Better Left Unsaid
by Kenchi618
Summary: Mizuki never got to shoot his mouth off at Naruto the night he took the Scroll of Seals. Other than skipping a half-manic monologue from him what exactly did this change for everyone's favorite blonde ninja? Who knows? Rated M for language/later events.
1. You Are The!

Disclaimer: Greetings all of Kenchi's current and hopefully soon to be fans. Welcome to my 5th story attempt and hopefully this one gets over as well as The Sealed Kunai did… I'm holding my breath on that one, but you never know eh? Anyway the concept is simple enough, my take on what the storyline would do if Naruto never found out he was the Kyuubi jinchuuriki from Mizuki the night he graduated. An important event for sure (Duh, it was the first event). Simple, but let's see how I mess with this in the end eh?

Let's give it a shot and jump right in… oh, and I don't own Naruto. There.

**Better Left Unsaid**

**Chapter 1: You Are The-!**

**

* * *

**

"What do you think you're doing out here Naruto?" An out of breath and seemingly irate scar-faced, brown ponytail wearing chunin Umino Iruka asked rhetorically to a young blonde boy with whisker-marks on his cheeks. He already knew of course, everyone his level and higher knew. Naruto had been caught leaving the Hokage Tower with the Forbidden Scroll of Seals, the scroll with tons of Konohagakure's secret and most well guarded techniques ever amassed. This was right up there with treason, even for a child like Naruto. Hence why Iruka had hunted him down and found him deep inside of the forests outside of the village walls.

Said boy simply held his hand behind his neck, rubbing it while grinning sheepishly, "I found you Iruka-sensei!"

Iruka's eye twitched, "Idiot! _I_ found _you_!" His expression then softened, "Naruto what on earth possessed you to take the scroll like that? Don't you know it's forbidden?"

Naruto chuckled like a goof for a moment before standing up and looking proud of himself, "You caught me fast Iruka-sensei, I only had time to learn one jutsu from the scroll." That one tidbit of information made Iruka's eyebrows rise under his headband in surprise, "But everything's okay now because I can graduate! That's how it works isn't it? I get the scroll and learn a jutsu from it and I can graduate even if I failed!"

There wasn't an inflection of lie in his voice at all that Iruka could decipher, not that Naruto could effectively lie to a ninja his level anyway, but he was completely sincere. He honestly believed what he was saying, "Naruto, who told you this? I have to tell you now right off that it's not true. Someone lied to you." Iruka asked, seeing Naruto's face drop from one of triumph to disbelief.

"What?" He said in a panicked voice, "B-But Mizuki-sensei was the one that gave me the test. He said it was a make-up for the graduation exam." Hearing the despair in his voice worked Iruka's heart for the boy. He was deceived by someone that should have had his best interests at heart and was to be used as a scapegoat. And what could Naruto do? To trust your sensei to do what was right was no sin, no crime. If it were than Mitarashi Anko would be locked away or dead by now for what her sensei had done while she was under him.

Iruka shut his eyes so that he could think. Naruto was lucky he was the first one to find him, others would have probably destroyed him before he even knew what was going on. Speaking of which, Iruka sent out a pulse of chakra so that he could see if anyone were around. It was one of Iruka's best techniques, sending out the pulse of chakra to get something of a momentary sonar image of his surroundings; the secret behind how he was able to tell if anyone in his class was slacking off or goofing off even when he had his back turned to the chalkboard.

Naruto looked up at Iruka, his eyes on the verge of tears, "I-Iruka-sensei am I in trouble?" Naruto had no idea what to do in case he were. Fight Iruka? Yeah, as if. He may have had a lot of bluster but he wasn't a fool when it came to his own capabilities as a ninja. He knew Iruka could pick him apart if necessary before he could even do the seals for his new super-strong technique… and what good would beating up Iruka do even if he _could _somehow pull it off? If he did that he definitely wouldn't be a ninja afterwards which meant no Hokage for him. There was no reason to even fight.

Iruka sighed before letting out another pulse of chakra, no one around yet. What was he going to do? He placed a hand on Naruto's hair, "To be frank, more than likely. But you were just doing what your sensei told you to do to become a ninja. If you come with me I swear on my status as a Konoha chunin that I'll do whatever I can to vouch for you and help you get out of this." He said with as much conviction as he could. He could see the subtle movements of Naruto's body, he was trying to decide whether he would run, fight, or just give up.

If he ran and Iruka couldn't catch him again the next person that found him would leave Naruto a bloody smear on the forest floor, and the sad thing about it would be that he really didn't think that too many people would care if that did indeed happen. Poor kid, Hokage-sama was right about him.

Naruto looked at Iruka intently. Mizuki had already lied to him today apparently, who's to say that Iruka-sensei wouldn't either? But he did give him his word. Not just his word, his word as a chunin of the village, and if there was one thing Naruto took seriously it was people giving their word, "Do you promise?"

Iruka gave him a reassuring smile, "I just gave you my word stupid." He sent out another pulse absentmindedly, he needed to get Naruto back to clear his name quick, as long as he kept doing this he was burning right through his chakra rapidly, "Now let's get going Naruto-." His pulse actually got something this time, and it was coming at them fast, "Naruto look out!" Iruka tackled Naruto to the ground just as a massive shuriken passed right where he had been standing a second earlier.

"Nice work Naruto." Mizuki stated as he appeared standing on a tree branch looking down at him and Iruka who had gotten back to his feet standing defensively in front of Naruto, "Now give me the scroll."

Iruka's fingers flexed right by his kunai and shuriken pouch on his thigh, "He already knows you deceived him Mizuki. You should have been a bit faster, or maybe you couldn't find your own decoy? Maybe you should be the one going back to the academy." Iruka took a moment to pat himself on the back for riling Mizuki up.

Mizuki sneered at Iruka before turning a kinder look to the young boy behind the scar-faced chunin, "Naruto did you ever wonder why everyone hates you? Everyone in the village knows about it but you."

Naruto glowered at Mizuki, "I don't care what you have to say you bastard! You tricked me! Now who knows what's going to happen to me. If you think you're getting this scroll from me you're going to have to walk over my cold, dead body to get it!"

Mizuki frowned, he really wanted to take the demon brat down a peg, but he was going to die whether he told him the truth or not so it didn't really matter in the end. He shook his head before taking another large shuriken from his back, "Well that was the general idea when I had you take it for me Naruto. No one would miss you once you were gone, trust me."

Iruka looked back and saw that Mizuki's words cut deep inside of Naruto from the change of expression on his face. Even he knew it was true, "Mizuki…" Iruka growled lowly, "Surrender now. I don't want to have to hurt you, it doesn't have to be this way."

Mizuki let out a loud bark of laughter, "Why would I possibly surrender? All I've got standing in my way is a lackluster schoolteacher and the talentless dropout dead-last of his class. If I lose to a glorified babysitter like you Iruka I deserve to be punished."

"Naruto." Iruka said firmly, keeping his eyes on his fellow teacher, "I'm going to need you to stay out of the way. Can you do that for me? Get far out of the way so that you don't get caught up in this fight." He would have told him to go and get them some help, but if he went to anyone else other than himself Naruto would probably have been immediately detained or even killed. It would have been a boy who cried wolf scenario.

Naruto nodded hesitantly and picked up the scroll, however the second he made his move to leave Mizuki launched three shuriken at him. The only thing that saved him was some spot on marksmanship from the instructor seemingly on his side in this situation, Iruka.

"You're going to fight for that little monster Iruka?" Mizuki shook his head as he saw Naruto vanish into the woods, "I thought you were smarter than that. You know you can't beat me. All this grading papers for the last several years made you lose what little talent you have, clearly you couldn't move up."

Iruka wanted to laugh in Mizuki's face. Oh well, he was about to get his in just a moment anyway. Obviously he had been whipping himself into shape for this little plan of his, but it wasn't like Iruka had just been sitting on his ass doing nothing.

Being the teacher he was he had free reign and plenty of reason to head to the library, not just to gather extra material for his lectures, he also dropped in from time to time in the section set aside for exercises and jutsu, and while there was never anything too high level in there for all to see beyond basic and at the most intermediate techniques, that was never really a bad thing. Basics were basic for a reason, because they worked, and the tactics and theoretical ideas in tome were more than enough for someone like him, it helped him develop his sonar technique all on his own.

Being the teacher he was he also stayed after school plenty of times to finish his work for the day when Mizuki simply got to head home as he was simply his assistant. Seemingly a good thing, but Mizuki had to isolate himself to set all of this up, to plan and prepare. How much could he train and improve on his own? Iruka didn't have that problem. All teachers were at the very least chunin by prerequisite, and they all trained together regularly after school to ensure their skills stayed sharp in case they were needed. He never remembered Mizuki ever getting that memo as it was an ask-receive basis for that privilege, no one was going to make you train.

Being the teacher he was he may have been just a chunin, but he was a chunin with every single battle scenario worth memorizing and remembering ingrained in the back of his brain. Mizuki may have been treacherous and cunning, but Iruka could be just as cunning as he was, and he had the technical nuances of being a ninja all locked up in his head. While they may have been on a similar level of strength and while Mizuki _may_ have been _slightly_ stronger than him he knew he was better, Mizuki simply thought he was better, but in a straight up fight Iruka was positive that Mizuki couldn't beat him.

"Naruto's no monster, I learned that a long time ago. The only monster I see here is you, turning a student's trust into a weapon against him for your own bidding." Iruka held a kunai in his right hand, ready for combat.

Mizuki chuckled and drew his own kunai to humor Iruka, "You should have just left Iruka. I tried to talk you out of this just so you know. Why are you defending him? He's just the-."

Iruka cut him off sharply, "I'm done listening to you talk. The next words I want to hear from you are your pleas to Ibiki to stop." With that both men flew at each other in a blur of speed, at least it was a blur of speed to Naruto who knew full well he couldn't move that fast on his best day.

Iruka and Mizuki met on the ground, clashing their kunai against one another in a test of strength. Mizuki had a smirk planted on his face while Iruka's face was one of focus and intent. In a burst of energy, Mizuki overpowered Iruka and threw him off balance before making a move to stab Iruka and end the fight.

Iruka let the kunai sail past his throat, coming short of slashing out his esophagus, and returned with a short backhand with his free arm to Mizuki's face that the man blocked. Iruka was not deterred and fired off a side kick that caught Mizuki in the body, sending him back. It was just as he thought, Mizuki wasn't that much better than him, if he was at all. He hadn't used any jutsu yet, but then again Iruka hadn't either.

Mizuki growled at being the one to take the first hit in this fight and threw the kunai in his hand at Iruka. Iruka simply used the kunai in his own hand to deflect it and came back in to press his new advantage; he was armed, Mizuki wasn't. Mizuki stepped back as he saw Iruka coming in to attack him and threw a handful of caltrops from his pockets right in his path to keep him from advancing any further.

Iruka was forced to stop in his tracks or have his feet impaled by the spikes, but he was forced to take his eyes off of Mizuki who immediately responded to Iruka's situation. He drew the large shuriken from his back and threw it. Iruka had ample time to prepare a Kawarimi to switch himself out for protection, but the shuriken sailed right past him, 'What did he throw at? He missed me by a mile!' The sound of the shuriken sailing off into the distance and cutting through things rang out, even something that sounded like a person… "Naruto!"

Mizuki chuckled, "Did you really think that brat could hide from me Iruka? It was either let me kill him or let the others kill him once they found him. I just did it faster than they would have. I'm not surprised he didn't see it coming, he was ranked dead-last for a reason after all." His gloating was cut off when Iruka's fist slammed right into his nose, spraying blood with the impact.

All Iruka wanted was to beat Mizuki to a bloody pulp at the moment. After all of the things that Naruto had to deal with and he was cut down by someone like Mizuki before he even had a chance to change the way he was seen by the villagers. One punch wasn't enough, he wanted to make Mizuki suffer for this. He never got to apologize to Naruto for being so hard on him all the time, he never got to tell him how alike they were and how much of himself he saw in the boy. But he could at least clear his name at Mizuki's expense if nothing else.

Mizuki was reeling after the first punch from Iruka, but after clearing the tears from his eyes that sprang from getting his nose broken he realized that Iruka had gotten sloppy. His punches stopped being crisp and started looping far more than before and he almost completely forgot about the kunai he had in his hand, well Mizuki remembered that it was still there.

Mizuki shot out a short punch as a counter to one of Iruka's emotional haymakers and hit the man right in the throat, delighting in watching his eyes bulge out. It was a pity though, a little harder and he could have watched him strangle to death and been done with it. Iruka dropped his kunai to clutch at his throat, trying to catch some air after nearly having his larynx smashed by Mizuki allowing the silver-haired man to pick up the discarded weapon and drive it into Iruka's shoulder to the hilt before he could aptly defend himself, he was only able to avert it from going into his heart.

Mizuki scoffed, "You're being irksome Iruka, just die already." He said, standing over the fallen instructor, "All of this simply to protect that useless monster, I bet you feel proud." He held his heel right on Iruka's throat, slowly descending it to crush it under his sandal.

Iruka choked out a cheeky response, "He's twice the shinobi you are for sure, but then again what's two times nothing?" Seeing Mizuki's face twist into that scowl almost made the fact that he was about to die slightly better.

"I'm good enough to kill you apparently." Mizuki said right before he planned on stomping right on Iruka's neck, planned because it never came to be. An orange blur came out of nowhere and plowed right into him, sending him flying back.

XxX

Watching the battle between Mizuki and Iruka made Naruto feel completely out of his league, they weren't even using any jutsu. There was no way he was going to step into the midst of that, he'd get killed by accident, every move was fluent and flowed. Either one of them would thrash him before he could finish hand-seals for any of the jutsu he knew, except for the new one of course. He'd smash anybody with his new jutsu.

But then Naruto was stunned, Mizuki really was trying to kill him. Once he got out of sight so that Iruka and Mizuki could fight he started skulking around the battlefield, making use of his new jutsu to cut off any escape routes Mizuki might try to take once Iruka started kicking his ass. And then he felt his own death and heard Iruka shout his name getting him to look from his cover out at the battle between Mizuki and Iruka, talking about how he had just died and how Mizuki had been planning to kill him all along.

Seeing Iruka explode in rage after thinking that he died brought some happiness to Naruto, at least there was someone out there that would feel something if he just up and kicked the bucket one day, it was better than he thought it was at least. But when he saw Mizuki take the advantage over Iruka and move to finish him off he couldn't take it anymore and sprang to action. Luckily Mizuki figured he had killed him with that shuriken and never saw him coming when he slammed right into him, taking delight in the fact that he sent him flying with a glorified body check.

He stood in front of Iruka and glared out at Mizuki, "If you try to lay one more hand on Iruka-sensei I'll kill you." He threatened.

Mizuki stood up and dusted himself off before laughing at Naruto, "What exactly can you do? I just beat the only threat here? I'll kill you right out in one shot!"

"Come and try it then! I'll send it right back a thousand-fold!" Naruto roared at him, clinching his fists tightly. Mizuki must have taken that as a personal challenge because he came storming right in to take Naruto out. Naruto made a cross sign with his index and middle fingers on both hands as a large cloud of smoke engulfed the field, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

When the smoke cleared, the entire area was filled to the brim with copies of Naruto. Every nook and cranny of the area was filled with them, even all over the branches of the trees, "What's the matter Mizuki-teme?" One of the Narutos shouted.

"Yeah, I thought you were going to kill us all with one shot?" Another quipped.

"Well since you're not coming to us, we're coming to you!" And with that, the countless number of clones descended upon Mizuki and began beating the daylights out of him, the numbers were simply too much for someone like him to handle alone.

Iruka was astonished. Less than 18 hours earlier Naruto couldn't make one regular Bunshin, but here he was able to fill an entire forest clearing with the most complex clone jutsu known to Konoha, and he had done it seemingly effortlessly. That had to take an ungodly amount of chakra, how could he-?

Oh, yeah that... duh.

In a matter of moments Mizuki had been beaten to a pulp by Naruto and his countless Kage Bunshin, leaving one remaining Naruto standing over his prone form grinning sheepishly, "I guess I went a little overboard huh?"

'Not really.' Iruka thought to himself, "Hey Naruto come here for a minute and close your eyes." The boy blinked but curiously did as he was asked, allowing the wounded Iruka to quickly swap out the boy's goggles for his own headband, "Now go ahead and open them. Naruto looked at Iruka strangely when he saw that he was no longer wearing a headband, "Congratulations, you graduate!"

Iruka wasn't sure if the sunshine hitting him in the face came from the sunrise or from the smile that spread across Naruto's face once his words had sunk in.

XxX

(The Next Day)

Naruto had gotten one hell of an earful from the Sandaime Hokage after returning the Scroll of Sealing with Iruka the previous night. Naruto wasn't sure what he was more angry about, the fact that Naruto had actually gotten away with the scroll, or that Naruto had actually gone through the Hokage himself to get it. And people called Oiroke no Jutsu (Sexy Jutsu) a stupid waste of time.

Anyway, after getting chewed out for half an hour the kindly old man told Naruto he was proud of him and that protecting Iruka the way he did showed that he did indeed have the Will of Fire. He supported Iruka's decision to allow him to graduate and proceeded to give Naruto all of the information he needed for orientation the next week; where to go for the actual orientation itself, where to go to get his ninja ID photo taken, etc.

Anyway, Iruka asked him to meet him at the Academy the next day. Why, he didn't know since he was told orientation for new genin didn't happen until next week, but he figured he would humor his teacher and show up. He proved the previous night that he was someone Naruto could trust and for that the least he could do was show up when he was asked to, it wasn't like Naruto was doing anything else either to not do so. With that in mind Naruto headed through the streets of Konoha towards the Academy.

XxX

Iruka sat on the edge of his desk waiting for Naruto to show up. He was very glad that he showed the skill needed to graduate last night, but the conversation he held with the Hokage after Naruto headed home stuck out in his mind

_(Flashback)_

_Iruka sat in front of Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Sandaime Hokage who had lit up his pipe as he waited for Iruka to speak. For some reason the man had something else he needed to talk about regarding the events of the evening. Iruka looked like he was thinking on how to address the issue, but eventually opted to just speak, "Hokage-sama, Mizuki came this close to telling Naruto about the you know what. If he hadn't cut him off when he did it would have gotten out."_

_The Sandaime nodded and let out a puff of smoke, "Sometimes I wonder why I don't just tell him myself. I kept it a secret because it was supposed to help him be a normal boy like everyone else, but as we all know, that didn't exactly turn out as anticipated. You yourself can attest to that."_

_Iruka nodded in concession to that, "Do you want me to tell him?" Iruka wondered, "I think I'd be willing to, and I think he might take it better if he hears it from me in case another person like Mizuki tries something."_

_The old Hokage laughed, "I don't believe that after what Naruto-kun did to Mizuki there will be too many people lining up to attempt to use him for anything. As if Naruto-kun himself would let that happen again. He learns his hard lessons well enough. No, I don't think that will be necessary Iruka-kun. I have someone I intend to have tell Naruto-kun himself when I can get him to return to Konoha. I appreciate the thought though. I just want him to enjoy his first days as a genin before I let him know about such a dark secret. He hasn't had a normal childhood as we all know even as far as orphans go, he at least deserves to get a normal experience as a genin."_

_Iruka couldn't even imagine having the pressure of holding back what Naruto had the responsibility of doing right now, and he was doing it unwillingly and unwittingly as a child. Knowing that an entity of chakra that nearly obliterated your home and snuffed out countless lives was sitting behind a construct of ink on your belly would turn the hairs of lesser men gray with stress. Iruka blinked at realizing what his leader had just said, "Wait, you mean you're going to tell him at some point? From the way you just put it I would agree with never telling him, it's worked so far."_

_Hiruzen shook his head, "I'm risking Naruto-kun's spite by not telling him for as long as I have, but one day he will need to know. The burden placed on him isn't just going to disappear Iruka, no matter what he does it will always be the elephant in the room. To anyone that doesn't know Naruto-kun personally they will always see the shadow of the Kyuubi over him if they ever even see him at all. I could reiterate to the village over and over again that he is a hero, but that would do no good, they must come to their own conclusion on the matter, unfortunately for the most part it is usually the wrong conclusion."_

(End Flashback)

"Iruka-sensei?" Naruto called out, sounding kind of hesitant. He slid the door to the room up at the top of the rows open and looked around before seeing Iruka at his desk, "Hey there sensei. You wanted to see me?"

Iruka sighed before smiling, "Yes I did Naruto. I wanted to say that I'm very proud of you for proving that you were good enough to graduate, and also for saving my life."

Naruto grinned widely as he started walking down the stairs towards Iruka and rubbed the back of his neck in what had to be his signature posture, "No problem sensei, I mean you saved me first didn't you? I just returned the favor heh."

Iruka smiled warmly at the boy, "Well how about I teach you something in return for helping me out yesterday?" Hearing the word 'learning' from Iruka sent a shiver down Naruto's spine. Learning was usually associated with lectures, lectures were boring, Naruto hated boring.

Naruto slowly backing away towards the door, "Uh that's okay sensei I didn't do anything big. And besides, I don't need it, I graduated right, dattebayo?"

Iruka gave Naruto a deadpan look, "Naruto I was going to teach you a jutsu."

The word 'jutsu' stopped Naruto right in his tracks and he seemingly teleported right into Iruka's face, "A jutsu? You're going to teach me a jutsu? What is it? Is it a giant fireball? A tidal wave? What is it Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka calmed Naruto down, "I'll teach you this jutsu but I want you to listen to me okay?" Naruto stood still and had a face of intent listening. Iruka cleared his throat, "Now as I said I'm very proud of you for what you accomplished and you should be too." Naruto beamed a smile at that, "But you should know that things are only going to be harder from this point on. I want you to take everything I'm telling you to heart, as if I've never tried to tell you anything before this, but this time I want you to really listen to me and take note."

Naruto frowned but he was getting a jutsu out of this, "Alright Iruka-sensei. I'm listening."

Iruka nodded and continued, "You're going to be a ninja of Konoha and that means that you're a soldier of this village, just like me. And just like me you need to be ready to defend the people of this village with your life and do missions important to our prosperity." Naruto wanted to yawn, he knew this already, "You have a responsibility to be the best that you can be. Whenever someone, especially another ninja, tells you something important you need to listen. You also need to work at your weaknesses. Now tell me, what are you good at?"

Naruto immediately started, "I've got the Oiroke no Jut-."

"Be serious Naruto." Iruka said seriously.

Naruto squinted at Iruka, why did no one take that move seriously. It's an effective technique, "Alright… I have Henge, Kawarimi, I can't do the Bunshin but I have Kage Bunshin now heh." He tapped his chin in thought, "Um, my taijutsu is awesome!" He felt Iruka's glare on him, "Okay, my taijutsu could be better. And my genjutsu…" He trailed off.

Iruka sighed and patted Naruto's head, "That's okay Naruto, you're just starting out, but that's what I mean. You have to get yourself together. You need to get all of the Academy katas down and finish learning the taijutsu. I know you still have all of the take-home things I gave you for when you all were learning them and I want you to practice."

"But Iruka-sensei I'm a good fighter!" Naruto whined.

Iruka shook his head, "Those are the most basic forms there are Naruto, made so that everyone can learn them and they're good for branching out further for original styles later. It's a fantastic stepping stone. Everything you've learned in the Academy is a stepping stone, the concepts of the three jutsu you had to learn are all rooted in the basis of many other far more complex jutsu. Kawarimi and Henge are two of the most adaptable ninjutsu in existence, hence why we teach it, but I'm going off on a tangent."

'You're telling me.' Naruto told himself, still listening intently.

Iruka rested his hands on Naruto's shoulders, "I know you can be a splendid ninja if you put your mind to it, but you need to work hard. I don't want you to slack off like you were doing in the Academy, because if you do it out in the real world it can get you killed. Tons of genin die on their first real missions because they weren't ready for what the life entailed. I don't want that to happen to you, so if nothing else I want you to keep these things in mind."

Naruto saw that Iruka's expression was completely genuine and he had said these things out of concern for his well-being, "Okay Iruka-sensei. I'll try."

"Good. I'm counting on you to prove me right. After all, when you're Hokage I want a raise for being the guy that was behind you all the way." He got a chuckle out of Naruto before he made a motion with his head, "Now come on, let's teach you that jutsu I promised."

"Yatta!" Naruto shouted, almost making a dust cloud on his way out of the building, "I'm getting an extra jutsu right out of the Academy. Nobody else is getting that!"

Iruka sweatdropped and followed him out.

XxX

Iruka had brought Naruto outside to the obstacle course field that was now deserted seeing as school was not in session, "Okay Naruto I'm about to teach you a move that I created myself." Hearing that Iruka had created his own jutsu made Naruto stare at him in awe, making Iruka feel pretty cool. People never think he's cool so it was refreshing.

"Did you really make your own jutsu Iruka-sensei?" Naruto asked, gasping when Iruka proudly nodded, "Wow…"

"Yep." Iruka rubbed under his nose pridefully, "It doesn't need any hand-seals, and it's pretty simple in theory too, it just takes a burst of chakra really. It's kind of wasteful, but for someone like you I don't think you'll have any problems with it, especially after your little exhibition on Mizuki." Naruto laughed, remembering what he had done to get his rank, "Alright it's called Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu). It can be used to find things around you, like finding the location of things that you can't see. It's really good for tracking, or for scouting ahead for traps, or all kinds of things. It's a great sensor technique." Naruto squinted at Iruka throughout his entire explanation as if deep in thought, eventually unnerving the man, "Naruto do you have a question."

Naruto simply kept staring at him with his closed eyes expression before he pointed abruptly, "That's how you were always able to find me when I did stuff?" Iruka face-faulted, seemingly validating Naruto's theory, "Damn it I knew I wasn't making mistakes of leaving tracks! Do you have any idea how insane that kept driving me? I thought I just sucked at hiding, I was about to throw all those stealth lessons away and start just running in before fights since it looked like I could never stay hidden, dattebayo!"

Iruka stood up and rubbed his face. If one thing was for sure, whenever he did his pranks Naruto definitely got some training in, "So you started wearing that orange jumpsuit because I kept catching you and you decided to just discard all of the stealth lessons?"

Naruto looked away, "Um no. I started wearing this last year remember? Well that was when I had the idea to paint the Hokage Monument. Ha, I had it all planned out at the start of this school year I just needed to test it… that and orange is awesome!"

Iruka looked at him strangely, jutsu lesson temporarily on hold so he could make sense of this, "Wait. So you wore an orange jumpsuit to help you pull that off?"

Naruto nodded with a huge grin, "Yeah! See I started painting before the sun came up and I kept painting all through the sunrise in the suit. No one could see me when the sun wasn't up because it was pitch dark out and during the sunrise-."

Iruka's jaw dropped. The idea was actually brilliant. In the early sun, Naruto's jumpsuit would blend right in as the sun hit the mountainside, making the mountain glow _orange_, and as the sun rose over the direction of the mountain anyone looking that way would be blinded by the sun, even if they could distinguish Naruto while he was working. Did he even know how tactical that was? He needed to make sure Naruto cultivated that before he lost it, this kid might be able to write a book on tactics when he got older.

Iruka shook that thought off for later, he wasn't letting this one go, "Alright Naruto, now it's really simple. All you have to do is gather your chakra throughout your entire body and exert it outwardly in a single layer burst. You should get a feeling of everything around you, closer objects should give a stronger presence than things further away. Got it?"

Naruto nodded, "I've got it Iruka-sensei!" He placed his hands in the ram seal. When Iruka gave him a questioning look Naruto blushed out of embarassment, "I kind of don't know how to focus my chakra without making hand-seals yet."

Iruka shook his head, "That's another thing you need to work on Naruto, but it's alright for now."

Naruto did as he was instructed and projected his chakra outwards in a quick burst. He looked at Iruka after doing so and blinked blankly, "So how was that?"

Iruka scratched his head, "I don't know, you have to tell me. Did you feel anything?"

Naruto shrugged, "How am I supposed to know? Can you tell me what it feels like when done right?"

Iruka took a moment to think, "I'll be right back. Just yell for me when you're ready to do the jutsu again, I'll hear you and come running. Just see if you can feel which way I'm coming from. That should work." With that, Iruka disappeared from sight, leaving Naruto to build his chakra again.

Naruto stood for a moment before getting an amount he thought was good before shouting at the top of his lungs, "Alright Iruka-sensei! I'm ready!" He waited a second before letting the pulse go. He felt something moving at 7 o'clock and turned in the corresponding direction, "Got you Iruka-sensei!"

A few seconds later Iruka made it right next to Naruto, "You felt me coming from all that way?" He sounded surprised, 'That was from 400 meters away... That's a quarter of a mile.' He tried to hide his shock under a guise of indifference, "That's pretty good for just having gotten the jutsu down, but you need to get better at sensing things and reacting before they get close. If someone was throwing something at you being able to sense it wouldn't do any good if you still can't dodge it. You'll get better the more you try it."

Naruto had been expecting something big and flashy, but this was cool to him as well, "Ha, no one's ever going to sneak up on me again with this Iruka-sensei. I'll get better with this jutsu than you are, and then I'll rename it to something cooler, dattebayo."

Iruka curled over by a tree with a raincloud over his head, "Why does everyone say the name of the jutsu isn't cool? I think I came up with a great name for it…"

Naruto ignored his thoughts on his jutsu and kept talking, "I mean it explains what it is and all but you've got to come up with something that just screams 'bad-ass'! Something like, 'I-see-you-motherfucker-jutsu' or 'get-out-here-and-get-your-ass-kicked-jutsu, you know?"

Iruka coughed and got over his momentary lapse in self-esteem, "Well that's it Naruto. That's all I've got for you."

Naruto smiled up at the man, "Thanks for everything Iruka-sensei. I promise I'll make you proud."

"I know you will Naruto." Iruka said, "But remember the most important weapon a shinobi could ever have."

"A kunai?" Naruto guessed.

"No."

"A log for Kawarimi?"

"N-… Well yes, but that's a lesson a lot of ninja don't know until much later so good for you." Naruto grinned widely at the compliment while Iruka continued, "I'm talking about your mind." He accentuated by tapping his temple, "Your mind is the most dangerous weapon that an enemy can encounter… especially _your_ mind. Because I'm not really sure what goes through it 90% of the time and anything you can't anticipate is always scary."

Naruto nodded, "Right. My mind is scary. Got it."

Iruka palmed his face and dragged it down, "Ugh, just don't be afraid of learning things Naruto. Trust me, the smarter you are, the tougher you are to beat. Just look at Hokage-sama, they call him 'The Professor' because of all of his amassed knowledge. The better understanding of things you have the stronger you can be."

Naruto laughed, "Well then I'll just have to get smarter than the old man too! Thanks a lot Iruka-sensei, I'll see you later!" Naruto turned and took off away from the Academy, "I'm going to get some ramen! Wait until I tell everyone I passed!"

Iruka watched Naruto leave with a smile on his face, "Konoha wasn't built in a day I suppose… Heh, you know I think he actually listened to me more today than any other time in the last six years."

XxX

Hiruzen was watching Iruka and Naruto's impromptu session from his crystal ball, "Good work Iruka. It seems that you're one of the most willing shinobi out there when it comes to passing the torch to the next generation." The old man let out a fond laugh, "If only we had more shinobi like you in our ranks."

* * *

**Chapter one of the new experiment. the change in the universe is _subtle_, but hey... butterfly effect eh? I hate that movie...**

**The chapters will get longer as the actual direction of the story starts to play out, but I figured that would speak for itself once things got underway for real. This one is going to be a divergence away from the usual themes my stories take, but I believe I can still make it awesome, and if I can't I'll know my limits in storytelling.**

**Whatever, I don't care. It's not like I'm getting paid for the shit I write… Who would pay for my crap anyway?**

**Any questions? Concerns? In the realm of things I can answer of course.  
**

**Kenchi out.**


	2. Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Kishimoto better change his name to Santa Claus and fork over the rights or his ass is grass.

**Chapter 2: Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers**

**

* * *

**

It had only been one day since Naruto had learned Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) and he had barely stopped using it for the entire day before. Once he ate and bragged about his graduation to Teuchi and Ayame at Ichiraku Ramen he went straight home and pretty much sat on his roof for hours just sending out pulse after pulse, scouting for anything he could sense. It was unarguably the stillest Naruto had ever sat for the longest period of time. Why didn't more people take the time to learn this jutsu from Iruka-sensei? As a matter of fact why not teach it in the academy? It was so cool.

Anyway, after doing that for a few hours of mindless entertainment, funny though, Iruka said it was wasteful on chakra, he didn't feel like he had been doing anything but that was a whole different matter, after he was done playing with his new jutsu he headed inside. He still had a week to wait out before he was to be at orientation and he had nothing to do. He promised he wouldn't pull anymore pranks and he wasn't going to be able to top painting the Hokage Monument anyway.

He had absolutely nothing to do that night. There was no need to go to bed early or anything, he didn't have to be anywhere the next morning for an entire week, but he still didn't have a thing to do for that period of time.

"_You need to get all of the Academy katas down and finish learning the taijutsu."_

Iruka told him he needed to finish learning the taijutsu. Naruto always assumed he was passable in taijutsu because he was. It was the only thing he decisively passed no matter what in the academy because it didn't require him to learn anything or pay too much attention. All the attention he paid was in the beginning when they went over the most simple basics provided, how to punch and kick. That was it. He knew nothing else formal about it. Not how to dodge and parry, not even how to properly block. He never even really got reprimanded in taijutsu class because more often than not when they would spar he would win. He couldn't beat kids like Kiba or that asshole Sasuke, but pretty much everyone else he was able to at the very least hang tough against, because he launched an assault right when the fight would start, even when he got hit he would just work on through it, counting on the fact that he could take more punches than his opponents. His style was no style, he was a hard-nosed brawler and it had suited him fine to this point.

But he promised that he would try… that and he didn't have anything to do and it was too late to go out and run amok. What he forgot however, was that he had never bothered to even keep his stuff together from the Academy. When he got homework or some other handout that he didn't do right there on the spot it usually got forgotten among some clutter, and he hadn't touched anything on taijutsu in forever. Hence the rest of his night awake was spent with him digging all over the apartment for his stuff on Academy taijutsu.

When he had woken up the next morning two hours were spent with him retrieving the rest of his scrolls on taijutsu, and by the time he had finished that and had some breakfast he was too bored to just sit in his apartment a read them. Deciding to kill two birds with one stone he left the house in search of somewhere interesting that could help him hold his attention long enough to get to the practical application of the academy taijutsu because after learning basic stance and punches and kicks Iruka went into lecture mode for about a month after that, killing Naruto's buzz so to speak and letting his attention on the matter drop.

'At least this time I can skip all of the boring stuff and just learn the cool moves in the scroll.' Naruto thought to himself as he walked through the village. He held the scroll in his hand, looking at it as he navigated the village streets on auto-pilot.

He didn't really need to keep his eyes ahead of him, people usually always gave him a wide berth when he was going anywhere, something he didn't really understand, but that was the way it had been for as long as he could remember. That was okay, all he had to do was show them how awesome he was and then everything would change, which was going to happen any day now that he was finally a ninja. Kids would be asking him for autographs, he'd hear people reference his greatness even in conversations where his name wasn't even in the topic, appraising eyes would be on him every time he went into public. Yep, he couldn't wait.

'I can't wait to show everyone how much ass I kick! I've got to go learn this taijutsu so I can get started!' With a huge grin on his face, Naruto sped off towards the verdant forests of Konoha to find somewhere to get to work.

XxX

Naruto was incredibly disappointed when he finally reached his spot in the forest he had chosen to train at. The Academy taijutsu scroll only had a few basics; how to throw textbook punches, kicks, how to block to minimize damage, how to notice your opponent telegraphing an attack, just those basics. The most advanced thing in the scroll he found was how to trap a limb and that was where that little hint of instruction stopped with the words '_from here utilize advanced grappling knowledge_.' When the hell had they gone over that? And why didn't he have a scroll on it?

Naruto growled and stood up to go through the motions that were actually provided in instruction on the scroll as he really didn't know those things actually except for the punches and kicks. Blocking was harder to get seeing as he needed a training partner. And then he proceeded to slam his head off of a tree as he realized that he had a built in training partner from the jutsu he had learned from the Scroll of Seals.

With a clone made via Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu) Naruto had him play living dummy as he directed the clone to hold its hands out and catch his punches and kicks so that Naruto didn't have to smash them up on a tree. It would always dispel after blocking a few, but he could always bring out another one no matter how irksome it was. This went on for thirty minutes before Naruto decided to drill his defense.

Making a clone that was grinning at the potential prospect brought along by his order, which was to punch and kick the original Naruto while he tried blocking, parrying, and eventually catching the punches in his grasp, he set himself in his basic stance and prepared for practicing his blocking… which didn't really work out too well for him right off the bat.

Naruto's clone immediately took to pummeling his creator, per his orders, not even letting Naruto reset himself to try again, and then it basically devolved into Naruto rolling around and brawling with himself on the forest floor.

"Ow! You bit me!" The original Naruto shouted before dispelling his unruly clone with a hard smash over the head, "Stupid troublemaking Kage Bunshin!" Naruto stood back up and smashed his fist against a tree, forcing the leaves to shake violently. A kunai then deposited itself right above where his hand was against the tree forcing Naruto to turn around and let out a pulse to determine his attacker's exact location.

Naruto turned in the exact direction he felt a living presence with a serious look, "Who's there? You might as well come out, I can find you no matter what!" Naruto sounded pretty tough, but that kunai came close to pinning him to a tree and the other night while playing with his new jutsu he had gotten used to sensing distance. He sensed the person that did that from about 500 feet away, that was scary aim even though they missed… and he hoped that they had missed on purpose.

After a few seconds a brown eyed girl with brown hair put up into buns came out, looking over Naruto warily, the favor being returned right back to her. She had on a sleeveless pink Chinese top and dark green pants. The thing Naruto noted was that she had on her own headband signifying her as a ninja of the village, and he had left his at home, only planning to wear it once orientation took place.

Naruto pulled at the kunai she had thrown into the tree trunk out with quite a bit of effort as he kept his eyes on her, 'How hard did she throw this thing?' Finally he managed to pull the kunai out and held it out in front of him suspiciously, "Why did you throw that at me?" He finally asked.

The girl spoke up with conviction in her voice, "For the last forty-five minutes all I hear from my spot training in the forest is a lot of yelling and shouting, and then a bunch of cursing and finally someone starts sounding like they're going to tear the forest apart. Let's just say I don't like leaving things unsolved and leave it at that. Now who are you?"

Naruto still didn't really drop his guard, Mizuki wasn't supposed to try and kill him either and that still happened, "Uzumaki Naruto. Future Hokage, dattebayo."

"You have to be a ninja first before you can try being Hokage kid." Naruto got a tick mark on his head from how she was talking to him.

Naruto snapped at her, "I am a ninja! I'm no different than you!"

The girl didn't verbally respond she simply audibly tapped the metal of her headband, "You need one of these to distinguish yourself as a ninja of this village. So where's yours?"

Damn it, so most of this could have been avoided if he had just worn the headband. He wasn't leaving that thing home ever again, "I didn't bring it, I didn't know I would need to actually identify myself today… I don't even have orientation until next week."

The girl's distrustful look switched over to one of amusement as her seemingly hostile posture straightened up. She walked over to Naruto and ruffled his hair, "Aww, you're just a baby rookie huh?" She grinned as him as he shook her hand off of his head.

"Oi!" Naruto replied crossly, "You're treating me like a five year old! I'm a legal adult now, a fully-fledged ninja!"

"Of course you are…" The girl pinched Naruto's cheek, taking pride in the twitching eyebrow signifying his ire at the current predicament, "Such a big tough ninja that hasn't even put his headband on yet or even gone on a mission. So precious."

Naruto's voice came out distorted due to the girl's grabbing of his cheek, "You know you're not any older than me so you can't be that much farther advanced."

She raised an eyebrow, "I've been a genin for a little over a year. That's an eternity compared to a newbie like you. I'd squash you if we were ever to fight."

"Oh yeah?" Naruto felt insulted. Who did this girl think she was? Why did everyone think they could just walk all over him all of the time? Even when people don't know him at all it still happened, "How about you put your money where your mouth is?"

The girl once again looked sufficiently amused by his statement, "Alright then. You're lucky that my team broke off for the day so that we could all train on our own, so now I've got some time to play with you. Follow me." She finished by taking her kunai back out of Naruto's grasp.

Naruto flexed his fingers in anticipation as he followed this new girl into a clearing to fight. This was his first legitimate fight against a ninja since Mizuki and he was going to make her eat her words. The girl stood out in front of him with a confident look on her face, "I'll go easy on you and wrap this up in 3 minutes Naruto-_chan_." She taunted.

Naruto grit his teeth, she was seriously messing with him now, "Oh yeah? I don't know who you are, so I know damn well that you don't know me! I'll tell you this though, don't underestimate me!" Naruto broke out in a rush right at the kunoichi planning to just knock her block off and be done here so he could be productive again.

The girl's jaw almost dropped at how straightforward this guy was. The space between them was thirty yards, thirty yards that he had to cover before he could even think of taking a swing at her, and he wasn't even that fast. Hell, one of her teammates hopping towards her on one leg would probably be faster than this kid was moving. She had to refrain from shaking her head as she pulled out a set of shuriken, she really didn't want to hurt this kid.

Naruto ended up falling onto his face as sharp pains hit him in multiple places on his body. Naruto rolled over and looked at his legs to see multiple shuriken sticking out the front of them going down. He looked up in surprise at his female opponent who had a displeased look on her face, "If that's all you've got then go home. I could have killed you right there and been done with it if this were an actual battle."

Naruto's eyes widened. She was right. He barely even saw anything coming at him and she hit him flush. Ignoring this, Naruto pulled the shuriken out of his legs and stood back up, she hadn't hit him anywhere vital or even anywhere important. So she was using weapons was she? Naruto reached into his own supply pouch and let off a barrage of shuriken at the girl who simply smirked and threw more of her own, hitting each of Naruto's and knocking them out of the air.

She was looking too smug for him to just quit and leave. Not without hitting her once, not without just giving her one good one to prove he wasn't pathetic. Naruto lifted his hands and made a cross seal with his fingers, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

The young girl's eyes widened as she saw one Naruto multiply into twelve. She was so surprised she almost missed his shout of 'Go!' that spurned all of them into action. The sight of so many Naruto's charging in at her and the realization that they weren't regular Bunshin and were real almost made her run away, but she got herself under control and focused. It didn't matter if there were twelve of him; twelve times zero was still zero.

Naruto planned on giving her the old Mizuki special, but he figured she was a genin and Mizuki was an elite, sending that many would be complete overkill so twelve was enough. He thought that right until a bo staff appeared in her hands in a puff of smoke and she began decimating his clones.

Seeing a girl his age masterfully handle a six-foot long staff so effectively, his clones weren't even getting close enough to mount an offense, was disheartening. What did he have? What? Was he going to just flood the field with clones like against Mizuki and beat her to a bloody pulp because she had skill that he didn't have? He didn't even think that teme Sasuke could beat this girl.

"Who are you?" Naruto asked once she finished mowing his Kage Bunshin down.

The girl set the head of her staff on the ground in her hand and wiped her brow, "It took you long enough to ask, how rude. My name is Tenten. So are we done?"

Naruto frowned. What did he have other than the Kage Bunshin? That was his trump card, his best technique, the strongest thing he had. He could have kept making them for as long as he wanted, but she would have just kept killing them off, and he didn't like his own chances of getting close to her the way his replicas had been put out of commission.

No. A win was a win and he would be damned if he was just going to lay down and let this girl beat him without at least trying to triumph. Naruto channeled his chakra and formed his hand-seal again, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Okay, seeing a rookie that hadn't even had a day on the job make solid clones was an eye-opener for Tenten, but this was ridiculous. She was surrounded on all sides by Naruto's clones that were giving her a wide berth to avoid the staff, but it was only a matter of time before he sent them in, she knew this, it was only logical.

Tenten quickly pulled out two scrolls and set them on the ground while making a short set of hand-seals.

"Go!" Naruto shouted, ordering his Kage Bunshin to put Tenten down hard.

"Soushouryuu (Twin Rising Dragons)!" Tenten's scrolls unraveled upwards in a swirling pattern of smoke as she jumped between them and began unsealing weapons from the scrolls surrounding her. She then proceeded to mercilessly bombard Naruto's hoard of copies with every single weapon she had amassed inside of her scrolls. Not just the standard fare of kunai and shuriken, Tenten pelted the poor clones with fuuma shuriken, a mace, sickles, senbon, katanas, she even threw out a few broadswords… and everything she threw hit. Nothing she flung at the Kage Bunshin missed its mark.

All of them forgot about attacking and simply focused on surviving, but there was nowhere to go. They were in the middle of a clearing, the closest cover was sixty yards away and Tenten wasn't taking prisoners. In a matter of moments Tenten had cleared the field of every single image of Naruto she had been aiming at. She landed back on the ground and her scrolls went slackas the field was covered in the leftover smoke from all of the clones.

Tenten grimaced at her handiwork. She knew she hadn't missed a single one, they were far too slow for her to miss on her worst day. She looked around for the real Naruto, she hoped she hadn't injured him too badly with all of that, she might have gone a little overboard, "Kid are you still alive? Say something!" She began walking and looking about the field that was hazy from all of the Kage Bunshin smoke that was steadily dispersing.

The area finally cleared up and Tenten couldn't see Naruto anywhere, there was no blood or anything either, signifying if he ran away or not. A poof sound directed her attention behind her where all she saw upon turning was a flash of yellow and orange before a fist closed in on her face.

"Dynamic Entry!"

A green blur came from out of nowhere and plowed a flying kick into the side of Naruto's face, sending him flying off from his surprise attack on Tenten and sending him sliding through the amassed weapons from Tenten's jutsu.

The blur turned out to be a boy their age in a green bodysuit, orange leg-warmers, bandaged hands, and a red headband around his waist as a belt. He had a black bowl-cut hairstyle and large eyebrows over round black eyes. He stood protectively in front of Tenten in a fighting stance, "I cannot allow you to harm my teammate. Such an underhanded attack on my youthful female comrade."

"Lee?" Tenten said questioningly as she saw Naruto struggling and failing to pick himself up off of the ground. Her mood turned from confusion to annoyance, "Lee that was what he was supposed to do! We were sparring, he was _supposed_ to try and hit me!"

The boy now identified as Lee stood up out of his stance and looked at Tenten in a puzzled manner before his face turned apologetic, "Ah, I am sorry Tenten. I simply saw him appear and attack you from behind and I just acted. I apologize."

Tenten shook her head, "Whatever. I'm not the one you need to apologize to. I'm not the one that got blindsided and knocked senseless." She turned her head towards Naruto who had finally pulled himself into a sitting position.

Naruto sat on the ground rubbing his face and clearing the mass amounts of weapons around him so that he didn't get cut or stabbed by anything. What the hell hit him? One second he was so close to nailing that Tenten chick right on the chin he could see the fear in her eyes and then he was over here forty feet away and feeling like chewing would be a pipe-dream in the near future. He stopped thinking when he saw the object of his last attack kneel down in front of him with an apologetic look on her face, "I'm sorry about that. My hot-headed teammate jumped the shark and interrupted the fight."

Naruto looked at her eyes exuding remorse for his appearance. He dabbed at his face with his hand and pulled it away. When he was hit his face must have dragged across the ground quite a bit from the blood he saw when he touched it. He must have cut it up on any of Tenten's myriad of weaponry, "Are you alright?"

A smirk crossed Naruto's face suddenly, "I told you I'd last more than 3 minutes." Naruto then noticed how concerned she sounded and gave her a reassuring grin, "Sure I'll be fine. This will all heal up by tomorrow!" He said loudly before clutching his jaw, he had opened it too far to talk. He looked over and saw a strange guy in green, ah, he must have been the douche that hit him… he probably fractured his jaw.

"I am terribly sorry for kicking you." The green guy said frantically, "It's just I was not aware that it was a spar, I thought you were trying to harm my teammate and I just jumped right in, and-."

"Lee!" Tenten cut him off from speaking any further, "I think he gets it. You're sorry."

Lee stopped moving around and spazzing out, "Yes, Tenten is correct. I apologize for harming you." The boy bowed to him before straightening out and giving him a smile, "I am Konoha's Beautiful Green Beast, Rock Lee!" Did his teeth just sparkle?

Naruto figured he must have been concussed or something and shook it off, "Well then I'm Uzumaki Naruto, the next Hokage, dattebayo!"

"What a youthful goal!" Lee shouted to the skies, "I myself have high dreams as does our dear Tenten. I wish to be a world-famous ninja known only for my taijutsu, and Tenten wishes to be a ninja on par both strength and reputation-wise with Tsunade!"

Naruto just nodded once he heard Tenten's dream, he had no idea who that was. He rubbed his jaw again once Lee's goal registered with him, "Well you're off to a good start… both of you actually." Naruto looked at the weapons surrounding him, "You didn't miss once!"

Tenten smiled at him before it fell, "Wait, I missed you."

Naruto shook his head, "No, you never threw anything at me. You just destroyed all of my clones. After you cut down a few I hid in the smoke and henged into one of the weapons that you threw. That was really scary though."

Tenten held out a hand and helped Naruto to his feet, "You almost got me. If Lee hadn't kicked you I would probably be face up looking at the clouds right now wondering what happened."

Naruto grinned at her widely, "Henge no Jutsu (Transformation Jutsu) is super useful. I was never going to get close enough to do anything to you the way you were fighting."

Rubbing the back of her head sheepishly she laughed a little, "What can I say? I like weapons." She then let out a sigh, "But now I have to pick up and reseal all of these."

Lee gave her a rigid salute, "I will help you retrieve all of your ninja tools Tenten." With that he ran off around the entire clearing, picking up the weaponry.

Naruto was shocked at his speed and then turned to Tenten, "So that's why it looked so easy for you to hit me if he's your teammate. That guy is insane fast!"

"You have no idea." Tenten agreed, "But you weren't bad."

"Yes I was." Naruto looked down, "You said it yourself that you could have killed me right at the start. And even then the only way I could even get close was with that trick."

"Well duh." Tenten said with a roll of her eyes, "That's what a shinobi is supposed to do, catch their opponent off guard and finish them off. It's not like you had any weapon to get near me with anyway, you had to fight like that or you would have never gotten near me."

Naruto's face lit up at that, "Actually I did have a weapon. A weapon more dangerous than any of yours." Tenten looked at him anticipating his answer, "My mind."

Tenten blinked at him before bursting into laughter forcing her to double over and hold herself up on her knees, "Your mind? Okay then whatever you say." She finished with a giggle.

"Yosh!" Lee deposited all of Tenten's weapons in a neat pile by her two scrolls and saluted her, "Tenten, Gai-sensei sent me here to retrieve you so that we could take a mission. You should hurry and get back to our training ground." Lee turned his attention to Naruto, "It was nice to meet you Naruto-san. I hope I will see you around the village one day." With that, Lee ran out of the clearing away from Naruto and Tenten.

Tenten sighed and walked over to her scrolls, quickly sealing her tools back inside of them.

"Whoa!"

She looked at Naruto oddly, getting him to continue, "That was cool! How did you do that?"

Tenten almost face-faulted, "That was just me sealing my weapons back up. I learned how to do that in the Academy, didn't you?" Naruto looked away sheepishly and mumbled, "What was that?" She asked him.

"I said I was the dead-last!" He shouted before going silent, expecting her to start making fun of him, laugh at him, or just start treating him like everyone else did, ignoring him.

Tenten gave him a warm smile, "But you graduated didn't you? Graduating last is better than not graduating at all, right?" She pocketed her scrolls and patted him on the shoulder, "You know, Lee was the dead-last of our class last year too." Naruto looked up at her with bulging eyes, "Yep. He can't do any ninjutsu and barely passed and now look at him. I would rather have him on my side than any of those others from our year. So don't worry about it."

Naruto couldn't believe it. _That guy_ had been the dobe too? "How did he get so good? He was so fast I don't think anyone in my class could even touch him."

Tenten put up one finger, "He trained, trained very hard." She then turned to leave the field, "See you around Naruto. If you ever want a rematch you can usually find me here on days where my team doesn't meet."

Naruto watched her leave and waved at her, getting a wave back. He looked at the field he had just used to more or less get his ass kicked, 'So that's how strong a genin is after one year of being a ninja?' His face formed a small grin, 'Well it looks like I'm just going to have to get better than that won't I?'

XxX

After getting bored with the monotony of just going through taijutsu katas for hours, Naruto headed back into town. The cuts he had suffered from his little scuffle were steadily healing, but he still had to head home to grab some bandages, making him look like he had lost a fight. He basically had, but he still didn't like looking like he did in public.

He simply kept to himself and wandered about, thinking on what he had done today, 'Tenten kicked my ass, all those Kage Bunshin were useless when it came to getting close to her. She was really good with those weapons! I almost got her though… after I did that trick with Henge. Huh, so that's what Iruka-sensei meant by my brain is my most dangerous weapon.'

Naruto's wandering had taken him from the business and residential districts of Konoha he normally found himself frequenting and brought him over to the side of the village that was more focused on military matters. He hadn't been here much because there was never really any need to do anything except go and hang out with the Sandaime Hokage for a bit.

That actually didn't sound like a half-bad idea come to think of it.

With a new course of action set in his mind, Naruto headed towards the Hokage Tower where once he arrived, the guards game him a cautious look. He got that look more often than not, but in this case he figured they had some reason to look at him like that, he had just broken in two days ago and stolen a scroll full of village secrets.

As he headed towards the office he greeted the pretty secretary that let him go inside where he found the old kage sitting at his desk with a lit pipe in hand, "You shouldn't smoke that stuff Sarutobi-jiji. You're already old enough, don't let the smoke kill you faster."

The old man chuckled at Naruto and put his pipe out for the boy's benefit, "Naruto-kun. What can I do for you today?" He then got a good look at his face, "What on earth happened to you?"

Naruto grinned awkwardly, "I kind of got into a fight with an older genin a little while ago."

The old man frowned disapprovingly, "You shouldn't be picking fights with your comrades Naruto-kun. You should know better than that. I'm disappointed."

Naruto looked down ashamedly. He didn't even bother telling him that Tenten more or less started it as he didn't think that would go over so well as an excuse even if he had, "I'm sorry jiji. I learned a lesson though. She kind of handed me my ass for most of it."

Hiruzen's mood improved and he let out another aged chuckle, "Well you are just a fresh genin Naruto. She's been at this for at least a year if she's older than you from the way you sound. A year of hard training and field experience while you were still in the Academy makes her a better shinobi just out of principle."

"About the Academy…" Naruto figured he might as well ask while it was fresh on his brain before he forgot, "I was going over some stuff about the Academy taijutsu. All it had was the basic stuff, and the only thing it said on anything else was something I didn't even had. I checked later and I couldn't find it. Something about advanced grappling knowledge, but I don't have anything on that."

The old man stood up and rested his hand on Naruto's shoulder as he led him out of his office, "I'll show you this now since you're a shinobi now Naruto-kun, come with me." The Sandaime Hokage led Naruto out to the roof of the tower where he proceeded to use Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu) to take them to a building at the top of the Hokage Monument.

Naruto looked at Sarutobi who started walking ahead of Naruto towards the building, "Can you teach me how to do that jiji?" Naruto asked excitedly.

"Maybe you can teach it to yourself Naruto-kun." The Hokage motioned for Naruto to catch up with him. After the boy caught up, he proceeded to open a massive set of double doors. Behind the set of doors lay a massive room with row after row of books and scrolls.

"Where are we Sarutobi-jiji?" Naruto wondered. He had never been anywhere near this place before. When he went to the top of the Hokage Monument all he ever did was go to look off over the edge at the village

Hiruzen smiled, "This is the Konoha Archive Library. Located here is tons of information on things like village history, ninja both past and current, and all sorts of other things."

Naruto deflated, "Aww… I thought this was going to be cool. All this place has are a bunch of musty books and scrolls."

Hiruzen shrugged, "Oh, I was going to say that I thought a few ninja techniques were here as well, but if you aren't interested…" He baited Naruto, and he didn't let him down.

"Hold on." Naruto stopped Hiruzen, "You say that there are all kinds of stuff here like jutsu too right?"

"There are a few if you actually comb through and look." Hiruzen knew he had him now. Just the prospect at learning a new jutsu had Naruto ready to go.

"Well then let's get going then!" Naruto yelled before a harsh shush sounded out from the man seated at the front desk. A middle-aged man with close-cut black hair and a small, high, ponytail, a goatee, glasses, and a long white jacket, open to show a dark orange shirt and black pants.

The man sighed, "You can't just yell in the middle of this place you know. This is a facility for quiet study, please don't disrupt the shinobi here to work."

Naruto blushed and rubbed the back of his head, "Sorry oji-san. It won't happen again."

Hiruzen chuckled and patted Naruto on the head, "Naruto this is Ikeda Atsuto. He is the head of Konoha's Cryptanalysis Squad."

"Wow." Naruto said as he looked at the average looking man, "You must be a really important guy then huh?"

"I'm just a basic librarian when I'm not needed to work." The man smiled slightly, "Heh, a bookworm's good for something in a hidden village after all. Now what can I do for you Hokage-sama?"

Hiruzen led Naruto closer to his desk, "Well Uzumaki Naruto-kun here just graduated and he would like to go through your library to see if he could find something on advanced grappling techniques to bolster his Academy taijutsu."

"-And some cool jutsu!" Naruto cut in loudly before covering his mouth suddenly, "Sorry, I forgot."

Atsuto waved it off, "It's alright, but I'm kind of iffy on exactly where the volumes on taijutsu are." He looked at Naruto appraisingly, "He _is_ a shinobi isn't he?"

"Yes, yes. He is a recent graduate." Hiruzen assured him, "I most certainly wouldn't have brought him if he weren't. He simply neglected to wear his headband today. Isn't that right Naruto-kun?"

Naruto was sure there was a lesson in that comment somewhere. It was the second time today that he almost got himself into trouble for not wearing that thing. He just wanted to keep it looking good for orientation. If he had worn it he would have gotten it all scuffed in his little scrap with Tenten or it would have gotten all sweaty, or he could have lost it. He was trying to be responsible, "Yes jiji…" Naruto said as if he had just been lightly scolded.

Atsuto nodded, "Alright then, next time make sure you wear it. Only shinobi of Konoha or those with express permission from the Hokage can come in here and examine our archives. Now let me get someone to help you. Shiho!" He shouted out into the mostly still library, getting Naruto and Hiruzen to sweatdrop at the hypocrisy.

A surprised yelp came before some swift rummaging noises. Seconds later a girl with blonde hair darker than Naruto's tied back in a ponytail with a red hairband and glasses that looked like swirls were in them where her eyes should have gone on her face came out and stood in front of Atsuto's desk. Her hair had occasional strands sticking up, making her look slightly disheveled. She had on a long dark red dress and a long white coat like Atsuto, only she held her coat together with a black headband worn like a backwards sash around her waist.

"Yes sensei? What can I do for you?" Shiho said once she had gotten to the front.

Atsuto smiled at the girl and turned to Naruto, "This is my genin apprentice Shiho. If you'd like I'm certain she'd help you find anything it is that you are looking for here. Shiho go ahead and say hello to the Hokage and meet Uzumaki Naruto."

The girl turned around and saw Naruto who gave her a tentative wave. The girl returned it with a smile, "Hello Hokage-sama, and hello Uzumaki-kun. I'd be happy to help out. All I was doing before this was just putting back some of the books those other lazy ninja didn't bother with."

"Speaking of which, did you finish that?" Atsuto said with a look that had a dangerous gleam in his eye.

Shiho recoiled slightly, "Uh I was almost done, but then you called me to meet Uzumaki-kun. Sorry sensei."

The man laughed, "It's alright Shiho as long as it gets done before you head home for the day. Now if you would, please help Naruto here get situated."

Hiruzen sighed, "Well I have to get back to the office and complete my work. Please take good care of Naruto-kun here if you could Shiho-chan." With that the old man bade everyone farewell and returned to the Hokage Tower.

Atsutu waved for the two youngsters to leave him to his busy work, "Now both of you go on and show Naruto what the library has for a young ninja like him. You can finish your work later Shiho."

Shiho nodded and motioned for Naruto to follow her into the archives, "Come with me please." After they started walking for a bit, Shiho started talking, "So this is your first time here?"

Naruto laughed and placed his hands behind his head, "Yeah, I just graduated the other day and jiji brought me here so I could figure out something that I couldn't find on taijutsu from the Academy stuff."

"Well the Academy taijutsu is more of something that was used as a building block to help keep students in shape and give them a base in learning more advanced styles later." Shiho replied succinctly as they kept walking.

"Yeah." Naruto said, squinting, "Iruka-sensei said that too."

Shiho nodded and smiled, "Well you graduated. That's good for you. I graduated last year but I wasn't able to actually become a ninja due to… well related circumstances. I shouldn't say."

Naruto looked at her sorrowfully, "Oh, that's terrible. I'm sorry, I'm probably making you feel bad with all of this aren't I?"

Shiho waved off his concern, "Oh no don't worry about it. Because of sensei I'm still technically an active shinobi and I still do missions from time to time, but I'm here more often than not. It actually might have been the best thing to happen to me. Atsuto-sensei found me after it happened and extended an invitation to be his apprentice in the Cryptanalysis Squad. I actually like doing that more than I would have liked being a shinobi. Fighting never really was my strong suit in the Academy, I wasn't too good at the practical parts. If I hit you it would probably feel like a paper bag brushed against your face." She said with a slight laugh as she threw a fake punch at Naruto that brushed against his cheek jokingly.

Naruto let out a laugh himself, "Heh, you never know. I'm not too good myself, I just got a bit of a beatdown today myself, but it's going to be alright. A Hokage never lets a little setback stop him!"

Shiho liked this Naruto kid. There weren't too many shinobi around her age heading to the library for her to talk to and he didn't treat her like a useless nerd so far. It didn't seem to bother him that she wasn't a real ninja at all, "You want to be Hokage Uzumaki-kun?"

Naruto grinned at her, "You'd better believe it Shiho-chan. I'm going to be the best Hokage there ever was! You'll see, then when you're the head of this department we can run this village, dattebayo!"

Both of them turned down an aisle as directed by Shiho, "That sounds good, just make sure you give me a raise okay?" She said as she trailed her finger along the edges of the books to find her place, "Okay, here's a book on basics of shinobi combat." She said as she placed it in his hands, "It's a good read and it's pretty helpful."

Naruto looked at the book; _Essential Knowledge on Shinobi Tactics, Styles, and Skills_, "Aww, Shiho-chan I just wanted the taijutsu scroll on the grappling stuff or some cool looking style so I could see if I could learn it before orientation so that I have more cool moves to show off." Naruto whined, "Why are you making me read this?"

Shiho rolled her eyes, "Because all of that stuff you want is all well and good but if you don't know how or when to use it then it's not going to help is it?" She questioned, "If you _did_ end up getting a new style from out of here and then somehow learned it well enough to use it by orientation you still wouldn't have any knowledge on what to do with it. Like if you wanted to engage from one hundred feet away, how would you get there, run right at them and hope they stand still and wait for you?"

Naruto blushed as he realized that little plan of action didn't exactly work out today against Tenten, "Okay…" He said begrudgingly, "I'll read this then, I promise." He gave a defeated sigh as Shiho gave him a victorious smile and a 'v' sign before taking him to a table to sit and read at.

Shiho seated him and patted him on the back, "Okay Uzumaki-kun. Get started reading this and I'll see if I can find the stuff on taijutsu that you want." She looked back towards the archives and slumped her shoulders, "I really wish there was someone else working today other than me and sensei though… help would be nice."

"You need help?" Naruto vacantly made the seal for his strongest jutsu after cracking the book open with a bored look, "I can do that, Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)." A puff of smoke surrounded Naruto and Shiho before revealing a dozen Narutos all looking around blankly, "There you go, help Shiho-chan find what she's looking for. I'll just stay here and… *sigh* read." He said distastefully.

The clones looked at each other before shrugging, better to do this than to read, 'Poor boss.' The clones thought before one turned to Shiho, "Okay Shiho-chan, where do we start?"

Shiho stared at them in disbelief before poking the one closest to her, "They're all real? That move must be so complex? What is he doing here then? He must be a genius or something!"

The clones all blushed in embarrassment, "Actually we were the dead-last this year… But that doesn't mean anything!"

Shiho nodded, "Not if this jutsu you have here has anything to say about it. Now come on, let's go find the real Uzumaki-kun his scrolls."

Naruto simply read along while his clones and Shiho went searching through the place for what he asked for. He promised her he would read this and she was a nice enough girl. He didn't want to upset his new friend right after meeting her just because he was too much of a blockhead to try and crack a book for once.

_A ninja's style is an approach to combat that makes use of that ninja's strengths and talents._

It then proceeded to give off a list of different catalogued styles and the direct page number to skip to, something Naruto was thankful for as he didn't have to read the whole thing if he found something he liked.

'Long-range, mid-range, and close-range styles.' Remembering how Tenten fought he flipped to the section on long-range, 'Marksman, that sounds like her alright. Marksman; a style more suited for support than for direct attack. Is most useful in events of surprise attack to take down multiple foes before they can react, weakening an enemy's defenses, and diverting their attention away from the main attack. A marksman's best bet in a fight is to stay at a distance from an opponent to keep out of the enemy's range and safely bombard them with accurate attacks. Good reflexes and impeccable hand-eye coordination are the hallmark of a good marksman. Marksmen are usually weak against wind-type ninjutsu as their weapons must fly through the air to reach the target'

Naruto sighed, "Man if only I was a wind-type… or even knew how to be one. Then Tenten would have been done for." He laughed to himself at the thought of a chibi Tenten throwing stuff at him and Naruto just lifting one hand and blowing it away like paper.

He kept reading through styles such as puppeteering, which sounded cool but they were all from Sunagakure, and Naruto couldn't even find that place on an unlabeled map, let alone actually know someone from there so no dice whatsoever there. He read about sensor ninja, a type of ninja able to detect the presence of others through their chakra. He was pretty new at that as he couldn't really use Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) far enough for it to be effective enough to call him a proper sensor yet. He eventually lost himself in the book, jumping around and reading parts that he found cool enough to pay attention to… for the better part of an hour.

"Uzumaki-kun." Shiho ran back to his table with a scroll in hand, "I found the scrolls you were looking for." She placed three scrolls on the table, "This is what me and your clones worked out as what you might like to use."

Naruto looked up from his book, "Oh, I know."

Shiho looked at him strangely, "How would you know? You were here the whole time, why would you possibly know what I had done with your clones?" That thought caused Naruto to pause. Why did he know? He remembered doing stuff with Shiho before climbing the bookcase to grab the scrolls at the top, it almost tipping over and Shiho screaming causing him to lose his balance and fall. That was what jumped into his head about two minutes ago. Shiho had a thought, "I'll be right back Uzumaki-kun."

While Shiho left to head back into the archives, Naruto looked over what she had left. Three scrolls; Yawa-ashi (Soft Foot), Oomi-te (Long-Blade Hand), and Nebaiken (Sticky Fist).

Yawa-ashi (Soft Foot) was out almost immediately when Naruto read it. Not only did the name turn him off as it made him sound like a ballerina, it didn't seem like his kind of style. It revolved around using your legs for feints and neglecting the use of your hands to deal damage in exchange for kicks. The hands were never used, even when it came to blocking. Head movement and simply being elusive were the touted defenses of the style. It required good coordination and fast feet. Naruto didn't even know how to train to get fast feet and he tripped on his own feet walking down the street from time to time. He wasn't too coordinated.

Oomi-te (Long-Blade Hand) was a cool concept, but the practice turned Naruto off from learning it. It required you to build up the hardness of the tips of your fingers and the knife-edge of your hand for powerful chops and straight-hand thrusts that could be shoved right through an opponent. It sounded cool in practice, but the training to get your hands that strong in the first place however was to repeatedly break your fingertips and pinky side of your hand enough times while learning the strikes that the bones would calcify and harden over time to increase hardness. The only good thing about that style to Naruto was that he would have to drink more milk.

The last style hooked him in. Nebaiken (Sticky Fist) went right along with what he had caught notice of in the Academy taijutsu text of advanced grappling. It basically compounded on what to do after you had trapped a limb on your opponent. After grabbing an enemy's arm or leg you would either pull them in and deliver shockingly powerful punches, forearm and elbow strikes, knees, shoulder shots, headbutts, and short joint attacks powered by physical strength and momentum to disable your opponent and keep them close or keep them literally at arm's reach and pick apart their open defenses with fast looping kicks. It was also the simplest to train. All it required was someone willing to take a beating in order to learn its nuances due to how close one had to remain to an opponent to launch attacks and willing partners to be training dummies. Naruto had an abundance of both as this fit in best with his 'take three to give one' brawling style and he had Kage Bunshin to beat on for as long as he needed.

Naruto's head snapped up suddenly, "Shiho-chan what was that all about? You've got to be joking!" He cried suddenly.

He left his book and scrolls on the table and rushed through the archives to find Shiho standing with a smile on her face. Naruto dropped to his knees in front of her, "Please tell me you're joking Shiho-chan. I can't afford that." Shiho was fighting hard to keep from laughing out loud, "I can't afford a 30000 ryo fee for library use!"

Shiho broke down and started laughing, "I'm sorry Uzumaki-kun it was a joke. But it did end up proving my theory right, how did you know I said that? I was all the way over here."

"You told my clone didn't you?" Naruto said plainly as if it was unimportant. Shiho just stood there counting the seconds until it hit him what he had just said and realizing that him being his year's dead-last might not be so unfounded, "Wait, you told my clone! How did I know about it?"

"Shh." Shiho said trying to settle him down, "I don't know, but you obviously get your clone's memories after they get dispelled. Do you know what this means?" Naruto shook his head and a shine reflected off of the girl's glasses, "You could read like seven books at once as long as you use you clones and still get the information they got from it."

Naruto's face lit up, "So I can make my clones read these books while I train and do actual cool stuff?" Shiho nodded, "Yatta!"

"**Shh!**"

The sounds of others audibly shushing Naruto erupted from all around the library, breaking Shiho into a mess of giggles as Naruto apologized quietly, "Make some more of those Kage Bunshin Uzumaki-kun, there's so much you need to know before you become an active ninja. You won't be a dead-last by the time I'm through with you!" Shiho grabbed onto Naruto's wrist and swiftly dragged him through different aisles, loading him up with books. He had to wonder what part of her wasn't conditioned to be a field ninja, because she was dragging him and half a dozen books around the place like they were weightless.

* * *

**Bliggety blaow! And I'm back from outer space with chapter 2. I have not jack to say worth listening to so I will simply leave it at that.**

**You all know the drill, so simply proceed and I will be checking back in some time later with something else for you all to read sooner rather than later. Any questions in the realm of me answering (i.e. No blatant spoilers) and I will attempt to do so. I hope you enjoyed.**

**Until next time, Kenchi out.**


	3. The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and unless I missed a gift stashed under my tree in the form of legal documentation that more or less summarizes to "Kenchi618 now owns Naruto effective immediately" I don't think it's in the cards this year. Oh well, next year's always up for grabs. Santa better pay what he owe!

**Chapter 3: The First Day of the Rest of Your Life**

**

* * *

**

Naruto had been frequenting the library pretty much every day with a few clones. He wanted to make enough to fill the library with them but both Atsutu and Shiho weren't going to tolerate a library full of Narutos when only one was more than enough to raise a ruckus and cause a disturbance, thus forcing him to keep the clones at a minimum, usually around six. Naruto pitied his clones, Shiho had them reading the books she picked out to help him along in his knowledge as a shinobi. She was a nice enough girl, but reading was still ultra-boring, not even a new friend could make him think otherwise.

She didn't even have him learning cool stuff like he wanted. After she realized how much basic knowledge he lacked Shiho saw to it that she drilled something into his head to make sure that it stuck, and her sensei didn't have any problems with her doing that, especially since she had Naruto's clones helping out keeping the place organized. By the end of the week one of the things drilled into his head was how to replace books and scrolls that other shinobi had checked out and returned. Naruto's clones went over basic tactics and combat strategies, yes, at least things that Shiho thought a genin needed to know anyway. In addition to that she introduced him to the immediate geography of Hi no Kuni and its surrounding nations so that he didn't look a complete horse's ass when he went outside of the country on missions.

While Naruto's clones suffered indoors he took his business to the woods where he would go over his taijutsu. His choice of using Nebaiken (Sticky Fist) seemed like the most tailor made for him at the moment but he had to make sure his taijutsu was decent enough for it to even work. This led to him doing the thing from the other day, working with his clones to trap melee attacks like the Academy scroll instructed him, as he realized it wasn't in the other one due to it being an intermediate scroll.

He would have skipped straight to learning the new style if he hadn't been training his moves in the exact place he had been trying to the other day, where he once again ran into Tenten, this time with some kid with long brown hair and white eyes. Naruto didn't like that guy straight from the first meeting as he looked at him like he was stupid when he told Tenten what he had been doing when she found him again.

Tenten quickly informed him that he should finish learning what the Academy scroll had to teach him before anything else. When he got all haughty and asked her how she knew she just gave him a deadpan look and asked him if he wanted her to go get Rock Lee or someone worse. Naruto politely declined that offer and took her word for it for two reasons; she already proved she could beat him so what could it hurt to actually listen to someone that proved they were stronger than him, and he didn't even feel like seeing Lee so soon after getting dropkicked in the face, he sure as hell didn't want to see someone that Tenten labeled as worse.

She had a point as well that she had the benevolence to explain to put it in perspective for him. Naruto could start from the Nebaiken scroll and master every little thing on it. It wouldn't do him any good knowing all of the slick techniques available after latching onto an opponent if he couldn't even get a hold of them in the first place. After an interrupting grunt from the guy that Naruto assumed was her teammate as well as Lee, Tenten ran off leaving Naruto to his own devices once more.

The problem was that Naruto's taijutsu wasn't necessarily bad per se. The issue was that when the spars in class started a few years back Naruto… kind of dominated. It was the only thing he was really good at when they began. He never really had to study for the entire year because he was always able to outlast his opponents and wear them down for a win. Everyone else kept getting better and learning technique while Naruto coasted on his laurels for as long as he possibly could in the category since he hit just as hard if not harder than anyone else and could take ten times the damage others could before calling it quits. And he wound up coasting all the way to graduation in this case as it was his one saving grace on his grades.

He wasn't really bad in practice, when you factor in how much punishment he could take before dropping, but take that away and he would have failed that too. Good thing he was so damn stubborn huh?

Nevertheless, he was still taking punch after punch from his own Kage Bunshin, he was simply having trouble getting the timing aspect of catching an attack down. The clone doing the punching was absolutely loving his job for the day as well. Naruto had been at this for four days at this point, between the reading and messing around with his echolocation jutsu, and while there had been improvement, today you'd have thought it was his first day. Grinning wildly as his fist connected with his creator's face once more. He let the original get settled again before gleefully throwing another punch, however this one was caught at the wrist before a return fist dispelled the clone.

Naruto panted as his Kage Bunshin disappeared in a puff of smoke. He rubbed his sore, bruised face, "Finally." He laughed to himself, "I got one, I got one, I got one, I finally got one!" He winced at a particular stinging part of his face, "It took long enough damn it…" He didn't know why it was so hard, but the reason was that his clones knew how he would try to trap a limb, they altered their punch and kick style to keep him from ever getting a hold of them. So it wasn't really that he was doing it wrong, he was simply not adept enough at it to take on an opponent that knew what he was going to do.

"Man… I have to get that ID picture taken today." Naruto picked himself back up off of the ground, "I hope these marks go away before I get there." Naruto decided that the best way to train was to work his taijutsu which would work his Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu) at the same time, and he would also release random bursts of Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) as a short break. Iruka said it placed a decent drain on him to use it, but so far Naruto wasn't feeling it.

Naruto placed his hands in the ram seal to begin charging the pulse, "Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!" Naruto let loose the jutsu only to hear a sharp cry of pain from a decent distance away, "What?" Naruto looked around himself before taking off in the only direction that he felt anything big enough to be a person, "Who's there? I know you're over here!"

He arrived at the place where he felt the presence and saw no one, "Someone's messing with me." Naruto fired up another sonar pulse and felt the person quickly leaving the area. He felt like chasing after them but he had things to do, and if they hadn't attacked him when he revealed that he knew where they were they must not have been dangerous, right? Besides that, once they reached a populated area he wouldn't have been able to pursue any further, he had trouble pinpointing exact people in decent crowds. With that thought in mind Naruto headed off towards the Hokage Tower to get his ninja ID picture taken.

XxX

Hinata finally stopped running once she finally reached the village itself. She had found Naruto and decided to follow him to see what he had been doing, seeing him fail obviously hurt him and she wanted to know if he was okay. Her surprise was eminent when she saw him make a physically solid clone that could actually fight, and she almost yelled out for him to stop once she saw it start beating on him. Only after a few tries when she saw him actively trying to counter by catching its punches and kicks did she realize it was training did she relax and simply watch with her Byakugan active so that she didn't have to move.

She watched right up until the point where he let off that weird pulse of chakra. A spherical wave of chakra expanded outward from Naruto's body and she sure as hell wasn't ready for something like that from him. From her point of view when it hit her eyes it felt like the strongest camera flash she had ever felt in her life and she had to cry out in unexpected pain at the sensation which tipped Naruto off to her presence. From there she simply ran away as fast as she could lest he find her and actually ask her embarrassing questions on what exactly she had been doing there.

She nervously activated her Byakugan again to ensure that Naruto wasn't near her again, and once satisfied with that went on her own way, still somewhat shaken by her close call of being discovered by her object of admiration.

XxX

Naruto cursed his revamped schedule as he walked away from the Hokage's office. He intended to do something awesome for his ID photo but with all of the stuff he had been doing he simply didn't have the time to set it up in time for his appointment. It was nice to see the old man smile at him and complement him, thinking he was starting to take things seriously, but he would have rather had the fallout that would have occurred if he had done something outrageous instead. Oh well, there was always another day.

As Naruto walked through the hall to exit the tower a small boy ran into his knees. Naruto looked down and frowned, "Hey kid watch where you're going. And what are you doing running around with that shuriken in your hand?"

The boy was wearing a yellow shirt with the Konoha symbol on it, grey shorts, a long blue scarf, and a grey helmet with a hole out the top for a tuft of hair to stick out of. He looked up at Naruto with a glare, "You tripped me!"

Naruto got an angry look on his face, "You tripped over your own feet and ran into me clumsy, don't blame me for your lack of balance." With that, Naruto walked past him and down the stairs to leave the building.

As he kept walking the boy ran out and stopped at the top of the stairs, "Don't you know who I am? I'm the Hokage's grandson! Apologize to me!"

Naruto scoffed and didn't even turn his head, "The Hokage himself only gets me to do stuff because I actually respect him, because he earned it. If you want me to apologize to a brat like you you'd be better off trying to make me yourself with action, because being his grandson doesn't mean anything in reality." After saying that, Naruto hid his hands from clear view as he let out a pulse of his jutsu, allowing him to feel the shuriken that the boy threw. Naruto simply stepped to the side and let it fly past him, "You'd better watch out with that thing, you might hurt somebody."

The boy simply stared at him in awe until he disappeared from sight at the bottom of the stairs. A man with a dark long-sleeved shirt and dark pants wearing his headband to cover his entire head like a bandana came up behind the boy, adjusting the sunglasses on his face, "Honorable Grandson there you are. You shouldn't run away like that, not while in the midst of my lecture. You do want to be a powerful shinobi one day don't you?" He then noticed that the boy wasn't paying attention to him and was looking down the stairs, "What do you see?"

The boy just kept on staring, "Who was that guy?" He asked more to himself than to anyone else.

Naruto stood right behind a corner at the bottom of the stairs with a wide grin on his face, 'I love that jutsu so much! Oh man, that probably looked so badass! I wish I had made a Kage Bunshin to let me know what it looked like!' Naruto shut his eyes and walked away grinning until he himself bumped into a solid figure. When he opened his eyes and looked up a plume of smoke greeted his face, forcing him to cough and hack somewhat.

Naruto cleared the tears gathering in his eyes from the smoke and saw a man with brown eyes, short spiky black hair, a beard, and his headband around his head with a cigarette in his mouth. He wore the stuff he saw a lot of Konoha ninja wearing; the black long-sleeved shirt, the black pants, and that vest with the pouches on the chest. He also had a strange sash with the kanji for fire on it, "Sorry there kid."

Naruto stopped rubbing his eyes, "Why are you apologizing to me?" He really wasn't used to this, people didn't apologize to him, as a matter of fact most adults glared at him if they even bothered acknowledging he was even there at all after something like this, not this guy though, "I was the one that ran into you."

The man had a calm smile on his face as he answered, "Well sometimes you've got to remember that kids younger than you are prone to accidents and the like, just like ignorant people are going to do ignorant things. There's no need to try and look cool all of the time you see. Cool just happens, you can't manipulate it."

Naruto blanched, thinking the man might have taken offense to what had just happened between him and that kid, "So, you saw what just happened…" The man nodded, Naruto's train of thought then shifted, "Hey what are you talking about? That was cool."

The man shook his head and took another drag of his cigarette, "Nah, like I said, cool just happens. You just graduate the academy?"

Naruto blinked before grinning at the man, whoever this was certainly was getting on Naruto's good list. He hadn't been condescending or an outright asshole to him once yet, "Uh yeah. I actually have to show up for orientation tomorrow. Why?"

The man took on a thoughtful look, "So what have you been doing for the week?"

Naruto was about to open his mouth and go into full, colorful detail about just what he had been doing, from learning both of his new jutsu, to the people he met, to the fight against Tenten (that he was going to edit down substantially to fit his own ego of course), when a lesson learned hit him from Shiho's brutal method of force feeding his Kage Bunshin information.

_Information is one of the most useful tools at a shinobi's disposal. Even simple information such as a person's day-to-day life or events that have transpired in the past, ranging back decades in some cases, can be a powerful weapon to be used one way or another, either as a point of leverage or a talking point in somewhat hostile negotiations._

Naruto shut his mouth and rubbed the back of his head, "Just stuff heh. Trying to keep busy." He so wanted to tell this guy about his Kage Bunshin, or about Iruka's echolocation jutsu that he used so much, or anything, but the sooner he could put some lessons to practice the better things would be in the long run… or so Shiho had said when his clones griped.

The man chuckled and walked on past Naruto, heading up the stairs and leaving him alone. Naruto looked at where the man had been for a moment before moving along his own way.

The bearded man walked through the halls until he finally reached the office of the Hokage. He knocked on the door and opened it up to walk on in. Hiruzen looked up and smiled, "Ah, Asuma. What can I do for you today?"

Asuma stood in front his desk and spoke with the cigarette in his mouth, "Hey dad, you know how you sent out requests for teams?" Hiruzen nodded, "Well I've got one request that should be easy enough. I'm sure there won't really be anyone else jumping at the chance to take him."

Hiruzen's eyebrow rose in curiosity upon hearing Asuma begin to make a request. He never requested anything.

XxX

Naruto just couldn't shake the feeling of someone following him as he walked the streets of the village. Sending out regular pulses of Iruka's jutsu, that he was starting to like just as much as turning his head to look for things with his eyes (it took basically the same amount of effort), he noticed that there was something following him, but he just didn't feel like turning around to see what it was. It hadn't tried anything yet and he was hungry. Whatever it was could wait until he got to Ichiraku Ramen.

"If you're still following me when I get to the ramen stand I'm going to have to mess you up!" Naruto shouted to whoever was following him. After walking a few blocks and another check to see if he was still being followed he shook his head. Just as he entered the stand underneath the curtain he formed a Kage Bunshin that made itself scarce before anyone that cared could take notice.

Taking his seat at the counter, Naruto immediately called out his order, "Oi, Teuchi-oji, one large serving of miso ramen with roasted pork fillet and keep 'em coming!"

The middle-aged man running the stand gave Naruto a half-salute and got to work on his order, "You've got it Naruto. Coming right up!"

Ayame leaned on the counter while Naruto waited on his food, "So Naruto-kun, tomorrow right? That's the day you become a ninja."

Naruto laughed to himself, "Yep, I can't wait. I'm so excited I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight! I'm going to kick so much ass tomorrow, it's going to be great." His attention was directed downward as a large, steaming bowl of ramen with the works was placed in front of him. Naruto grabbed a pair of chopsticks and broke them apart, "Itadakimasu."

The blonde stopped the chopsticks full of noodles just short of his mouth as the memories of his Kage Bunshin and his little stalker came into mind.

XxX

(With Naruto's Kage Bunshin)

Across the street from the stand the Kage Bunshin stood with a sweatdrop on its head as it stared at a square rock looking intently at the real him eating at the stand. 'Naruto' kicked at the rock twice and deepened his sweatdrop when it scuttled away from him a few feet before continuing to watch the real him.

"Rocks aren't square…" 'Naruto' said absently. Upon hearing his voice the rock abruptly turned around before being thrown off to reveal the little kid he had met at the Hokage Tower earlier, "Why have you been following me for so long? Can't you see it's chow time?"

The kid pointed at the clone with a shaky, accusing finger, "H-How can you be over here? You're supposed to be over there! I heard you yell from over there! You're not real- ow!"

The clone rapped the boy on the head, "Well you said ouch so I must be real enough right?"

He stared at Naruto in awe, "How did you do that?"

'Naruto' grinned widely at him, "I'm a ninja kid! Pretty cool huh?"

The boy then got adetermined look in his eyes, "Alright then I've decided, you're going to train me now boss!"

The clone almost face-faulted itself into oblivion, "What? Who decided? Why would I want to train you? And what's with the 'boss' stuff?"

"I'm calling you boss because you're going to be training me, and I've decided on you because, well you're awesome boss, and this thing with the making two of you as well as being able to discover my location just proves it, kore!"

The clone blushed under the praise before sighing once he thought of the kid being impressed at noticing a square rock was out of place in the middle of a street, "Yeah whatever kid, I don't even know your name so it's going to be kind of hard for whatever training you think I can give you. Besides, don't you have a teacher already?"

"Konohamaru." The boy mumbled facing the ground, "My name is Konohamaru." His head snapped up abruptly, "But no one ever calls me that. It's always 'Honorable Grandson' even though my name should be easy to remember. No one ever sees me for me, they only just see me for the things that my grandfather did. I want people to acknowledge me."

'Naruto' frowned as he heard the boy explain himself to him. It was kind of like him. People seemed to prefer to pretend that he simply didn't exist and he had no clue why. At least Konohamaru had the luxury of already knowing what it was they saw when they treated him that way, and it wasn't so negative. Still, the kid strangely reminded him on himself, especially at that age. He wished he had the balls to go up to someone and ask them to train him though.

"Alright…" Clone Naruto sighed, "But there's not really anything I can teach you." He scratched his head, "Well, there's one thing. It could work for you and it seems to be effective on most of the people I use it on." The clone thought to himself, 'Boss doesn't need to actually go do this himself does he?'

"Well?" Konohamaru asked excitedly once he realized that Naruto was going to teach him something.

'Naruto' patted the boy on the head, "Alright. The jutsu I'm going to teach you requires you to do quite a bit of studying. Come on, let's get started."

XxX

(With Naruto)

That didn't really work out so well for Naruto's Kage Bunshin. Naruto sighed and made a bunch of Kage Bunshin, "Go with the kid and stay hidden except for one in case you get dispelled again, this might be a really long day."

The clones saluted him and took off towards Konohamaru's last location to make sure the kid wasn't freaking out at watching his instructor for the day burst into smoke. Naruto took in a sigh of relief and inhaled the aroma of the new bowl that Ayame had just set in front of him, "There is no way I was going to be stuck doing that all day."

"Stuck doing what Naruto-kun?" Ayame asked curiously. He seemed really comforted about something.

Naruto laughed and gave her a mega-watt smile, "Nothing Ayame-neechan, I'm just talking to myself."

XxX

(The Next Day)

Naruto arrived to the Academy super-early that morning and sat down before sighing to himself and pulling out a bunch of small sticky notes that Shiho made his Kage Bunshin write down and carry home before they dispelled. Yesterday had been very troublesome for the existence of realistic replications if the way his Kage Bunshin had to deal with the stuff happening around them was any indication.

Konohamaru's attempts to go through with research for the jutsu Naruto planned on teaching him ended up in pain and anguish for Naruto's clones, even though it was always Konohamaru that got them in trouble. Maybe teaching a kid the Oiroke no Jutsu wasn't the best idea in the first place? Anyway, Konohamaru eventually got it just in time for his instructor Ebisu to show up and take him away.

_(Flashback )_

"_Honorable Grandson it's time for you to stop associating with this rabble and come with me." Ebisu said, tilting his glasses up as he looked down on Naruto coldly from a tree limb._

'_Naruto' returned his look with a glare of his own, 'Guys like this are always looking at me like they have a problem. What is their deal? I don't even know who this guy is and he looks like he's trying to set me on fire with his eyes.'_

"_No!" Konohamaru shouted, "I want to go with Naruto! I actually learned something today! Check it out, __Oiroke no Jutsu (Sexy Jutsu)__!" In a puff of smoke, Konohamaru turned into a beautiful naked brunette woman that winked at Ebisu, "Hey there, how do you like my jutsu?"_

'_Naruto' smirked to himself, he had actually gotten it down after just a few hours of practice. Ebisu on the other hand was mortified, "Honorable Grandson what kind of deplorable acts have you been coerced into by this ruffian? This 'jutsu' is far below someone of your stature! The only guaranteed way to achieve a shortcut to Hokage is through my teachings, I'll show you the way!"_

'_Naruto' growled, "Oi, can you forget the damn way that he looked for a second and think about what the kid just did?"_

_Ebisu stopped pulling on Konohamaru and looked at 'Naruto' who he had expected to say something at any minute, just not something like that. He expected a challenge to fight or something. But hearing this boy perceived as a dead-last have anything to say to him irked his ire, "Oh and what would that be, besides making himself a public nuisance and besmirching his name in your tasteless influence?"_

'_Naruto's' eye twitched. He so wanted to fight this guy and show him what was what, but he promised too many people he'd stop acting like a bother and getting into a fight with another person so soon after being scolded for it wouldn't bode too well for him. 'Naruto' grit his teeth and continued to speak, "He did a transformation you idiot." Was all he really had the self-control to get out._

_Ebisu looked at 'Naruto' expectantly, as if to say, 'that's all you had to say?' It took a few seconds, but the facts of what he had just uttered had finally dawned on Ebisu as his eyes slowly panned down to Konohamaru still trying to break his grip. After realizing that Konohamaru had indeed used a jutsu that he hadn't even come close to teaching him yet he let go of the young boy in shock, "Honorable Grandson this is incredible! To learn such a jutsu in one day!" 'Naruto' wanted to yell at this guy so much for changing his tune so abruptly._

"_Of course it only took a day!" Konohamaru bellowed before running back over to 'Naruto', "Boss taught it to me!"_

'_Naruto' patted Konohamaru on the head, "Yeah, but now you can use it to turn into other stuff, all you need are the hand-seals now since you already get the idea of turning into a different form." He pointed to Ebisu, "That guy can do that for you later."_

_Konohamaru frowned as he looked over at Ebisu, "But Boss, he doesn't teach me any cool jutsus like you do. How am I supposed to get to be Hokage fast if I don't learn any jutsu?" _

"_You idiot." 'Naruto' said, "There isn't a shortcut. Nothing you do will make the way to Hokage any shorter or any easier. If you really want to be Hokage one day you're going to have to prove that you're better than me." Konohamaru gulped at that, "You need a lot of guts, and you're going to fall down a lot, but if you work your hardest one day you can be Hokage… after me of course." _

_Konohamaru stared at 'Naruto' as he started walking away from both him and Ebisu, "Fine, you're not my teacher anymore. From now on we're rivals!"_

'_Naruto' chuckled and waved absently over his shoulder, "Yeah, fine. I couldn't keep teaching you stuff anyway. I have to start my ninja career tomorrow."_

(End Flashback)

And then there were the clones that had been combing through the library for anything with a jutsu in it. The old man couldn't have been lying when he said that there were a few in there somewhere, he wouldn't have done that, but he would be damned if he had found any yet because he sure hadn't. And whenever the clones came across anything that Shiho thought he would need she pulled that particular clone away from searching and proceeded to make it read whatever it was. She kept on claiming seniority over him to get the clones to read what she told them to and accentuated the fact that he would have to learn how to take orders he didn't like so he might as well get used to it.

Poor clones… better them than him though.

"Hey." Naruto looked up to see a boy with black hair and a ponytail giving him a pineapple look looking at him lazily, "What are you doing here Naruto? This is for students that graduated."

Naruto flicked the metal on his headband around his forehead. He still wore the goggles as well, just around his neck. He might need them at some point so why not? "You see the headband Shikamaru? That means I'm a ninja just like you."

"Ugh, troublesome." Shikamaru rubbed his neck before going off to find his own seat, leaving Naruto back to his own devices.

Hinata's breath hitched in her throat when she saw Naruto sitting in class, 'Naruto-kun passed after all! I'm so glad.' However she still really hoped that he hadn't caught on to her tailing him the other day.

"Ha! Take that Ino-pig I got here first!"

Naruto turned his attention to the top of the stairs where he saw an out of breath Sakura and Ino. Sakura looked down to his level and put on a sweet face, 'No way, is she looking at me like that?' When Sakura began moving his way he took a chance that he probably knew the results of beforehand, standing up to greet her, "Hi there Sakura-chan!"

"Get out of the way Naruto!" Sakura bowled him over and moved directly to the seat beside him, "Good morning Sasuke-kun." She pleasantly greeted the boy in question seated directly to her left.

Naruto picked himself up off of the ground as a bunch of the girls in class began fighting over who was going to take that seat, 'What the hell was that for? Shiho says being nice to girls will get them to like you, and she hasn't hit me once all week. *sigh* I just don't get girls…' Naruto leered over at the object of all of the commotion, one Sasuke Uchiha. Naruto smirked to himself, it was only a matter of time at this point until he could go and prove that he was better than Sasuke was. Let Mr. Popularity there enjoy his last day as top dog, once things got going Naruto would be the one seen as the best.

With that in mind, Naruto took his seat and went back over the notes that he had placed in front of him on the desk with much trouble to his attention span due to the harping on by all of the girls around Sasuke. Seriously, how could that bastard keep a stone face in the middle of that? He had to have nerves like a river stone to not let it show that it was bothering him one way or another.

"What are you doing Naruto?" He looked up to see a boy in a hooded parka with fur lining the edges. He had red marks on his cheeks, rather feral features, and a little white puppy on top of his head, "Why are you studying? That's kind of the opposite of what you should be doing here, school's over now."

Naruto chuckled nervously, "Well a friend of mine just wanted me to go over some stuff that was supposed to help me out. Nothing big." How was he supposed to say he had clones running about the library every day this week going over things? That would have probably made him a laughingstock.

Kiba grinned, showing off sharp canines, "Well you can study all you want to, it doesn't matter. Me and Akamaru are going to blow right past you, whatever it is they have us doing now. Right boy?" A yap of affirmation from the puppy on his head sounded out.

Naruto stood up out of his seat and held up a fist, "Yeah right! I'm going to get out of here and hit the top in record time. Then you can all tell your children one day how you were in class with the new Hokage heh heh."

"They don't let class dobes be Hokage!" One random boy shouted out, engulfing the whole room in laughter.

"Shut up." Naruto barked back, "I could probably beat anyone in this room right now!" Could he? Yeah he could; he knew none of these guys were as good as Tenten was, he had been training all week and he was sure no one else had done anything, and he was Uzumaki Naruto, he was that awesome! Of course he could, "None of that stuff is going to matter once we get out of here and the missions start. We're all genin now!"

"Well said Naruto." Iruka said as he entered the room with a clipboard, "You're all as of this day forward official shinobi of Konohagakure no Sato. You are all expected to carry out your missions to the best of your ability for your home and for your comrades. I just want to say that I am proud of you all and that I wish you all luck in your future as ninja and kunoichi of our village." He gave his short speech a moment to sink in before clearing his throat, "Now I'm going to begin the announcement of the squads formed for the duration of your tenure as genin."

This got everyone in attendance's collective attention.

XxX

All of the would-be jounin sensei were in the office of the Hokage looking through his crystal ball at all of the rookies. Hiruzen looked at Asuma who had foregone the cigarettes due to the room being so crowded, "Is there any particular reason you asked for the addendum to your team Asuma?"

Asuma smirked when all eyes fell on him, "Trying to put me on the spot huh dad? Alright I'll explain it afterwards."

XxX

Iruka continued listing off names on his clipboard, "Team 7 will be Akimichi Chouji, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke. Your instructor will be Hatake Kakashi."

"Shannaro!" Sakura exclaimed after hearing her team, "Take that Ino-pig! True love conquerors all!"

Ino placed her cheek in her hand in a dejected fashion while Sakura continued to celebrate. Sakura turned to Sasuke with hearts in her eyes, "Now we'll be on the same team Sasuke-kun, isn't that great?"

"Hm." Was the stoic genin's response.

Naruto had to bite back a snort of laughter at that. It was clear that Sasuke cared so much about his predicament.

"Team 8 will be Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, and Aburame Shino with Yuhi Kurenai as your jounin sensei." Iruka said as the three young ninja mentioned all acknowledged that he had been heard. Team 9 is still in circulation so we'll move on to Team 10. Team 10 will be Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Uzumaki Naruto with Sarutobi Asuma."

"Aww." Ino said as her head slumped onto the desk, "I've got a lazy bum and the dead-last on my team… why me?"

Naruto rolled his eyes at Ino's words and kept his eyes on Shiho's notes, 'Why did she give me these? The only thing that's been useful so far was the one that told me we were going to be broken up into squads like all genin were. Other than that these have been a waste of time.'

"And that's all for now." Iruka concluded, "You will all be picked up by your respective jounin sensei after lunch. Until then get together with your team, get to know them, and one more time, good luck to all of you." Iruka spared the class one last glance before leaving the students on their own.

Naruto picked up his notes and stuck them inside of his jacket just as Ino came down from her seat behind him with her hands on her hips, "Alright, you and Shikamaru are coming with me."

"Troublesome." Shikamaru said before pointing his thumb in a direction, "What about Chouji?"

"What about him?" Ino asked, still sounding short-tempered about how the teams panned out.

Shikamaru and Naruto both pointed towards the door where Sasuke walked out being audibly trailed by Sakura trying to curry his favor as they were now a team, "Do you really think he's going to be welcome eating lunch with them?" The lazy boy said before motioning Chouji down closer towards where they were.

Naruto spoke up, "Yeah it's alright with me, Chouji can come on over, no problem."

The plump boy in question took a seat next to Shikamaru before breaking out a bag of chips that he began to snack on. Naruto looked at a slightly fuming Ino, and Shikamaru who had both of his eyes closed as he leaned back in his chair, "So I guess we're teammates now huh?" He said with a slight laugh, losing it when Ino glared at him.

XxX

"Alright it's pretty simple why I chose Naruto to round out the team instead of going with Chouji in the end." Asuma said, "While he's not really smart I think that Shikamaru is hiding a major brain somewhere so he'll be the intelligence. Ino is bossy enough to keep both of them in line. And Naruto is going to show more than enough effort during actual training to inspire the other two to improve. Besides, with a Nara to hold opponents in place I'm sure that the kid is going to have some knockout power to him sooner rather than later."

Hiruzen sighed, "You know Kakashi wanted him for his own squad right?"

Asuma smirked and placed a cigarette in his mouth, "And where is he again?" All of the other jounin in the room snickered quietly when it was clear that he wasn't there at the time, "Oi, Kurenai!" The bearded man said when his cigarette was snatched from his mouth by a stunning raven-haired woman with striking red eyes.

Kurenai tossed the cigarette aside, "But to take him onto your team. Aren't you a bit concerned about the you-know-what?"

Asuma shrugged, "Why should I be? Has anyone ever even heard of any episodes taking place with the kid? Ever? At this point he might as well not even have it for all of the 'influence' it has over him. He's going to work out just fine on my team, I know he will."

Nodding at the points his son made, Hiruzen then gave a knowing smirk, "I believe Naruto-kun is going to have a few surprises for you already in regards to his performance on your team."

"It's been a week." A random shinobi said, "He was the dead-last of this year's graduates, how much could things have changed in a week?"

'A week?' Hiruzen thought, 'Try 24 hours.' He looked at the man that had spoken with an even gaze, "A week is far more than an ample amount of time for any competent shinobi to improve if driven. And I can assure you that Naruto-kun has an incredible drive."

"And that's why I wanted him." Asuma said before placing another cigarette in his mouth making sure to keep it away from Kurenai, "I mean, someone has to be the enthusiasm on my squad. I have a slacker, a loudmouth, and a knucklehead… It actually sounds like fun to me." He sparked up his lighter, placing it under the cigarette to start smoking.

XxX

Ino had pretty much demanded that they all leave the classroom for lunch. Shikamaru thought it better to go along with it that argue about something he didn't care about, Chouji went along with him on that, and Naruto just didn't care at the moment. He was too excited thinking about the things they were going to do after their jounin showed up after lunch. They all ended up sitting outside on an awning next to the main Academy building.

Ino was eating her lunch quietly as she looked over her teammates. She wasn't terribly unfamiliar with Shikamaru seeing as how both of their fathers were teammates and good friends. His grades and overall performance in the Academy were abysmal to say the least. He was always asleep in class, even after Iruka woke him up multiple times a day. Lazy bum.

And then there was Naruto. He wasn't a lazy-ass like Shikamaru was, but his grades in the Academy were even worse than his were. He consistently failed even when he would show up and he spent almost as much time sleeping as Shikamaru. He was the slowest to get all of the jutsu taught in class down, and he couldn't even do Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Jutsu) by the time of the graduation exam. How the hell did he pass anyway? She was cursing out Kami in her head for giving her such a bottom-of-the-barrel team to work with. This was going to be terrible.

Naruto wasn't even eating, he didn't have lunch with him anyway, he was simply grinning madly about finally being a ninja. He had his own team and a cool high-class jounin to teach him how to kick even more ass. Maybe he even had techniques that were as cool as the one Iruka taught him. He didn't mind his team too much, Shikamaru was an alright guy, and Ino was bossy but it wasn't anything he couldn't deal with he was certain.

Shikamaru wasn't really thinking about either of his teammates at all. He knew enough about Ino to know that she was going to be troublesome, but he knew how to handle her. Naruto on the other hand was just going to flat out be troublesome. Nothing he did or could think of would change or lessen that so there was no need to waste the effort trying to deal with it. He was more concerned with Chouji on Team 7. He hoped his old buddy would be alright on that team, but then again Chouji was strong. He knew he would be fine.

"Alright." Ino stood up, "I need our team to blow everyone else's out of the water, especially Forehead Girl's team."

Naruto nodded fervently in agreement, "Yeah, I need to wipe that superior look off of Sasuke-teme's face anyway. Don't worry, I'm right there with you Ino."

Ino glared at him, confusing him. Why was she upset? All he did was agree with her, "Baka, you can't beat Sasuke-kun. He's the best genin in the entire village."

She really hadn't been exposed to very many real ninja had she? Well he hadn't either until just this week. Naruto snorted, "My ass he is. I've met some of the other genin in this village. If Sasuke-teme can beat those guys here and now I'll eat my goggles."

Ino fumed at Naruto's claims of Sasuke's false superiority while Shikamaru sighed, "Ino isn't that counter-intuitive to what you just said? You just said to beat Team 7. Well Sasuke is on Team 7, so you're getting mad at Naruto for agreeing with you. But then again I don't know why I care, this whole thing is troublesome." He looked over at Chouji, "You might have been better off seeing if your team would actually eat with you, it would have to be less trouble than this."

"It's alright Shikamaru. I don't mind." The agreeable, portly boy said as he popped open a fresh bag of chips before noticing that Naruto hadn't eaten a single thing since they got there, "Chip?" He offered to the blonde boy.

Naruto noticed he was talking to him and smiled at him, "Thanks a lot Chouji!" Naruto reached in and grabbed a few before Chouji gave some to Shikamaru as well. All three boys were seated and munching on chips while Ino was crying over her rotten luck.

Naruto grinned at her, "It'll be fine Ino. Stop worrying about it. I'm sure Shikamaru isn't as lazy as he seems when something important actually happens."

The girl had to admit, he was right. He did graduate just like everyone else did after all, "And what about you?" Ino replied, running a hand through her light blonde locks, "He might be able to get himself up for when big stuff happens, but what about you? You can't really turn stupid off like that." She knew Naruto failed on the other hand. Everyone did, it was so evident on his face when he came out of the Academy that day. Why was he here? No one told her that.

Naruto gave her a deadpan look, "Yes you can."

Ino raised an eyebrow at him, "No you can't. You just can't fix stupid Naruto."

"Yeah, you really can, trust me." Naruto insisted. Damn he knew he was bad in the Academy, was it really that bad? Ino didn't even believe in him enough to think he was useful in a real situation. As far as she was concerned Shikamaru was more useful in a high-stress situation. That was a heartbreaker, "It's called a library Ino. That place was pretty much invented so that stupid people could fix being stupid."

Ino almost dropped her jaw at hearing that, Shikamaru actually opened his eyes to stare at Naruto in surprise, and Chouji actually stopped eating to gape at him, "You go to the library?" All three of them said at the same time.

"I sure do." Naruto said rather proudly. If it was able to get that kind of a reaction out of them then he must have been doing something right, "Every day since graduation!" He neglected to mention that he was more or less tricked into going once by the Hokage and then basically guilt tripped into returning by Shiho. Still after you get used to it the library isn't really a bad place at all. Kind of boring though, but Shiho's company made even that manageable.

"No way." Ino said in disbelief, "The dead-last that never even cracked a book to study for all of these years went to the library all this week in his own free time? I was barely under the impression that you could even read."

Naruto frowned, "That's mean Ino." He was starting to get tired of all of the cracks at his intelligence. No he wasn't smart but there had to be someone out there stupider than he was. It was a basic law of the world, somewhere out there someone had to exist dumber than him.

"Ino stop trying to antagonize Naruto." Shikamaru cut in, getting tired of hearing Naruto be grilled over this, "If he did he did. It couldn't be a bad thing that he went all week. You should actually be happy about it."

Ino blinked at Shikamaru before turning back to her fellow blonde, "Well it's not like I'm mad at him for doing it, but why? Didn't you have anything better to do for the rest of the week, like hang out with someone?" Come to think of it she never really saw Naruto anywhere with anyone. Shikamaru was at least usually with Chouji.

Naruto shook his head, "Other than play pranks I really didn't. All I had to do was train and go to the library because I promised not to pull anymore pranks." -Unless someone gave him a seriously good reason to do so. Luckily for everyone no one gave him a reason to do so yet. But he was feeling the pent-up need to vent in a pranking fashion on someone and Kami help the poor bastard he decided to unleash it on.

"Training too?" Ino said. Naruto trained? Since when did Naruto actively train without being directed to by someone. He barely did it when Iruka had everyone doing things in class.

"Yep." Naruto grinned reassuringly at her before sticking out his fist, "So like I said, everything's going to be just fine. We got through the Academy in one piece, we can handle anything that gets thrown at us right?"

Shikamaru looked up at Naruto before smiling to himself, "It's going to be totally troublesome already I can just feel it, but you've got it Naruto. We can handle whatever."

Naruto looked over to Ino with his vibrant blue eyes that exuded confidence before she smirked and flipped her ponytail back, "Well I suppose I have to agree right? I mean who else is going to dig you two idiots out of the fire when everything goes wrong? I have to be there to save both of you… I'm sure that will get Sasuke-kun to see how much better than Forehead I am."

Naruto laughed and threw his hands behind his head, "Alright then. So we're a team right? Team 10?"

"Team 10." Shikamaru agreed.

Ino sighed, "I'd still much rather be on Sasuke-kun's team though…" She then perked up and winked, "But yeah, Team 10."

* * *

**Hello all. Yes I know not much happened in this chapter but patience please. Things must be set before I take this where I need it to go so in due time the pace of things will quicken, until then it's a celebration (bitches). **

**I hope you all had some happy holidays because me being a grown ass man of 19 I didn't get shit. Hell I'm too old for gifts anyway. I wouldn't even know what I want. Actually that's wrong, I did get what I wanted; my goddamn Ford Taurus out of the shop, but then again I laid down a lot of bones for that so it wasn't a gift to myself, it was a necessity.**

**Anyways, I'm done. I need to go install a door as I am extremely busy these days. Any questions that I can actually answer without blowing storyline or that aren't kind of stupid and as always I'll do my damndest to respond somewhat timely. Cheers everybody, Kenchi out.**


	4. How To Train Your Genin

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If you're reading all of my stories back to back starting with this one then take a shot every time you read this. Trust me, you'll be fucked up by the time you hit chapter ten of one of my others.

**Chapter 4: How To Train Your Genin**

**

* * *

**

Lunch ended and the newly graduated genin all filed back inside of the classroom to find that there was a group of adults already there waiting on them. Team 10 decided that now was as good a time as any to start working like a team and sat in the same row next to each other while most of the others were still spread out around the classroom. After everyone reentered, Iruka took the front of the class again.

"Alright everyone." Iruka started, "The men and women standing before you are your jounin sensei for your duration as genin. Remember to work hard and remember everything you've learned through your time here in the Academy." With that, the jounin started going down the line taking their teams away by the number indicated.

"Team 8?" A beautiful raven-haired woman with remarkable red eyes said. She had on a mesh blouse with one long sleeve and a missing other underneath a broad, bandage looking material that had a pattern of thorns on it. She had bandages wrapped around her upper thighs and her hands up to her elbows, "I'm your jounin instructor, Yuhi Kurenai, come with me and we'll get started."

Kiba, Hinata, and Shino all stood up and walked out of the room with the woman when Sakura stood up, "Um, you skipped Team 7. What about our sensei?"

All of the remaining jounin shook their heads with amusement etched on their faces as the next man stepped forward, "You guys are going to be waiting a while for him to show up. Anyway, Team 10? I'm Sarutobi Asuma and I'm your sensei, so follow me."

Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru stood up and followed him out with Shikamaru giving a small wave to Chouji before they left for luck to him and how he would fare on his own team. Shikamaru was still worried about leaving his oldest friend like that all on his own, but he had to worry about himself at the moment and how he was going to do on his own team.

Naruto looked at the bearded man they were following oddly, as if he were supposed to be familiar or something, "Hey, have we met before?" Naruto asked with his eyes closed in confusion. The man chuckled at the diminutive blonde, "Hey, what's funny?"

"You must not have a very good short term memory eh kid?" The man said as they started walking outside. When he saw Naruto's face scrunch up in thought, "We met yesterday kid. You were outside of the Hokage Tower and ran into me after messing with my nephew."

"Huh?" Naruto was still confused before he started piecing together what Asuma had just said along with his last name, "Wait, you're Konohamaru's uncle? Then that means you're the Hokage's son right?"

Asuma sighed, "Well that's not what we were really talking about but yes, I am the Hokage's son."

"Wow." Naruto said with a grin on his face, "So you must be like a younger, more awesome version of Hokage-jiji right?"

Asuma broke into laughter at hearing that. If nothing else Naruto was going to be entertaining to have around on his team, "Well I don't really know about that. I don't even fight anything like the old man to be quite honest with you, but I do in my own humble opinion think I'm quite strong."

Ino gave Naruto a chiding look, "Naruto why would you call Hokage-sama that? That's disrespectful to his status in the village."

Naruto shrugged, "It's just what I've always called him. Ever since I was a little kid I've been calling him Hokage-jiji whenever he came to see me and he never corrected me on it so I guess he liked it or something."

Now Shikamaru and Ino had something else to think about. Why did the Hokage spend _that_ much time with Naruto when he was little? Sure he was an orphan and everything, but for Naruto to be comfortable about calling the man such a familiar name in passing… that's a whole different level of acquaintance.

The newly minted Team 10 kept following their jounin commander as he walked them about all the way to a training field where he instructed them to sit down in the grass under the shade of a tree while he leaned against the trunk. Shikamaru acquiesced far too easily for Ino's tastes when he plopped right down on his back and looked up at the sun poking through the leaves vacantly. Naruto swiftly did as he was told as well, just staying seated normally on the ground. Ino did so reluctantly and sat with her knees pulled to her chest as they all looked at their sensei reach into one of his flak jacket's pockets and pull out a cigarette.

Ino watched him distastefully as he stuck the cigarette in his mouth, "Those will kill you, you know."

Asuma smirked and pulled out a lighter to spark his cigarette up, "Girl I think you'll find after you've been doing this for a while that compared to being a ninja, a little smoke can't even come close to being anywhere near as dangerous." He took a moment to enjoy his cigarette for a moment, taking in the expressions his genin all wore.

Ino was calm, yet she had an air of annoyance about her; apparently she wasn't as pleased with her team selection, or her sensei if the way she was lightly glaring at him and his cigarette was any indication, as she would have liked to be but she was willing to deal, that was good.

Shikamaru didn't seem to care either way. He was just waiting for whatever it was he was supposed to do apparently before he decided whether or not it was worth the trouble of actually doing it. This kid would need some serious motivation if he was to end up any good kind of ninja. He didn't appear to be as out of it as he looked while gazing up at the clouds. It was clear he was still paying attention.

Naruto was barely able to hide his excitement. He was hardly able to sit still and every few moments you could see a huge grin threatening to peek through his already happy expression. Well there was clearly no lack of motivation in him and he didn't seem to have any problems with the way the teams panned out, he was just happy as a clam to even be there at all. 'Alright.' Asuma thought to himself, 'Enough of the silent contemplation.'

Asuma tapped the ashes off of the end of his cigarette, "From this day forward I'll be your jounin sensei. You will train under me, take missions under me, and I will be responsible for all of your well-beings from this point forward." He saw a their faces receive that information, 'And now for the fun part.' He thought with a smirk, "That is, after you pass your final test to become genin."

Ino looked at him with a cocked brow, "Wait, I thought we already did that? We just got through with graduation didn't we?"

Asuma chuckled, "Come on. Anyone can reel off a few memorized test answers and crank out the most basic level jutsu that pretty much any ninja can do right?" After he said that, a sweatdrop formed on his head when Ino's eyes turned to Naruto and Shikamaru who laughed nervously and muttered 'troublesome' respectively, "Right. Nevermind. Well regardless that was just to scout out prospective candidates that actually end up being ninja. The truth is that there's a 66% average failure rate for kids at your level.

Naruto's eyes widened, "That's why Shiho-chan almost ended up not being a real ninja after all! Why didn't she tell me?" Both Shikamaru and Ino looked at him in surprise after his outburst, 'As a matter of fact why didn't Tenten tell me? Gah, I'm pissed!'

Asuma nodded, "You say almost, so I assume she was one of the lucky ones that didn't end up having to be sent back somehow. She must have gotten someone to actively apprentice her. But most shinobi don't have the time for that, or they don't have anyone they're actually interested in enough to go through that pain in the ass process for so the failed ones usually end up heading back to the Academy or in a lot of cases washing out altogether."

He let silence settle over the field before sighing, getting the full attention of the group of kids, "You know, I talked about it with Hokage-sama beforehand and I have to tell you all, just to be fair to you, I don't really want a team." He surprised them, "I have the freedom to make the test to pass you as tough or as easy as I want it to be, and I'm going to come up with something you'll never be able to pass. A task a full-fledged jounin would have to take a second thought at accepting." He exuded the minutest trace of killing intent he could to enforce his threat, and seeing Ino's eyes quiver he had to hold himself back from breaking his straight face.

"That's not fair!" Naruto said loudly from the ground, "You can't do that to us just because you're a lazy ass!"

Hearing Naruto say something brought something out of Ino, "Yeah, even Shikamaru wouldn't be lazy enough to do something like that!"

"Tough." Asuma said, shutting them both down, "I'm a jounin, an elite. I've earned my spot ten times over and I'd much rather not have to spend the next five years wiping noses and powdering bottoms." Even Shikamaru was fully attentive by this point.

The normally lazy pineapple-haired boy sat up and stared Asuma down, "So you're going to just drop us? You led us all the way out here just to tell us you're failing us like that? Just getting rid of all of us."

"No." Asuma said to him, "I never said I was going to just get rid of you. I said I never wanted a team, not that I never wanted to train anyone. I'm willing to take only one of you as an apprentice. The others are out of luck."

All three of them looked at each other before Ino spoke up, "Which one of us?"

Asuma smirked, "That's up to all of you. I don't know the first thing about either one of you so how would I know? All I know is that I don't want any weak little tag-along. I want the best."

Ino smirked back at him and flipped her ponytail back, "Well I can tell you that I am the best. My Academy grades were twice as good as both of theirs were, probably combined."

"Yeah…" Asuma said dryly, "That doesn't really mean a damn thing to me. You could pass with flying colors and still be shit for a shinobi, just like you could have barely graduated by the skin of your teeth and wind up being the best there ever was. What happened there doesn't mean anything to me now."

Ino shirked back at that. Naruto spoke next, "So… what happens now?"

Asuma started walking away, "Meet me back here in three hours. In that time I'll come up with a way to determine which out of all of you is worth being a genin." With that he vanished from the training field in a whirlwind of leaves, leaving three bewildered youngsters on their own.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Konohagakure Ninja Academy)

The only team still remaining in the room was the group of Team 7, who were getting increasingly agitated by the wait for their sensei. Sasuke and Sakura were absurdly bored and could have actually been doing stuff with their time, and Chouji was running out of food to munch on this guy was taking so long.

The door finally slid open, "Sorry I'm late, a black cat crossed my path and I had to take the long way around to get here." A man with gravity defying silver hair in regular jounin garb and a facemask with his headband covering one eye stuck his head in the door with an expression that appeared to be him smiling. He opened his one eye and looked at the three with a bored expression on his face, "Hmm, my first impression of this group: You all are not quite what I was expecting. Meet me on the roof in five minutes." With that he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The faces upon hearing his lame excuse twisted in confusion once they processed his later words. Sakura looked at both of her teammates, "What did he mean we're not what he expected?"

Chouji simply shrugged before Sasuke stood up, "Hm." Sasuke said before putting his hands in his pockets, "Let's just go." Chouji nodded and put up his snacks before following Sasuke out while Sakura sat there, still puzzled at her new sensei's first words to the team.

XxX

"What the hell?" Naruto wondered as he walked the streets by himself to wait out Asuma's timeframe, "Did this kind of thing happen to Shiho-chan? Did her jounin sensei not want to do this either and just got rid of the whole team because they could? I can't let it end like this! I can't just go back to the Academy because of this!'

Naruto clinched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white, 'Maybe… Maybe he'll take me as his apprentice. Maybe if I show I'm more awesome than the others he'll take me as a student? He has to! It's my only chance! But how am I supposed to prove it?'

Naruto kept walking for a moment before he steeled his eyes and headed back towards the training field they had met with Asuma on.

XxX

Naruto returned to the field to find Ino and Shikamaru already there, the former glaring at the latter as he sat against a tree with his eyes closed, "Naruto." Shikamaru said before yawning, "We've been waiting on you to show up."

Naruto gulped before he began walking towards the tree, "Yeah. I'm here." He looked from Shikamaru to Ino who was splitting her time from glaring at Shikamaru to glaring at Naruto, "I thought I'd get here early and get some time to think before everyone else showed up… I guess that plan was good enough for everybody to use too huh?"

Shikamaru shrugged, "Well I never really left. I just waited until you guys all did and then I came back. This is a good spot. Ino stomped back here a few minutes before you did actually."

"So how are we going to do this?" Naruto asked more to himself than to anyone else as he made his way under the tree with the others, but Ino heard and picked up on it.

"There's no way I'm going back to the Academy now. Not after all I've done to get out of there. If this is how it's got to be, then I'm not just letting this pass me by." Ino said, voice full of determination, "So if I have to prove it, I will."

"No you're not." Shikamaru said, his voice having lost the disinterested tone from before to take on a more hardened one that showed he was actually serious, "Neither of you are actually." He said, directing his gaze to Naruto to make sure he got the message.

Ino smirked, "So what are you going to do? Beat us both and take it for yourself Shikamaru? That seems like too much work for someone like you."

Naruto tensed up his muscles and spoke animatedly, "I'm not going to fail, I can't. Not now, not after all of this, dattebayo! I won't go back! If I have to fight you guys I will!"

Shikamaru stood up from his spot on the tree, "Well you see, no one's going to be fighting anyone at all." He made a gesture of antlers on the top of his head and let a smile cross his face when he saw Naruto and Ino mimic his action, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu) complete."

Ino's eyes had panic in them, "What is this Shikamaru?" She said frantically.

Naruto struggled but couldn't move an inch, "I… can't move."

Shikamaru put his hands down, "This is my jutsu, now listen up. We're not going to be fighting. None of us are. Why would they give that guy a team if he could just fail us for something stupid like 'he didn't want a team?' Just because he has tenure or something doesn't mean he can just ruin someone's career before they even start."

"But what if he can?" Ino said, "I can't fail. My entire family would be totally ashamed of me."

Naruto's eyes widened, "He never said he would flat out fail us though! He said he would give us an exam we couldn't pass, but he didn't say anything about failing anyone just like that!"

"Exactly." Shikamaru said, smiling at Naruto for pulling that answer out, "So, as troublesome as it is, all we have to do is pass his exam and that should be that."

Ino wasn't convinced, "But what if we can't? He said that a jounin would have trouble with what he was going to end up making us do. How can you be so sure we'll get through it?"

Shikamaru let go of his jutsu, "Because there are three of us. A single jounin might have trouble with whatever he makes us do, but three of us can more than likely handle anything he'll make us do." He kept looking between them in case anyone planned on attacking anyway, but calmed down when no one did after a minute.

"Okay." Naruto finally said, "We're Team 10 aren't we?" Naruto said with a slight laugh, "We're not supposed to be fighting anyway, and Shikamaru's right, we can take whatever that chain smoking teme has planned for us."

Ino sighed in resignation, "Alright sure… we'll work together, but if we end up all being sent back to the Academy for this I'm going to spend the next year making your lives a living hell. Got that?" Her tough façade dropped as she slinked down against the tree that Shikamaru had been sitting against for the longest time, "So what are we going to do?"

Shikamaru kneeled down in the shade of the tree in a weird position with his hands forming a circle with his fingers with his eyes closed. Naruto and Ino looked at him strangely before looking at each other. Naruto whispered to his fellow blonde loudly, "What is he doing?"

Ino shook her head, "I don't have a clue. Just wait."

Naruto's whispers grew harsher, "We don't have time to wait! That Asuma guy is going to be here in ten minutes, he's a jounin, and he's Hokage-jiji's son. That has to mean he's strong as hell!"

"Well what do you want me to do?" Ino whispered back just as harshly, still trying to whisper though so as not to disturb whatever Shikamaru was doing, "I don't know the first thing about the guy! Or any of you for that matter!"

"Oh man!" Naruto continued to whisper as he moved around in place nervously, "We're going to get our asses killed by this guy and then we're going to go back to the Academy, and I'm going to have to sit through those boring lectures for another year! I don't think I can do it!"

Ino started crying anime tears, "I don't either! I can't be the only one of my friends this year to go back to the Academy, that's a popularity killer for sure! I'll be a social untouchable Naruto, just like you! …No offense."

"No, I don't blame you!" Naruto said, crying just as equally as Ino was, "I wouldn't want that either, and if that would happen to you what would happen to me? I don't think I can sink much lower Ino and I don't feel like finding out if I can either!"

"What are we going to do Naruto?" Ino grabbed the collar of his jacket tightly.

"I don't know!" Naruto replied just as desperately. Both of them hugged the other and started sobbing loudly.

Shikamaru's eyes opened up, "Alright I have a plan." He almost had his eyes bug out of his head when he noticed Ino and Naruto holding each other and crying inconsolably, "Guys." Shikamaru said, not getting a single response from them, "Guys." He said a bit louder before muttering troublesome and trying again, "Guys!"

Naruto and Ino noticed he was finally back to paying attention and proceeded to let go of each other nonchalantly as if nothing had happened. Shikamaru stood up, "Alright, if we're going to do this then we need to know what the others are good at, so I'll go first. I'm not really much for fighting, I'd rather sleep or play shogi than do something so troublesome but if I had to I would say that my best thing is-."

XxX

(Hokage Tower – Hokage's Office)

A knock came at the door of the Hokage's office, "Enter." Hiruzen said, placing some paperwork to the side to pay attention to his guest. The door opened to reveal Kakashi poking his head in, "Ah, Kakashi, I was actually expecting you to come here at some point, but don't tell me you finished your test this early?"

Kakashi gave the man an eye-smile, "No Hokage-sama, I decided I would wait until tomorrow, let them sweat it out a bit… also it seemed like more fun to let them dangle than to get it over with."

Hiruzen shook his head at the masked man's relaxed attitude, "Are you actually going to pass your team this year Kakashi? You have a lot you could actually pass down to the youngsters if you ever actually chose to."

Kakashi made a noise of neutrality, "Maybe. It's up to them whether or not they pass so who knows. Speaking of my team, I thought I was supposed to get Naruto Uzumaki to even out the team with Sasuke and Sakura."

Hiruzen nodded, "You were, until Asuma personally requested him yesterday. He hadn't made a request and you didn't really ask for Naruto, he was to be placed there to balance things out. I know you didn't bother to ask for him since he was placed here, but you could have asked for him yourself to keep him. Hell, Sasuke was already guaranteed to be on your team regardless so you could have reserved Naruto." A smirk then crossed the grizzled old warrior's face, "You could have even shown up today before teams were being announced like all of the others and probably would have ended up with Naruto when you found out he was on Asuma's squad."

Kakashi face-faulted on the ground, damn habit of showing up late. He quickly picked himself up and cleared his throat, "Well I don't really have issues with my squad. And as long as he's with Asuma, Naruto should be just fine as long as he passes."

"Oh he'll pass Kakashi." Hiruzen assured his masked jounin, "Of that I have no doubts, so you shouldn't even worry about that."

XxX

(Training Ground 24)

'Okay, time to break some genin.' Asuma thought to himself upon entering the training field. He looked around and saw all three of the kids sitting under the tree he had left them at. He walked over to them and crossed his arms once he got close enough for the three to take notice of him, "So have you come to a decision on which of you are going to be my apprentice civilly, or will I have to fail all three of you and be done with it?"

Naruto stood up and dusted off his pants, "You're not going to be failing any of us at all. We're not going to let a jerk like you just tell us he doesn't feel like being a sensei and kill our dreams like that."

"So we're going to give you a choice." Ino said, backing her teammate up as she got up to stand beside Naruto.

Shikamaru stood up with a groan, "As troublesome as it's going to be; you either pass us, or we'll make you pass us. And you really don't want us to do that."

Asuma let out a derisive snort, "And how exactly is a group of green-as-grass genin going to pull that off? You'd be better off hedging your bets and fighting between yourselves for the one guaranteed spot. You know that you all have a snowball's chance in hell of actually beating me right?"

Naruto grinned, "Just pass us, and you don't have to find out."

Asuma smirked, "Well that's fun! Because I was needing a workout anyway. You brats can try, by all means feel free to."

Naruto smirked, "That's just what we wanted to hear. Let's do this!" As he said that, Shikamaru placed his hands in the rat seal, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possesion Jutsu)!"

Asuma smirked and jumped back away from the shadow the tree was casting over the field, "I know about the Nara clan's signature jutsu. I'm not taking students I don't know anything about!" He said before finding himself frozen in place, "What?" He looked at the ground and there was no shadow stretching from the tree, "What happened?"

Naruto smirked as did all of the others as they transformed in puffs of smoke to all take on the appearance of Naruto, "What's the matter _sensei_? I thought you knew about your students?" With that the extra Naruto's disappeared leaving only one original Naruto in place, "It worked Shikamaru!"

"Yeah I can see that Naruto." Shikamaru said as he walked out of some brush from behind Asuma. Asuma turned his head when Shikamaru allowed him the motion to do so, "Ino if you would be so kind as to finish this."

Ino sauntered out in front of Asuma in a showy fashion, prompting the man to speak, "You all set this up? What was the plan?"

Shikamaru elaborated. "Naruto was to distract you with his Kage Bunshin henged into us… that was good by the way, you even had our mannerisms down perfectly."

Naruto shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, "Basics kill."

Ino smiled over at him, "Yeah, solid clones Naruto? I don't even know where you would learn something like that." Prompting Naruto to blush more under the praise.

"Anyway." Shikamaru picked up where he left off, "After Naruto distracted you and feigned my jutsu I would catch you with the real one from your blind spot. You would be dodging what you thought was the real one so you would be on alert… just at the wrong one." A mischievous smirk crossed Shikamaru's face, "And finally we were going to have Ino hit you with her jutsu and walk you right to Hokage-sama's office to pass us so you couldn't screw us over." Ino waved from her place in front of Asuma before making the hand-seal needed for the jutsu she intended to use.

Naruto chuckled after that, drawing attention back to him, "And then for all of the crap you put us through today, we're going to do something humiliating that you'll never live down in your body. Something like make you look like an idiot in front of that Kurenai lady. Shikamaru said you were standing awfully close to her for anything less than just a passing work relationship or something which kind of brought up our second way to beat you… but _somebody_ didn't want me to use that way."

Ino glared at Naruto, "You're damn right I don't want you using that way. You'd better never use that… that _jutsu_, around me or else, got it?" Ino said to Naruto threateningly before turning back to Asuma with a victorious look, "Get ready to get used to us _sensei_. We're not going anywhere." Asuma had a look of terror on his face before he started laughing raucously, "What's so funny? Fine, Shintenshin no Jut-!"

Before Ino could complete her jutsu, Asuma disappeared suddenly. The genin all looked around, Naruto felt familiar seeing Asuma just disappear like that, "No way, he knows that too? How could he have-?"

"It's a high level skill kid, but I'm a high level ninja." Asuma said as he walked into the clearing. He looked at all three in a pleased manner, "That was good. I liked that." His face turned grave, "But seriously, if you ever try pulling any crap around Kurenai I'm going to make you all pay dearly, don't even think about it. Ever." He then noticed that they all were still ready to fight, "Oh, by the way you pass."

All three of them blinked before standing up out of their fighting stances, two of them with confused looks, the other just slouched, yawned, and placed his hands in his pockets "Um, what?" Naruto said, conveying the thought he and Ino shared at the moment.

"Yeah." Asuma said with a laugh, "That was just to see if you would all turn on each other and fight over the single spot or work together. I was actually expecting you all to fight with Miss Bossy and the Airhead Kid over there, Lazy-Ass would have ended up getting dragged into it, and I would have failed your miserable asses and sent you back. Didn't really expect you all to turn on me though, that was entertaining."

"Damn…" Naruto said as he slouched his shoulders, "I swear I only sensed the first Asuma-sensei that entered the area." Naruto then told himself whenever he was doing anything like that again he needed to send out a pulse every once in a while, they had wasted all that time with a clone when the other entered the area right after the clone did. He knew Asuma was coming, too bad it was the wrong Asuma.

Asuma placed a cigarette in his mouth, "I was going to scare you all shitless one more time and then give you the option to fight over the apprenticeship, and if you turned that down I was going to make you fight the clone anyway seeing as how the point of all this was to ensure that you all act as a team, so all you really did was rush it all along." He finished and lit his cigarette.

"Knew it." Shikamaru said offhandedly, "Are we done? We pass so we're done right?"

Asuma sighed. Shikamaru straight killed his momentum. Damn kid just didn't understand the concept of cool, he was trying to be a role model here, "Yeah… we're done. Meet me back here tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp for your first actual day as Konoha genin. Good work Team 10." With that he once again disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Shikamaru heaved a sigh at his day finally being over, "Finally. I'm going straight home and taking a nap. See you guys tomorrow." He began to walk away from the field.

Ino smiled, "Well that worked out better than I thought it would. I'm going to tell dad I passed. Later guys!" Ino ran off in her own direction.

Naruto just stood still watching them both walk away before a smile crossed his face and he jumped into the air excitedly, "Yatta! I'm finally an actual ninja now!" He landed and looked around for anyone that might have seen that before shrugging and walking away.

"That seriously wasn't cool Naruto!" He heard Ino say from a distance away.

"Damn it!" Naruto said to himself before walking off with a proverbial raincloud over his head.

XxX

Tenten was simply doing target practice on bulls-eyes she painted on trees at the edge of the training field. She felt someone tap her on the shoulder and she abruptly turned around and unloaded every shuriken in her hand at the person that had surprised her. She looked down oddly when she saw a log riddled with the weaponry she had just unleashed.

"You're so lucky I knew you were going to do that." Naruto said as he walked up beside her looking at the log she had murdered.

"How did you even sneak up on me?" Tenten asked. She had been alert the entire time in case one of her team members came looking for her to help them train.

"I wasn't trying to. I just walked up to you and tapped you on the shoulder." Naruto said honestly. Tenten frowned. She guessed she had to chalk it up to her not being used to Naruto's presence. It was still something she needed to work on, being surprised by someone that wasn't even trying to do it wasn't a good indicator of her awareness. Naruto glared at her, surprising her, "You could have told me there was a second test. I almost looked stupid out there today."

Tenten smiled apologetically, "Sorry, that would have been cheating. But you said almost so that means you passed right?"

"Yeah you bet!" Naruto said with a huge grin before he took on a pondering expression, complete with squinted eyes, "But are you leaving anything else out that I need to know? Because I'm supposed to start missions tomorrow too."

'Should I tell him about the D-ranked missions?' She asked herself. On one hand knowing would soften the blow of the wind being taken out of his sails. It was better to see a punch coming than to be hit with one you had no clue was there. However on the other hand why should she? No one fucking told her she would be picking up dog shit and painting fences for 'missions' when she started, 'Nah, he'll be fine.' She figured, "Nope! You're all set!" She chirped happily, confident in her decision to pass on the suffering to the next class of genin.

Naruto kept grinning at her, "Want to spar?" He asked spontaneously, "I haven't really done anything today."

Tenten shook her head, "No, but thanks anyway. This is the time of day where our sensei has us work on our own things, one of my team should be here any minute to get me. Or do you want a repeat of what happened the first time with Lee?"

Naruto paled and made a hand-self to send out a random pulse to check if anyone was coming. "Getting kicked in the face once out of the blue is enough thanks. I just wanted to see if I'm any better yet."

Tenten frowned and placed a hand on her hip, "It's been a week. How good could you expect to get in a week Naruto? You haven't even had a day under your sensei yet." Tenten began pulling her weapons from the bulls-eyes in the trees.

"But I've been training super-hard!" He assured her, "Something's got to have changed right? I still might not beat you, but I might do better than last time."

Tenten let out a laugh, "Unless you have a new trick like the one you used the first time, if we fight I don't think you will. I'm ready for your little surprises and you don't have anything new to get close to me. Just wait some more and make sure you actually improve or else you won't be any better than my teammate Lee repeatedly challenging my other one Neji."

"What?" Naruto said, "Lee loses? To your other teammate? He hasn't beaten him once?"

Tenten shook her head and sighed as she picked up the last of her weapons, "No. He works hard and he's clearly far better than he was last year when we became a team, but he still hasn't beaten Neji. He sees him as his 'eternal rival' and challenges him every chance he gets. The thing is though, he does it _every chance he gets_, everyday if Neji is willing, which means that he isn't giving himself much time to actually get better before trying again. I'm getting tired of watching him get beat up but he doesn't listen to me."

Naruto was surprised by that, "Wow, your other teammate is stronger than Lee?"

Tenten nodded, "Well, it doesn't hurt that Lee can only use taijutsu, and going up against Neji with just taijutsu is pretty much suicide if you aren't Gai-sensei good at it. He was the rookie of the year in our class… everyone calls him a natural genius."

"Oh." Naruto said dejectedly. That meant that there was someone else out there way stronger than him too. He perked back up somewhat, "Well enough of that, what about us? What's going on with you and me?"

Tenten gave him an odd look with a raised eyebrow begging him to repeat himself, "What? Care to try again with how you worded that or were you actually trying to hit on me?"

Naruto gave her a clueless look in reply, "Huh? I was wondering when we actually can spar again. If you say it won't matter until I get really, really better, then how will I know?"

"Oh, good." Tenten replied in a relieved voice. It would have been really weird if Naruto had started to have a crush on her, the him being shorter than her by so much thing was seriously noticeable, "Well, I'm going to need to see how I do against actual ninja in combat in a few months. Tell you what, if you're any better come back here in five months and challenge me and I'll see if you're any better."

"Five months…" Naruto whined, "That's a long time. I can't come back here for five months?"

Tenten giggled, "No Naruto, I didn't say you can't come back, I just said you can't challenge me like you have been for five months. You can still come back and ask me stuff. I mean I have been a genin longer than you and it's my responsibility to be a useful senpai to a rookie like you isn't it?" She said, ruffling his hair and getting a laugh out of his facial expression from it.

"Fine!" Naruto shouted, "In five months I'll knock your block of Tenten, just you wait."

"Like I would actually let you catch up to me and pull that miracle off." Tenten flicked Naruto's nose, "If you actually beat me in five months of training alone I'll… I don't know yet, we'll figure that out later."

Naruto held his nose and glared at her, "Alright then, it's a bet. For… something five months from now that I can beat you."

"Someone like you will never beat someone like Tenten." A cool voice said.

Both turned to see the boy with Tenten the other day standing at the edge of the field with his arms crossed, "Neji." Tenten said expectantly, "Is it time to meet back up with Gai-sensei?"

Neji wordlessly nodded before turning his attention back to Naruto, "From what I've been told by Tenten and by my other teammate Rock Lee, you are a dropout just like he is."

"Hey!" Naruto barked indignantly, "I didn't wind up a dropout in the end! I graduated, and then I finished the other genin test! I'm a ninja just like you!"

Neji simply smirked, "And you're absolutely wrong there as well. Fate has already decreed that I would be better than you from the beginning. It clearly showed itself based on our respective positions in life at this point, and it clearly showed from our respective performances in the Academy as well. Tenten was top kunoichi of our year as well, do you really believe that five months will be enough to defeat someone on her level?"

"Absolutely I believe it!" Naruto shouted at Neji. So that's what it was when he saw him the other day, that look on his face while Tenten was helping him, the prick just thought he was better than him. Well he wasn't taking that crap from someone he had a shot at proving it wrong against, "So what if she's better than me and wiped the floor with me the first time? I'll just get better so she doesn't do it next time! I'll get stronger than Tenten somehow, and I'll get stronger than you so I can shut your damn mouth, and that's all I really need to know about that."

Neji actually laughed momentarily. The only thing keeping Naruto from heading over there and decking Neji in the face was the fact that he was trying to stay out of fights like he promised the Hokage and the fact that he would have needed to run over there, and head-on charges didn't have a good track-record for him, "From what I've seen and been told you have no skills, no redeeming traits valuable to a shinobi, and no inherent talent. I'll tell you this once since if it doesn't get through the first time it simply won't at all; once a failure, always a failure. You can't change that." With that he turned to leave, "Gai-sensei is waiting for us Tenten, it's time to go."

Tenten glared at Neji for speaking to Naruto that way, "Bastard." She muttered under her breath when he got out of earshot. She placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder, "If you really want to get stronger just remember what I said. Don't measure yourself by day-to-day. Do it over time. I'll be here to give you advice okay? So don't worry about it, you'll be just fine." She didn't want to leave him like that after Neji said all of those things, but she had to get back to her own sensei. Who knows what the man would do if she were late.

Naruto just walked away out of the field. That guy… Naruto couldn't rightfully call Sasuke a bastard ever again. Sasuke was just anti-social, especially compared to Neji. At least Sasuke wouldn't verbally come out and say he was better than you without that not even being the point at hand. As a matter of fact, Sasuke never really said anything about how much better he was until you called him out on it. Neji just did it for the sake of doing it.

"I'm definitely going to beat that guy." Naruto said to himself.

XxX

(Konoha Archive Library)

Shiho was laughing uncomfortably as Naruto sat across from her at a table, glaring at her lightly over the book he had in his hands that she had prompted him to read over the course of his last few visits, "You aren't mad I didn't tell you about the test are you Uzumaki-kun?" His silence spoke volumes as the only answer she needed, "But I couldn't just tell you, it's an important indicator of if a student is ready to become a genin or not!"

Naruto's glare faded and he put the book down with a sigh, "I'm not really that mad Shiho-chan, it's just been a really long day. Have you found a jutsu in here yet?" He asked her. He knew Hokage-jiji wouldn't lie to him about something like that. There had to be some really cool stuff in this library somewhere, there just had to be. He _would_ find them, and then he would stomp a mudhole in Neji's pompous ass and walk it dry.

Shiho shook her head, "I haven't had the time to actively look. Atsuto-sensei keeps me really busy logging the books back in and all of the other things I have to do. I haven't had time to thoroughly go through the catalogue and see where they are. There aren't that many, sensei told me, and it isn't like there's a 'cool jutsu' section of the library."

Naruto's face fell, that would be so cool if there was. Then this wouldn't be such an issue. Didn't jiji know like a thousand jutsu? Why didn't he just make some scrolls in his spare time and fill this place up so there could be one? That was what he'd do when he was Hokage and knew even more jutsu than the old man did, fill a section in this place up with them so a down on his luck genin could learn some cool stuff. There was cooler stuff in the Scroll of Seals… hey, it was easy the first time, maybe he could take that again and get something? Nah, even if he could, was he really supposed to be causing that kind of trouble?

"I guess I'll keep on coming back and going through this place until I hit the mother lode then." Naruto said with an encouraging smile before a frown took over, "Oh yeah. I'm supposed to start with my team tomorrow. Well I guess I can still come by here sometimes. I'm not going to be busy all the time."

Shiho gave Naruto a smile of her own, "I'll help you Uzumaki-kun. I'll keep looking for stuff to help you out, I'm holding you to your promise of being Hokage, and running the village with me helping you when you get there. I should start helping you now right?"

Naruto looked at her in awe for a time. She was actually saying she believed in him? He thought she was just messing with him when she alluded to it on the day they met, but she was serious. Someone actually thought he could do it. Naruto gave her a grateful look, "Thank you Shiho-chan."

"And then when I help you get to the top I can institute a change in curriculum for the Ninja Academy the way I always wanted!" She said, changing the tone of the moment, "I mean, if I could end up getting the dead-last graduate of his year up to snuff enough to get to Hokage that would be incredible!" Naruto face-faulted out of his seat, not slowing her down one bit, "And if I actually end up being head of the department one day that would be all the stroke I needed to get it across! Yes, you will be Hokage Uzumaki-kun, I won't settle for anything less!"

Naruto picked himself up off of the ground by the table, "Um, yeah Shiho-chan. I'll definitely be Hokage." He said, giving her a thumbs up with a sweatdrop on his head, "Dattebayo." He said weakly, without enthusiasm. Shiho started laughing like a mad-scientist and started talking to him rapid speed about all of the things he would be going over for her 'project' as she so called it, 'Sakura-chan, Ino, hell even Tenten when she's fighting… Why are girls in this village so scary?' He thought to himself.

XxX

(The Next Day)

Asuma led his team to the foot of the Hokage Tower and looked at all of them. Shikamaru still had the same lazy expression on his face as always and there was no outside indication of how he was feeling other than not particularly wanting to be there. Ino was looking rather energized and cheerful for what they would be doing today, and that wasn't even comparing to Naruto.

Naruto looked like a squirrel on caffeine and amphetamines running around an active artillery field. His every motion was jerky and twitchy and full of vigor. He wasn't even sure if the kid had even slept the night before, hell it didn't look like he even needed it all things considered. He had a feeling if anyone tried to lay a hand on the boy he'd bite it off out of pure reflex. Talk about being wired.

He led his bright-eyed… well, except for Shikamaru of course, genin inside to the mission distribution area where he saw his father the Sandaime Hokage sitting to greet the genin and give them their first mission, "Hello Hokage-sama. Team 10 is here to receive their first mission as a squad."

Hiruzen smiled warmly at all three of them who smiled after Asuma said that. He started reaching for mission scrolls, "Well I have to say to each of you; good luck, work hard, and make Konoha proud to have trained such fine shinobi as you. Now for your first mission you actually have a choice."

Naruto's face lit up, 'What? What? Is it rescuing a princess? Taking down an enemy fortress? Ooh, is it rescuing a princess while taking out an enemy fortress?' He thought to himself. Asuma had to bite his fist to keep from laughing when he saw Naruto's face.

Hiruzen smiled gleefully, "You have the choice of walking the dogs from the Inuzuka Clan kennel, pulling weeds from the garden of an old lady, cleaning out the storage area of a general store, or helping an old man who lives at the edge of the village chop and stack firewood."

The expectant looks of the three genin froze on their faces somewhere between the anticipation of the notion of their first mission, and the horror of the abject reality of it. Asuma looked at their faces and quickly tossed a camera to his father who caught it, "Oh yeah, that's the look. Take the picture dad." Hiruzen did as asked by his son before throwing the camera back, "Yeah… that's definitely going to be the team picture for sure. Do you want a copy?" He asked the old man.

"Bring it by once you get it developed." Hiruzen replied, "Now which one will it be?"

Asuma stroked his chin, "Do you guys like dogs?" He got three near lifeless nods, "We'll take that one then." Hiruzen handed him the scroll and Asuma pocketed it before pushing his shell-shocked youngsters out of the room, "Come on guys, the work of a ninja doesn't do itself now."

After Asuma had physically herded them all out of the room, Hiruzen leaned back in his chair and lit up his pipe before taking a relaxing inhale of it with a wistful sigh, "Sometimes I really, really love my job." A few seconds later, Naruto's yells of resentment echoed into the room, "Ahh, the cycle continues."

* * *

Omake

Asuma let out a derisive snort, "And how exactly is a group of green-as-grass genin going to pull that off? You'd be better off hedging your bets and fighting between yourselves for the one guaranteed spot. You know that you all have a snowball's chance in hell of actually beating me right?"

Naruto grinned, "Just pass us, and you don't have to find out."

Asuma smirked, "Well that's fun! Because I was needing a workout anyway. You brats can try, by all means feel free to."

Shikamaru and Naruto smirked, "Fine, your funeral. Naruto, you're on, go." Ino scowled deeply, confusing Asuma. Wasn't she supposed to be behind her teammate? She was with them firmly just a moment ago.

Naruto made a cross hand-seal, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Mass Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Fifty clones surrounded Asuma, getting him to lift his eyebrow in interest, "One more chance sensei, pass us and I won't have to do this."

Asuma rolled his eyes, "Whatever kid, I'll be the judge of how bad this is." He absently noticed Shikamaru holding his nose, and Ino was trying to burn a hole in the back of Naruto's head with her eyes.

"You asked for it." Naruto said, "Harem no Jutsu: Kata no Kurenai (Harem Jutsu: Kurenai Style)!" In a massive puff of smoke, all of the Naruto clones transformed into a mass of Kurenais… all naked and hanging off of Asuma.

'Asuma' dispelled before the memories of it actually hit the real one. Asuma held his composure for as long as he could, which was roughly 0.0375 seconds before he flew back over the trees from the power of his forced nosebleed, "You paaaaaaasssssss!" His voice carried as he flew away.

All of the clones dispelled leaving one Naruto standing by himself. He turned around to his teammates with a smug grin on his face, "You see how easy that was? Didn't even need the dialogue to keep him distracted for it."

Shikamaru spoke in a nasally voice as he held back his own nosebleed, "Good work Naruto. Troublesome bastard…"

Ino was gritting her teeth trying to melt Naruto's brain with her own mental powers, "Don't you ever, ever, ever do that again… Ever."

Naruto shrugged at the blonde girl, "Whatever works."

XxX

In the middle of her team's final genin test, Yuhi Kurenai stopped in the middle of the forest she was running through and looked up at the sky, "Why do I want to cause physical bodily harm to that blonde Uzumaki kid right now?"

"Sensei."

She heard a stoic voice call out only to find herself surrounded by bugs inching towards her and a small white puppy growling as it slowly advanced on her. Shino walked into sight, "There is nowhere for you to go. My bugs have cut off any retreat you could take."

"Yahoo!" Kiba shouted as he stood next to Akamaru, "I knew we could find her boy!"

"S-Sensei, is there something the matter?" Hinata asked, as she noticed Kurenai's side-tracked expression from before.

Kurenai sighed, "I'm not sure. But anyway, Team 8 passes."

How To Train Your Genin: Tip 1

Determine your genin's intelligence level

Intelligence is extremely important in the development of a shinobi and their skills. That is why an actual test of their knowledge is crucial to knowing exactly how to go about figuring out what exactly to teach them. If the genin is of low-quality level of knowledge this can be fixed... if it is caught early enough. If it is too late there is almost nothing you can do to remedy the problem. The timespan varies from person to person so be sure to work fast to correct this if at all possible. If it is not possible to improve on the genin's mental prowess than do your best to patch the problem and teach according to their strengths, doing all you can to hide the weaknesses... and there will be many.

Sometimes you can teach an ignorant ninja more than a worldly one since you would be working with a blank slate. If the intelligence is low make sure that the information given to the genin in question is short enough to keep their attention, yet long and elaborate enough so that they at least get the gist of the lesson being taught.

Another important caveat that needs to be addressed is _how_ you teach your genin. Each ninja is different just like each person is different and in the early years especially, it is very important to tailor a genin's learning to fit their own unique way of assimilating information.

Some geniuses can be given the base knowledge of what they need to know and can work out the solutions from there, this is the easiest and most desired by the vast majority of teachers (*cough cough* Lazy).

Others won't get things on the first few tries, but with some prodding it won't take too long for them to find an effective way to perform the task instructed without too much clarification needed. Most are like this.

Then there is the kind that cannot seem to get what you try to tell them no matter how you verbally beat it into their head. No matter how many different ways you attempt to word it, or try to alter ways of explaining things to them it seems the equivalent of attempting to teach a brick wall how to cook an omelet, it just doesn't work. Do not fret, do not worry, and most importantly do not strangle said genin until their fingers stop moving (No matter how appealing this option may be, it doesn't work out. Trust me.). Chances are that they are more of a kinesthetic learner. They learn by actually doing things and failing until they get it right. No matter if it upsets them or you, it is learning, and you must make sure that they understand it as such lest you lose them in the midst of teaching them.

Remember, there are slow learners, but no one is hopeless. Do not give up if teaching seems hard, just alter your teaching style accordingly and your genin will respond in kind.

-Shiho

* * *

**Chapter complete. Gah I'm pissed! The steady stream (see: raging river) of yaoi combined with the fact that the stories I find worthwhile to read aren't getting updated is really grinding my gears. I mean, the shit is everywhere I look. Every time I try to look for something decent it seems like 2 new ones pop up every 30 minutes… and that's being generous. It's breaking my brain, and I need that brain when the next semester starts because I have a 50 dollar bet riding on my grades.**

**Ugh… I need to go beat the shit out of a punching bag for an hour or something to get some testosterone flowing, Kenchi out.**


	5. The Routine of the Routine

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. First of all, I'm not Japanese. Second of all, I'm 19 years old, I don't own shit. Third of all I am not intelligent, I just have common sense and can memorize facts relatively easily. All of these things should lead to me owning something cool and important in the future, but not right now obviously.

**Chapter 5: The Routine of the Routine**

**

* * *

**

The first mission involving the Inuzuka kennels wound up being by and large the thing that set the standard for the day by way of amusement. Apparently Naruto wasn't particularly a dog person. Well that wasn't fair. It was more like dogs weren't exactly Naruto animals. You see, when Naruto took the leashes for the dogs he had been meant to walk they had a total shift in personality from reasonably tempered, obedient, human friendly animals, to belligerent pains in Naruto's ass.

For Ino she got the smallest dogs, the puppies, the smaller breeds, easy for her. Shikamaru got the next step up, but they were so obedient it was still easy enough for him. Naruto not only got the biggest, oldest dogs because he was the physically strongest and it wasn't like he was going to back down in the first place because they were in his own words, "Just a bunch of dogs." However Naruto's dogs as mentioned previously. Did. Not. Like him.

Once the leashes were handed over to him by Asuma they proceeded to wear out the soles of Naruto's sandals by dragging him about the pavement outside of the Inuzuka Clan compound. Naruto tried digging his heels to stop them, but they were seriously strong dogs, the strongest dogs he had ever met for sure, and they proceeded to drag him about until he tripped and fell and then they ended up wearing out the fabric of his coat as they then dragged him around on pavement for twenty minutes until Asuma got around to checking on him and got him out of his predicament. Were it not for the fact that Naruto's clothes were so thick he would have gotten some serious road rash.

Asuma quickly got Naruto untangled from the leashes and stopped the dogs to hand them back to Naruto, "Kid I left for five minutes to grab some cigarettes and I come back to this." We scratched his head, "Well technically the dogs got walked." He said, getting a glare out of Naruto, "Alright, we'll work on that. Let's take the dogs back and get paid." Naruto sighed and fell in line with his sensei as he glared at the now innocent seeming dogs.

"Well…" Naruto finally said, trying to find a silver-lining in his first mission, "At least I wasn't dragged through the grass. This could have been way worse."

"That's the spirit kid!" Asuma said, lighting one of his cigarettes up, "You didn't get a face full of dog shit and in this case you can take that as a victory. It's the little things Naruto, the little things that make being a ninja all worth it. Small victories, you'll learn to accept them sometimes."

XxX

The next mission they ended up taking was a mission to chop wood at the outskirts of the village, and once again this wasn't a very difficult mission at all, just more… troublesome than it had to be.

"Shikamaru!" Naruto yelled as his ax split through another piece of lumber, "Stop moving so slow! We've been here for thirty minutes, you've only cut five pieces!"

Shikamaru leaned on his ax and yawned, "You've got it don't you? Once you're finished with your pile you can help with mine."

Ino set up another piece of wood for herself to chop before frowning over at Shikamaru, "Shikamaru this really isn't the time to be lazy. We're going to be stuck here until we're done and you're not pulling your weight."

Shikamaru sighed, "Why can't Naruto just do that jutsu of his, the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu) and get them to do this? We wouldn't even have to do anything if we could do that. We'd be done by now for sure."

Naruto gave him a deadpan look, "I tried that when we first started, remember? Asuma-sensei made me get rid of them, he said this was supposed to be a team-building exercise and using Kage Bunshin were outlawed or something." That was blatant lie that Asuma was grateful Naruto or none of the others had picked up on or bothered investigating further and simply accepted at face value. Using ninjutsu for D-ranked missions _was_ frowned upon, but not necessarily outlawed.

However doing these missions was supposed to build a rapport between newly formed genin squads, give them a base to understand taking orders, get used to the way things were to go and keep them busy while they trained to improve their skills before getting real work. Besides, Asuma had to do D-ranked missions when he was a genin, and there was a damn war going on at the time! If he had to gut it out until he got promoted then they were damn sure going to as well… Kage Bunshin his ass.

Ino pointed at Shikamaru firmly, "Pick up that ax and do some actual work Shikamaru or I swear I'll get Naruto to do something completely humiliating to you. You remember what he's capable of right?"

Shikamaru somewhat paled at that. Doing this work was a pain in the ass, but having Naruto pull some horrible pranking crap on him would have been worse. He had never been a target of one of Naruto's efforts in the past, but he sure didn't want the manic blonde's focus to fall on him in that category. A few minutes of work to spare him six months of troublesome consequences was a sacrifice he had to make. He knew Ino was bossy enough to get him to do it too, even if he really didn't want to so there was no way he was calling her bluff on the matter.

Naruto gestured Ino over as Shikamaru began actually working and splitting his pile of wood, "Um Ino? I kind of made a promise to some people that I would stop with the pranks." He said to her quietly.

Ino rolled her eyes at Naruto and flicked him between the eyes, "Shikamaru doesn't know that baka. I didn't even know until just now. You and me are going to have to whip his lazy ass into shape to get him to do stuff or else we'll be doing the lion's share of this grunt work until we get something better."

Naruto rubbed the spot where Ino flicked him and looked at Shikamaru working with a shrug, if it worked then why not? The two blondes then proceeded to hurry up and finish their own work while Shikamaru was muttering to himself and chopping wood handily.

XxX

After finishing their day's work, Asuma directed traffic to their training field. Asuma looked over his team with a huge grin on his face. This was almost as good as smoking the last cigarette in the pack for him. Almost. He had watched his fresh little genin team trudge through the monotonous and spirit crushing hazing process known to all shinobi of every age as D-rank missions for the first time, and he truly hoped that the entertainment value of watching them do the glorified chores and odd jobs never faded. He could seriously have watched them work all day, it was that entertaining.

The last mission they took was the one that had them cleaning out the general store's storage, and that had just been fantastic to watch. It took forever for them to get actually started since once they walked past the clothing section to get to the back, Ino had dragged Naruto right over there to give him what she had called an emergency makeover, which led to Naruto screaming bloody murder at Asuma and Shikamaru to free him from the injustice.

Asuma laughed and walked away to buy himself a carton of cigarettes while they were there and left the kids to work… and Shikamaru just left since he found getting involved to be too much of a hassle. Thus leaving Naruto to be Ino's life-sized dress up doll that would not take no for an answer, and Naruto quickly shut up once Ino said that he was getting out of that beat up orange jacket even if she had to use Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu) to get him to cooperate.

In the end after a lot of griping from two stubborn sides that ran their time inside the store without having done a damn thing in an hour of being there, Naruto relented once Ino actually took aim at him with her hand-seal and picked what she selected for him, allowing them to head to the back and get started… where they found Shikamaru asleep on the empty boxes in the storage room.

Which eventually led to now after they completed their work. Once again, all three genin were sitting under the shade of the tree and looking at their sensei.

Naruto was tugging angrily at his new clothes until Ino swatted him one to get him to stop. He still had his headband on his head and his goggles around his neck, but Ino had managed to get Naruto into a pair of orange shorts and an orange short-sleeved windbreaker that was left open with a dark blue shirt underneath. Ino had also forced a pair of dark blue arm-warmers kind of like hers onto his arms. Naruto had vehemently fought that one for a while, not wanting to wear arm-warmers like what Sasuke had, but Ino had already granted him a concession in her mind by letting him keep the orange, thus by virtue of that, this was one fight he was going to lose in this instance. It didn't make him feel any better that all the money he had made that day went into getting a few pairs of all of those things, but Ino insisted that he would make it back tomorrow.

"Okay." Asuma said to them, "It was a decent first day. I've seen far worse and at least you didn't fail any of those missions so good work." All three of the genin looked at each other, who could fail those missions? They could have done those things in the Academy.

Ino looked at Asuma inquisitively, "So… what now Asuma-sensei?"

He pointed at Ino and Shikamaru, "I pretty much know what you two can do. You both know your family techniques and I've worked with plenty of Nara and Yamanaka shinobi in my time, even your fathers." He looked at Naruto, "I don't know that much about you though Naruto. I know you can use Kage Bunshin, and quite a lot from what Hokage-sama told me. Apparently you can also sense the locations of others, is that right?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his head, "Well, I'm not that good at it yet. I just learned the jutsu last week and I need to learn how to tell things apart better, like what's a door, a wall, and other stuff."

Shikamaru looked at Naruto, "So what jutsu is it and how does it even work?"

Naruto grinned at the chance to explain Iruka's cool jutsu to others, "It's called Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu). It lets me send out a burst of chakra that somehow lets me sense where stuff is around me, all over. I'm just not that good at it yet. If I use it outside, like where we are now, it works great, but if I'm inside all I can sense is down a hall, behind me, or beside me. I can't tell people apart either, and when I use it in the streets and stuff I can barely tell what's what."

Shikamaru's eyes widened, that was a very useful move, but it had to take a ton of chakra to use even sparingly. Naruto's chakra would be pushed out of his body and would saturate the air, staying connected to him long enough for him to feel the things around him with it. If Naruto ever mastered that move no one would ever be able to properly set traps or ambushes against him. He could take away an enemy's advantage of surprise.

Naruto continued to talk, "Oh, and I'm also trying this cool taijutsu called Nebaiken (Sticky Fist) that a friend helped me find. It's hard to learn it by myself though, and making the clones over and over that dispel in one hit is a pain."

Asuma smiled, "Well that's one thing that a team is for Naruto. Training partners. I'm supposed to be training all of you, helping you all get stronger, but I don't really know what I'm allowed to teach you as far as techniques go, nor what I actually know that any of you are suited towards using. You all don't look like you can fight the way I do. Besides that, you all have your family jutsu that you're to learn." Asuma pointed at them all, "You're all just genin right now but I expect you all to get very good very fast. You all certainly have the talent for it." Naruto and Ino seemed pleased to hear him say that, but Shikamaru rolled his eyes. Apparently someone didn't really want to excel.

Naruto looked at Asuma and all of his teammates before frowning, "But I don't want to use Nebaiken on any of them." He said, "It's not really nice, even in practice."

Asuma looked at Naruto thoughtfully, "Well, try it on me. I'll be the judge of that." When he saw Naruto shy away from actually wanting to beat up his sensei, Asuma insisted, "Naruto I'm a jounin. I can take it. I promise."

Shikamaru and Ino prodded him to get up and give it a try, so Naruto stood up and stood in front of Asuma, "Um, I'm not that good at it yet. If it doesn't work right then tell me." Asuma nodded and gestured for Naruto to come forward.

Naruto hesitantly did so and came at Asuma who had a guard up. Naruto led off with a punch that Asuma already had a guard prepared for, 'I don't see what's different about this style, it's just Academy taijutsu isn't it?'

He thought that when he lifted his arms to block Naruto's punch and respond, only his plan of action never got that far. Naruto's fist opened up into a hand that grasped Asuma's leading wrist like a leech. Naruto spun inside, still holding on to Asuma and threw a back elbow low (or for Naruto, at the level) at his body that Asuma had to defend with his remaining arm. Naruto switched to a high elbow that Asuma had to keep from hitting him in the jaw. Asuma then shoved Naruto by the back of his head to get him out of his range and get them back at a distance from one another, but Naruto seemed to have a damn good grip on his wrist because he stayed attached and reeled himself in, jumping at Asuma, leading with his shoulder for an attack.

When he saw this, Asuma added to Naruto's momentum, pulling his diminutive frame in faster before shocking Naruto with a shoulder-to-shoulder smash that jarred Naruto's grip loose and sent him bouncing off of Asuma to the ground.

Naruto sat down on the ground, rubbing his shoulder and backside while Asuma analyzed what he had just seen, 'That style would be way out of the comfort zone of most shinobi I know of. All he needs is some size and strength and only an Akimichi could decisively deal with moves like that.'

Naruto picked himself back up and went over to sit back down with Shikamaru and Ino, "Naruto why do you know how to fight like that? You never did that stuff in the Academy."

A shrug from the blonde shinobi was the response, "I just felt like going over taijutsu and I ended up finding that in the library. I don't know that much about it, there's some complicated stuff in the scroll and my clones aren't that good of test partners for it. They dispel way too easily for me to get a good workout against."

Shikamaru had also analyzed Naruto's fighting style, it seemed to be a lot of short range offense, not so much with defense, "Well what else can you do with it?"

Naruto's eyes squinted in thought, "Um, some throwing stuff, and some grabby moves, but I'm not good at those yet and Asuma-sensei is too big to use that stuff on."

Shikamaru's eyebrow quirked, 'Throws and locks maybe?' He thought, '*sigh* If Asuma ever makes us spar I'm going to need to catch Naruto before he can ever get anywhere near me. Troublesome. Or maybe I could just throw the fight?'

Asuma took all of his information in about Naruto, "Alright then. Ino, fight Naruto." Ino nodded and Naruto jumped back to his feet, 'Shikamaru wouldn't fight either one of them, but the kid isn't stupid either. I'll need to find out just how smart he is soon so I can get the team dynamic down.'

Ino took up a basic stance that left her hands at a good level to make hand-seals, a style taught by the Academy and encouraged by her father for her to use. Naruto took a sideways stance with a wide base that left his body set lower than Ino's, his hands up in a perpetual guard around his face. Asuma could see this was an automatic deterrent for people trying to hit him in the face or it was a way for Naruto to quickly grab on to someone that did indeed attempt to do so.

Asuma looked between them both, "Use of your jutsu is legal, but Naruto, keep the number of Kage Bunshin low, as in less than five… we don't want to have Ino fight an army on her first day. Hokage-sama told me how many you can make." Naruto chuckled nervously and nodded before turning his attention back to Ino, "Begin."

Naruto immediately made two Kage Bunshin that flanked him and went forward towards Ino. Ino took a few steps back to buy her some space and some time to figure what Naruto was going to do, but Naruto's closing speed was faster than she anticipated and she was forced to punch one of the Narutos in the face to keep from being surrounded. It burst into smoke signifying a clone leaving one more clone and one real Naruto to deal with.

One Naruto was able to get behind her and made a lunge for her, but Ino saw him fight Asuma and picked up on Naruto's habit in hand-to-hand; grab someone and then beat the crap out of them when they couldn't get away. And she didn't have the luxury Asuma had of being stronger than Naruto or being better than him at taijutsu. She had started to neglect taijutsu in the Academy during the last quarter of the year when her dad started teaching her the clan techniques.

Ino moved aside from the Naruto trying to grab onto her, but when she turned to see what had happened to it and if it crashed into the other Naruto, she saw that it had instead grabbed Naruto's hand and whipped him around to throw him towards her with added momentum. Ino quickly made hand-seals and just as Naruto got close enough to throw a punch he ended up hitting a log in her place, signifying a Kawarimi.

The surprise from her counter allowed Ino to go about finishing off Naruto's clone as stealthily as she could, but that somehow wound up tipping off Naruto as he turned and saw her. As he came back at her, Ino realized that she wouldn't be able to land her ace in the hole on Naruto at this rate. He was moving far too fast and far too often for her slow-moving jutsu to get a bead on him and make contact. So she was stuck with hand to hand for the time being since she was sure pulling a weapon would have been frowned upon by Asuma.

Naruto on the other hand was getting annoyed. He was used to fighting his clones, and they were never shy when it came to trying to punch his lights out before he could do it to them. Ino was keeping elusive and while he was faster than her she was wily. His clone rush at the start hadn't disoriented her enough to get him in close seeing and as how his clones didn't have the internal make-up he did to let them use his style effectively they had to be decoys that would let him get close enough on his own.

Stupid Asuma, if he would have let him flood the field with clones he would have won by now. He already used two of the five he had been allowed and Uzumaki Naruto was no liar or cheater so he resolved to bring Ino down all on his own if he had to.

One effective way to get opponents that weren't into attacking, being aggressive, or getting anywhere near him, he had read in one of those strategy books Shiho pushed on his during the last week, was to do something blatant that would never have a chance in hell of actually hitting them. They would think he gambled and failed, while really he had been trying to get them to make a move the entire time and was ready for their response. Huh, that stuff was actually kind of useful after all.

Naruto let out a loud shout and jumped right at Ino with a wide sweeping kick that she saw coming the entire way. Ino smirked and moved just out of Naruto's way, letting him land before letting a kick go towards his body that she knew would double him over.

Ino's kick hit home with a dull thud that showed how hard it hit, but Naruto cradled her leg close to his body with a cringing grin. It hurt, duh it hurt, she kicked the shit out of him for sure, but he had been getting repeatedly punched and kicked by his bastard clones for a week, he could take a kick from Ino if it let him do this. Naruto held Ino's ankle under his left armpit and used it to pull her towards him while she was hopping on one leg helplessly.

In order to keep her balance, Ino had to jump forward towards Naruto in order to avoid getting yanked to the ground, but when she did she wound up getting bullied to the ground from a shoulder attack by Naruto who then wrapped himself around her leg and made sure to gently extend her knee just to the point of extreme discomfort. It was clear he wasn't trying to hurt her, but he wanted to win, otherwise he would have just broken it and been done with it.

"That's enough." Asuma said, calling Naruto off and watching as he let go of Ino's leg, 'Instead of a shoulder-block he could have punched her right in the face or elbowed her or even headbutted her, substitute that with a kunai and he might have been able to turn that into a kill-shot. And then once he grabbed her on the ground he could have broken her leg. That's a really dangerous style, he was right.'

He then looked at Ino, rubbing her leg on the ground, 'He was faster and stronger but she kept evasive for a while until he was able to get close. She was very good at stalling tactics and in a fight alongside this team that is very good for her... not to mention we had been on missions all day before this and we haven't eaten lunch, she was probably low on energy. Once they actually start fighting as a team she has Naruto to do the fighting and Shikamaru to subdue them while she can be a fantastic support kunoichi once she learns more of her clan techniques.'

"Damn." Ino said under her breath as she remained seated on the ground. Where did that come from? She hadn't held back on that kick at all and he just took it and kept going like a juggernaut. Little did she know that Naruto's clones kick too and they kick way harder than she did in comparison. Naruto held out his hand in front of her with an apologetic look on his face, he must not have liked the idea of beating up girls. Ino accepted it and stood up with a pouting look on her face, "You'd better watch yourself Naruto, I'm not going to lose like that again. Next time I'll beat the crap out of you."

Naruto's face lit up and he took on a confident grin, "You can try whenever you want Ino. I'm just going to keep getting better!"

Asuma moved over to both of them and rested his hands on their shoulders, "You both did well there." He turned to Shikamaru who was leaning against the trunk of the tree, "Shikamaru do you want to fight next?"

"I'd rather not." He said blandly, "I'm kind of tired from today, I'd just lose."

Asuma gave him a deadpan look, "Everyone else did just as much as you for just as long as you."

"I know." Shikamaru commented, "And look at them." Naruto didn't look too worse for wear at all, but Ino was breathing kind of heavily after her fight with Naruto, "Naruto looks like he didn't do anything today, he'd wipe the floor with me, I'm tired. And Ino? Ino looks exhausted. I'd have an unfair advantage and I really don't like fighting women in the first place."

Asuma's eye twitched, 'Alright you lazy punk. You act like I've never dealt with a Nara before. I've got ways to work around your unmotivated ass, for sure.' "Fine. You're all dismissed for today. Meet here tomorrow, same time, same place."

Shikamaru let a smile cross his face for a second, 'You act like I've never had someone tell me to do stuff before Asuma. As long as you're not my mother there's really not a lot you can do to make me work.' He wanted to wave in a provoking manner at the smoking jounin as he walked away and turned back, but it would have been too much effort just to incite the man needlessly.

Naruto looked at Ino who was shaking out her leg, "I didn't hurt you did I?"

Ino noticed he was talking about her leg, "No, it's a little stiff but it's nothing a good night's sleep won't fix. Though…" Ino shot him a provocative pose, "How did you like rubbing up against me like that Naruto? You were awfully familiar with me there weren't you?"

Shikamaru watched Naruto's face heat up with a pitying look, "Troublesome woman… sorry Naruto, you're on your own here."

Red-faced Naruto stuttered out a reply, "W-W-What? I was fighting! That was a real move, I learned it myself! I wasn't trying to do anything else, honest!"

Ino knew it was a legitimate move, it had extended her leg at the knee past the point of it being comfortable after all and that was just him being nice, but she had just lost to him and she would be damned if wasn't getting the last laugh today, "You may say that now Naruto, but you were so gentle with how you held my leg, and I'm not sure but I could swear I felt you rubbing it. It felt so good, you flirt." She said with a sly, half-lidded smile.

Naruto just stood there, a stammering mess until Shikamaru came over, threw his old clothes over his head, and dragged Naruto away in a headlock, "Okay Ino, don't overheat the guy's brain. You might just break him if you keep it up." Shikamaru continued to drag Naruto out of the training field amid Ino's laughter at Naruto's reaction, "You should have just kept your cool Naruto. Now she's just going to keep doing it from now on." A muffled response from Naruto under his clothes came, but Shikamaru didn't bother trying to interpret what he said, "I don't know what that means, but whatever."

Ino kept laughing and let it die down as her two teammates disappeared from sight. She wiped a tear from her mirthful eyes and started on her own way home, "Oh this is going to be more fun than I thought." She was attracted to Sasuke of course, but today proved to her that Naruto cleaned up relatively well and he wasn't as bad a ninja as everyone had thought in the Academy at all. And he showed that he actually responded to her when she flirted with him, that at least showed that he thought she was attractive. She could never tell if Sasuke thought one way or another on the matter.

'Maybe… Nah, Sasuke's still way better. But still,-. No I should just stop thinking about it.'

XxX

Naruto and Shikamaru had caught up with Chouji who then proceeded to talk to them about his day. How things went with his sensei the previous day and what he had done today. Most specifically the test he made them do.

Naruto looked at Chouji and shook his head, "So his entire test was a trick to get you all to work together? How did that work out for you guys."

Chouji wiped his brow, "We ended up cutting it really close. Sasuke didn't want to work with anyone, and Sakura got knocked out before I could even find her and see if she would so I had to try and fight Kakashi-sensei... and I lost, but Sasuke jumped in and tried to get a bell of his own so we kind of ended up working together, a little bit at least. He ended up tying Sakura to a stump though and kept lunch from her."

Naruto looked at him curiously while Shikamaru snickered slightly, "Why would he do that to Sakura-chan?"

Chouji broke out a bag of chips, "Well he said she didn't do anything but look for Sasuke and get herself knocked out. Kind of embarrassing to call her out on it like that though, I felt kind of bad, so I tried feeding her lunch, and Sasuke did too." The large boy shivered slightly, "Then Kakashi-sensei came out with all angry with all of this lightning and storm stuff going and then…" He said forebodingly.

Naruto was listening intently as Chouji built suspense up, "He said we passed!" Chouji said cheerfully, getting Naruto to face-fault, "But then he almost left Sakura tied to the stump until Sasuke threw some shuriken at the stump and cut her free. Then I went to get lunch."

Shikamaru nodded in acknowledgement of his friend's story ending, "Hey Naruto, what are we doing all the way up here? We're all the way on top of the Hokage Monument."

Naruto pointed as they came up on a building, "We're going here. I have to see my friend Shiho-chan before she goes home... because I don't know where she lives, and following her to find out would be creepy."

"The library?" Chouji and Shikamaru both said before they remembered him saying stuff about it not too long ago, "Why?" Shikamaru asked his teammate.

Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know. She told me to come back when I could because I would be busy since we're starting missions and everything, well I'm free now and I don't have anything to do. Why not?"

Shikamaru conceded that point to him, there wasn't a real reason not to. It was one hell of a walk though, but the top of the Hokage Monument did have a good view of the clouds. Maybe he'd come back up there in his own spare time.

Naruto led them inside and let anyone within the walls know of his presence, "Shiho-chan!"

"**Shh!**"

Naruto recoiled, apparently there were a lot of shinobi that decided to go to the library today, "Sorry." He said quietly.

Atsuto, who was seated at the front desk shook his head at the sight of the blonde, "Kami kid, you'd think after the third time you'd have gotten the point. Libraries are meant for studying… that's a whole lot easier to do without some random brat yelling at the top of his lungs."

Naruto crossed his arms, "That wasn't the top of my lungs." Naruto said increasingly louder, "This is the top of-!"

Chouji had moved to cover Naruto's mouth as he saw tick marks for on Atsuto's head. Atsuto settled down once he saw that Naruto had been reined in by his friends, "So what brings you here today kid? Shiho's about to go home so you can't get her to do anything for you today."

Naruto stopped glaring at Chouji for cutting off his tirade to pay attention to Atsuto, "I didn't come here to get Shiho-chan to do something for me. I just don't know where else to find her except for here." He replied somewhat ashamedly.

"Wow." Atsuko said in mock displeasure, "You don't even know that? What a crappy friend." When he saw Naruto's expression drop he realized he had been taken seriously, "Whoa Naruto, I was just messing with you."

"No…" Naruto said as a storm cloud formed over his head, "You're right… I suck. I don't even know where Shiho-chan lives. It's like I'm only using her because she helps me out a lot. What kind of friend does that make me?"

Shiho came from the archives section of the library and saw Naruto standing by her sensei, "Atsuto-sensei I finished taking catalogue of the new intelligence." Atsuto gave her a stern look, "No I didn't look at any of it. Sheesh sensei I did it once and I apologized for it. I didn't know it was supposed to be confidential, he's a genin. What's confidential about a genin?" His eyes glinted dangerously getting Shiho to laugh nervously, "Right, my mistake. It won't ever happen again."

Atsuto sighed, "You're so lucky I know why you did it. Anyway, you're done for the day, go on home. And look who came to see you." He pointed at Naruto who waved to her.

"Uzumaki-kun!" Shiho exclaimed, "Come with me!" She rushed over to him and grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the library before he could even say hello.

Chouji looked at where Naruto had just been standing in shock, a dust-trail leading out of the door, "What just happened?"

Shikamaru had a similar look on his face until he palmed his face, "I don't know… That guy finds himself in more troublesome situations than just a few."

Chouji watched the dust trail fade, "Should we follow them? He might need some help."

Shikamaru sighed, "Yeah sure…" He started slogging out the door, "Let's go follow them."

XxX

(15 Minutes Later – Ichiraku Ramen)

Shiho stared at Naruto as he barreled through a large bowl of miso ramen. She wasn't staring at him because he was eating like he hadn't seen food in six weeks, it was more like she was looking for something, something that wasn't really there. Seeing him place his bowl down after drinking the broth she spoke up, "Uzumaki-kun I went over your Academy grades." Naruto gave her a look saying 'how did you get those?' Shiho tilted her glasses with a proud look, "I work in the Konoha Archive Library. There are records there on all ninja past and present." Naruto seemed to easily accept that answer, "And I was wondering if anything I made you learn actually stuck with you so…" She pulled out two stapled sheets of paper, "I want you to take your written graduation exam again!"

Naruto fell off of his stool and quickly climbed back to his feet, "What? Why? I don't want to take it again! I just passed it a little over a week ago!"

Shiho gave him a dry look, "You passed with a fifty. I know you can do better this time, and it's not for anything, I just want to see if you can do better after what I did for you all last week."

Naruto could see the pleading look on her face and it easily ended up breaking him down. Damn, girls were really getting him to do what they wanted today. Where was his backbone? "Grr, fine." He said, "Do you have a pencil?" The test was slapped down on the counter and a pencil was stuck in his face, "Of course you do. Why wouldn't you?" He looked up right before he started, "Am I on the clock?"

Shiho shook her head, but her lips quirked in amusement, "No, but I'm not staying here all night Uzumaki-kun, it's almost sundown. Now get started, you'll do great."

Naruto shrugged and went up against what was once his greatest foe on three separate occasions. 'Okay Naruto forty questions, you've got this. Question one: Name three countries that border Hi no Kuni. Extra credit if you can identify whether or not these countries have hidden villages and can name the ones they possess. Damn it I don't-!' He stopped his mental rant and blinked, 'Oh wait. Yes I do. Ta no Kuni (none), Yu no Kuni (Yugakure), Nami no Kuni (none).' Naruto grinned before he started to focus again, 'Okay, question two: What was the bridge in Kusa no Kuni that was the site of one of the greatest successes of the Third Great Ninja War and the Yondaime Hokage?'

Shiho watched Naruto work and had many thoughts running through her mind as she looked at him. She had been through Naruto's personnel files to see firsthand exactly what his trued strong and weak points were and found that they were highly classified. Why, she had no idea, until she actually managed to get a look at them of course and stumbled upon the reason for the privacy.

Who would have thought that some loud little blonde kid was the entire reason that the entire village was still in one piece after what had happened twelve years ago? How did him having the Kyuubi in his body make him different? How did it feel? How did it get there?

She wanted to ask him this but did not for two reasons. One, he wouldn't know what the hell she was talking about. He didn't know about the Kyuubi in him. And if she told him he might not believe her, he might freak out. Who knew what would happen?

The second reason was because it was an S-ranked secret, and while she wanted to tell him, and was going to tell him right after she found out, she had been taken aside by her sensei and told that anyone who revealed that secret could be put to death by order of the Sandaime Hokage. When she asked why he said he didn't know and it was best she kept it to herself, but looking at Naruto's oblivious face she found it hard to keep such a heavy secret from her friend, especially when it was about him. He should know that there was a demon stuck inside of him, it wasn't fair that he didn't know about his jinchuuriki status, wouldn't that be dangerous?

"There he is Shikamaru, and he's at Ichiraku Ramen? Awesome! Good choice Naruto!" Shiho was stirred from her thoughts abruptly by Chouji's loud voice once he threw back the curtain to the stand and took a seat, almost surprising her out of her seat, "I'll have three large bowls of beef ramen, keep 'em coming!" He said boisterously.

"Please be quiet." Shiho said once she regained her composure, "Uzumaki-kun is taking a test right now Mr… this is embarrassing, I don't know your name."

"His name is Chouji, I'm Shikamaru, and we know you're Shiho." Shikamaru walked in a moment later and looked at Naruto hunched over the counter working on his test given by Shiho, "Alright I'll bite. Why are you making Naruto take a test? It seems like a whole lot of hassle for nothing."

"It's not for nothing." Shiho insisted, "I need to see if Uzumaki-kun actually got anything out of what we went over all last week or if I just wasted his time. If I just wasted his time then I need to adjust my curriculum to suit a student of his needs." She giggled, "I actually did have a full class so it's a good experiment."

Shikamaru took a seat in the stool between his best friend Chouji and his teammate Naruto, "So what's the point of teaching him stuff? The Academy is over."

Shiho nodded, "Yes, but this is a test to see if my way of getting him to learn things actually works. If it works with the review things I made him go over all the time at the library then it can work with just about anything he needs to learn and he can apply it to anything. Do you know that he wasn't even really there to learn anything? He did it with his clones. This is the ultimate test of my theory on his Kage Bunshin because I didn't teach him anything on this test personally; I did it through his clones."

Shikamaru watched Naruto intently go through his test, "So why him?"

Shiho smiled, "Well Uzumaki-kun is… how should I say this without being too blunt?" She placed a hand on Naruto's head and rubbed his hair comfortingly, "Uzumaki-kun is dumb. Really dumb. I mean, he's really, really dumb, and he even knew it." She noticed the tick marks on his head as he tried to ignore her and decided to stop teasing him and get to the point, "I just want to help him out really. At first it was because he had never been to the library before and I wanted to show him around, but he's a really sweet person and it's not fair that no one's trying to do anything about it. With a little fine-tuning he could have been rookie of the year if anyone would have bothered to give him some personal time."

Naruto grinned at that, but stayed focused on his test. This was way easier! The last time he was drawing blanks all the way through. The only reason he was able to get a fifty on the last test was because of the questions on the Yondaime Hokage that were sprinkled throughout in multiple choice format, some repeating. There were next to none of those on this form of the test and it still felt way easier.

Chouji stopped eating the ramen he was given at hearing that, "Naruto? Rookie of the year? How?"

Shiho shrugged, "Okay, how to put this… well, you know his Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)? None of us here could even make one without nearly killing ourselves. Uzumaki-kun makes twenty just to read things in the library. He said he maxed out once before at around 1000, and I'm not sure if he's being truthful or not but even if he isn't he has more chakra than any genin I've ever heard of before, rookie or veteran. I don't know of many jounin that can say they have that much chakra to spare." Chouji dropped the noodles he had in his chopsticks upon hearing that, "Just off of sheer chakra capacity alone he's more advanced than anyone else."

Shikamaru took note of all of this. Why did it take this girl actually going into detail on this for something like this to actually be known? Shouldn't Naruto's chakra capacity have been something that the Academy teachers knew about? That's why he found it so hard to do the Academy jutsu. Because it took a miniscule amount of chakra to perform them, that's why they were Academy-level ninjutsu. It wasn't his fault he couldn't do the Bunshin, that was supposed to be the easiest to do because it was supposed to take the least amount of chakra. For Naruto that had to have been like trying to isolate an eyedropper worth of water from a lake or something..

Naruto slammed his pencil down and put the test in front of Shiho's face, scaring her, "Done!" He laughed to himself and looked over at Chouji and Shikamaru, "That was so easy! How did I ever think any of that was hard?"

Shikamaru smirked at his teammate, "Maybe that's because you didn't have a woman trying to force the information into that empty head of yours when we were in school."

"Good job Uzumaki-kun." Shiho said with a smile, "You got 80% of your answers correct. I knew you could do it!"

Naruto spun around in his stool, "Yatta! So that means I'm not stupid anymore right?"

Shiho shook her head, "Oh no, you're still really stupid." Naruto face-faulted, "What I mean by that is, all I made you learn was review stuff. You should have at least known this stuff in passing; most every ninja does off of memory. But about how smart you are. What do you know about chakra?"

Naruto squinted his eyes, "Um… we use it to do jutsu and stuff?" Chouji chuckled while Shikamaru palmed his face and shook his head.

Shiho giggled, "Yes but not quite. It's the mixture of your physical energy and your spiritual energy gained from physical exercise and experience. It runs through a system in your body that circulates it, much like blood. It's more important than just that. Now what about the difference between ninjutsu and genjutsu?"

Naruto's face drew a blank, "They both do stuff?"

"I said the difference." Shiho said, "I figured you didn't know that when you referred to everything as a jutsu instead of categorizing it. We're not done with you yet Uzumaki-kun, we're just getting started." Naruto lowered his head, getting her to pat him on the back, "It's okay! You picked up these things so quick, now you can learn about actual techniques. Hey, maybe if I can get the points of these things across well enough for you, you could start making jutsu of your own?"

That perked him up. It was true. He was a sucker for a new jutsu and if he could learn enough that he could start making his own like Iruka did that would be ideal for him, just another thing to make him badass.

Chouji spoke through another bowl that he wound up being served, "Yeah Naruto, you can do it. She seems like she knows what she's talking about and she thinks you can."

Shikamaru nodded in agreement at his best friends words and turned his attention to Shiho, "So, what exactly do you plan to teach him anyway?"

Shiho's glasses shined at the sound of his question, "Everything." Shikamaru couldn't help but pity Naruto with the way she said that.

Naruto blinked as he had heard that from her, "Wait. Everything? What do you mean everything? I can't learn every-."

Shiho pulled a bowl of ramen in front of him, "Look Uzumaki-kun, ramen! And it's still hot, you'd better hurry!" Like a switch had been turned he immediately dug into the bowl placed in front of him.

Shikamaru sweatdropped, "Are you going to fix that too?"

Shiho shook her head and chuckled awkwardly at exploiting such an embarrassing weakness, "I don't think I can. But seriously would you even want to?"

Shikamaru stared at her for a while, making her uncomfortable with such a firm gaze, 'What is he looking at me like that for?' Her cheeks started heating up at the thoughts of why.

Finally, Shikamaru shrugged and turned his attention elsewhere, "I guess I wouldn't. It's good to know I can sidetrack Naruto with a bowl of noodles. I might be able to use that from time to time."

Naruto finished off his bowl happily, "Man that was good." He then looked at Shiho suspiciously, "Now then… what were we talking about just now?"

"Um…" Shiho said hesitantly, "I was just saying that it's getting late and I have to get home before I get into trouble."

Naruto nodded, "Okay, the sun has gone down after all I guess. Do you want us to take you home Shiho-chan?"

Shiho stood up abruptly, having just dodged a bullet of sorts, "No that's okay. I'll see you later Uzumaki-kun. Goodbye Shikamaru-san, Chouji-san." The other two waved to her as she left the stand.

Shikamaru sighed as he watched his two friends order more food, "That girl is kind of strange."

Naruto nodded, "A little bit, but pretty much every girl I've met so far is weird to me Shikamaru. She's still nice though, really nice. If you get to know her you'll like her."

"Whatever you say Naruto." Shikamaru said unbelievingly, "Remember. All women are troublesome, it's just to what extent are they troublesome."

Naruto stopped eating long enough to point ahead, "You do know that we've been being served by a woman the entire time we've been here right?"

Shikamaru paled and looked forward to see Ayame giving him a sickeningly sweet smile and holding a ladle in her hand, "Ugh… I hate you Naruto."

Naruto shrugged and went back to eating, "I don't know why you hate me. I didn't say that, you were the one that had the brilliant idea to say that out loud. And you all call me stupid. At least I'm smarter than that." Naruto looked into his bowl, "Hey Ayame-neechan, when you finish chewing Shikamaru out about his dumbass comment can I get some more please?"

* * *

How To Train Your Genin: Tip 2

Instill a work ethic in your genin

Motivation is another highly important component in the steady improvement of any and every ninja. The stronger they get, the more they will have to work to keep up with the expectations placed upon them which will grow more and more difficult. Many good shinobi and kunoichi with lots of potential have found themselves swept up by this and overwhelmed, mostly due to complacency in their own strength, knowledge, and skill.

There is never enough in any of those attributes. As a ninja you can never afford to settle with where you are, because there will always be someone willing and able to show you how much better than you they are, and this could end with your failure or death.

This must be driven home early in a ninja's career as while confidence is good, arrogance will get them killed… miserably killed, by some lunatic, miles away from home. So to prevent this you must ensure that they know that they must keep improving bit by bit and show them a progression of their abilities so that they clearly know what they are capable of. And in order to keep them from getting swelled heads you, as their jounin sensei, must make sure they know that they still have a long way to go. This can be done by showing them up in some way, shape, or form. You can do this any way that you like, but the less imaginative jounin all seem to like doing it the same way, by beating their genin senseless. But to each their own. They are all full-fledged ninja and you shouldn't baby them because it will get them killed.

Just so long as you ensure that they're always working to improve, you're doing your job.

-Shiho

* * *

**Chapter done. No energy for smartass remark or anger fueled rant of violent violence. **

**Until the next time people, Kenchi out.**


	6. Step Up

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, or the color green, but they all seem like good things to have possession of to me.

**Chapter 6: Step Up**

**

* * *

**

It had been a little over seven weeks since Team 10 had been formed and they had started finding their rhythm as a group. They had all been working hard… even Shikamaru, and had been getting accustomed to one another and how they all operated, especially after all of Asuma's training exercises, including the one he had them do today.

Asuma looked at his team of genin as they were all sprawled out on the grass, scuffed up and exhausted, "Well that was good work you guys. I thought you had me for a second there. Nice try with the decoys Naruto, but you pulled the trigger on the trap too quickly. Ino, you let loose the Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu) too soon, I wasn't caught yet. Shikamaru, you need better communication with your teammates. A good plan won't work if you can't readily adjust if there are hiccups."

Naruto was the first to pick himself up off of the ground, "What are we getting out of you kicking our asses twice every week Asuma-sensei?"

Asuma grinned at the disheveled genin, "Well first of all, it's fun." He felt three glares of death on him, "Second of all, you need the battle experience and hopefully I'll end up beating you guys up worse than any opponent you'll actually wind up facing. And third, this was a test."

Ino sat up, still somewhat disoriented, even after recovering from her missed jutsu, "What test? We're supposed to be done with all of the tests aren't we?"

Asuma stroked his beard, "It was to see if you were ready for the next level of missions."

Shikamaru stayed on his back looking up at the sky, "And what would that be? Walking dogs, finding cats, _and_ picking up dog crap at the same time? Or how about we mix the babysitting missions and the gardening missions? That would make a real high-profile one." He said sarcastically.

Asuma turned away from them all and began to walk away, "Fine. And here I was about to give you all a C-ranked mission for all of your trouble. I guess we can keep doing D-ranks then. Or maybe I can pitch Shikamaru's idea of combining them, that would probably be a boon for the village economy." He stopped talking when he found himself unable to move, "What, does that not sound good to you all either?" He said jokingly.

Naruto spoke in a low voice, "C-rank mission or the same threat from the day we met stands." Naruto's head gestured towards Ino who had her hands ready to use her mind-switching jutsu. As a passing thought from before ran through his head he sent out a pulse to see if they had the real one. They did, "I can probably find Kurenai-sensei right now if I had to. It wouldn't be that hard I'm sure. I have Kage Bunshin."

Asuma sweatdropped nervously. With his back turned he couldn't even see the looks on their faces to tell if they were serious or not, and this time they really did have him caught. Damn teamwork. Why'd they catch on to it so fast? Oh, because two of their fathers are on a squad famous for teamwork, "Now don't be so hasty you guys. I was just messing with you. You're getting the mission so just let me go."

He couldn't see anything but silence went throughout the field until Ino spoke, "I say we should still do it, he beat the crap out of us all month long. And look at my clothes, I'll have to get a new set!" She pouted.

"You look fine Ino, it's alright." Naruto said absently, "And if we do it won't he get us back for it? He is a jounin. I don't think I could duck him forever if I really had to."

Asuma let himself smirk when he heard Naruto's first comment. He knew what was coming next and wasn't let down when Ino spoke again, "I really look fine Naruto? You're so sweet! I think you've earned something special from your Ino-chan!" He could just feel Ino batting her eyes at Naruto as well as Naruto's gaping fish expression without ever turning to see and had to keep from laughing, lest Naruto retaliate, he was still at their mercy.

Ino had taken to teasing Naruto like this regularly since it had worked so well out of the blue the first time, and Asuma had to say, it made his days more entertaining to say nothing else. It may have been embarrassing the boy, but they were all a team, and it was getting him used to girls, something that judging his earlier reactions he hadn't had much experience with. Ino seemed to enjoy his reactions too, apparently all her time spent on Sasuke ended up getting no positive reactions out of him, at least with Naruto he would react in a way that didn't destroy her self-esteem, dare he say they actually made her feel pretty.

"Could you guys do this another time?" Shikamaru cut in, still holding his hand-seal with a look of focus on his face, "I don't know how much longer I can keep him like this."

Naruto waved Shikamaru off, "Whatever, you probably need the work out anyway." Ino laughed at Shikamaru who dropped the rat seal, clearly the moment had passed where they were serious about getting Asuma.

Shikamaru sighed and stretched his back, "Troublesome… you're a real bastard Naruto."

Naruto grinned at Shikamaru, "I dabble from time to time."

Ino raised an amused eyebrow at Naruto, "Oh, 'dabble' you say? I didn't know you 'dabbled' in anything Naruto. What else do you 'dabble' in?"

Naruto gave her a deadpan look, "I've been sending clones to work with Shiho-chan for the entire month. I see that word all the time. If you see a word all the time you kind of learn what it means sooner or later Ino."

"You still do that?" Asuma said, "I thought I told you not to keep doing that every day?"

"No." Naruto said with a grin, "You _advised_ me not to do that every day, and I listened, I just didn't do it."

Asuma gave him a deadpan look, "Stop being a smart-ass and stop using big words on purpose just for kicks no matter how entertaining it is."

Naruto shrugged, "I'll try, and why should I? The only reason anyone uses big words is because they want people to think they're smart. Every single big word I've ever heard has a smaller word that means the exact same thing for it." He blinked, "Wait, what were we talking about before this?"

Finally, Asuma was able to get the team back on track, "I was saying we're finally going to take a C-ranked mission tomorrow. You all make sure you have everything you think you'll need for a decent length of time away from Konoha." He knew they were ready for this, A C-rank wasn't out of their league. "Tell the people you need to tell that you'll be gone for a while starting tomorrow. See you in front of the tower at our usual time." He then left his team in the training field.

Ino waved to Asuma's back and called after him, "Tell Kurenai-sensei I said hi Asuma-sensei!"

Asuma almost tripped and whipped his head around at the speed of sound, "How did you know I was-?" He saw Ino grinning at him as well as Naruto. Shikamaru even had a smirk on his face, "I hate you kids sometimes…" He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked away grumbling about brats, "Should have never come outside that day…" He was of course referring to the day his team met Kurenai for the first time.

_(Flashback – Two Weeks Prior)_

_Shikamaru was crouched down and having prolonged staring contest with a cat that had a red ribbon in its ear, "Ino, you can't release the jutsu until we get the cat back to Madam Shijimi." The cat hissed at him, but the lazy genin only blinked at it, "You can hiss at me all you want to, but the last time someone tried picking it up it turned Naruto's whisker marks into a tick-tac-toe grid. He's got your body safe and sound, so don't worry about it." He gestured behind him where Naruto had Ino's unresponsive body held piggy-back and had bandages on his cheeks._

_Asuma walked into the area and looked at the scene, "You know, using ninjutsu during missions like this is against protocol right?"_

_Shikamaru's gaze turned to him, "This troublesome thing had us running all over for it. Why would we keep trying to grab it when we could just do this?" Ino, in the cat's body, let out a meow and jumped onto Shikamaru's shoulders where she draped herself comfortably, "Seriously?" Another hiss was his reply, "Fine, whatever. I'll carry you, you troublesome woman… cat… ugh. I don't even care anymore."_

_Asuma watched as Ino rested on Shikamaru's shoulders in the cat's body, "Alright then… Mission to locate lost pet Tora complete I guess."_

_XxX_

_Shikamaru smirked at Ino as the team walked out of the Hokage Tower after completing the mission, "You should have released the jutsu a little bit sooner Ino."_

_Ino glared at him as she rubbed her ribs, "Well you said to keep in on until we gave the cat back, and how did I know that lady was going to crush the cat once she got it back. Poor kitty, having to take bear hugs like that, we should let it go if we ever get this mission again."_

_Shikamaru let out a laugh, "Poor kitty? Poor me and Naruto. You call me lazy, but me and Naruto had to carry you in both forms all across town. I feel sorry for Naruto actually."_

_Ino took a swing at Shikamaru who ducked it and moved away, "What are you trying to say Shikamaru? Are you trying to call me fat or something?" The female member of the squad said threateningly._

_Naruto sweatdropped, "I don't think he meant that Ino, you weren't heavy anyway." Naruto was pretty sure he was referring to all of the weird looks that he had gotten from the villagers as they walked back through town, directed solely at him. From the way they looked at him you'd think that the villagers didn't know his teammate was a Yamanaka, and thought he had been attempting something indecent but he was sure they knew, they were very famous in this village. It was more likely they were looking at him. People were always looking at him like he stole something… it pissed him off honestly. Becoming a genin didn't help much at all._

_Naruto reached into his pocket to fish around for something while Ino reacted the way she started to whenever Naruto gave her anything that could be construed as a compliment, "Naruto you're so thoughtful! And you did take such good care of my body. It's good to have at least one teammate I can trust to know how to treat a lady. Maybe you should be in charge of my body more often huh?" Shikamaru scoffed, but she ignored him for Naruto who then pulled something out of his pocket to give him an excuse to lower his head and cover his blush, "Naruto how did you get those?"_

_Naruto had in his hand a pack of cigarettes and had freed one from its confines to place into his mouth, "What? Asuma-sensei has like one pack of these in each pouch of his vest/jacket thingy. He can let me get one."_

_Ino raised an eyebrow, "How did you even get a pack off of him? He's a jounin and we're genin."_

_Naruto started digging around in his pockets for something else, "I have sticky fingers Ino. That and he was busy staring at the rack of dirty magazines in the book store when we had to collect the merchant's guild taxes." He grunted in disappointment, "I need to buy a lighter."_

_Ino watched Naruto place the pack back into his pocket, "Are you really going to smoke that? Those things will kill you Naruto." She said displeased at watching her fellow blonde trying to light up._

_Shikamaru shrugged, "Asuma does it. Naruto can do what he wants."_

_Naruto looked at his two teammates, cigarette still in his mouth, "He's not the only one I see doing this all the time. I just want to know what the big deal about them is. I can buy them myself anyway, I just didn't want to in case I didn't like them." That reason, and because maybe the stores would jack up the prices for him and call it a 'minor tax'. Before he graduated they called it a 'civilian tax'. Shiho told him there were no damn taxes like that. What the hell was wrong with people?_

"_Ah, Asuma's team." Team 10 all looked in the direction of the voice they heard to see the pretty black-haired lady with the red eyes that had been there during team placements. Her team in tow. Kiba, Shino, and Hinata, "Have you just finished a mission?" She got nods from all of the kids, bringing a small smile to her face, "Good. We're all here to get a mission ourselves."_

_The two teams of genin looked at each other. They hadn't seen each other since they had graduated and had a few things to catch up on, but first-, "Dude." Kiba said, looking at Naruto, "Since when do you smoke?" Akamaru yapped on his head after his question._

_Hinata had a look of horror on her face, 'Naruto-kun smokes? Why would Naruto-kun smoke?'_

_Naruto shrugged, "I don't know. Since-." He was going to say since five seconds ago, but the killing intent from Kurenai drowned out his response, "Since… since… since…" He couldn't rightly respond when he looked into her red eyes that seemed to be looking right through him. He felt like he was going to die if he said one more word._

_Saved by Asuma, is what he felt like when the man came out, "Hey you guys forgot your paychecks. Eager to get rid of that cat huh?" He said as he had money in one hand, and the other sticking a cigarette on his mouth. He grabbed a lighter and lit it as his eyes panned around, "Hey Kurenai."_

"_-Since Asuma-sensei started making it look so cool!" Naruto exclaimed loudly, his excuse and his scapegoat found. Let no one ever say that Naruto did not know how to think on his feet. Too bad it had to be at Asuma's expense, but as the saying went; better you than me._

_Asuma looked at Naruto strangely, not knowing what he was talking about until he saw the cigarette in Naruto's mouth. His eyes widened and he pointed at Naruto accusingly, "Oh Naruto you're so full of-!" He was stopped by killing intent from… two different sources. _

_What the hell? He knew one was from Kurenai, but where was the other one from? No way, the timid Hyuuga girl was trying to shake him up? He would have thought that was so cute if Kurenai wasn't scaring the hell out of him at the moment. How precious, the little Hyuuga girl was upset at him for Naruto smoking. Man, even a cute little Hyuuga like her could glare a hole through granite. It had to be the eyes._

_Taking advantage of Asuma's stunned state, Naruto snatched the lighter from Asuma's hands and after a few experimental flicks he lit his cigarette and sighed deeply, exhaling smoke, "Ahh, you were right Asuma-sensei. Bold flavor, and relaxing after a hard day's work." Honestly, it tasted like hell to him, but he was supposed to be selling this thing for his immediate health right now, so he took another toke like it was the best thing in the world, and exhaled again, with more strain this time, "Smooth." He said in a choked voice._

"_Asuma." Kurenai said firmly, "I know you remember the speech Hokage-sama gave us all when we accepted our teams. We're supposed to be role models and set good examples for them. What kind of example does smoking two packs of cigarettes a day set to your genin?"_

_Asuma was sweating bullets, "Um… to patronize friendly, local tobacco retailers?" He yelped in pain when Kurenai grabbed him by his ear and pulled him away._

_Naruto took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled as he watched Kurenai drag off and scold Asuma with her team trailing behind her, "And there you go, that's what you call taking command of the situation. And now, I've got a free lighter." He gave himself a mental pat on the back at his masterful performance until he felt the collar of his windbreaker and undershirt get tugged, pulling him back. He looked to see that Kurenai had doubled back and come back for him, "Um… Hi?"_

_She gave him a rather cold look of disappointment, him in one hand, Asuma in the other, one being dragged walking on his feet, the other being dragged from behind, heels sliding through the dirt, "I'm going to give your sensei a little lecture on responsibility and then I'm going to break you of that nasty habit before you can get started like him."_

_Naruto and Asuma looked at each other with Naruto mouthing, "I'm sorry" to his sensei who just sighed in defeat and accepted his fate._

_Shikamaru looked down the road that his sensei and his male teammate were disappearing at the end of, "So… does that mean we're done for today?"_

_Ino blinked at the same sight when something hit her, "Wait, Asuma-sensei still has our money!" She took off after them to see if she could catch up._

_She never did. The money was used to buy Naruto three entire cartons of cigarettes which were then used to make him smoke them all in one sitting by Kurenai who spent the entire time telling Asuma about the responsibilities he now had. Kurenai's genin squad watched on in horror as Naruto smoked 48 packs of cigarettes at once and then proceeded to puke his guts out and fade into unconsciousness immediately after finishing._

_Kurenai let both Asuma and Naruto go, seeing as her job was done. Naruto learned his lesson as did Asuma, and after watching Naruto get physically ill off of the cigarettes her team got the message that she wanted to convey; do not start smoking. However, her plan backfired miserably. Naruto, instead of being one and done to protect his own ass as he originally intended, ended up getting a taste and a feel for the cancer sticks off of Kurenai's little punishment. Asuma still continued to smoke regularly, and seemed to encourage Naruto's growing habit as it gave him something to bond with the blonde over… as long as he wasn't stupid enough to do it in front of Kurenai again… and to date he had not been._

(End Flashback)

XxX

(Ino's House – Later that Evening)

Ino was in her father's small storage area loading up her pack for the mission tomorrow.

"And where are you going that you need all of that?" Ino's father Inoichi asked, standing by the door to the room, "You have a mission to prepare for?"

Ino turned to him and nodded, "Yes daddy. Me, Shikamaru, and Naruto are supposed to be going on our first C-ranked mission with Asuma-sensei tomorrow. Anything you want to tell me about what to be ready for?" She switched to a mild glare, "Since you didn't tell me about the second part of the genin exam and everything?"

Inoich laughed, "No one could say anything about that. It was a test Ino, but yes actually. You're good enough for the mission, just make sure you trust your teammates and you'll all do fine." He then stopped for a moment as he thought, "You know I know Shikamaru pretty well. I've never met your other one before."

In return, Ino shrugged and looked up at him, "Naruto's a nice guy. And he's a way better ninja then everyone else thought he would be coming out of the Academy which is great actually." She smiled a bit, "It's hard to believe no one thought he had a chance coming out of graduation. He's actually good. Kind of goofy from time to time, but he's more fun than Shikamaru is, that stick in the mud."

Inoichi's face was momentarily stern, "Uzumaki Naruto…" His face then lit up, "He's not really a bad kid at all. You should invite him over sometime. I already know Shikamaru, I might as well meet him too."

"Will do daddy." Ino said, straining visibly with her overfilled pack, "Now could you help me close this thing up?"

XxX

(Shikamaru's House)

Shikamaru walked into his house and heard his father's voice call out, "Shikamaru, come in here." Shikamaru sighed and made his way to the living room where he had been summoned to, "What do you want dad?"

Shikamaru's dad Shikaku was sitting in a reclining chair with his eyes closed, "So how was your day?"

"Troublesome…" His son replied, "We did a mission, and then Asuma spent the second part of the day kicking our asses. If I knew being a ninja would have had me doing so much stuff I don't think I would have let you talk me into it when I was little."

Shikaku didn't physically respond. He grunted in understanding before speaking again, "I said you could quit whenever you wanted didn't I"

Shikamaru yawned and leaned against the door frame in the room, "Yeah, but mom on the other hand said she wasn't going to have a dropout for a son, and here I am now."

"Troublesome." Shikaku said, yawning much like his son had a moment earlier.

Shikamaru shook his head, "You're telling me, I'm living it. Anyway, I have a C-rank to go on tomorrow. Asuma finally said me, Ino, and Naruto could take one to see how we do."

Shikaku chuckled, eyes still closed, "Ha, that's right, you have Ino on your team. Poor bastard." Shikamaru grumbled something about troublesome old men, "And Naruto? Heh, good luck with that. Has he pranked you yet?"

Shikamaru scowled slightly, "No thank Kami. I would like to stay on the opposite end of that spectrum for as long as I can. That bastard is sneaky, he's already gotten Asuma, he won't touch Ino with any, and that means I'm a potential target, it's best to not give him a reason." He stood there in thought for a moment, "Hey dad, why do people seem to have a problem with Naruto. He isn't that bad of a guy, I've met way worse people, and his pranks aren't that bad. Everything he does can be fixed in an hour."

At that, Shikaku cracked an eyelid and gazed at his son for a moment before shutting it again, "Too troublesome to explain. You're a smart kid. Figure it out on your own."

Shikamaru got off the wall and walked away, "Whatever dad. Troublesome old man."

Shikaku muttered when Shikamaru left, "Troublesome brat…" He said with a smirk.

XxX

(Konoha Archive Library)

Naruto frowned as Atsuto shrugged, "Shiho didn't come in today Naruto. I don't know what to tell you."

"Well has she ever missed before?" Naruto asked, getting a shake of the head as his response, "Well let me go check on her, she might be sick or hurt, or something really bad."

Atsuto nodded, he couldn't leave to go check on her the way he wanted to. She may have been his apprentice, but he had to keep watch over the library as well. He wrote out her address on a sticky note, "Here. This is where she lives since you still probably don't know." At that Naruto grinned sheepishly, "Make sure she's alright and if she isn't, come get me." Naruto nodded and ran off on his way.

XxX

After a few minutes of searching, Naruto found the right address. Shiho appeared to live in a nice sized two floor home across town from him. No wonder she didn't want him to walk her home, it was so far away. But she shouldn't have known that, he never said anything about where he lived.

He knocked on the door, "Shiho-chan, it's Naruto. Are you okay? You didn't come in today." No response. He knocked and waited three more times before getting nervous and picking the lock, a skill he was proud to say he had learned all on his own from when he would leave his key inside his house and lock himself out. It was kind of awkward explaining to passing ANBU about why you were trying to break into your own house and he could swear behind those masks those guys were laughing… bastards.

Naruto felt the lock click open and made his way inside, "Holy crap!" He exclaimed once he got a look at Shiho's ground floor. The entire ground level was a maze of bookshelves filled with books of all kinds, "How does someone live in all of this?" He started making his way through, calling out her name, but getting no response.

Something finally hit him, "Duh." He crossed his arms and shut his eyes to let off a pulse of his location jutsu. He had gotten better with it now. He still had trouble with walls and things, but he could catch a person's presence in the woods pretty well if his training with his team was anything to go by and he didn't need the hand-seals anymore. He got a signal and began to make his way over to where he sensed her only to find a massive pile of books, "Shiho-chan? I sensed you over here, where are you?"

He heard a muffled cry from underneath all of the books, "Wah!" He made a mass of Kage Bunshin who all helped him pick up the books where he found Shiho at the bottom, crying tears of joy, "Are you alright?"

She nodded, "Thank you so much Uzumaki-kun." She said, getting helped to her feet by the clones who then started looking around, "I was trying to get something down to study from this morning when all of a sudden that whole pile fell down on top of me. And I live alone you see, so I didn't have anyone to call." She let out a sigh of relief only to see Naruto looking at her strangely.

"You live alone?" He asked, "But all the time when you had to leave before I could offer to take you home you always said you had to leave right then or you'd get into trouble."

Shiho looked down, "Well I didn't want you to see my house Uzumaki-kun. I was afraid that you would think I was even weirder than before if you saw that I lived… well… here." She said, gesturing to the books that made up her bottom floor.

Naruto shook his head, "Well that's stupid. I don't care that you have books Shiho-chan… I mean, there are a lot, but so what? I like all kinds of ramen, you like all kinds of books. We're both weird I guess." He said, getting a smile out of her, "What happened to you family?"

Shiho smiled apologetically, "Well my father was killed in the attack by the Kyuubi, and my mother suffered serious injuries from it that never really healed you see. She died when I was five."

Naruto frowned deeply, "Wow, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring anything bad up Shiho-chan."

Shiho momentarily placed Naruto's face with the Kyuubi, but quickly wiped that thought aside. The real Kyuubi wouldn't have cared anything at all about her parents. The real Kyuubi wouldn't even have helped her out or even tried befriending her. As a matter of fact, Naruto was tormenting the Kyuubi with his very existence. Keeping it trapped, unable to do a single thing, and that brought a smile to her face, "It's okay. It was a long time ago. At least I got to know her. You never knew either one of yours so I can't really complain."

Naruto grinned at her, "Aw, I got used to it when I was little. There's nothing crying over it will solve so why waste time with it?"

"Exactly." Shiho said cheerfully, "But none of these books are really mine. They all belonged to my mother. She worked at the Konoha Archive Library as a part of the Cryptanalysis Squad until her death and she filled the house with all of these. She's the reason I do what I do now. She encouraged me when she realized I might be really good at it so when Atsuto-sensei offered me the chance I jumped at it." She cleared her throat, "But anyway, what did you need to see me for?"

Naruto remembered why he came looking for her, "Oh, well I'm leaving on a C-ranked mission tomorrow and Asuma-sensei said I would probably be gone for a while so I'm just telling you that I won't be around for a bit."

Shiho gave him a stern glance for a moment, "Amount of exits in the house at first glance Uzumaki-kun? Know your surroundings."

Naruto rolled his eyes, "The amount of windows on the front of your house would make me believe between 5 and 7. Two are doors, front and back. The others would be windows but that's just for down here. I wouldn't know about upstairs, I didn't think about it."

"Very good, it's seven by the way. You see, making you read that section of tactics on knowing your location did help. Now give me the number of choke points you can find in this floor." She said.

Naruto looked around blankly before turning back to her with his eyes squinted, "Um, really? Because with the bookcases and everything that would take a while to put together. Shiho-chan I could trap an entire platoon in here if I had to. Ask Shikamaru about that, Asuma-sensei said his IQ is like over 200."

Shiho blushed at the implementation of Naruto's teammate's name and laughed sheepishly, but he chalked that up to him embarrassing her about the state of her home, "Well nevermind then. Anyway, good luck on your mission. I know you'll do great." She said to him.

Naruto grinned at her, "You know it! Alright, now I have to go pack." He turned to quickly and abruptly leave by running but wound up smashing his face into a bookcase. He steadied it and proceeded to watch his step all the way out the door, "Bye Shiho-chan!"

XxX

(The Next Day)

Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino were all standing out in front of the Hokage Tower in front of Asuma, "So today's the day. Are you all ready?" He got three nods before pulling out a scroll, "I already picked your mission for you so we could get started. Anything to say?" He asked.

Naruto shook his head excitedly, "No more useless chores."

Ino frowned, "Why didn't we get to pick?"

Shikamaru rubbed his shoulder, "How far away is it? I don't want to have to carry this pack too far for too long."

Asuma sweatdropped, "While he said it in the most ass way possible, Shikamaru was the only one that asked the right question. We're to be heading to the village of Toui, three days away from here to deliver a letter meant to be received by Kusagakure. We'll meet up with a squad of Kusa ninja once we arrive. Questions?"

Naruto raised his hand, "Are we going to have to fight anything?"

Asuma shrugged, "Maybe. There's always a chance of combat when you leave the village, but if you're asking if we're going to directly be forced to fight then no. Missions like this don't normally anticipate conflict. There's little chance of danger on these."

Shikamaru sighed, "Walking all the way to a far-off village… That's just what I wanted to do for a week." He said sarcastically.

Asuma raised an eyebrow, "Okay, I can just take this mission back and exchange it for a day's worth of nice, easy-going D-ranks. I hear the Academy commissioned some help in moving the new equipment into all of the classrooms and taking old equipment out. _All_ of the classrooms."

Ino and Naruto grabbed Shikamaru's arms and dragged him away from the tower, "There's no need for that sensei!" Ino said cheerfully, "Come on, let's go before we lose the daylight!"

"It's morning Ino, we have all day." Shikamaru commented, letting himself be dragged because hey, that was just ground he didn't have to cover himself by walking.

XxX

(A Few Hours Later)

Naruto looked around himself as Team 10 continued on their way to Toui. On the road like this, Naruto's team position was as human sonar. Having so much chakra meant that every two minutes or so Naruto could let out a pulse to scout the area around them. Iruka said he would never be able to use the jutsu the way Naruto could and stay battle ready, but Naruto chalked it up to his massive chakra reserves and took it as a blessing, "We're pretty far away from Konoha by now aren't we?" He asked, getting a nod from everyone else, "Good." He said, taking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting it up in his mouth.

Ino looked at him, shaking her head, "That will kill your lungs Naruto. You should really stop. I'm surprised you don't smell like an ashtray by now. Asuma-sensei too."

Naruto looked over at her, "I can't help it. They're not that bad. And I smoked an entire carton's worth-."

"Three cartons worth." Asuma interjected, smoking his own cigarette carelessly.

"Right." Naruto said, "-Three cartons worth of cigarettes at once and I didn't feel it once until after I was done. And that was in my stomach. And Asuma kicks our asses and runs circles around you guys and he smokes two packs a day at least."

Asuma nodded, 'Well my reasons for not being affected too badly by it are different than yours. I channel chakra to my lungs to tone down the damage, you have a demon in you kid. Not that you know that.'

Sighing in defeat, Ino threw her hands into the air, "Fine, I give up. Two of the people on my team are now addicted to smoking. If Shikamaru starts too I'm going to lose it."

Shikamaru rose to her remark, "Yeah as if. I'd never pick up that habit. It's too much work. First you've got to pull the cigarette from the pack, then you've got to put it in your mouth and light it, then you've got to breathe it in and out without killing yourself in the process, and then no matter what, 30 or 40 years later you die anyway. It's too troublesome."

"You being lazy is a good thing for once." Ino said, "Who would have figured?"

Asuma signaled them to a stop, "Okay, let's see your packs." The group looked at each other in confusion until he elaborated, "I need to make sure you all brought what you needed for this mission so packs off, this is for a grade." He joked.

He looked through Shikamaru's first, "Good. You've got a good amount of equipment and rations for a mission of this length. Clothes to change into… and it's all placed in here neatly." He gave Shikamaru a dry look, "Your mother packed this for you didn't she?"

Shikamaru didn't have a hint of shame towards admitting it, "She said I needed to redo it and I said it was too much trouble."

"Of course she did." Asuma passed it back to Shikamaru, "I'll tell her to make you do it yourself next time and see how lenient she'll be if you don't." Shikamaru paled as Asuma moved on to Naruto, "Okay Naruto, you're up." Naruto handed his bag over, letting Asuma look through it, "You have a good amount of clothes to change into, you have good rations, but a lot are instant ramen cups."

Naruto shrugged, "What? They're fast, easy to make, and they have energy… at least to me. And they're cheap."

"Fair enough." Asuma said as he kept checking, "You went kind of spartan on the weapons and tools though. Only kunai and shuriken, and not many of those."

"Those aren't so cheap and easy to get for me Asuma-sensei. I don't pay sticker price for most stuff. 'Taxes' they say." Naruto said. He could tell that Naruto was confused about why, but apparently from the way he dismissed it he was used to it.

Asuma kept the growl out of his voice lest Naruto think he was angry with him. He'd be paying a few stores a visit once they got back home. Most stores that sold weapons were run part-time by shinobi, shinobi that weren't afraid of retaliation from a fresh genin for hiking up prices, "It's alright Naruto, we'll get you rightly outfitted when you get back."

Ino put a hand on Naruto's shoulder, "If you need to I'm sure you can stock up on some things from my house. We have tons of stuff that we keep too much of anyway. It's got to be hard keeping your own place and buying everything for yourself." Ino didn't rightly get it but the only tax she was aware of was sales tax and that wasn't much. He also said it plural so that meant more than one tax, 'What taxes?'

"Thanks Ino." Naruto said with a grateful smile through his cigarette as he placed his pack back onto his form and they continued on the road towards their distant destination, "Is this village even in Hi no Kuni Asuma-sensei?"

"Nope." The bearded jounin responded, "You're all getting to see the world for the first time. Isn't that half the reason why you joined in the first place? The shinobi forces of Konohagakure no Sato; join up, meet interesting people, kill them." He noticed the owlish looks he was getting from his genin, "Um… That used to be the old slogan back when I was a chunin."

XxX

(Three Days Later)

"Damn it Naruto you can't take this from me!" Asuma said almost hysterically as they entered the town they were intended to be in, "One of the things I was looking forward to as a jounin sensei was watching you all fall off the side of a tree on your heads for a week! You were going to be the most entertaining one!"

Naruto looked at Asuma strangely, "Sorry Asuma-sensei, but it was an exercise in the Neibaiken scroll. Sticking to surfaces with chakra. And a week? I just now got it, how the hell did you figure it would take a week?"

Asuma calmed down, "Well it's a chakra control exercise. Since you have the reserves of at least five regular chunin, exercises like that are always going to be rough on you. I'm surprised you didn't come to me about this."

Naruto turned away, "Well I'm not going to walk up to you and say I can't get two steps up a tree. It was my own training. I'm sure when Ino and Shikamaru can't get their own clan stuff down they can't just come to you about it."

Asuma scratched his head, "Well they have family members that are shinobi Naruto. You don't. I'm the one that's supposed to be responsible for you, and if you can't get something you shouldn't hesitate to come to me."

Ino looked at him inquiringly, "So you can walk up stuff now? Like that wall. If you walked up to it you could stick to it?"

Naruto nodded, "Yep. I can do it for my hands too." He kept his hand wide and stuck his palm to Ino's arm, "Now if I get a hold of you, good luck getting me off. Try." Ino jerked her arm around but found herself unable to even budge Naruto.

She stopped struggling, "You're sticking to the ground too aren't you?"

Naruto let go of her arm and they all kept walking, "You've got it. "

"Alright Naruto stop showing off." Shikamaru said, "We're not in Konoha and I really don't want anyone we could end up fighting knowing how you're going to fight them." Naruto nodded and continued down the street alongside his team.

Naruto repeatedly poked at Ino sides who poked him back, only he was able to get his fingers to stick to her when he did it, which felt weirder to her, giving him an advantage. He rather liked having the shoe on the other foot, and felt he could afford to mess with his fellow blonde because he could sense anything around them. No one was going to get the drop on him. Thus, Naruto continued messing with Ino, only this time when he stuck a finger to her side he used the rest of them on his hand to tickle her to get her to stop poking him and concede defeat.

The villagers of Toui were treated to the sight of a blonde boy with a Konoha headband, whisker marks, and orange clothes grinning madly while tickling one of Konoha's famous Yamanaka Clan in the middle of their street while she was trying to take a swing at him. In order to stop his students from acting up any further, Asuma lifted them up and separated them between him, "Asuma-semsei you're no fun, I almost had her." Naruto said once it was over.

"As if Naruto." Ino said, regaining her composure, and trying to glower, the occasional chuckle and small blush on her face blowing her poise.

Asuma smirked, "Sorry Naruto, it's work time. You can find Ino to play with after we're home and safe." He said suggestively, however it went over both of their heads.

Naruto rolled his eyes and placed his hands behind his head as they kept walking, "Whatever. Ino's got better things to do than hang out with me when she's free. She does that enough already."

"No I don't. Not really." She disputed his statement, "It's kind of hard to meet up with the people I used to know in the Academy now that we're genin. I see you guys more than anyone else these days. *sigh* I can't even find Sasuke-kun around. If they're anywhere near as busy as us then Forehead is hogging all the prime Uchiha time and I'll never get to see him."

Naruto and Shikamaru shared a look of distaste before returning their faces to normal, lest Ino see them and chew them out. Naruto had gotten his ear talked off several times in the past for shooting down anything Sasuke related.

Asuma's face suddenly hardened over as his eyes caught something down the road, "Look alive you guys." Down the road was a group with Kusa headbands. All three including the one perceived as the jounin were also looking at their Konoha counterparts with completely business-like looks on their faces. The two groups met in the middle of the street, all civilians clearing out in case of a full-out shinobi dogfight in the middle of the village.

Asuma walked forward, as did the leader of the Kusa team. Asuma simply handed over the scroll from earlier to the man, got a bow in return, and went back to his team as did the other man. Asuma prompted his team to walk away, and they did, all the way out of the village. "Well." Asuma said, placing a cigarette in his mouth, "Mission complete!" He said, getting all of his genin to face-fault.

Naruto jumped to his feet, "What the hell was that? That was it?"

"Yep!" Asuma replied brightly, "What? Were you expecting fireworks or something?"

Naruto blinked at him blankly at how he was just playing it off. To hell with that, this was his first real mission, he was pissed, "Yeah, actually I was!" Naruto barked at him, "What was with the old-school showdowny faceoff in the middle of town if we weren't going to fight? That was just a waste of good tension, my eye was almost twitching! Ino held her breath so long I thought she was going to pass out!" He pointed at Ino who was taking huge gulps of air while Shikamaru rubbed her back and muttering obscenities under his breath.

Asuma laughed loudly at how his genin had interpreted the whole scene, "That? All of that was just formality kid. We might be allied with Kusa, but ninja will be ninja, and we don't trust each other as a bylaw. That was just all theatrics. Although I'm glad none of you blew it by sneezing or something. Then that guy and his genin would have been laughing their heads off all the way back to their village. They already knew you were a bunch of babyfaced newbies, no need to give them a reason to try and pick with you."

Shikamaru raised his eyebrow, "Those other guys were genin? That was a genin team? Those guys looked like they were all 18 or something." He then had another thought, "Are we going to be genin that long too? That would suck… picking up dog crap and shopping for old people on a daily basis…" The entire team shivered at the thought of running D-ranks at that age, "I'd rather do C-ranks like this. This was actually pretty low-key, I like it."

Asuma shrugged, "Well, get good enough to pass the chunin exams and escape this horrible existence as a genin and you can run C-ranks on a regular basis. Or you can underachieve and you can stay like those guys, doing odd jobs and getting to leave the village once every blue moon. It's up to how good you want to be really. That and whether or not we're at war, but that's a whole different set of circumstances." Asuma took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled, "Yep. Back to Konoha and good old D-ranks for you guys. Good job back there."

Ino crossed her arms and grumbled, "Yeah we did great." She said sarcastically, "We sure scared the other team with our mad dog faces. Oh well… at least the pay should be good."

(The Next Morning)

Naruto had been looking up for about five minutes. They had all taken shifts on keeping watch, and he had the last shift, thus leaving him with the morning run. About right around the time just after the sun came up, a hawk was circling above the camp… and Naruto hadn't the faintest idea on what to do.

"Hey squirt, how you doing?" Asuma said as he alerted Naruto that he was up and about, "You feel dead on your feet yet? Want to crash out in your own bed once we get home yet?" Naruto shook his head, "Damn. You fucking ball of energy."

"Energy and win." Naruto corrected, "The win's the most important part. I'd hate to be a ball of energy and fail." He then pointed up, "What is that thing doing up there?"

Asuma squinted and saw the hawk before signaling it down to him. He took a scroll from the animal and sent it back from where it came. Once he read it he let out a sigh and rolled it back up, "Naruto, go get Ino and Shikamaru and you guys break up camp. We're moving out in a hurry."

Naruto was confused, "What was that Asuma-sensei?"

Asuma looked down at his diminutive genin, "That Naruto, was one of Konoha's messenger hawks, and the message was for us to back up another squad already dispatched on a mission to Nami no Kuni. Sending a whole squad of chunin would be a waste of resources since there's already a whole genin squad and a jounin there so we're going to help out." He pulled out his first cigarette of the day irritably.

Naruto looked at how angrily he lit it up and had to comment, "Is this going to be one of those days you keep telling us about?" Asuma's only response was to stick a cigarette into Naruto's mouth and light it.

Asuma placed his lighter back into his pocket and looked at the freshly risen sun, "All I'm going to say is you better enjoy that."

* * *

How To Train Your Genin: Tip 3

Find your genin squad's group dynamic

Just as there are many different types of shinobi there are different types of squads. While most squads are going to want to be well balanced to be prepared for any possible situation they'll face, a lot of the time that goal is extremely unrealistic. No matter what you do, your team will probably specialize in one field or another, and there's nothing wrong with that. Getting an area of expertise is important for your genin to have a comfort level in the field. They need to know what they're good at, and while being predictable in combat can at times be fatal they need to have some kind of default gameplan that they can revert to at any time.

However do not try to force a niche for your squad. Let it find them. As mentioned earlier, train them to accentuate their strengths and hide their weaknesses. If this is done right, it will become obvious soon enough what your team will be good at. If they seem to have chakra reserves that don't quit, and are swift and well prepared there goes a Quick Response Squad. If they specialize at keeping powerful enemies at bay long enough for something to be done about them with little to no damage to themselves then there goes your Delay and Diversion Squad. And I could go on and on but you get the point. It will build itself if given time.

Also finding a pecking order in your squad can help to improve your squad's solidarity. Having a clear cut go-to-guy/girl in the case of your absence gives them a sense of comfort in a situation and helps to put a feeling of control back on them in stressful situations, allowing them to keep their heads and work out a solution. Establishing roles also breaks up the obvious responsibilities of the squad and improves teamwork and team relations.

A team is only as good as its individual parts, but a well-trained squad of genin can bring down a jounin under the right conditions. Thus, teamwork is obviously a great way to ensure your genin stay alive long enough to improve themselves.

-Shiho

* * *

**I'm done yo. Alright. It's Friday night and not midnight yet, times to get my smoke o- I mean time to do legal things in a family setting, with no intent whatsoever to partake in the delicious mind-numbing awesome of the ganja. **

**Mind your own business, Kenchi out.**


	7. Have Blade, Will Travel

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. But I should have owned the Slapchop… damn copyright first-come first-serve laws… I swear, the kids were going to love my nuts.

**Chapter 7: Have Blade, Will Travel**

**

* * *

**

It was a two day excursion moving at the fastest speed that Team 10 could collectively muster to get them from the side of the country they were on all the way to the other side where they were meant to head over to. A message from Konoha to Asuma and his team informed them that they were needed to head to Nami no Kuni (Land of Waves) to provide assistance to another squad of genin along with their jounin sensei that were in over their heads.

Despite cutting a very good pace to make it to the coast that was where they ran into a problem as getting from the mainland to the island nation would prove to be rather bothersome in itself as seemingly no ships were making their way to or from the country.

Ino had a hand on her hip as the three genin of the squad took a rest in a port town at the border of Hi no Kuni (Land of Fire). She looked out at the ocean where she could barely see the outlying island at the outer limits of the horizon, "How did anyone else get there in the first place? What are we supposed to do if we can't even reach the place we're supposed to go? Are we just going to fail our mission off of a technicality or something?"

Naruto was sitting on the edge of a nearby wharf, kicking his legs over the edge and looking at the ocean, he had never seen it up close before, it was great, "Asuma-sensei is handling it Ino. All we can do right now is just wait for him."

"Yeah Ino…" Shikamaru said, laying down in a pile of thick rope as makeshift bedding, "Asuma's a jounin, they're supposed to be experts at every aspect of shinobi life. I'm sure he can find a way to get us to Nami no Kuni sooner rather than later. Until then just chill out and rest up… No doubt whatever we end up doing once we get there is going to be troublesome."

Ino rolled her eyes and walked over to the pineapple hair-styled genin, poking at him with her toe, "Shikamaru rolling out of bed this morning and putting on shoes was troublesome to you."

Shikamaru closed his eyes and let out a yawn, "That doesn't mean I'm wrong about this though, does it?"

Ino looked at him with a twitching eye before giving up on him and turning back to Naruto who was for some reason doing pushups, "Naruto what in the world are you doing?" She asked him.

Naruto didn't stop and continued, "I'm bored to death here Ino."

"You should be resting. We ran all the way here." She said, trying to convince him to stop for the moment to save some energy, "What's going to happen if we run into trouble-?"

"-_When_ we run into trouble." Shikamaru cut in blithely.

"Right." Ino said, acknowledging the fact that he was more than likely right about that, "What's going to happen when we run into trouble and we have to fight? You'll be all tired."

"Nope." Naruto said brightly, "I'm A-ok. And pushups never made me tired, I might as well do something while we wait. *laughs* At least I'll be all warmed up when it's time to actually fight right?" Ino shook her head at his answer and plopped down at the edge of the wharf much like Naruto had done beforehand with a sigh, "What's the matter Ino?" Naruto asked, slightly concerned, "You look upset."

Ino panned her eyes over to him, noting that he had stopped with his random exercise so that he could listen to her, "Well, why is it us that had to go? There had to be a squad with more experience that could have been sent."

Naruto stood back up and dusted himself off, "Come on Ino, you were one of the best in our class, are you saying you can't handle it? And Shikamaru is smart, really smart. Like, he's scary smart. Besides, we've got Asuma-sensei with us and a whole 'nother team. We should be fine."

Ino smiled at his attempt to make her feel better about the situation, "And what about you Naruto? You talked about us but you didn't say anything about yourself. What do you bring to the team?"

Naruto stared at her for a moment before rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, "Uh, one man radar and human meat-shield?"

Ino gave him a deadpan look in response, "That's really not funny Naruto. That better not be how you really see yourself. You're the only one out of us that is good at actually attacking. With your Kage Bunshin and that taijutsu of yours I think you're the strongest genin on the team."

Shikamaru spoke from over where he was laying down, "Ino's right Naruto. In an active battle you're the only one of us that can guaranteed beat their opponent single-handedly. Ino's jutsu puts her at a disadvantage in case she misses, my jutsu is good for trapping and I have to find other ways to beat people. Without you on this team we'd be sitting ducks. You or your clones can watch Ino's body when she uses her jutsu and you can finish off the people that I get with my jutsu."

Ino lightly slapped the side of his leg and grinned at him, "You're our teammate Naruto, so stop it with the fluctuating self-esteem. Sometimes you think you're the baddest genin in the land, other times you think you shouldn't have even graduated. Do you need me to go into your head and get you all sorted out?" She said jokingly.

Naruto rolled his eyes but returned her smile, "Hey you don't want to do that. Iruka-sensei said that my mind is a scary place."

"That's because he saw your grades in school." She quipped right back at him, jokingly raising her hands in the seal needed to fire her Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu), "Get ready to black out for a few minutes Naruto. I'll kick you awake when I'm done with your body."

Naruto started bouncing on his toes, "You have to hit me with it first." He gloated in a challenging manner.

Ino winked at him, "From this range I barely have to aim. Shikamaru, watch my body would you?"

"Alright that's enough of that." Asuma said sternly as he made his way back over to the group, "Stop playing with your jutsu. Those are meant for serious work." There was no humor or anything in his voice.

Naruto looked at Asuma strangely, "Asuma-sensei yesterday Shikamaru took control of me with his shadow and made me slap myself. You laughed so hard you swallowed your cigarette. What's changed between now and yesterday?"

How could he put this that wouldn't tip them off to something being wrong in Naruto's psyche? Asuma quickly rattled off an answer, "We can't get to Nami no Kuni by normal means when over a year ago there was never any problem doing so. That has to mean that things are rather suspicious either here or there and I would rather the enemy that may or may not be watching know what you can do because you decided to play with your jutsu while you were bored."

He almost cringed at his response. That excuse was flimsy at best and he knew it. Hopefully they wouldn't call him on it if he had a serious enough look on his face… and they didn't, "Sorry Asuma-sensei…" Naruto and Ino said in unison. Still, in his head he needed to come up with something better. That excuse would only work for the duration of this mission. He might not come up with another one if they decided to mess around like that again, and the last place he wanted Ino to be was crawling around in Naruto's head, lest she come across a dark little secret… one that could potentially tear her mind asunder.

Shikamaru gave Asuma a long hard look for being so strange about Ino using her jutsu. He placed it in the back of his mind for later and spoke up, "So do you have a way for us to get over there or are we landlocked and have to go home? Because I'm completely cool with going home."

Asuma sighed at Shikamaru's expected attitude, "Remember Shikamaru, there is always a way to get anywhere no matter what… and it's called money. We're going to pay someone with a boat to take us across, but we're going to need to get some money fast. They want way more than I have on me to make the trip."

"How much?" Naruto asked.

Asuma scratched his nose, "Um, 300,000 ryo."

Naruto and Ino stared at Asuma blankly after hearing the amount of money they needed to gain passage to Nami no Kuni. "What!" Both of them exclaimed simultaneously, getting Asuma to clean out his ears after hearing both loud blondes shout at him.

"Yeah…" Asuma said when the ringing in his ears stopped, "Apparently there's a sort of blockade around Nami no Kuni. Ships trying to get onto the island have to pay a steep tax to get in. Apparently it's orchestrated by the powerful shipping magnate Gato. He's got control of Nami no Kuni's trade routes, so unless we can actually pay for passage aboard a ship _and_ the extra that's needed to actually get there, not to mention the amount that they need to pay to actually be allowed to leave."

"How in the hell are we going to get 300,000 ryo?" Ino asked angrily, "We're kids! A month's worth of D-ranked missions doesn't top out at 300,000 for all four of us combined! It barely tops out at over 100,000!"

Shikamaru sat up from where he had been laying down and began thinking while Ino fumed over the situation and Naruto stared at his frog wallet sadly. "Hey." Shikamaru said, getting everyone's attention, "I think I have an idea." Everyone moved over towards him, "Naruto how long do you think your Kage Bunshin can hold a Henge?"

XxX

(Twelve Hours Later – Nami no Kuni)

As night had fallen, from a distance at the outskirts of a port town in Nami no Kuni, Team 10 watched the ship they had taken to the island nation disembark back to the mainland hastily. They had slipped off of the ship unseen while Gato's 'harbor patrol' had gone on the ship and collected the money from the captain. Instead of a patrol, they looked more like a bunch of thugs, "Damn good plan Shikamaru. And good work Naruto." Asuma said to the lazy genin and the orange-aficionado as he patted the nearby Naruto's spiky blonde head for a job well done, "So when do you think those Kage Bunshin of yours will dispel?"

Naruto started counting on his fingers, "I don't know, I can hold a Henge for like a week straight if no one makes me break it and I have to split my chakra evenly to make one Kage Bunshin. The longest I've ever had one out was four days straight and I just had it doing odd jobs; cleaning my house, studying some notes, just useless stuff that didn't take chakra and I just let it be. I blacked out when I dispelled it though."

Ino snapped her fingers and pointed at him, "Oh yeah! That was the day you didn't show up to the training field a week ago wasn't it?"

Naruto nodded, "But these ones are holding the Henge so I don't know." He let out a sigh, "I made… a bunch. And they're still holding out so we don't get busted. I'm going to black out again when they go though, I know it, so can we get to where we need to go fast before I do?"

"How many did you make?" Ino asked.

Again, Naruto counted out on his fingers, "I made enough to put in that sack in increments of 5,000 ryo, so I made 20."

Shikamaru shut his eyes to think, "One clone can last four days doing nothing, Naruto himself can hold a Henge for a week himself, and he made twenty clones, all Henged. The clones can last almost a day and a half as they are before they dispel if nothing happens, and we were on that boat for twelve hours, so I would say that they have at least another twenty four hours before they fade."

"And by then everything should be good. The boat should be back in Hi no Kuni, and the Henged clones should be placed with other forms of money so that they can disappear. With any luck it will be assumed that someone in the organization took the money." Asuma said, wrapping it all up, "Alright then. That's plenty of time for us to find the team we're meant to assist so we can get the full breadth of the situation."

Shikamaru took it upon himself to ask the question everyone else had neglected to ask thus far, "So who are we here to help? And what are we even doing in this country in the first place to help them out?"

"All valid questions..." Asuma said as he led his team along away from the village. He sparked a cigarette as Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru looked at him expectantly, "…That I will answer once we get to where the team is shacked up at."

"We hate you Asuma/Asuma-sensei." All three of the younger ninja said in unison as they followed behind with dry looks on their faces.

Asuma exhaled a plume of smoke and walked along with a smile on his face, "Ahh, the sounds of teamwork, such a beautiful thing." He said before breaking out in a run, prompting his team to follow behind swiftly.

XxX

(Two Hours Later)

KNOCK KNOCK

"Coming!" A knock at the door garnered the attention of a beautiful dark-haired woman that made to open the door before being stopped by Sasuke, who pulled a kunai and went to answer it in her stead. Opening the door, keeping his weapon hidden from view, Sasuke saw three of the students from his class that graduated along with a larger bearded man with a cigarette in his mouth and a vest much like his sensei's.

"You must be Kakashi's student, Uchiha Sasuke right?" Asuma asked blowing smoke at Sasuke as he did. Intentionally or not, he couldn't tell.

Sasuke held back a cough and waved the smoke out of his face, "Yeah, and I guess you guys are the team Kakashi sent for to help us, right?"

Asuma nodded, "Correct kid. Team 10 at your service."

Sasuke looked back at the woman inside of the house and gestured to her to let her know everything was okay. At that point she came to the door and greeted the new arrivals with a warm smile, "Hello, my name is Tsunami. You all must be the group of ninjas sent to help the others protect my father." She bowed to them.

Asuma smiled at the woman, "Well I am Sarutobi Asuma." He pointed behind him at the kids, "The lazy looking boy is Nara Shikamaru, the blonde girl is Yamanaka Ino, and the blonde boy in orange is Uzumaki Naruto." Shikamaru waved half-heartedly, Ino smiled brightly at her, and Naruto gave her a grin, although the thing about him that got her attention was the thing she saw him holding in his mouth and trying to light at the same time.

"Well it's nice to meet you all." She said before pointing at Naruto and Asuma, "But I don't allow smoking in my house, I'm sorry."

Naruto blinked before looking at her with puppy-dog eyes. He hadn't had one in days and he hadn't even taken a puff yet. He thought he deserved one after single-handedly paying their ferry with his chakra. Couldn't he at least imbibe a bit before he blacked out with a monster headache in a few hours? Tsunami refused to budge on the matter due to the unchanging expression on her face and Naruto dropped the cigarette with a sigh before putting it out under his foot. Asuma did the same only with more hesitation, but upon doing so they were invited inside.

Sasuke stood off to the side as they all came in and Tsunami closed the door behind them. He looked at everyone pass him uninterestedly until Ino walked past him, "Hello Sasuke-kun, I missed you all of this time." She said, getting a roll of the eyes out of the stoic genin.

Apparently Naruto wasn't the only one who had sensor capabilities because when Ino said that, Naruto could have sworn that Sakura did too when she yelled down the stairs before she was even see, "Leave Sasuke-kun alone Ino-pig! He was doing just fine before you shoved your snout into the house!"

"How could I shove my snout into anything with your massive forehead already filling the place up?" Ino yelled back, "I know Sasuke-kun is sick of your company after two months. Now he can spend time with a real kunoichi."

Naruto looked at Tsunami as the two young female ninja began squabbling over Sasuke who looked like he would rather be anywhere but there, "Do you have anything blunt to hit one of them with?" He asked dryly, "Because if not we're going to be here all night."

Ino turned to Naruto, ignoring Sakura for the moment, "Naruto you really wouldn't hit me would you?"

Naruto shrugged vapidly, "I've already done it before."

"Those were spars." Ino sent back at him. Seeing him turn away, mumbling 'So?' made Ino smirk in victory, "Now where were we Forehead?" She asked, about to start up a whole new series of insults between herself and Sakura.

"Alright enough." Asuma cut in, getting sighs of relief from Naruto, Shikamaru, and even Sasuke, "Where's Kakashi? We still need to understand the severity of the situation and I kind of want to hear it from him."

Sakura looked at the jounin she had failed to notice during her spat with Ino and got herself together, "Kakashi-sensei is upstairs with Chouji. He has chakra exhaustion from the battle."

Naruto looked over at Sasuke, "You guys fought? Who did you fight?"

Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets and walked upstairs as it was clear that was where the group was soon heading, "A jounin."

XxX

(30 Minutes Later)

Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru stared blankly at Team 7 with their jaws quite slacked at what they had just heard. Everything was clear and simple when they were told of the mission to protect Tazuna the bridge-builder. They were still along for the ride when they were told about being attacked by the two chunin Demon Brothers, they were somewhat lost when they were told that a Momochi Zabuza, high-class jounin missing-ninja, was next to attack them, but hearing how the battle played out somewhat assuaged how they were feeling. But the combination of everything heard beforehand along with the amassed knowledge they continued to be given as well as the full scope of the situation hit them rather abruptly.

A long silence was broken when Shikamaru spoke, "So you're telling me that we just ran all the way across an entire country, scammed our way onto a ship to get here, and we can't even leave now until this bridge is built because the blockade of the trade routes are locked down tight?"

A nod from Chouji and Sakura was the response. Ino spoke next, "And you just got through fighting two chunin and one jounin that you thought you killed, but he got away because someone that was able to pose as a hunter-ninja and actually _fool_ your jounin sensei into thinking the jounin was dead got away with him to let him rest up for the next go around?"

Naruto finished up for them once Ino's question got a response with another set of nods, "And in addition to that, the one orchestrating all of this is one of the richest men in the entire world and he actually has Nami no Kuni under his heel and has full control of the country? Not only that, but he kills anyone opposing him and that includes the guy you're here to protect because the bridge would ruin his hold on the nation?"

Again, a nod from Sakura and Chouji. "I see…" Ino said before turning to Asuma with anime tears running down her face, "Asuma-sensei can we go home?" She asked, getting a face-fault out of Naruto who sprung to his feet swiftly after.

"No way Ino!" Naruto said, "If Chouji, Sakura-chan, and Sasuke-teme didn't cut out and leave after they knew what they were into we can't just leave. We pulled one over on that Gato guy and his thugs when we first got here before we even knew what was going on, we can do this!"

"It's a jounin Naruto, a jounin and a hunter-nin." Ino said, not really feeling too good about this whole thing.

Naruto pointed over at Asuma and the downed Kakashi, "We have two jounin and the rest of us."

Ino found herself somewhat on the losing end of the reasoning, but did not let the matter die, "If this Gato guy has enough clout to control the country he has to have a lot of people working for him to enforce his rule. That's an army Naruto."

Shikamaru scoffed and pointed at Naruto who grinned and waved to her, "_He's_ an army Ino." He said, getting some confused looks from Team 7, "And he's right. We can do this. We just need to know what they know so we can be ready for the next time around."

"Well yes." Kakashi said, still looking rather haggard from his battle with, "Exactly. There isn't much we can do with us knowing nothing of where Zabuza is or where Gato is if we want to get drastic. However there is one thing that we can do that will help us."

The genin all looked at Kakashi expectantly getting Asuma to chuckle, "Kakashi's right, though it's one of one of my student's least favorite words. We're going to train you kids up for the next time."

XxX

(Gato's Headquarters)

A man walked into Gato's office with a serious look on his face. The small businessman in a suit and diminutive sunglasses sat at his desk flanked on both sides by two bodyguards. One, a young man with white hair, marks under his eyes, a dark purple hat on his head, and a blue hooded jacket. The other was a shirtless man with brown hair, an eyepatch, tattoos on his body, and a few scars to go with them. Both of them were in possession of a katana to go with their bodyguard status.

The man stopped in front of the desk and started speaking, "Boss our boys got some information from the ship that stopped here earlier today and left right after. Two of them disembarked and ended up telling us that a team of ninjas got off of their ship. We never saw 'em, but they _are_ ninja, so I figured it was worth telling you."

Gato let out a growl, "What, are they coming out of the woodwork now?" He said in a seething voice, "That whelp Zabuza better get it together and get his ass in gear. Grr, I'm not paying him anyway, but he doesn't know that and I expect him to get the job done!"

The man spoke to Gato again, "Apparently three of them were just kids."

Gato lifted his right arm to reveal a cast on it, "Zabuza had a kid with him too, and the little bitch did this! But you might have a point. A few kids can't take on an entire contingent of my soldiers." The greedy little man smirked and laughed to himself, "Something to think on I guess…"

XxX

(The Next Day – Forest Surrounding Tazuna's House)

"Alright kids!" Kakashi said brightly from his place standing on crutches next to Asuma, "Today we'll be teaching you all a very important skill that every shinobi learns over the course of their career, early on like the rest of you are now."

Asuma had a grin on his face, "I was looking forward to teaching this…" He then gave a light glare to Naruto, "One of you tried taking my fun away by already learning this…" He then grinned again, "But Kakashi is somehow making up for it by replacing him with three of his own genin for my demented amusement."

Kakashi gave Asuma an eye-smile, "I'm so glad I could make your day Asuma." He turned his attention back to the genin, "But you will all be learning how to climb trees."

Naruto raised his hand, "Yo Kakashi-sensei, Asuma-sensei, I can already do this."

Sakura nodded in agreement, "Yeah, we all already know how to climb trees. How is this training Kakashi-sensei?" She asked curiously.

Shaking his head at the pink-haired girl, Naruto spoke again, "No, you guys can't. I can though." He said, getting a tick mark to form on Sakura's head due to how he made the rest of them sound.

"We can all climb trees Naruto-baka!" Sakura said fuming at him. **"What do you think you're trying to say you idiot?"** Sakura's inner personality roared inside of her psyche.

"You might get the concept Naruto-." Asuma interjected, trying to save his genin from a furious fisticuff, courtesy of Sakura, "-But the way this exercise is done is to accentuate the most difficult way you can possibly generate chakra through your body. You might have worked it out for your hands, but elsewhere would be a different story."

Naruto looked between Asuma and Kakashi repeatedly before sighing and moving between them, pushing them aside to walk towards a tree. That was where all of the normal stuff ended, because Naruto started walking straight up a tree with a dull expression on his face. He then walked down and got back into the line-up with the others who were looking at him oddly. He ignored them for the moment and looked at Asuma, "I learned how to do that from my taijutsu scroll because I needed it to make my taijutsu style more effective when I grab somebody like I told you. Well I had to learn how to do it with every part of my body because I have some moves that need me to keep a hold with other parts of my body to make me harder to shake off."

"So you can do this?" Kakashi asked.

Naruto shrugged, "In my sleep." He then took note of the stares he was getting from the others, "What?"

"Since when could you do that?" Chouji asked, remembering Naruto having trouble with… well, everything in the Academy. He and Shikamaru had never really talked about training when they hung out. He found it too troublesome.

"Three weeks. Heh, at first I thought it was something cool that only I could do since I'm learning the style, but I found out it wasn't from Asuma-sensei during the last mission." Naruto responded with a grin.

Ino asked a question next, "You never did that when we were training Naruto. Not even during spars, you didn't stick to anything."

In response he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, "Well I could get a good enough grip on my own during spars. Using chakra to stick would have been overkill. And using it with my feet for the moves I'm talking about… well those moves aren't as nice as the things you normally see me do. They aren't sparring moves. Besides, when did I ever need to walk up a tree for anything?" Just for kicks he walked over to the same tree and started walking in circles, "Yep, this sure came up again and again while we were doing that babysitting mission." He said sarcastically.

"Right." Kakashi chimed in, "Well you just saw Naruto do it. You need to channel chakra to your feet and make your way up the tree. You might want a running start when you do it though, so the momentum will help you when you start off." The two jounin threw out five kunai at their students' feet, "Use those to mark your place and try to beat it each time."

All of the genin, sans Naruto, picked up their respective weapons and took off at the tree. Sasuke made it to his first and took a few steps up the tree before the bark exploded under his feet, forcing him to backflip off and land on his feet before he fell. Chouji's attempt was seven steps up the tree before tumbling down and rolling back, ending with him sitting and looking up at the tree. Ino was feeling good about herself as she continued putting one foot in front of the other as she climbed the tree. The first branch was well in her sight and she reached out for it, but lost her concentration and wound up falling back to the ground, upset enough to kick the tree… which ended with her hurting herself and hopping on one foot cursing at the tree.

"Hey, this is easy!" Sakura said as she sat up on a high branch overlooking the others.

Naruto looked up at her and whistled, "Wow Sakura-chan? First try? It took me a few days to actually get it." 'With clones.' He added to himself mentally, actually really impressed with her, after speaking aloud, "Good job!"

Sakura held up a 'v' sign and stuck her tongue out before turning to Sasuke, "How was that Sasuke-kun?"

"Well it looks like my team's own kunoichi is the first one to get this exercise." Kakashi said with amusement, "Maybe someone isn't working hard enough for me to warrant going back to the house to pick up lunch for them?" Chouji let out a horrified gasp and jumped to his feet to keep working, "And maybe the Uchiha Clan isn't all it's cracked up to be." Sasuke glared up at where Sakura was before going back to start trying again.

Sakura looked at Kakashi incredulously, 'What? Now he's going to hate me.' "You talk too much Kakashi-sensei!"

Shikamaru didn't immediately take off like the others did. Instead he sat and watched the others take a few tries. Ino took two more tries before getting it along with Sakura who took another trip up. The two girls glared and started jawing with one another once again. Chouji kept up at his work with a determined effort to show Kakashi he was trying hard enough to get lunch later, but he kept smashing the tree before getting very far. He then looked at Sasuke who seemed to have the same idea as he analyzed what was going on, 'So if I use too much chakra I'll end up being pushed off of the tree like Chouji and Sasuke, is there a certain amount I need to generate? Do I need to generate a consistent amount and keep it? Troublesome, I need to figure this out and tell Chouji.'

Naruto let out a yawn as he stood watching everyone else. He thought of joining in, but him running up and down the trees repeatedly would have just wound up pissing everyone else off, and there wasn't anything he could really get out of it anyway. He placed his hands behind his head and began pacing about in a bored manner, getting Asuma's attention, "Naruto, do you have anything you're working on that you could be doing right now?"

He looked at Asuma and blinked, surprised at being called out, before shaking his head. Asuma made a thoughtful noise, "And you say you've got this exercise down pat?" Naruto nodded with a grin and jumped at a tree before sticking to it back-first. After a few seconds he dropped onto his feet and rubbed the back of his head, seeing as how he had smashed it into the trunk when he was trying to be facetious, "Okay smartass, I get it." He said with a chuckle. He turned to Kakashi, "I'm going to take Naruto off somewhere to work on something so he doesn't waste any time here."

"Alright Asuma." Kakashi said, pulling out his orange Icha-Icha book, "I've got things here in the meantime."

The others watched Naruto walk away with Naruto in tow for a moment before getting back to work. Sasuke's eyes lingered on him the longest before turning back to his tree and continuing to train, gritting his teeth determinedly, 'I am not going to fail and be left behind!' He said to himself in an effort to get himself to step it up.

XxX

Asuma led Naruto to the dock out front of Tazuna's house and stopped at the edge of the water. Naruto simply stared at the water and then at Asuma, waiting for the man to do something, or explain something to him. Eventually Asuma dramatically placed one foot out, getting Naruto's full attention, not that the boy was saying anything, but his eyes were clearly interested in either seeing something awesome or something hilarious.

The jounin stepped off of the dock, but instead of a loud splash followed by Naruto rolling on the dock laughing as hard as he could, Asuma was standing on top of the surface of the water as if he were still on land. He took a few steps out before turning back to Naruto and making a grand gesture, "Well?"

"How?" Naruto asked squeakily.

Asuma quickly explained, "Channel the chakra to your feet as if you were walking up a tree and go for it. But the amount you have to use to stay up will change consistently, making it harder than tree-climbing. Get to it."

Naruto nodded excitedly and did as instructed before falling into the water. Asuma broke up in laughter, "Oh Kami… it would have been funnier if I had them all do it at the same time, but ah… This is why jounin choose to become sensei… the precious moments like this."

Naruto surfaced and pulled himself back onto the deck, sitting on the edge and staring at Asuma while still dripping wet, clothes drenched. Naruto opened and closed his mouth multiple times trying to think of something to say before giving up, "Well son of a bitch…" His eyes widened and he patted around in his pockets before pulling out a drenched pack of his cigarettes, "Son of a bitch!" He looked up at Asuma, "Asuma-sensei?"

"No smoking while you're training Naruto." He said walking back towards the shore. Once he reached the dock he ruffled Naruto's soaked hair, "Well, get to it. Oh, and can you send some clones to check on Ino and Shikamaru while I go with Tazuna today? I don't really want Kakashi's lazy streak to keep them from getting the finer points of their training down. Actually one clone should be good."

Naruto nodded and stood up before forming the seal for Kage Bunshin, making one appear in a puff of smoke. Naruto stood still after making the clone before it dispelled and he fell backwards, almost into the water. Asuma moved swiftly and caught him before he could fall in the water and potentially drown, "What happe-?" He asked before stopping himself as he remembered yesterday, "Wow. Those clones sure lasted a long time." He picked Naruto up and took him inside the house.

The entire scene was witnessed from a window in the house overlooking the ocean by a small boy in green overalls and a white, blue-striped bucket hat.

XxX

(Hours Later)

"Ow…" Naruto whined, sitting up on a couch in the living room, "Why does the backlash suck so much?" He asked himself only to notice a small boy standing in front of him, looking at him rather angrily, "Hello?"

"You're going to die here you know?" He said matter-of-factly.

Naruto just stared at the kid in shock before speaking, "Um I don't think so. I just got hit with too much information at once and it kind of scrambled my brains for a bit. If I can get an aspirin I should be fine. It's no big deal."

The boy's glare on the young shinobi grew more intense, "No you idiot, Gato. Gato's going to kill you guys. You and all of those other people that came here." He said as if it were a fact, as if it had already happened.

Naruto just looked at the kid with a twitching eye before noticing himself covered in a blanket in his boxers, 'Damn, not cool.' He stood up, keeping himself covered, "Um, okay whatever. I'm going to go ask your mom if she has anything for my head so I can train." He walked into the kitchen, seeing Tsunami sitting at the table just looking out the window, "Um excuse me ma'am, do you have any aspirin? And could you tell me where my clothes are?"

She looked at Naruto and smiled warmly, "Of course dear, and I'm sorry about Inari. He was like that to the others too. I just don't know what to do." She said, quickly moving to a cabinet and retrieving two pills that she handed to Naruto, "Here you go. Your clothes are outside drying. They should be done by now, let me get you a glass of water."

Naruto accepted the pills with a grateful smile of his own. Man, no adult was ever this cool to him in Konoha, "That's okay, I don't need the water." He said before quickly downing the pills and heading outside where he saw his stuff hanging up, his sandals on the ground underneath them. He reached for his clothes before looking back at the ocean, "Meh, I might as well stay like this… I'll just end up messing my clothes up again." He immediately hopped over to the wharf and attempted the same process as the first time before dropping into the water again.

Tsunami heard the splash and came outside to see Naruto pulling himself out of the ocean, "Are you okay?" She asked.

Naruto spat out a mouthful of seawater and gave her a thumbs up, "Yep. I'm good. Just training to walk on water." He said to her before making another attempt, actually staying up for quite a while this time before-, "Gah!" He shouted before going under once more, this time getting out with a growl.

"Are you sure this is possible?" Tsunami asked, not knowing much about what is was that ninja did regularly and how they went about doing them.

Naruto nodded, "Oh yeah, don't worry. I'll definitely get it soon. I've got to get stronger to make sure your father's safe after all don't I?" He gave her a wide grin that she couldn't help but return. Naruto would up steadying himself and taking step after step out onto the water. He finally turned around and found that he had made it well over fifty feet from the dock, "You see! I told you I could do it!" He shouted back to her now that his head was no longer ringing from his dispelled clones.

Tsunami looked at him in amusement and clapped for his achievement, "Good job Naruto-kun!" She said before noticing some strange black mark on his torso, "Naruto-kun, what's that mark on your stomach?" She asked.

Naruto blinked in confusion and looked down at his stomach, but he wasn't experienced with his water-walking yet and fell in the water. He swam back to shore and sprawled out on the deck before looking at Tsunami, panting somewhat, "What was that you were saying?" He asked.

Tsunami was about to repeat what she asked when she looked at Naruto's belly and saw nothing there any longer, "Oh nevermind. I'm sorry about that." She said apologetically. She messed up his training for something she didn't even see.

"Oh it's alright." Naruto said, sitting back up and pushing the water out of his ear, "I've got it and that's all that matters. All I have to do now is get used to fighting on the water like I can on walls, and there's only one way to do that right now." He stood up and made forty Kage Bunshin before they all went out onto the water, ignoring how shocked Tsunami was at seeing all of those blondes appear out of thin air.

Naruto was still shaky, but he was out there, and there was only one way to solve that problem about his steadiness on the water. Naruto stared at his grinning clones who were all stretching and trying to punk him with their confident faces, "So come on all of you, let's do this!" That shout was the last precursor before Naruto and his clones commenced brawling atop the seawater.

Tsunami watched as Naruto set himself in his low Nebaiken stance while three clones came at him. The first of the three quickly grabbed onto Naruto, using their superior numbers to disorient him for the time being. It grabbed Naruto's right arm and worked it behind his back, trying to garner a joint-lock and quickly disable him somehow. Naruto switched his dominant leg and spun around, freeing his arm and delivering a back elbow strike to his clone's face, dispelling it in a puff of smoke.

Another clone came through the smoke screen caused by his defeated brother and leapt at Naruto, attempting to wrap him up and leave him a sitting duck for the other clones to come in and pummel him. Naruto moved to the side and let his clone miss, instead having it jump through the surface of the water. the impact disrupted his footing and he dropped an ankle into the water, leaving him wide open for one of his other clones to land a hard punch to his face.

Naruto grit his teeth at taking the punch cleanly and shot a headbutt to the body of the offending clone, not hard enough to dispel it, but hard enough to disrupt its strategy, giving him time to regain his footing and hit a cross-arm chop to his clone's throat, dispelling it. He didn't see the other clone that he had forced under the water, but he did see the others he made, standing off to the side, none of them moving in to replace the ones he had beaten.

Naruto released a pulse of his sonar jutsu, sensing something close below him and jumped just high enough to avoid a pair of hands reaching up to grab him from below. Naruto stomped hard on the water, driving his feet through the surface and delivering a harsh stomp to the face of his sneaky clone, finishing him off. He sighed to himself before he looked up and saw five clones of the mass he made walking out to fight him this time.

XxX

(Hours Later)

The exhausted members of Team 7 and remnants of Team 10 came out of the forest on their way back to the house along with Kakashi only to see an, at the time for them, surreal sight. Naruto in a fight… with himself. With five of himself. Now that didn't surprise Team 10 at all, they knew he could do that. Team 7 on the other hand had no clue.

"Why is Naruto doing that with the Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Jutsu)?" Sakura asked rhetorically, not really expecting a legitimate answer.

"Those aren't regular Bunshin." Kakashi said, "They're Kage Bunshin. Clones like the ones that Zabuza used, only they're full-on copies of the original that can use jutsu, bleed, and all kinds of other things. He's sparring with them."

"Nevermind that! He does that all the time!" Ino said, fully used to Naruto's signature jutsu by now, "Look at _where_ he's doing it! He can stand on the surface of the water?"

"Huh." Kakashi said, sounding mildly disinterested, "Asuma must have shown him this exercise after they left. He picked it up very quickly I have to say; to be able to engage in a battle on the water after just a few hours. Well, that's still beyond most of you at the moment. Tree-walking comes first and then you can possibly think about trying this exercise." He finished as he made his way back towards the house.

The others watched as Naruto finished off the last of his clones. Naruto had the clone facedown in the water, pulling its arms back and holding its head down with his heel on its head while it struggled against him. The original grit his teeth and did not let up despite his clone thrashing to free itself. Finally the clone popped and Naruto slumped weakly on the water, panting heavily and rubbing his throat, "Okay… I'm never doing that to any of my clones ever again. Drowning isn't cool at all." He slowly walked his way back to shore and fell out face first on the dock as the others walked up to him from the edge of the forest, "Hey guys."

Ino kneeled down by him, "Are you alright? You sound half-dead."

Naruto let out a weak unintelligible groan before speaking, "My clones we used to get here popped… I blacked out. Then I came out here and did this for the rest of the day again, and again, and again. *laughs* I wonder what I'm going to do tomorrow? So how did all of you guys do?"

Sakura smirked, "Ino-pig and I have it down perfectly, after she saw me get it first of course." Ino growled at Sakura, who continued, "Sasuke-kun and Chouji are getting it, but Shikamaru. I don't know if he has it or not. He only did it a few times and then went to sit down."

Naruto moved his head to look at Shikamaru who stared right back with that bored look in his face, "Of course he did. Can someone help me stand up?"

Ino and Chouji both slung one of his arms over their shoulders and picked him up per his request. Ino grunted as she picked Naruto up, "Why are you just in your boxers?" She asked, somewhat dismayed at having to touch him like that.

Naruto rolled his eyes, "Because I had to fall into the water like one hundred times today and my clothes would have wound up soaked Ino. But when you learn it you can wear all the clothes you want to. Tell me how that works out." He said jokingly, getting Ino to dig a sharp knuckle into his ribs.

"Smartass." She said before changing her tone, "Hey, could you teach me how to do that tomorrow?"

Naruto answered with one question of his own, "Can you stand on a wall or a tree while barely even thinking about it?" She didn't really know how to answer so he did for her, "I'll ask Asuma-sensei tomorrow. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow anyway."

Chouji spoke up, "So where do you want us to put you Naruto?" He asked.

Naruto grinned at the large boy, "Oh just put me over by the clothesline. I need to get dressed anyway. Thanks."

They placed Naruto by his clothes and went inside the house while he put his stuff back on. After a moment, Naruto noticed Sasuke standing nearby looking at him intently, "What's wrong Sasuke-teme?" He asked. He hadn't even said more than a few sentences to the guy since he and his team had arrived.

Sasuke's coal black eyes seemed to bore into Naruto. It was really starting to mess with him. The guy never even paid him half a mind before in the Academy, just like most everyone else, "I want to spar with you." He said, "When I finish the tree-climbing exercise."

Naruto blinked once before answering, "Sure I guess. But why would you want to spar with me?" It wasn't that he didn't want to, because he did. He wanted to fight Sasuke since his time in the Academy, but when Sasuke started beating him again and again in spars and he showed less and less interest in fighting Naruto he thought Sasuke didn't exactly return that sentiment. So why would he want to fig-?

Naruto smirked to himself as he realized why. Sasuke thought Naruto was as strong as he was, or at least stronger than anyone else on either of the teams there. Now he had a chance to actually prove it to others and himself. Sasuke was widely perceived as the very best genin of this year coming out of the Academy. If Naruto could beat him it would be the best possible litmus test for him as far as how he was developing as a shinobi.

"Finish the tree-climbing training. And then we'll talk about it." Naruto said to Sasuke, looking forward to actually going head-to-head with the boy that was on the exact opposite end of the spectrum in the Academy that he was.

Sasuke returned Naruto's smirk with one of his own, "Whatever you say dobe." He said confidently.

Naruto shook his head and stood up, picking up his sandals instead of putting them on as he would have to take them right back off once he got inside anyway, "You won't be able to call me that after I actually beat you teme. I'll show you who the real rookie of the year is."

The two gave each other challenging looks until Sakura's voice called out to them, "Sasuke-kun! Tsunami-san says that food is ready! Get Naruto and come inside!"

Naruto gestured towards the door, getting an amused scoff out of Sasuke who walked back towards the house.

XxX

Dinner was largely uneventful. Asuma sat away from the table and Kakashi took his food on the couch while the genin and the family of Tazuna took all of the seats at the table. Everyone only got one good helping though, because Chouji was seemingly famished from his training today, and took it upon himself to hoard seconds, thirds, fourths, and etc.

Naruto finished his food and gave thanks to Tsunami before turning to Asuma, "So sensei. I can walk on water now. I can even fight on water now too, so what do I do tomorrow?"

Asuma looked over at Naruto and smiled at him, "Those Kage Bunshin of yours are ridiculous, you know that?" He said under his breath, but Naruto caught it as he nodded keenly in agreement, "Alright… you only have one jutsu fit for battle and you're our team's muscle so to speak, so I guess I'll show you a little something tomorrow before I go with Tazuna to work on." Naruto had a look of excitement on his face.

Sakura looked at Kakashi, "What about me Kakashi-sensei? Or Ino-pig? We finished tree-climbing."

Asuma rubbed his beard and looked at Kakashi, "Naruto can give them the water-walking exercise and they can work on that. They should get that just as quickly as they got tree-climbing." Kakashi nodded in agreement, getting smiles out of both girls, "I'd better get the lion's share of the pay when we get back Kakashi, I'm doing your work for you."

Kakashi shrugged, "If I felt that I would be of any use if Zabuza or anyone else showed up again I would go with you Asuma. Thanks though. Don't worry, I've been keeping a good eye on your students for you." He said in his characteristically dull , yet chipper voice.

"You didn't watch me all day Kakashi-sensei." Naruto slipped in, poking a hole in the man's statement.

"Actually Naruto-." Kakashi interjected, giving what everyone swore was a smile had that mask not been covering his face to the boy, "I got back before Asuma did, and I saw you training at the end so I technically did watch you while Asuma was gone."

Naruto gave him a dry look, ignoring the snickers from everyone around him, "I don't think I like you too much right now Kakashi-sensei."

Kakashi's smile never dropped, "Oh don't say that. I'll grow on you soon, trust me."

By now everyone had finished and the girls were helping Tsunami with the dishes when Sakura took notice of a picture with a missing section, "Hey Tsunami-san, what happened to this picture? It looks like a corner is missing like it was ripped out."

The civilian family all bristled at the seemingly innocent question from the pink-haired female genin before Tazuna finally spoke, "That part of the picture used to contain the image of a man this country called a hero."

At hearing that, Inari stood abruptly and ran out of the kitchen and upstairs, "Inari!" Tsunami called after him before turning to Tazuna, "Father you know you can't talk about him around Inari!" She then followed after Inari upstairs.

Kakashi looked over at Tazuna, who had his head down, "So I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that there's a story there." Tazuna nodded, "Well would you mind letting us in on it?"

Tazuna took off his glasses and wiped any smudges he might have on them off, "Seeing as how part of it has to do with the entire reason you're all here I don't see why not." He took a deep breath before continuing, "This is the story of a man that inspired our entire nation. A true hero of Nami no Kuni." Everyone else in the room sat in rapt attention as the old bridge builder began his story.

* * *

How To Train Your Genin: Tip 4

Do not be afraid to challenge your genin

The life of a ninja is hard and oftentimes extremely short. It is a good thing to want to keep your students safe and have them succeed at things that they feel comfortable with, but how will that prepare them for true emergencies? For when they are actually needed in something important? The answer is, that they won't be.

You will never know how they will respond under pressure until they actually are pressured. The best way to get them ready for stressful situations and danger is to put them in stressful and dangerous situations. This can be easily accomplished. C-rank missions are a good way to get them accustomed to actual ninja work, but after a while, if you think they've reached a plateau of sorts, do not be afraid to ask for a B-ranked mission. Is it dangerous? More than likely, yes it will be. But eventually they will be forced to fight for their lives, to brave great dangers for their comrades and village. If done in a semi-controlled way to get them ready you can mentor them through it, as is your job as their jounin sensei anyway.

Remember, protecting your students is okay, but there is such a thing as too much of it, and trying to keep them from getting killed ironically may be the thing that actually winds up getting them killed. Trust in your team to succeed and break their own limits in doing so. If they've been prepared appropriately they will make you proud.

-Shiho

* * *

**Chapter done, now be subjected to the haphazard thoughts that were circulating through my head while I was writing this over the course of the last 24 hours! I command you! **

**I've always wondered exactly how fast a ninja actually was in this show in conjuncture of mph. Now personally I believe that Gai is the fastest ninja in the show (Naturally. I'm not counting stuff like Hiraishin or Madara's space-time move) and I'm certain that his top speed isn't something ultra-ludicrous like the speed of sound. As a matter of fact, if his top speed is well over 100 mph I would be shocked (without the gates). I believe that the fastest group of ninja in the series would move at… between 80 and 100 miles per hour without weights I would hazard as a guess, because you see blur marks and all that shit indicating speed and the like, but that's an anime/manga thing that represents speed. And anyway, something moving from a dead stop to right in your face, covering a 50-100 foot distance at that kind of speed is going to be a fucking blur no matter what. Have you ever paid attention to cars passing on the highway? That's how fast I think a ninja moves, as fast as most vehicles are prompted to go. Using weights would drop his speed a good 10-20 mph, but again, that **_**is**_** a significant jump in speed comparison when you think about it.**

**Sorry, spontaneous question time over. I think about random things often.**

**Hope it was all well and good, I'll catch you all next time around. Kenchi out**

**P.S.: Fun fact. Even if you've been close friends with a girl for over ten years and have had sex with her once every blue moon since you were sixteen, it is not a good idea to sing the song "I Just Had Sex" by The Lonely Island (feat. Akon) roughly thirty second after you **_**actually**_** have sex with her, no matter how appealing and appropriate it is, especially if she can fight… and she could. I feel safe telling you all this since I will never personally meet any of you and you won't meet her, so consider this my court-ordered public service announcement. Don't do it, I have scratches… and not the fun ones, they're on my face now… and I had class today. It wasn't really fun explaining an angry red mark going down the side of my face all day.**

**Have a nice day.**


	8. Do the Wave

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I own two horribly injured knees that should in no way, shape, or form belong on a healthy 19 year old male… however when you aspire to knee in faces for a living, eventually they were going to wear down right?

**Chapter 8: Do the Wave**

**

* * *

**

The morning after Tazuna's story about Inari's stepfather Kaiza and what had happened to Nami no Kuni, Naruto was outside bright and early with his clones in a single-file line as he could practice his more devastating attacks until someone else came out and his day could get officially started.

Another of Naruto's clones walked up to him to go through a walkthrough of one of Naruto's moves. It stepped in with a front kick that Naruto caught and spun through to smash it in the face with a back elbow, dispelling it. His mind was firmly planted on the story he heard the previous night. Hearing about what Gato had done to a man trying to keep his land prosperous and free made Naruto sick. If he could get one clean shot a Gato while he was there he would freely take it.

Also hearing about Kaiza made Naruto wonder how Inari could say such a thing, that heroes didn't exist. If not then what had all of Kaiza's actions been? Had they served any purpose to the boy at all? Such a traumatic experience would obviously mess with his world-view, but if that was how he really felt, that they were going to die, then what did the little boy think was going to happen to his grandfather? Did he think he was just going to walk on home after they were all finished off? No, he was the real target. If Gato could kill Tazuna without even having to deal with the Konoha ninja sent he would. The only reason he even would possibly care about them would be because they would be protecting Tazuna.

Naruto continued to work his attacks with his clones until the front door opened to reveal the remnants of Team 10 and Team 7 coming out the door. As the boys headed out to the forest with Kakashi, Asuma walked over to Naruto and motioned for Ino and Sakura to walk over to him and for Naruto to do so as well, "Okay girls. You both did well learning tree-walking, but today you'll learn water-walking like Naruto here has. Naruto, if you would demonstrate?"

Dispelling his clones, Naruto walked to the edge of the dock and jumped off, landing on the surface with his feet, "It's like sticking to the tree, except because the water is always moving you have to match the amount of chakra you need to go with the flow of the water." He stopped and thought for a moment, "You're going to want to take your clothes off too."

"Naruto!" Ino and Sakura yelled at him, "We're not getting undressed out here you pervert!"

Naruto's cheeks heated up and he looked away, grateful he was standing on the water, something they couldn't do at the moment, "I didn't mean it like that you guys! I meant-. You know what, nevermind. Go ahead and do what you want." He jumped back on the dock and circled around so that he had Asuma as a buffer between him and the rather perturbed females, "I don't know why you're looking at me, get to it!" He hid behind Asuma when they glared at him.

'Don't play with fire kid…' Asuma thought to himself, "Alright, he's right. Both of you get started. Naruto, leave a clone here would you?"

Naruto did what he was asked, making a clone to watch over Sakura and Ino's progress. He sent it over to the edge of the dock where it sat down and waited for Sakura and Ino to start, "Oi!" He shouted to them before they could walk away, "Don't pop him." Sakura nodded and kept walking, "Ino…" He said dangerously.

Ino rolled her eyes, "Fine, I won't destroy your clone if I get pissed off. Happy?"

Naruto gave her a dry look, "No, not really." He and Asuma began to walk towards the house, "So what are we doing tod-?" He turned his head around quickly before they reached the porch, "Actually, hold on for a second." Naruto eagerly looked at Ino and Sakura and Asuma let out a small chuckle as he saw them both walk towards the water.

"So how do we do this Forehead?" Ino asked Sakura as they passed Naruto's Kage Bunshin, ignoring its knowing smirk.

"Naruto said it was like walking on the tree so it can't be that hard." Sakura said, trying to work out Naruto's advice, "Let's just do it."

Ino smirked, "I bet I beat you out to the middle of the water Forehead."

Sakura growled at Ino's challenge, "You're on Ino-pig! Have fun sitting on the dock!"

Both girls channeled chakra to their feet and stepped off of the dock onto the water, falling underneath immediately with a resounding splash. Naruto and Naruto-clone began laughing uproariously while Asuma let out a few amused laughs as well. Naruto had been leaning on the wall of the house and his clone had been rolling on the pier as Sakura and Ino pulled themselves out of the water.

Naruto wiped a tear from his eye, "Okay Asuma-sensei, so what are we doing today?"

Asuma moved towards the front door, "You're going to help me watch Tazuna today, but since you've been so good about getting yourself in gear I guess I can throw you a bone and give you a jutsu to work on while we're out there. It's not like you can get any from anywhere else."

Naruto grinned at his sensei as the front door was opened until his smile dropped, "Hold on wait. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)." He made another clone, "Protect yourself this time." The clone saluted him and ran back to the dock where Naruto yelled back at the girls, "I said _don't_ hit my damn clones! That's the last one! You do it again and you're on your own for the day, figure it out yourself!"

Asuma went inside of the house as the girls yelled back at him, Sakura in particular, "Then tell your stupid clones not to laugh at us!"

Naruto and his clone shared a look before both shouting out their reply, "It was funny!" Naruto elaborated, "If it had been me everyone watching it would have been getting their eight chuckles off of it!"

"So?" Sakura yelled back at him.

Naruto sighed, "Just don't break that one, he's the last one you're getting. I'm not wasting chakra just so you can have a punching bag to vent on Sakura-chan." Asuma came back outside with Tazuna in tow as they all began to walk to the site of the bridge for the day of work.

Sakura huffed indignantly as Naruto's clone took a seat to watch them continue to work on their water-walking. Sakura turned to Ino who was about to try it again, "Who does Naruto think he is? Telling us what to do like he's the leader."

Ino shrugged as she continued trying to channel chakra to her feet, "He's the strongest one on the team. I know it, Shikamaru knows it, the only one that really doesn't like thinking that way is Naruto himself, but it's true."

Sakura flipped her wet hair back and smirked, "Well no matter what he's still not stronger than Sasuke-kun." Ino didn't immediately leap to agree with her, which surprised her, "Right? He's not stronger than Sasuke-kun."

Ino stopped concentrating as she honestly thought about her answer, "I… I don't know. I honestly can't answer that question Forehead. If I just said yes it wouldn't be fair. I mean… he's not weak. Not even close."

"I'm so glad that you think that the boss isn't a wimp." Both girls turned their heads to see Naruto's clone sitting nearby giving them a deadpan look, "But you guys should really get back to working on this. It should take you all day to get it, and by 'get it' I mean be able to fight freely on the water."

Blushing at getting caught trying to talk about someone behind his back and failing, and taking Naruto's clone's words to mind, Ino started focusing her chakra again, "Now stop distracting me Forehead. I have to get this." With that, both girls returned to their new training exercise for the day.

XxX

Naruto sat off to the side of the work area with his clones posted as sentries all over the bridge building site. Though surprised at first, the sight of that many functional orange-clad, blonde ninjas put the workers at more ease and had the day of work carry on rather smoothly. Every so often Naruto was letting out a burst of Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) to monitor places he couldn't readily see on his own and found that when it came to people he knew, it was getting easier to distinguish more subtle figures, as it was getting easier and easier to locate Asuma and tell which outline was his no matter where he followed Tazuna at on the bridge. Up close he could even start to make out people's facial features and physical details with nothing but the jutsu and not his eyes.

Asuma walked over with Tazuna to check in on his more or less 'Head of Security', "Do you have anything strange Naruto? Anything suspicious to look out for?"

Naruto shook his head, "No Asuma-sensei. The clones that went ahead and popped themselves to show me something were all false alarms. Everything's clear as far as I can find."

"Well then." Asuma said with a grin, "I guess it's time to teach you a new jutsu to use." He saw Naruto hop to his feet in eager anticipation, "Kid you're going to be learning something a lot of genin don't get to learn, especially this early. You're learning Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu)." With that, in order to demonstrate he immediately disappeared in a burst of smoke and reappeared atop a crane a good distance away before doing it again and returning to Tazuna's side in a matter of moments.

Naruto's eyes widened as that had been the jutsu he had bugged the Sandaime Hokage to learn and ended up in the library for the first time, "How do I do it?"

Asuma placed the boy's hands in the ram seal, "You're going to have to channel chakra through your body enough for a temporary boost of speed. Your movements should be covered by a puff of smoke that usually covers you when you use it. When you get better at it you can make it even flashier to distract your opponents, but for now you'll have smoke."

Eager to begin his training on his new jutsu, one that he had actually wanted to learn for a while, Naruto began to get to work before asking a question, "Any advice?"

Asuma nodded, "Yeah, don't try going too far with it or too short a distance. It's meant to cover some ground, but it isn't anything to move long distances with, it's more along the lines of something that can get you out of sight. Going too short would be a waste since anyone with half an ability to sense chakra could tell where you're going and it's not fast enough to get the drop on someone that already knows you're there. Don't use it in the middle of a battle. Only one guy I've ever heard of could, and that's because he cast genjutsu before he started using it." He ruffled Naruto's hair, "Now get to it kid. It helps to have a good knowledge of where you want to go, either by being able to see it, or by it being a familiar place."

Naruto shrugged and began to go through the motions while Asuma held Tazuna back from continuing on his way so that they could watch his first attempt. Naruto thought of aiming for the top of the crane like Asuma did and did so, "Okay then, Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu)!" Naruto's body was shrouded in a puff of smoke.

CLANG

Asuma burst out laughing loudly when he saw Naruto belly up right next to the crane with a massive bump on his head, "Watch that tunnel vision Naruto! It's hard to see properly when you use that move. That's why it's good for moving in straight lines… the guy that mastered that move had Sharingan so he could see things slower, he didn't have that disadvantage."

Naruto rolled over amid the laughter from the workers and even his own clones who had seen and heard him hit, "I hate you Asuma-sensei."

Asuma walked up and picked him back up onto his feet, "Oh you don't mean that kid. Take it slow with this one." He pointed at a group of around ten Naruto's clones who were using the jutsu back and forth along the bridge, "They're getting it. Just do it along the ground for now before you try using it in elevated spots."

Naruto growled at his clones, "Oi! Get your asses to work, I didn't say you could train!"

A few of the clones flipped Naruto off, "We're bored and now we've got a new jutsu to learn. You watch the bridge, we already saw how much you suck at using it."

Naruto dispelled his clones and created more before using Shunshin to make it back to his original position, "Huh. It didn't feel as forced this time. Like I had already been practicing it." He looked down the bridge at Asuma and smirked as he again used Shunshin, only this time he appeared right next to his sensei, scaring the hell out of Tazuna, "Sorry old man." He quickly apologized before looking at the bearded jounin, "Hey Asuma-sensei, either I'm really good and can move already or this wasn't as hard as you and Hokage-jiji made it sound."

Asuma gave Naruto a strange look, "You should have crashed about five more times before you started getting it. This is only your second tr-…" He looked at Naruto's clones who were back on sentry duty, "You said that you use your clones to study things right?"

Naruto nodded, "Yeah, I had them read all of the stuff that Shiho-chan gave to me. I can learn what they learn."

The jounin stared at Naruto for at least thirty seconds before popping a cigarette in his own mouth and lighting it, keeping a cool façade despite the storm going on in his head, 'Okay Asuma calm down… so you have a gold-mine ninjutsu specialist prospect on your own team? Big deal, it's cool… no need to get all fired up and start raving about it. You'll swell the kid's head. We've _got_ to test this clone thing out later.' Asuma had to fight the urge to begin frothing at the mouth and running back to Konoha to brag about what he had just found out about Naruto.

Instead he gave Naruto a smile, "Good work Naruto. If you can do it without stumbling or falling on the ground I want you to practice using it to switch elevation, but stay out of the way of the workers and stay sharp."

Naruto grinned at his sensei and gave him a salute before going back over to where he was. He and Tazuna continued on their way of overseeing the bridgework, "That's one energetic kid. Do you mind if I put him to work on the bridge? We could use the extra hands."

'Well… the faster it finishes the faster we can leave…' He looked back at Naruto who was practicing on a pile of steel girders and back to Tazuna, "Let me think about it, let him finish learning his jutsu, maybe." In his head he was thinking about how much better his team was going to get now that he knew absolutely what to do about Naruto, 'Maybe I should start thinking exams?'

XxX

(Forest Around Tazuna's House)

Sasuke looked over at Shikamaru who was simply sitting and watching the tree. He couldn't believe this, he had been trying to get up that tree since yesterday and he hadn't gotten any closer, and here this guy was, not even trying. Hell, Chouji had made more attempts that Shikamaru had. The pineapple-haired genin had only made one… maybe two attempts between then and yesterday.

They were the only ones left, and the only solace he could take in this disaster of an exercise was that he wasn't the only one still doing it and neither of them had gotten any higher than him yet.

Naruto, from the other team and the dead-last in the Academy, already knew the exercise. He could accept that at first since his jounin sensei didn't look as lax as Kakashi did, but then he found that his sensei hadn't taught his team either and he had learned it on his own to go with a fighting style. If it weren't enough that the kid at the opposite end of the graduate spectrum had beaten him in learning this exercise and mastering it, the two fangirls from his and the other team beat him in learning it within hours.

It didn't matter. He had more important things to worry about than people who weren't there, namely getting up that thrice damned tree!

As Sasuke focused to prepare for another try of running up the tree, Shikamaru suddenly stood up and grabbed his kunai, "Are you finally going to start trying this out?" Sasuke said to him.

Shikamaru rubbed his neck, "Well it seemed like a waste of effort just going up and falling off again and again. I'm not a machine like Naruto who could keep going and going. I know enough about how this works by now though to give it a go."

Sasuke paused in his own attempts to watch Shikamaru give it a try. He channeled chakra towards his feet and took off at the tree. Sasuke's eyes then widened when he saw Shikamaru blow past his best mark of seventeen feet off the ground and keep going, all the way to the first branch where he stopped, "*sigh* So that's how you do it. Okay I've got it down."

He really didn't want to ask such a lazy guy how he did that, but he wanted to do better. Luckily for Sasuke, Chouji asked the question for him, "Hey Shikamaru, how'd you do that?"

Shikamaru looked down at his rotund friend, "You've got to find a balance and keep it. If you lose the balance you'll slip off and fall from the tree even if you had it in the first place… it's so troublesome."

Sasuke quickly understood what was being said and he looked at the tree with renewed vigor as did Chouji. Kakashi took that moment to interject and talk to Shikamaru, "It's good that you've got the theory down Shikamaru, now put it into practice. Come down here and start again until you can get to the top of the tree on one go."

Letting out a groan in disappointment, expecting to be done, Shikamaru jumped down and slowly walked over to his starting place before looking up, "But it's so high. Can you just tell Asuma I made it all the way up there and then let me wing it later?"

Kakashi gave him an eye-smile, "No can do Shikamaru. Until Asuma comes back, despite not being on my cute little genin squad I am in charge of you until he returns and you need to be able to do this, now get to it."

"Come on Shikamaru." Chouji tried convincing his friend, "The sooner we do it the sooner we can get out of here, right?"

Finding no success in being able to just sit it out in this instance, Shikamaru decided to keep going. Maybe if he just did the least amount he needed to keep Kakashi off his back he would fluke out and get to the top on one of his tries?

XxX

(In Front of Tazuna's House)

"Wah!"

SPLASH

"Get up." Naruto-clone ordered with a grin on his face and a pebble in his hand while he stood out a fair distance on the water, "You guys aren't good enough at this yet if I can make you fall like this."

Sakura pulled herself out of the water next to Ino on the dock and wrung out her hair as both of them glared at Naruto, "You're throwing rocks at us! How are we supposed to focus on standing on the water if you keep doing that?"

Naruto-clone chuckled, "You have to know how to fight and dodge on the water too for this to be useful Sakura-chan. I can't fight, so when you can reach me out here without falling in you pretty much are done."

Ino stood up and squeezed the water out of her clothes, "I am going to kick your ass when I get a hold of you."

Naruto-clone shook his head, "No you're not. When you get close I'm going to dispel. I'm not getting killed by you guys." He noticed someone walking in the background, "Oi! Inari! Come and pick up some rocks to throw at the girls, it's great!"

The little boy just glared at Naruto and ran off away from the house, confusing the clone and the two genin girls greatly before they both looked at him sadly, "Poor kid." Ino said, "After what happened to Kaiza I guess he would be like that huh?"

"Don't do that." Naruto-clone said firmly, getting the two girls to look back at him oddly, "That's exactly what he wants, for you to fall for his whole 'woe-is-me' stuff."

Sakura took offense to what he had said and let him know about it, "Naruto, he lost his father!"

"So did Sasuke." Naruto-clone argued back, silencing her, "You remember that right? Everyone remembers that, it was a big deal, he didn't come back to school for the entire month after his clan was killed. He lost his whole family." Naruto-clone then let off a shrug, "And at least he knew him and knew the guy loved him. I don't know what the hell happened to my parents." He juggled the pebbles in his hand, "Alright enough, back to training. That Zabuza guy isn't going to care about any of this when he shows back up."

From his tone, Ino and Sakura could tell that he didn't want to talk about the subject anymore, but gave them something to think about. Both boys had lived very hard and they didn't act like Inari did, the little boy just seemed like he had given up.

The clone started getting impatient, "Come on, I've got my pockets loaded down with rocks, let's go already!"

XxX

(Later That Evening)

Around the same time that Naruto, Asuma, and Tazuna came back from the bridge, Kakashi, Sasuke, Chouji, and Shikamaru came from the woods and their training. The two groups converged and walked the rest of the way to house together.

Naruto moved over to the other genin, "Did you guys get it yet?" Sasuke let off a 'hm', Shikamaru let off a troublesome, and Chouji held his stomach and complained about being hungry, getting a sweatdrop out of Naruto, "I guess that's a no." The group continued to walk towards the house when they saw Sakura and Ino moving about on the water before falling in, "What's going on?"

Naruto-clone looked up at Naruto and the other new arrivals and paled, "Boss run!" It then dispelled.

Naruto stood with a plain look on his face as Ino and Sakura climbed out of the water, until the information from his clone began circulating through his head, "Shit."

"Na-ru-to!" Both girls yelled as they saw the original orange-clad shinobi himself standing at the end of the dock and charged at him.

Seeing his life flash before his eyes, Naruto screamed like a girl, "No!" He quickly formed the ram seal, "Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu)!" Ino and Sakura missed him as he disappeared in a puff of smoke and reappeared on top of the house, "It was training!"

Shikamaru eyed Ino, who was huffing and puffing angrily and glaring at Naruto on the roof. He almost thought they were going to start circling the place to keep him up there, "What's the matter with you?" He almost ran for the hills himself when her angry eyes turned to him.

"He threw rocks at us…" Ino growled out, "He threw rocks at us while we were trying to stand on the water.

Sakura shook her fist up at him, "You're dead when you get down from there Naruto!" She yelled at him threateningly.

Naruto dug out his ear in a bored manner, "My clone did all of that, not me. He must have been bored though. And if that's the case I guess I just won't come down will I?"

The angry pink-haired girl placed her hands on her hips, "So are you just going to stay up there all night?"

Naruto kicked back and lay himself down on the roof, "It's a nice night. I don't have to go anywhere." Eventually he would get hungry, but he was certain that if things were really that tense and dangerous for him he could send a Kage Bunshin inside to grab a bite to eat for him, "Go change clothes before you catch a cold, you've been out here all day."

Ino stomped her foot angrily, getting a squish noise from her sandals, "You made us fall in the water all day!"

"I told you to take your clothes off, but no one ever listens to me the first time." He defended, flinching slightly when he felt the killing intent directed at him from the girls who he forgot could get up there in a matter of seconds, 'Open window!' After rapidly pulling off his sandals, Naruto darted in through the window just as they started jumping up to where he was.

"No running or shoes in the house!"

The others walked inside as Tsunami yelled at the genin already in there.

XxX

"Naruto-kun." Tsunami asked the boy from her spot at the table, "Are you sure you want to be all the way over there while we eat?"

Naruto looked up from his bowl and gave her a thumbs up from his spot a safe reactionary distance away from Ino and Sakura, "Yep, this is just fine. I'm great!" And it was. He'd rather not get beat up by girls right then.

Shikamaru and Chouji were trying and failing to hold in their laughter, "So you're saying that Naruto's clone spent the entire day after you could both stand on the water throwing rocks at you and making you dodge them?"

Ino nodded and stopped eating for a moment, "At least it had the good sense to stay away from my face, but these bruises aren't going to go away for a week."

"I didn't hit you that hard with them Ino." Naruto disputed from his position far away, "He would have tried fighting you both on the water, but if you hit him once he would have popped… So he threw rocks at you. It did the same thing. I bet you guys will have it down perfectly soon."

Sakura looked over at Sasuke, "How about you Sasuke-kun? Did you finish yet?"

Sasuke looked up from his food for a moment to answer, "Tomorrow." He said before he went back to eating.

"Same here." Chouji said before holding his bowl out, "Can I get more please?" He let out a happy laugh when his request was fulfilled and his bowl was refilled.

Asuma looked at all of the genin around the table and the one that was still keeping a safe distance away from the potentially volatile pair of kunoichi his clone had been picking with all day and smiled, "Well it looks like you're all as prepared as you're going to be for Momochi Zabuza. You've all done very well."

"I can't take it anymore!" Inari yelled, standing up from his seat angrily, "You all can't beat Gato! He's going to kill every single one of you!"

Naruto snorted from his spot away from the table, "Kid, we're not just going to roll over and quit. Your grandfather isn't, your dad didn't, well neither are we. We're not like you."

Inari turned his venom on Naruto, "Yeah, well I'd hate to be like _you_! You laugh and joke all the time, but people like you don't know how hard life can be!"

"You done?" Naruto asked, his temper getting more and more spiked by Inari's attitude, "I'm tired of hearing your nasty little mouth kid. You haven't said one positive thing since I've shown up here. You say we're going to die, well what do you think is going to happen to your grandfather if _we_ die? Do you think Gato's going to let him go home? No! He'll kill him even if he swore to quit working on the bridge. You're pretty much wishing death on him by wishing death on us!"

Inari looked at Tazuna, tears forming in his eyes. The old man sadly nodded to Inari, "I can't back out of this Inari, even if I wanted to. I'm seeing it all the way through. Kaiza would have, and I am too."

Naruto stood up, "He's doing what he can for you, for this country! I walked through town today, when was the last time you went?" He asked Inari who couldn't answer him, "Obviously you clearly don't know how hard life can be, because if you did you would be shutting the hell up right now! So you can sit on the sidelines and whine and try to get everyone to feel just as useless as you or you can do something about it. I don't really care which one it is because I just can't deal with you anymore." Naruto stood up and started walking towards the door to leave.

Ino shook her head as she saw tears start streaming down Inari's face, "Naruto that might have been too much. Hey, where are you going?" She asked him before he could exit.

He looked over his shoulder, "To beat the hell out of my clones." He said angrily, "You shouldn't follow me." He shut the door behind him as his footsteps thudded off of the wooden porch.

After the sound of his footsteps disappeared, Ino and Shikamaru stood up to go after him when Asuma stopped them, "Let him go. Guys like Naruto need some time to vent. He'll be fine by himself."

XxX

Naruto stood in the middle of the forest, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Naruto surrounded himself with countless clones that all shared his expression. One turned to one of his brethren and punched it in the face, dispelling it. From that moment on a free-for-all was declared.

The rest of the night the sounds of angry pitched battle filled the woods.

XxX

(The Next Morning)

A teenage girl with long black hair and brown eyes wearing a pink, sleeveless kimono walked through the woods with a basket in hand when she saw a boy laying down covered in scuffs and bruises. As she got closer she took note of the headband wrapped around his neck, 'A Konoha ninja? But this one isn't any of the ones that we saw last time. Did they get reinforcements? I left all my weapons at the hideout.'

She narrowed her eyes and set the basket down before quietly creeping up to him, slowly extending her hand to strangle him right then and there. Right as her hand got in range of touching his throat he grabbed her wrist and forearm with both hands and wrapped his legs around her neck and arm, proceeding to turn the tables and choke her with his legs, "Bastard clones… I knew I didn't get 'em all. This is the third time this happened." He mumbled sleepily until he failed to hear a pop that usually occurred when he choked his clones for too long.

Naruto opened his eyes and didn't see a clone of himself, he saw a girl his age slowly turning red in his grasp. Naruto yelped and quickly let go before backing away against a tree, "Oh Kami, I'm so sorry! I've been fighting all night and my opponents were being dicks and started hiding from me. I didn't mean to do that to you, I'm sorry!"

The girl sat on her knees coughing as the color of her face started returning to normal. She looked up at the boy that had almost killed her as he looked back at her with apologetically fearful blue eyes.

Naruto dropped forward and started bowing frantically, "I'm so sorry!" He got up and rushed over to her, "Are you alright? It looked like you were about to go out… thought that does mean that I'm getting better at the Sankaku-Jime (Triangle Choke)… But still, I didn't want to use it on a pretty girl like you! That one was meant for someone like Sasuke-teme!"

She stopped trying to regain her breath and took note of Naruto's appearance. She hadn't even noticed until it was too late that even in his sleep his muscles were tensed and even now he seemed prepared to retaliate to an attack from anywhere. He didn't look very fast, but from what she had experienced firsthand he didn't have to be, he was sudden when up close, able to close small distances up to a foot before she even knew what had occurred. Without any weapons and with him this close to her already, a fight wasn't going to go very well for her. Even if she managed to get away far enough to try using Ninjutsu she didn't know what else he could do, and getting away once he realized she was a threat was something else altogether. When he had her in his grasp she couldn't budge an inch.

It wasn't in any kind of tactical interest to fight him here, even if it would have thinned the opposition out for when Zabuza recovered.

"It's okay." The girl finally said, "You must have been quite on edge to attack like that. My name is Haku by the way." She said with a disarmingly beautiful smile.

Naruto grinned at her and let out a sigh of relief, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto. And I kind of came out here to safely pick a fight. I more or less went overboard." He looked around, "It's pretty early. What are you doing out here so early?"

Haku turned and pointed to the basket of herbs she had been walking with before, "I'm out here collecting herbs for someone close to me. He was injured not too long ago and I just want to help speed his recovery."

Naruto tilted his head to the side slightly and smiled, "Well then I guess I'll help you out. I did almost choke you out for no good reason. The least I can do is help you out and pick some herbs for you." He stood up and offered Haku a hand, "Just tell me what I need to grab for you."

Taking his offered hand with a smile, Haku stood up and went to collect her basket before leading Naruto to a nearby area to collect herbs. The two worked in a comfortable silence until Haku spoke up, "So Naruto-san, what were you doing out here, and who were you fighting?"

Now Naruto didn't want to say, 'Oh I was out here fighting with more than one hundred copies of myself to blow off a murderous temper that was initially directed at some sniveling brat.' That would be weird and would most likely scare the girl, who was already possibly terrorized of him, away for good. But he was Uzumaki Naruto, and thinking on his feet was what had gotten him famous.

The fact that he wasn't famous was irrelevant.

"Oh, I was fighting nature!" Naruto said before fighting the urge to facepalm, 'That was so stupid! Ugh… fine, roll with it. Combat etiquette says you cannot judge a battle plan while the battle is still carrying on, you have to wait until it's over.' He kept up his grinning face, "Yep, last night was pretty nice so I decided to camp out. The weather is great in this country."

"You're not from Nami no Kuni?" Haku asked. She knew where he was from. That headband was clear in its specification of his village allegiance.

Naruto shook his head, "No, I'm from Konohagakure no Sato. I'm a ninja here on a mission in this village."

"A ninja?" Haku repeated in amusement, "You must be very strong."

"I'd like to think so." Naruto said, laughing slightly, "But I'm not that good yet. I've got a long way before I'm as strong as I want to be. I've been training really hard for a while now."

Haku nodded and spoke again, "Why is it that you want to gain strength?"

"So that I can be Hokage." Naruto answered with confidence, "That way people will see me as someone important."

"So you do this for others?" Haku said seriously, "You gain strength and train for others?" Naruto looked at her with a blank face telling her that he didn't understand, "It's just, I believe when a person has something important that they want to protect, that's when they can become truly strong."

A smile slowly spread across Naruto's face, "I like that. You're absolutely right Haku-chan." He thought of his team, of Iruka, of Shiho, and of the Hokage, "I have things that I want to protect, and I'll definitely keep getting stronger to protect them."

Haku stood up with her basket full, "Then I believe that there won't be a limit to how strong you can get Naruto-kun." She began to leave before turning around, "Oh, and by the way. I'm a boy."

Naruto paled for a second before calming himself down prior to freaking out and thinking, "You've got a good poker face, but that's a lie."

"Wha-?" Haku was surprised at him calling her out on that, "I don't see how you can say that to me Naruto-kun."

Naruto shrugged, "It was a good double bluff. Dress like a girl and call yourself a boy to throw others off." He growled lowly, "I can only imagine with Gato's goons lurking around why you did that." He then brightened back up, "But remember, I did choke you… and it wasn't like I…" He took a gulp of fear, "…It wasn't like I didn't feel anything when I had you." Both Naruto and Haku blushed brightly.

"I… see." Haku said, breaking the silence.

Naruto simply took more time in silence before mustering up the will to talk, "So should I start running now, or are you not going to try and kill me for that? Because I swear it was an accident."

Haku waved off his trepidation, "It's okay. I have to go now." She said, turning to leave again.

Naruto was about to let her go when he stopped her, "Hey, do you think you could come back here tomorrow? This was nice."

Haku was about to tell him no when she saw the smile on his face that was almost begging her to say yes… and even though she knew she couldn't, she just didn't have it in her heart to turn him down, "Not tomorrow…" His face fell, "Maybe we could meet up the day after tomorrow?"

Naruto's good mood returned full force as he gave her a thumbs up, "Actually that works just fine too. Right here? So we both know where to find the other?"

Haku nodded, "Yes that sounds fine Naruto-kun. Goodbye." She returned his smile with one of her own that brightened his disposition even further.

"Goodbye Haku-chan." Naruto said happily, "I'll see you soon." He was ecstatic. It was never this easy for him to make friends in Konoha, and she actually agreed to come back the day after tomorrow. His morning was shaping up nicely to say the very least.

'Yes Naruto-kun.' Haku thought sadly as she walked away, 'I will be seeing you soon, sooner than you think. And not in the most amiable of conditions either.'

As Haku got out of sight, Naruto had a thought, if he was able to find out she was a girl then who's to say that none of the brutes under Gato could either. Naruto quickly formed a Kage Bunshin and pointed in Haku's general direction, "Follow Haku-chan and make sure she gets home alright. Don't let her see you either… she might think we're creepy if you get caught."

XxX

Asuma stood out front of the house with Tazuna, Kakashi, Team 7, and the remainder of Team 10 when Naruto came ambling out of the forest, "There he is. And from the look on his face he's not angry anymore. Are you ready to guard Tazuna? You'll be with Kakashi today."

Naruto nodded, "I'm fine Asuma-sensei, I just had to blow off some steam, but I'm completely calm now. Sorry about last night, but that kid just-."

"It's alright Naruto." Asuma said, "You don't have to say anything." He motioned to Sasuke, Chouji, and Shikamaru, "You guys are with me today. Let's go." They nodded and followed Asuma into the woods to continue their training.

Kakashi looked at the remaining genin, Naruto, Sakura, and Ino and gave them all a smile, "And that means that the rest of you are with me. We're on Tazuna guard duty today." They all agreed easily enough and began walking with Tazuna from the house to the bridge.

Before they got too far away, Naruto turned back towards the house and saw Inari looking out the window until he realized that Naruto had caught his gaze and moved to hide. Shaking his head, Naruto turned his attention to the work he was meant to do that day.

XxX

"Is this what you were doing all day yesterday? How boring Naruto."

"Why did you say all of that to Inari last night?"

"Where did you go?"

"What did you do last night?"

"Why is your face all scuffed up?"

Naruto leaned against the finished portion of the bridge railing as did Sakura and Ino on both sides of him, only they were badgering him with questions. Naruto never would have thought that he would be the one that wanted silence. Hell, part of him wanted them to start yapping about Sasuke, at least then they would stop asking him stuff.

He honestly wished that his windbreaker was something akin to a soundproof barrier, because he would have liked nothing better than to not have to hear them at the moment, "In the order you asked; yes I was doing this all day yesterday. Don't worry why I said that stuff to Inari, it's not important. I went to a strip club. I got a lap dance. And the strippers were a little rough." Two fists deposited themselves on his cheeks, "Ow… but worth it."

"Why didn't that hurt you more?" Ino fumed. It didn't even look like he had registered the hit.

Naruto swished his mouth around… did one of them dislodge a molar with one of those hits? Oh well, he didn't care right then, "It did hurt, but I'm leaning against the railing and I get punched in the face by myself every single day. I hit harder than you."

Sakura crossed her arms and looked away, "Stop trying to be cool Naruto."

Naruto looked at her and then at Ino, "I'm cool aren't I?"

Ino gave him a wry smile, "You're cooler than everyone thought you were, but you're still not as cool as Sasuke-kun." Both girls let off a swoon and repeated Sasuke's name wistfully.

"And on that note…" Naruto said as he got off of the railing and walked away from the girls to find Kakashi before they could get started on their Sasuke kick. A burst of his sonar jutsu located Kakashi's tall, spiky silhouette easily enough and the young blonde bounded over to him, "Hey Kakashi-sensei."

The silver-haired jounin looked down at Naruto, "Oh, Naruto. Any trouble?"

The boy shook his head, "No, nothing so far." Naruto said, somewhat downtrodden. He was getting antsy. As much as he tried hiding it he wanted some action to go down, he couldn't help himself. Sasuke had fought a jounin, he hadn't gotten to fight anyone yet, "Kakashi-sensei, what can you tell me about this Zabuza guy? You fought him and beat him didn't you?"

Kakashi nodded, "He's a top-level ninja Naruto, the kind of guy that a new genin like you shouldn't even consider fighting even under the most auspicious circumstances, because he will always be dangerous. He almost beat me and killed the entire team."

Naruto gulped, "What did he do?"

Kakashi looked up in thought as he remembered the events of the battle, "He managed to trap me and target my genin. Luckily Chouji showed a lot of heart and destroyed the clone with his family jutsu, that let Sasuke shoot off a jutsu of his own that forced Zabuza to let me go. From there on I refused to let him get any other chances… still, he got away when that hunter-ninja showed up. I should have been more attentive. We were lucky that after the trouble with the Demon Brothers earlier Chouji had the idea to send to Konoha for some assistance."

What if it had been his own team? What if Team 10 had gotten this mission instead? He was certain that they wouldn't have turned back either. They would have wound up fighting whoever this Zabuza was. What if Asuma had been the one who had gotten trapped and unable to defend the students, could he Ino, and Shikamaru have been able to get him out? Could they win if they had to fight?

"_I believe when a person has something important that they want to protect, that's when they can become truly strong."_

"It won't matter now Kakashi-sensei." Naruto said, prompting Kakashi to look at him in mild surprise. The blonde had a look of determination on his face, "We won't lose to Zabuza, or that hunter-ninja, or anyone. We're not going let this keep happening to this country Kakashi-sensei. If we're going to show this place that heroes still exist then we're going to have to be those heroes aren't we?" Naruto's face morphed into one of shock before his gaze hardened over, "Trouble."

"Zabuza?" Kakashi wondered. It didn't really fit his M.O. to be this blunt in his approach.

Naruto shook his head, "No, it's a bunch of thugs coming this way."

Kakashi took note of the serious look on Naruto's face, "You take Ino and Sakura and handle it. I don't believe you have any combat experience. While fighting a powerful ninja and taking on some thugs are completely different things you still could use the experience. I'll stay back with Tazuna." Naruto nodded and made the ram seal before popping off in a burst of smoke, 'He already has that jutsu down well enough to feel comfortable using it like this? You really do have your father's talent inside of you Naruto, and your mother's tenacity.'

XxX

Naruto appeared in front of Ino and Sakura in a puff of smoke, "We need to go. Now."

"Where?" Sakura asked as she and her fellow kunoichi stood up and followed Naruto who immediately took off running, "What's the matter?"

Naruto and the girls kept running for a few minutes before reaching the edge of the bridge where several of Naruto's clones had their kunai out and at the ready behind the construction gate. On the other side stood around twenty of Gato's men preparing to storm the site. Outside they stood, terrorizing people off of the streets and otherwise harassing people joyfully, "You don't want to be on the side of these fools. What do you all care anyway? This isn't your country, it isn't your problem."

"It is now." Naruto said cracking his knuckles as he stared down the thugs holding a myriad of weapons, from simple household tools to actual swords, "Now I think _you_ don't want to be on _Gato's_ side. You should leave now." He pulled up a fist full of shuriken.

The men all laughed at Naruto, "A bunch of punk kids are going to tell us to leave? Get in there and tear that brat apart!"

Naruto didn't say a word, he simply formed the seal for his most battle-ready ninjutsu and wound up side-to-side with fifty clones, all with shuriken in their hands, "Who's going to tear who apart?" With that, half of Naruto's clones jumped up over the height of the fence and pelted every thug in their range with their weapons.

That lone attack cut down several of Gato's thugs that were unable to run away and hide behind any cover fast enough, "Is that all you've got brat? You're dead when we get in there!"

Naruto again didn't say anything. Half of his clones simply boosted the others over to allow them to jump to the thug's side and begin a melee battle. The clones beat down the men and took them by surprise before they realized what was now happening. The return assault began claiming the lives of the Kage Bunshin sent after them, but not fast of efficiently enough. The remaining clones on Naruto's side took the tops of the gate and began picking off hapless men in the middle of their scrum against the infantry clones one by one with precise kunai shots that grievously wounded many.

Eventually the casualties were too great for them to continue fighting and they started retreating, leaving their wounded comrades moaning in pain in the streets as the retreat started becoming a rout, Naruto's clones chasing them all the way. The people who had been watching from safe points came outside and started cheering at seeing someone show Gato's goons up for the first time in a long time.

As they began cheering, Naruto dispelled his clones and let a sheepish grin cross his face as the attention fell on him.

Ino and Sakura stood back, having watched the whole thing firsthand. The original Naruto hadn't moved an inch the entire fight. His clones had done all of the fighting and had been an overwhelming force against the group of men. They were largely untrained thugs meant more to intimidate than to fight actual battles, but he hadn't even needed to go over and fight himself. He hadn't even needed to say a single word.

Sakura looked at Naruto uncomfortably soak up the praise from the workers who had seen him fight, "When Shikamaru said that Naruto was a one man army…"

Ino nodded, smiling fondly at Naruto's victory, "Shikamaru loves Naruto's Kage Bunshin more than Naruto does himself sometimes, I swear. He says, 'Why play shogi when I actually have real soldiers to work strategies with?'" She looked at Sakura who still could hardly believe the usefulness of Naruto's signature jutsu, "That's why I said that I don't know whether or not Sasuke-kun was stronger than Naruto. It wouldn't be fair to Naruto to just say that he was blindly."

Naruto ran over to the girls, cutting their conversation short, "I think I should stay here in case something like this happens again. If something happens on your end I'll have some clones with you so that I can find out for myself. Tell Kakashi-sensei would you?"

Ino playfully faux-saluted Naruto, getting him to roll his eyes amusedly. Sakura put on a tentative smile, "Sure thing Naruto. You've got it." They both took off back towards the unfinished part of the bridge where Kakashi and Tazuna were.

Naruto's smile dropped as he turned towards the wounded men that had been left behind and found one that wasn't too bad off. His attitude shifted as he remembered one of the most important lessons Shiho pounded into his head early on. That information was one of the most powerful tools in the shinobi world.

Taking this to mind, Naruto made his way over to the man who saw him coming and fearfully crawled along the ground until he reached a weapon and got to his feet. He stood with a small club in his hand and glared at Naruto hatefully, "You think you'll get away with this you monster! There's more where we came from!" He yelled before charging Naruto outright.

"I know." Naruto said lowly as he prepared himself for the incoming attacker. Naruto darted forward as the club was swung. He maneuvered himself so that the dangerous portion of the club didn't hit him, instead, the inside of the man's fist hit his bicep and shoulder. Naruto used his diminutive frame to jump up and use the top of his head as a battering ram that snapped the man's jaw shut. He was sure it cracked his jaw when his teeth audibly clicked.

As the man stumbled back, Naruto grabbed both of his wrists, freeing up his front with no defenses whatsoever. Naruto kicked out the insides of his legs to drop him to his knees and planted the sole of his foot right on the man's face, sticking with the use of chakra. Naruto jumped forward, ignoring the fact that the man was on his knees already and drove him onto his back to deliver a stomp kick that pressed the man's head between his foot and the ground, "Yousai no Houkai (Collapsing Fortification)!"

Naruto let go of the man's limp arms and peeled his foot from his face to see that he was unconscious with multiple broken bones on his visage. Naruto formed a Kage Bunshin to drag him off somewhere to possibly interrogate him and let out a sigh. He looked down at his hands to see that they were shaking and he couldn't will them to stop. He hoped that was just nerves from the adrenaline wearing off.

He decided to stake out the entrance to the building site for the rest of the day and took a seat near the gate to stand watch. He reflected on the battle he had just had. It wasn't a jounin for sure, but he thought that he had done awesome.

As he started thinking on what he had done, a clone had popped and had given its memories back to Naruto. A memory that caused Naruto to gasp in shock, "Haku-chan…"

* * *

How To Train Your Genin: Tip 5

Cultivate your genin's interests

Unless you have a ninja based from a clan on your squad you will usually be dealing with a blank slate as far as potential ability goes. The grades that they make in the Academy are good indicators towards where their strength may lie upon graduating, but that usually won't tell the whole story of any one ninja's potential. The best way to make a splendid shinobi out of your raw genin is to pay close attention to how they do everything, and I mean everything.

How your young ninja goes about doing basically anything in their everyday life is an indication of where their strengths lie. Something as simple as the way they tackle the simple D-ranked missions they will undoubtedly be saddled with early on will give you good signs of what they feel best doing. Before taking the mission do they ask many questions? That could be a sign for someone interested in an intelligence career. During the mission do they work fast and complete the assignment with more than enough energy to burn? That could be a quick-response ninja or maybe a potential ninjutsu specialist once their chakra reserves increase higher.

The point is, do not have them settle into a cookie-cutter mold of what you see most ninja doing. The more unique a ninja is, both in skill and possible eccentricity, the more likely they are to be powerful or good at what they do. (Tell me you haven't seen a couple of wing-nuts around the village and then after asking about 'that crazy guy over there' come to learn that they're ten times better than you.)

Individuality is important towards a ninja's overall skill set. Having everyone be just the same as everyone else in their talents makes a very uniform, one-dimensional military, and that is and always has been a detriment to martial might.

-Shiho

* * *

Jutsu List

Sankaku-Jime (Triangle Choke). C-rank taijutsu. Offensive, defensive. A type of figure-four chokehold which strangles the opponent by encircling the opponent's neck and one arm with the legs in a configuration similar to the shape of a triangle. The technique is a type of lateral vascular restraint that constricts the blood flow from the carotid arteries to the brain. Unconsciousness when properly executed will come in under 7 seconds, death will occur in under 20, not even adding in the variable of lower body strength. From this position one could also deliver powerful elbow strikes to the head, or draw a kunai or other sort of bladed weapon to kill an opponent.

Yousai no Hokai (Collapsing Fortification). D-rank taijutsu. Offensive. Using the sticking effect of chakra to grab onto an opponent's arms and keep them from breaking your grip, the user then has a wide open close range avenue to begin assaulting an opponent with knees, headbutts, and front aimed kicks. The effectiveness of this technique is dependent on your enemy's and your own skill in fighting without the use of their own arms as both of your arms will be unavailable for the duration of the technique.

* * *

**Nothing to say. Bleh. I've got a fight tonight. I'm going to kick some serious ass because I'm awesome! Then I'm going to come back and write a paper… because apparently my schedule likes messing with my head and placing two things back to back that should not even come close to each other. But you don't care, whatever.**

**Chapter up, hope it was enjoyable. Kenchi out.**


	9. Turn So Cold

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If you see me crying it's not because I'm sad about this fact, it's because I broke my hand and then typed this shit out. But it doesn't matter, because I'm Kenchi618… and I… I rule the world.

**Chapter 9: Turn So Cold**

**

* * *

**

Naruto seemed to be a ghost for the rest of his shift watching the path to the bridge as he sat against the gate and rolled through what his clone had told him of its time tailing the girl from earlier that morning. She was so nice, they had a wonderful talk it was actually one of the most pleasant conversations that Naruto had ever had with anyone around his age ever. In just a small amount of time he had thought that he'd made a real friend, but then the clone had dispelled.

The clone he had sent to tail Haku to make sure that she made it home, wherever home was, safe and unbothered by any of Gato's men found something rather interesting as it shadowed Haku from a distance.

_(Flashback – That Afternoon)_

'_Man Haku-chan lives way out of the way.' Naruto-clone thought to himself as he continued to shadow Haku, 'I guess it's a good thing that boss sent me after all, there was way too much of a chance of some jerk trying to do something to her with all of the ground she had to cover to get here.' The sounds of something being smashed clean through before a tree fell nearby alerted Naruto-clone and startled him, 'Oh, Haku-chan's dad must be a lumberjack or something. But didn't she say that he was supposed to be sick or something?'_

_Haku pouted and looked over in the direction that the tree fell from as she began to walk in that direction towards a man with camouflage pants and a sleeveless grey shirt. He had spiky brown hair and the lower half of his face was covered much like Kakashi's was only with bandages, "Zabuza-sama I told you to wait until tomorrow. You can still make yourself worse by being up and about today. Go lay back down."_

'_Zabuza?' Naruto-clone thought to himself, 'That's the name of the guy that tried to take out old man Tazuna and Team 7 isn't it? How does Haku-chan know him?' He stayed hidden and grit his teeth as he continued to listen._

"_Haku…" Zabuza growled in warning, "Tomorrow is the day that we're to attack. I can't go into it all stiff and rusty. This is nothing. I've been in bed all week, I need to get readjusted with my full range of motion here. I'm sure Kakashi isn't just sitting around licking his wounds."_

"_About that." Haku said, setting her basket of herbs down nearby and walking over to Zabuza, "There are more ninja now. A complete team to go with the one already here. They were able to get reinforcements. From the looks of one of the ninja I met it seems to be another squad of genin however."_

_Zabuza began pacing around thoughtfully, "Hmm. The numbers have the potential to be a problem, but if they're anything like the squad that came with Kakashi they would mostly be cannon fodder if they were to openly get involved." He stopped and looked at Haku, "I'm going to assume that you came across one while you were gone."_

_Haku nodded, "Yes Zabuza-sama. A blonde Konoha genin."_

"_And you didn't just finish him off then and there?" Zabuza asked incredulously, "You're far too soft for your own good Haku."_

"_He had me in close quarters Zabuza-sama. I didn't have any weapons to fight with and he was more skilled than I am in close." Haku said, defending herself slightly, "I simply tried to get some information from him from that point forward. I didn't learn anything substantial though other than the added squad as our enemies." She fiddled with her kimono, getting the attention of Zabuza as he had never seen her show any kind of nervous tic before, "I will be ready for whatever occurs tomorrow however."_

_Zabuza kept a firm gaze on her for a moment before letting it drop. There was time to talk about it later, "Good. You're my secret weapon Haku. You know how useful you are to me and my overall ambition. I can tell that you don't want to kill this boy that you met but remember how close we are to our ambition Haku. With this money we're closer than ever to affording the means to fund a proper rebellion."_

_Haku nodded and walked over to pick her basket back up, "Of course Zabuza-sama. There's nothing at all to worry about. I know what this mission is to us and how important is is."_

_Naruto's Kage Bunshin held back from jumping out and shouting at Haku the first things that came to his mind, complete with obscene insults and angry name-calling. Instead he simply began walking away, thinking of what it had just seen before it got far enough away and dispelled._

(End Flashback)

Naruto shook his head clear of the thoughts that had played through his head for hours upon hours, 'Was all of that really just a trick? She seemed so sincere. I really thought she was a kind person. Was all of that just in my head?'

He frowned as he remembered the first lessons he had been drilled on during what he now affectionately referred to as 'Hell Week with Shiho-chan'. A ninja's job is to complete the mission. To cover their true emotions for the sake of professionalism and to snub out all weakness that could become a liability in the field. Success above ethics, personal morals, everything.

'What a bullshit rule.' Naruto scowled, 'I'll take that as a guideline. No one follows the rules to the letter anyway right? They were made to be broken.'

"So this is what you've been doing while we've been climbing that troublesome tree." Naruto turned his head up to see Shikamaru walking towards him with his hands in his pockets, "Well it seems a lot better then what I was doing that's for sure."

Naruto raised an eyebrow at his teammate, "I'm not doing anything at all Shikamaru."

Leaning against the gate that Naruto was sitting against, Shikamaru smirked, "I know. It's great isn't it?" Naruto rolled his eyes as the two settled into silence for a short while. Shikamaru's eyes kept moving to Naruto's face and took notice of the look of deep thought that seemed rather foreign on the blonde's face. However he chose not to speak on it, believing that anything he'd say would lead to a conversation that would be more trouble than it was worth.

Naruto finally let out a sigh and broke the still silence that was only filled by the sounds of faint construction work a ways away, "So you guys are done with tree climbing?" Shikamaru nodded, "It took you all long enough. Oh well, at least you guys finished before nightfall. So where's Chouji, I expected him to be with you."

Shikamaru smirked, "He headed back to the house to grab a bite to eat before coming here to meet me. He should still be a few minutes before showing up. Asuma headed back to the house with Chouji and Sasuke. They're probably going to rest."

XxX

(Meanwhile – At Tazuna's House)

Asuma sat on the porch with a small scowl on his face and a cigarette in his mouth, "I can't believe I've got to smoke outside… I'm a grown man, a high level shinobi… and I just got kicked outside by a housewife with a nice body, cute face, and a deceptively terrifying scowl." He put the cigarette to his mouth and took a deep intake, "*sigh* Just another day in the life…" He narrowed his eyes at someone dragging a body down the path and noticed that it was Naruto pulling a person behind him and stopping every few steps to slap the man in the head, "I really hope you didn't drag him all the way through town."

Naruto dropped the man in front of Asuma, "If I said I didn't would you give me a cigarette?"

"I'm not wasting a cigarette on a clone. Are you a clone?" Asuma asked, letting the smoke leak from his lips.

"No…" 'Naruto' said before Asuma raised his hand in a prepared flicking motion directed at his forehead, "Okay, I'm a clone… damn it. Anyway." Naruto-clone kicked at the man on the ground, eliciting a groan on pain from him, "Boss beat up a ton of these guys outside of the bridge building site and he caught this one and made me bring him to you. He said you might know what to do."

Asuma stared at the clone and then at the downed man before standing up and grabbing the man by his collar, "Okay, follow me." Asuma dragged the man to the front porch and opened the door, "Sasuke! If you want to learn something then meet me in the woods in ten minutes!"

"Alright." Sasuke said loud enough to be heard from inside.

With that, Asuma started dragging the man off of the porch and towards the woods they had just left. He gestured his head at Naruto to follow him as the blonde clone fell in step, grateful that he didn't have to keep dragging Gato's goon any further, "So are we going to interrogate him Asuma-sensei?"

"Yep." Asuma said without even looking down at Naruto, "Ino isn't here so we're going to have to do this the old fashioned way." He saw Naruto-clone facepalm at forgetting about Ino's Shintenshin no Jutsu, "Don't hit yourself too hard brat. I need you here to pick this stuff up, you're going to have to learn how to do this eventually." He looked back at the man who was still unconscious, "And you did a number on this guy so I don't think we'll have to do too much to get him to crack."

XxX

(With Naruto and Shikamaru)

By now Chouji had indeed made it to where Naruto and Shikamaru had stationed themselves, loaded down with snacks and had taken to joining them in their guarding of the bridge site. It didn't take long for Chouji to pick up on Naruto's melancholy mood as well, except unlike Shikamaru he was actually willing to ask about it, "Naruto what's the matter with you? Did Kakashi-sensei do one of his speeches that sounded like they were nice but he was really chewing you out? Because if he did I've got to say that we've all gotten at least one of those, there's no need to be down about it."

Naruto shook his head, "No it's just… Well I might as well tell you, it involves you all anyway. I can't wait until my shift is over and spring it on Asuma or Kakashi-sensei like that when you're just sitting here." This got both Chouji and Shikamaru somewhat on alert hearing that they were involved, "Alright, you know how you said you guys saw a hunter-ninja working with Zabuza that helped him get away"

Chouji nodded, "Yeah, he didn't seem any older than us, pretty small too, the guy didn't seem like he ate much, how did he carry Zabuza away so fast?"

Naruto almost chuckled, "That's because the hunter-ninja was a girl. Did they have black hair? Pretty soft spoken?" He got a nod from Chouji and whatever little humor he had faded, "Yeah… that's Haku-ch-… I mean that's Haku. I met her this morning in the woods, a clone tailed her home to keep her safe, he found out she was with Zabuza."

Shikamaru finally weighed in on the whole situation, "You said your clone followed her and found Zabuza. Do you know where that is exactly?"

Naruto looked over at his teammate, "Yeah. One of the things I'm really good at is remembering how to move through areas, directions and stuff like that." He looked over at Chouji who had his eyes locked on Shikamaru before he himself turned back to the lazy pineapple-haired boy, "You have a plan already don't you?"

Shikamaru shut his eyes and adjusted his position against the fence to make himself comfortable, "Ask me later…" He said dismissively, "Whatever it is we're going to do next is going to be a serious bother. I'd like to enjoy the little bit of downtime I'm getting between climbing that tree and what we're going to have to do about what you just told us."

"So you're not going to tell us?" Naruto asked, getting no response from Shikamaru.

Chouji patted the blonde on the shoulder, "You should know by now Naruto. He isn't going to tell us here because he'd just have to repeat it later with everyone else. We're going to have to wait until tonight." Naruto growled lowly, "Hey calm down. You're probably just cranky because you haven't eaten all day."

Naruto crossed his arms over his chest, "I'm not pissed because I'm hungry Chouji." Naruto's stomach then growled in dispute, "But it sure isn't helping my mood any."

XxX

(With Asuma and Naruto-clone)

Asuma and Naruto-clone had quickly been joined in the woods by Sasuke after Naruto-clone had tied the man they dragged out there to a tree. Sasuke looked down at him and over at the eldest shinobi on the scene, "So what are we doing now?" He still had energy to burn after finishing tree climbing training and it didn't sit right with him to stay in the house and do nothing. Whatever Asuma had called him here for was good with him as long as it was productive.

Asuma pointed at the thug tied to a tree, "We're going to interrogate this guy and work the information of where Gato is and what his plans are out of him. And you two are going to be the ones to do it."

"Us?" Naruto-clone asked his sensei before he and Sasuke looked at each other and down at the thug, "How the hell are we going to do that?"

Asuma went off to the side and leaned against another tree, "You're going to do it anyway you want to, just leave him in one piece. If you can't do it I'll just have Ino pull it out of his head when she gets back later this evening." He pulled out another cigarette and sparked it up, "Get cracking."

Sasuke sighed and looked at the unconscious man, "Well we might as well get started. Wake him up Naruto."

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto-clone said before cracking his knuckles, "Should I be nice?" Sasuke shrugged, prompting Naruto to do the same before he slapped the man hard across the face.

"I thought you were going to be nice?" Sasuke said with a raised eyebrow.

Naruto-clone smirked, "That _was_ me being nice. There are way worse ways to wake someone up." He noticed the man coming around and crouched down to his level, "Nice to see you awake again."

"Fucking brat…" The thug mumbled through his jaw that Naruto had injured earlier, "Why am I here?"

Sasuke moved forward, "Tell us everything you can about Gato. What he plans to do about us, what he plans to do with the bridge, where he is, everything."

The thug spit at Sasuke's feet, "Like I'm really going to tell you babyfaced runts anything. I get good money for what I do. I'll never turn on that."

Naruto-clone walked forward and poked his finger into the man's jaw eliciting a cry of pain from him, "Gato isn't going to pay you if you're gone. We can keep you here for as long as we want, and this is deep in the woods, at the part that no one goes to. You aren't going anywhere so you'd better tell us. We'll probably let you go."

Naruto-clone stopped pressing against the man's pained jaw and let him speak again, "You kids are all going to get hurt… bad. Walk on home boys."

"We can't." Naruto-clone and Sasuke both deadpanned at him before Sasuke spoke up, "You've got the west coast of the island all choked down and every port full of your goons. How are we supposed to leave even if we felt like it?"

A laugh came from the man tied to the tree, "Heh, tough luck for you both then junior. Now untie me and let me go. I've got to go drain the head if you know what I mean."

Naruto-clone and Sasuke both walked away from the man where the blonde of the pair started whispering, "Okay, I have no idea how to go about getting this guy to talk other than beating the crap out of him, and that'll take all night. We might as well wait for Ino if that's what we're going to do."

Sasuke scowled slightly. He didn't like the idea of not being able to do something. Some punk-ass thug tied to a tree wasn't going to hold out on him if he could help it. Sasuke began to think before an idea hit him, "Okay, I think I've got something. Just follow me on this one." Without waiting for an answer he went back over to the man tied to the tree and crouched in front of him with his elbows resting on his knees and one fist resting in his other hand in front of his mouth in a stoic stance, "Okay fine. We're going to let you go."

"Finally." The man said, "No matter how much you kicked my ass anyway I was never going to say anything."

Sasuke's mood and face were unchanging, slightly unnerving the man at the stone-cold gaze that a kid could have, "You can go on back to Gato and tell him that you were held by the enemy and that they let you go without you telling them anything at all. I'm sure that'll work out really well."

"W-What are you talking about kid?" The thug said, squirming in his bonds as if he could feel Sasuke's coal black eyes staring into his soul, "I didn't tell you anything."

Naruto-clone realized where Sasuke was going and decided to add in as well, "He won't know that. He'll think you talked even if you swear up and down that you didn't. He might even kill you anyway just because. He cut a man's arms off and strung him up in the center of town to be executed publicly, you don't think he'd just get rid of you if he didn't trust you?"

"And even if he doesn't…" Sasuke said before backing off and making a hand-seal. A puff of smoke came before Sasuke appearing before them in the exact appearance of the tied up thug, "We can just walk around town until someone notices this form. I think this can get you into some trouble with what we'll have it do, and then we'll turn you loose and see exactly how well off you'll be." Sasuke said in the man's voice.

Naruto-clone grinned ferally at the man who was now looking at them wide-eyed, "We can just ruin your life like this, or we can make sure that you're a dead man walking by letting Sasuke here sabotage some of Gato's attempts to shake villagers down, or even have him take down more than a few of Gato's others to make them think you've turned on them." Naruto moved forward and crouched down, grabbing the man by the hair, "Do you get it yet? We're ninja. We're the people you see right now, and we're the people you never see at all. We can ruin your life and get away with it because we were never there. We're head and shoulders better than you and you need to know it. Don't fuck with us. One of me kicked twenty of your asses without flinching."

The man's voice was now quivering. If what they said was true he was screwed no matter what he did, "And why should I even tell you anything huh? Either way I'm dead!"

Sasuke nodded as he straightened himself back up, "True, but if you tell us what we want to know we'll give you a fighting chance to run away before we act and your boss figures out what happened to you. By the time he realizes that _you_ were the one that said anything it would be too late for him to do anything about you. You guys are nameless, faceless dumb muscle to him anyway. He doesn't know who you are."

Naruto-clone stood back up and dusted his legs off, "Then again if you don't tell us anything then we're going to do everything we just said we'd do to flush out more guys to interrogate, and then we're going to drop you in the middle of town and tell Gato's men exactly where you are. And then you won't even have a shot at getting away at all, the villagers won't help you, and you'll be all alone." Naruto-clone and Sasuke looked at each other and smirked, "But it's your choice."

Asuma let an approving smile come to his face as he saw the man hesitate to respond after Naruto-clone's final statement, 'And that's checkmate. Granted it was a guy that was some run of the mill punk, and Naruto probably already had him scared of him by the time he caught him, but that was still pretty good.' The man quickly started spilling what he knew in correspondence to Sasuke and Naruto-clone's questions, 'I should still have Ino go through the guy's head later.'

XxX

(Later That Evening)

In the living room of the house sat the two teams in their entirety. Asuma had just told them everything that Naruto and Sasuke had gotten from the thug of Gato, and Naruto had told all of the others what he had found out from his early morning interaction with Haku in the woods.

"So…" Ino started once all of the cards had been lain out for everyone to take note of, "You got within arm's reach of Zabuza's hunter-ninja and you _didn't_ end up in a fight?" She asked to Naruto who looked away with his arms crossed.

Naruto let out an indignant snort, "It was early, I had just woken up, I didn't know she was the hunter-ninja, she was cute and nice, and I'm a gentleman." He grabbed at his hair and messed it all up, "What do you want from me? Kami, my head is spinning. I'm starting to hate my clones. The feedback is starting to piss me off." Naruto calmed himself and pulled his goggles down over his eyes so that he didn't have to directly meet anyone else's.

Kakashi chose to step in at this point, "Right… well now we know to be ready for tomorrow, and what have we learned from Gato's man?"

Sasuke spoke up after being more or less prompted to by Kakashi, "Gato's going to wait until after we're done fighting and then he's going to bring all of his manpower to finish off whoever wins. We know where he is though. It's not like he's really even hiding. He has a mansion that he's been constructing about 20 miles outside of town for the last year or so."

Shikamaru's brain was working overtime at this point, "So it's not even complete… That means that no matter how many men there are guarding the place inside or out there's going to be a way in." He then groaned slightly, "Is anyone here other than one of the jounin really good enough to get in and out without having the entire place try to tear them apart?"

The only person that raised their hands were Naruto and Ino, albeit slowly. Sakura looked at them both with a strange stare, "And why do you two think you can do that and get away?"

Ino and Naruto looked at each other before shrugging and answering simultaneously, "Shintenshin no Jutsu/Because I'm awesome." Ino looked over at Naruto and shook her head, "Of course you'd say that wouldn't you?"

Sakura let out a huff at Naruto's seemingly arrogant remark about himself, "And what exactly makes you so 'awesome' Naruto. I could accept Ino's reason, but other than raising an army of clones to fight them how would you get in and out unseen?"

"Aw come on Sakura-chan." Naruto said, "I'm not bad. I painted the Hokage Monument didn't I?"

Shikamaru scratched his head as he worked out his explanation, "And, well you just said it. Naruto can make a ton of Kage Bunshin to directly attack the place, and while that's happening the real Naruto and Ino under Shintenshin on some guy they wind up getting a hold of can move around inside under the guise of saying that she caught him outside and brought him to Gato for interrogation."

Sakura's eyes widened, "That's… actually not bad at all. But don't they just go away after one hit or something?"

Naruto nodded, "Well yeah, but that doesn't mean that they can't raise enough hell to come off as a threat at least." He then looked down, "But I'm more worried about the whole thing with Zabuza. We know where he is. What are we going to do about that?"

Asuma looked over at his male blonde student, "Send a clone and tell them about what Gato is going to do. Hopefully they won't destroy it and they'll give you a chance to explain." He sighed, "If they destroy it or don't believe us then it won't matter anyway."

A shake of the head from Naruto was his reply, "No… I think that if I'm going to go I should go myself. If I don't go then they definitely won't trust us once the clone gets dispelled." He then thought to himself, 'Maybe that whole thing with Haku wasn't a complete lie… maybe she'll listen to what I have to say at least.'

"That's really not a good idea Naruto." Shikamaru interjected, "Going all by yourself would just get you killed."

"If I don't go alone then they'll be suspicious and attack us before we get close enough to explain." Naruto tried to defend, "I've got to at least try to get them to trust me."

Asuma patted him on the shoulder, "If you go alone then that would make them more suspicious since they know that we would operate in a group. Zabuza would be the one to pick you off for sure then, not the Haku girl, and you would be wiped out in a second by someone of Zabuza's caliber. If you think you have to go then we'll go with you."

Kakashi looked over at his fellow jounin, "Are you sure about this Asuma? This is a very unnecessary risk to be taking the night before the attack is supposed to happen."

A nod and a grin came from Asuma, "I trust my kids. If Naruto says we can stop this without fighting then I believe him. Besides, we'd have to fight anyway even if he was wrong. Why not get it out of the way?"

Naruto jumped up out of his chair, "Yeah, absolutely this can work. They have to know that Gato is a total snake, they should know that he might have pulled something like this. It's not farfetched enough that they won't even think about it." He gave a grin to everyone sitting there, "I can promise that at least they'll hear it out."

"Well in that case." Asuma said, standing up as well, "You should get your things. Team 10, it's time to head out and get this over with. Take what you think you're going to need, and Naruto's going to be leading the way. He's the one who knows where the hideout is."

XxX

(Hours Later)

The only thing barely illuminating the forest that Naruto, Asuma, Shikamaru, and Ino were walking through at the moment was the faint wisps of light that would poke through the leaves and hit the ground. They had to say, it was a great hideout. There was a very little chance of light slipping through at all and that meant very bad things for anyone trying to navigate the area without previous knowledge of where it was.

"Are you sure you know where you're going Naruto?" Ino asked him in a hushed tone as they continued moving carefully through the woods, "I mean, shouldn't we be waiting for tomorrow when we know the attack is going to happen, or going after Gato himself to end the whole thing?"

Shikamaru had his eyes sharp and at attention in case of some sort of trap on the way, "Why wait to fight when we could possibly stop it now before it ever even happens. Either way we'd have to fight, at least this way we might not have to, or at least we can give them something to think about." Shikamaru nudged Naruto with his elbow, "You're going to want to start making those Kage Bunshin and have them start surrounding us for when they realize we're here."

Naruto shook his head with a determined look on his face, "No. That'll just spook them won't it? They'll definitely try to fight once they see that. I don't want to fight them at all."

"And you think I do?" Shikamaru said, "But if we don't and they attack anyway then my best plan isn't going to be worth a damn. You're tying my hands here Naruto."

"Sorry." Naruto said to him, not changing his tone, "But since I've been a ninja all I've seen the whole job being about is a lot of backstabbing, power plays at others expenses… I haven't seen anything honest or good about it yet." He shook his head, "I don't want to be one of those guys that are all about nothing but the mission. People are important too. More important."

'Damn it…' Shikamaru thought to himself with an audible sigh, 'This kid's going to get us all killed here… I should have just stayed home from that first mission to Kusa, what a troublesome mission.'

Naruto forced everyone to a stop when he recalled the area that his clone had stopped at, and nearby lay a fallen tree, evidence of Zabuza's attempt to get himself back up to speed. Taking a deep breath, Naruto took a few steps forward and inhaled deeply, "Haku!" He yelled, "Haku come out here! I know you're here and I know who you are! I just want to talk!" He walked a few more steps forward and kept yelling.

'Come on Naruto…' Asuma thought to himself, his eyes firmly on their surroundings, mostly out in front of them, 'Get back into formation kid. Don't make me have to go and get you.'

A mist began to settle over the area, something putting everyone on edge as they had all been told about how Zabuza fights. Naruto almost began to step back into line with everyone else before he found enough courage to stay out there, something that a chuckling voice found amusing, "That's very brave of you brat. Not very smart by any stretch of the imagination, but still very brave. Do you know who I am?"

The genin of the group felt the sensation of choking from the oppressive aura that had set over them. Ino couldn't even reach for a kunai in case they were attacked. Shikamaru wasn't that better off, but he at least was still thinking in overdrive, 'Come on Naruto, get back over here. This guy's going to cut you in half if you don't.'

Naruto bit on his tongue to keep himself from moving from his spot and to keep from shaking, "Y-Yeah, I know who you are. You're Momochi Zabuza. I came here to tell you something."

"Tell me something?" Zabuza said tauntingly, "Sorry kid, but I'm not the kind of guy that follows anyone's last words, wishes, requests, or anything like that."

"It's about you!" Naruto yelled, "It's about you and whatever it is that you have with Gato!" Naruto recomposed himself and started speaking to the open air again, "Look, I know you're going to attack tomorrow, or you were until we came here, but that's the thing. Gato's not going to pay you after you beat us and kill old man Tazuna, he's going to use a bunch of his own men to come in and finish off whoever's left, us or you. Go and confront him about it."

Zabuza's voice echoed out in laugher, "You certainly know more about ninja life than just the fighting part. That's a good little bit of deception kid. Trying to use me to find Gato's base itself and take out your problem at the head right there."

Naruto wanted to pull his hair out, "We already know where he is, we just don't want to fight you over this! He's not going to pay you so there's no reason for us to be enemies! I don't want to fight you." Naruto then hopped back as the ground in front of him took a deep gash from some huge weapon.

"You're damn right you don't want to fight me, but this isn't about me is it? This is about Haku."

"Fine…" Naruto said, trying to get his heart rate back down after almost potentially losing his legs, "You're right. I don't care about you, not really. I'm here because of Haku. Even if everything she said and did was because she didn't know how to kill me in the best and easiest way, I want to believe that she's actually that kind all the time. And someone like that doesn't need to get betrayed by some loser like Gato."

"Haku?" Zabuza called out, "Haku is my weapon brat. If I told her to right now she'd put you down without a second thought. She may be kind, but she can kill her heart just like any good shinobi can and she can get the job done. It doesn't matter if she was kind to you or not."

Naruto looked down, fists shaking, "Still… that shouldn't matter. This is the right thing to do. I told you what I had to say, if you want to try and kill us now go ahead. All I have to say is that you're really stupid if you're going to fight us after all of this." He then pointed his finger in a direction roughly at his 3 o'clock into the mist and trees, "I know you're there, you've been moving around the entire time." He then shifted to his 9 o'clock and pointed up in a tree, "I know you're there too Haku."

Asuma looked down at his laziest genin after hearing the positions of Zabuza and Haku, "You hear that Shikamaru?"

Shikamaru nodded silently, 'My shadow can only stretch to reach one, it can't branch off far enough to get them both yet. Ino's jutsu might be able to get the Haku person, but if she realizes it's coming and what it is she can move and we're out one of our side until Ino recovers. I swear Naruto, you're a logistical nightmare.'

Zabuza's voice sounded relatively displeased at being discovered, "Hmm, I didn't know the kid was a sensor. He's pretty good too even if I wasn't really trying."

"I don't even care anymore." Naruto said as he turned back and started walking towards his squad, "I told you what I knew, if you believe me or not I don't care. Fight us now or fight us tomorrow. I'm done with this." He said in an angry tone. His eyes flickered towards the tree that his sensory jutsu located Haku's silhouette for a moment before he let out another burst to reveal that she was still there, 'You could have at least come out and said something yourself.'

Asuma waited for Naruto to get back over to them before he grabbed him by the shoulder as they were walking away, "Don't ever do anything like that ever again. I know you could find him, but even if he had attacked could you have stopped him?" Naruto frowned at his sensei's stern tone and shook his head, "That means that I would have had to move in to keep you in one piece and that would have left your teammates exposed to the other one in hiding. That could have gotten us all killed."

"I'm sorry Asuma-sensei." Naruto said apologetically, "It's just-…" He stopped trying to reason it out and just kept walking in silence.

Ino kept looking behind them at the area where they were confronted, "So did it work? Did Naruto get through to them?"

"I don't know." Shikamaru admitted, "But they haven't attacked us yet. That has to count for something."

XxX

(Hours Later)

By now the sun had begun to rise as Naruto led them back through the forest to return to Tazuna's house. As an afterthought and because of the habit he had developed while they were moving about he let out a pulse of his jutsu and narrowed his eyes in anger, "Asuma-sensei… we're being followed. It's Zabuza and Haku-ch… Haku." He could feel himself getting angrier, "I'm sorry, my plan was so stupid."

Asuma let out a sigh, "You stood up for what you thought was the right thing to do. I can't be mad at you for that, and we were going to fight them today anyway. It's better we do it here than near Tazuna." Asuma took a pair of unique trench knives out; zigzag blades on each knuckle and a blade coming out of the end of each, 'I can fight Zabuza, but he's going to use his mist. With Naruto I would be able to find him no sweat, but I can't just break up the squad of genin with this Haku with him. Man I wish Kakashi and his kids were here.'

Shikamaru and Ino moved towards their third genin partner with the female of the team speaking to her fellow blonde, "This is going to be our first actual battle against another ninja. How are you feeling Naruto?" She asked apprehensively to the boy that seemed to be shaking slightly.

"Pissed." He replied, clinching his fists, "More pissed than scared. I'm not even that scared. I got you all into this, and now we're fighting the people I tried to warn."

Hearing the anger in his voice took the fear out of Ino's body. Naruto wasn't even flinching once he saw the mist begin creeping over them. This got her own confidence to increase, and looking at Shikamaru she could see that he wasn't about to waver either, "Then we'll just have to show them what a bad choice they made when we kick their asses."

"Kick whose ass little girl?"

Asuma wheeled around and blocked a slash from Zabuza's large sword with both of his trench knives, "Kids get back. I'll handle this! Worry about the other one drifting around somewhere."

"I know where she is!" Naruto yelled, running off in that direction, his teammates trailing behind, "Follow me, we'll be done soon Asuma-sensei!"

Asuma smirked, "I'm sure you will kid." He then focused on Zabuza, "So you're willing to be stupid about this? Naruto told you what you needed to know and you're still going through with the job."

"I can just complete the mission now and find Gato after I'm done." Zabuza said off-handedly, "If he's really going to not pay me then Haku and I will get rid of him, simple as that. Until then, I'm still under contract so to speak, and I'm not hedging my bets on some bleeding heart genin. This mission is more important than you know."

"You're damn right it is." Asuma growled back, "This bridge is the only way that these people can be free from Gato. We're not just fighting because it's our mission, this is the right thing to do." He pushed back and squared off against Zabuza, "Besides, my team won't lose to your fake hunter-ninja."

Zabuza laughed as he faded back into the mist, "Haku is far from a 'fake'. She's more than enough for your little team of baby ninja, just like me against you would be overkill. At least when I fought Kakashi I knew him from sight. I don't even know who you are."

Asuma chuckled, "Heh, I know I left Konoha for a few years but I thought I was pretty famous from what that bounty of mine said. Oh well." He made a set of hand-seals and kept the last one intact, "Fuuton: Daitoppa (Wind Release: Great Breakthrough)!" From Asuma came a rather powerful blast of wind that blew all of the mist away, leaving him in the far more visible early morning forest, "That's much better. It's going to be a beautiful day isn't it?"

Zabuza grumbled to himself lowly from his hiding place, "Yeah, beautiful. It'll be the last sunrise you'll ever see."

XxX

(With Team 10)

Naruto stopped with Ino and Shikamaru bringing up the rear, all prepared to fight. Naruto growled angrily at not only being deceived, but at being ignored and then taken advantage of as well, "Haku get out here!" Naruto and the others waited for a moment before he yelled again, "I know exactly where you are! Get out here!" Again, he got no response, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

A mess of Naruto clones went into the woods, before long the sound of multiple faint pops came from the foliage. Shikamaru hunched down, ready to move, "Here we go."

From the woods in a blur flew Haku, right at Shikamaru and Ino before Naruto jumped in between her and them and took a swing at her with a kick that missed when Haku jumped away, "Naruto-kun…" She said as she stared down Naruto, backed by his team, "I really don't wish to fight you, but you're in the way of us and the bridge-builder."

"I already told you everything you had to know about your mission Haku." Naruto said to her coldly, "I told you that the guy paying you was going to stab you in the back once you completed it, I told you what was going to happen today once you tried attacking the bridge. You chose to do this anyway."

"There was nothing I could do." She said, her face obscured by a mask and her clothing a type that was what probably fooled Team 7 into believing that she was a hunter-ninja. That seemed to be what Haku was good at, deceiving people, people like him, "Zabuza-sama thought you were attempting to deceive him, and he had to take advantage of finding where Tazuna was without having to wait for him to get to the bridge."

Naruto's usually exuberant blue eyes didn't hold any speck of their usual kindness in them, "I don't have anything else to say to you Haku. We're going to beat you and you're going to fail. Then you'll see firsthand that you were wrong."

Haku pulled out a senbon, putting the rest of the team on edge, "I can't lose here. Zabuza-sama's ambition is resting on us obtaining the money that we need from this mission. Losing her would mean the end of his dream and I cannot allow that to happen. I'll kill you all if I have to, all to help Zabuza-sama with his dream. That is my job as his tool. For what it's worth Naruto-kun I hope you can forgive me for this, for what I did and what I'm about to do."

Shikamaru had his eyes locked firmly on Haku, "Naruto I need you to slow her down. She moves faster than my shadow can go. Ino won't be able to pick her off either if she stays moving at this same speed. Can you do it?"

Naruto punched his palm, "For sure. I know I can do it, just be ready, and if she gets past me before you can get her get ready to fight." Naruto took a breath and rushed at Haku, making a contingent of 4 clones to head in with him.

The senbon in Haku's hand found itself deposited through one of the clones, dispelling it, but with three clones and the original Naruto remaining she found herself in hot retreat to avoid Naruto and his clones who were actually pretty fast, 'He's not just sudden with his subtle movements like I saw yesterday morning, he's actually very fleet-footed!'

Shikamaru watched Naruto and his clones pursue Haku as he remained at the ready to engage with his jutsu, 'Naruto knew right off the bat when we were put on this team that he was the muscle, in every sense of the word. At first Ino and I were around his speed but he just rocketed past us on that front. Now he's the fastest and strongest of us, and with those clones he can prepare in advance I have tons of soldiers to work with, but now's not the time for a plan like that. There's no way to set it up and no way for all of those numbers to aptly take on a single opponent.'

Ino watched Naruto fight as well as another two of his clones found themselves vanquished by Haku's ranged attack, 'Naruto's really not nervous at all about fighting an enemy shinobi. Is he really that angry that he isn't scared at all? Well if he's not going to be scared then I won't be either. I just have to be ready to back him up. Shikamaru and I are no good in a close-up fight, and throwing any kind of weapon from here wouldn't help him at all.'

'I can't fucking get a hold on her.' Naruto thought to himself as he found Haku always just out of his reach. All he needed was a mere tap. Just his fingers brushing something on her would be all that he needed to slow her down enough to grab her and unleash hell on her up close, but she had clearly picked up something from the way he fought when they first met, because she knew that if he got a good hold on her it was game over, 'I need to cut her off, or corral her. Shikamaru can stop her and Ino can finish her, all I have to do is slow her down!'

"There's lots of moisture in the air for me to work with against you." Haku said to Naruto as she continued to stay just out of his reach, knowing that if he laid a hand on her he would quickly overpower her. She was also slowly leading him away from his team, but he was tougher to coerce away from them than she figured he would be. He would always jump back and force her to come towards him to continue engaging, "It's too bad Naruto-kun, but you and your team cannot defeat me if you're the only direct fighter that you have. Once I get rid of you they'll both fall easily enough."

Naruto and his last remaining clone were lunging at Haku with everything that they had in their arsenal to get close, but with Haku in a strict mode of backpedaling there was only so much that he could do. She was leading him, but where? His team was close by enough to keep her from trying to fight him directly, but she was still staying active. He slowly found himself catching up to her as he could swear that his fist almost hit her mask one time, 'Come on, a little closer and I can grab her.'

Haku could have gotten away from Naruto any time she wanted. He was fast, very fast for a new genin, very fast for any genin period, but the name of her game was speed all the way, and she had just been baiting him the entire time. She let him think he had been close to hitting her the entire time so that he wouldn't know where she was leading him. The day they met hadn't been the only day that week she had been in these woods, and on one of her excursions out that way she found a little something useful.

"That's close enough Naruto-kun." Haku said as she kicked it into second gear and got a good distance away from him before coming to a stop, "Now… Sensatsu Suishou (Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death)!"

Naruto looked around and saw that he and his clone were now standing at the edge of a lake that Haku herself was standing atop, 'I chased her to a lake? And she even got me to stop short before I realized it!' An uncountable number of needles rose from the lake all pointing at him and his clone on all sides. Naruto's clone quickly grabbed Naruto and threw him into the air just as the needles came to bear and impaled the Kage Bunshin, ending its existence in a puff of smoke.

Naruto landed back on the ground glaring at Haku who was calmly standing on the surface of the water. The boy didn't say a word, he simply reached inside of his open orange vest and pulled out a fuuma shuriken that he quickly unfolded to its full point before hefting it across the water.

Haku had her eyes beaded on it all the way through and jumped out of its path only for the shuriken to burst into smoke and out from it rushed Naruto. Before Haku's foot touched the surface of the water to land from her dodge, Naruto had grabbed a firm hold of her loose sleeve with a victorious smirk on her face, "Isn't this familiar? Only I'm not letting go this time!" A sharp yank on the sleeve pulled Haku towards him where he hit her in the body with a hard knee strike.

Haku doubled over his knee and let out a pained grunt, 'His raw physical strength is greater than mine. He's smaller than me but his frame packs a lot of muscle.' She thought to herself before she found herself jerked upright by the collar of her battle kimono with both of Naruto's hands. A hard headbutt was what met her that she could feel through the mask. Having had enough of getting beaten up, Haku freed herself from his grasp by ripping the collar of the kimono, revealing the dark-green turtle-neck sweater underneath.

She quickly got herself away from Naruto and looked down at the surface of the water where a line of shadow was trailing away from him.

XxX

In the bushes surrounding the lake, Shikamaru cursed to himself, "Damn it. I was too slow. Naruto had her for a good long time and I couldn't finish."

Ino was hidden along with him watching Naruto and Haku square off again, "Do you think he can get her again? That trick with him switching with a clone and transforming into the shuriken was one of his best ones that I've seen him practice."

Shikamaru grit his teeth, "He can do it Ino. Naruto isn't the kind of guy that's all tapped out of surprises at a time like this. He'll pull something off." Inside his head though was a different story, 'All by himself out there… this is seriously troublesome. He's the only one out of us that can fight directly like this though and I can't walk on the water even if I could. I just need to keep waiting and looking for an opening. Come on Naruto, just keep yourself out of trouble and reel her in again. I won't miss twice.'

Ino was barely able to keep herself hidden as she watched. She could walk on water just like Naruto could, but in a battle like this she knew she had next to no chance. Haku would have gotten her with the water needle technique she saw Naruto's clone help him avoid earlier, "What do we do Shikamaru? What do we do? How can we help him?"

Almost beginning to hyperventilate, Shikamaru calmed himself down and put his fingers together in a circle. He shut his eyes and began taking deep breaths, "I don't know. Give me a second. I'll come up with something." 'Come on. I'm no good to anyone if I panic. If my damn brain is all I'm good for to this team right now then I'd better get to using it.'

XxX

Haku's eyes watched the shadow on the surface of the water trail back to the foliage at the edge of the lake, "I can see that your team is trying to help you. I was right in assuming that you were the only direct combat type on your team. Along with being the sensor of the squad, that's a lot of responsibility Naruto-kun, you must be some shinobi."

Naruto chuckled humorlessly, "Dead-last of my year actually. I'm nothing but a glorified human shield for those guys. If they kick the bucket they have people that care about them. People will be sad if they die. Me on the other hand, I don't have anybody." He grinned but the way his face looked as he closed his eyes showed that his heart wasn't into it, "Sure… maybe three or four people would be sad for a little while if I died, but they'd get over it quick, they have lives and loved ones. That's why I don't have any problems with my role on the team, it is what it is. And I'll protect them if I have to."

"I'm glad to hear that." Haku said, "When I told you that true strength comes from protecting those that you hold dear I was being honest. I never lied to you once when we spoke. But I have someone to protect too, and his dream as well, and I cannot allow you to win here. After I finish you I will have to dispose of your teammates as well."

Naruto narrowed his eyes and formed his signature hand-seal, twenty Narutos popping up around him with the same looks on their faces, "Over my dead body Haku." He said determinedly.

Haku sighed and averted her eyes slightly, although Naruto couldn't see her face behind the mask, "I was afraid that you would say that Naruto-kun." She said reluctantly before making hand-seals and putting Naruto on guard. Quickly, a large dome of mirrors formed from the water and froze over, trapping Naruto and his clones inside, "Makyou Hyoushou (Demonic Ice Crystal Mirrors)." Haku entered one of the mirrors and her masked appearance appeared in all twenty-one of them, "Now I'll show you just how fast I really am."

* * *

How to Train Your Genin: Tip 6

Your genin must trust in you and be able to trust in others

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but it bears repeating as it is one of the most important things that any ninja should know. The name of the game for the most part in the ninja world is deception. Every shinobi is going to run across it, and it won't take long for a young ninja's mind to become jaded towards the idea of trust, even towards their comrades. This is one of the reasons that D-rank missions are run, so that trust can be forcefully built up by genin spending time together and sharing experiences.

As the senior ninja, and the first high-level shinobi that they'll be interacting with, the genin must know that you have their best interest at heart and that the things that you say are worth taking into account and being followed. The rapport that your young ninja builds with you as their sensei or with his/her teammates will be the basis of how they interact with any commanding officer or potential partner that they have for years to come, for the remainder of their careers even.

Be casual with them, let them be themselves, don't let them feel like they should hide things from you. Let them know that even though you're in control everything that you do is for their benefit, and that they must work as a unit to be successful. A ninja that cannot trust their own comrades is a ninja that will be a liability in high-stress or combat situations.

-Shiho

* * *

**Alright peeps, chapter el completo… and don't tell me that's not Spanish because I fucking knew that… Who do you think you're talking to? I'm the proud owner of a high school education and two years of university learning in the United States of motherfucking America damn it. That means that I read the political and cultural shifts of the times and I took the time to learn enough Spanish to get myself out of jail if the situation ever arises! …That or I learned the amount needed to get thrown **_**into**_** jail, but hey, either or works just fine right? Communication is communication.**

**Better than French. And I wanted to laugh at everyone who took that shit before college and **_**didn't**_** take Spanish… yeah, that's a great move, because every year millions of French speaking people enter the country and assume jobs that punk 19-20 year olds like me kind of require to make enough money to afford more than Top 'fucking' Ramen 8 months out of every year so that I can get more vitamins and avoid my damn hand breaking like a fucking hollow stick when some meathead wrestler starts winging open-space killing hooks and I block one!**

**Oh yeah, and I cracked that motherfucker with enough jabs for the next 3 minutes to break his damn nose after he did it too. That'll show that bastard some damn sparring etiquette! Who the fuck goes for the knockout when I'm trying to teach you something? Dick. That why I don't try teaching people my age how to do anything, the shit pisses me off because everyone thinks they know more than you from the TV and that they're Billy-Badass and some kind of gym class hero or undiscovered fighting savant until their nose starts leaking like I turned a faucet… and by faucet I mean nose, and by turn I mean break with my left fist.**

…**What was I talking about originally?**

**Nevermind, I'm too far gone. It's later than a motherf'er and I'm tired. Later all, Kenchi out.**

**P.S.: Duct-tape is one of the top 15 creations ever conjured by the ingenuity of mankind. That is all. Popsicle sticks in my own personal opinion sit just outside of the top 20 for sheer versatility.**


	10. The Red Eyes of the Devil

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Hopes up high, head down low… but with a hope that high won't I need to be able to look up to get an eye-full of it? Huh…

**Chapter 10: The Red Eyes of the Devil**

**

* * *

**

Asuma had his trench knives out and his eyes peeled for anything. He had managed to easily dispose of Zabuza's mist, but the man was still renowned for his stealth skills. It wouldn't have been a stretch at all for someone like Zabuza to be able to get the drop on him in a wooded area like the forest they were fighting in. It wasn't even a clearing, they were fighting among the trees, 'Okay. As long as he can't get the drop on me then I have the advantage. He can't create his mist and we aren't near any water for him to use any of the Suiton ninjutsu Kakashi told me about.'

Zabuza already knew where Asuma was, he was clearly just waiting for an opening to strike. Running around the area to look for him would do no good so the only thing he could do was try to pinpoint his location from where he was standing, otherwise he'd just be giving Zabuza a license to stalk him down and kill him, mist or not.

"So why didn't you heed Naruto's warning?" Asuma said, actually sounding rather cross at how this whole thing actually worked out, "Gato's still not going to pay you even if you finish Tazuna off."

Zabuza's laughter echoed evenly all around him, causing the laid-back jounin to let out a curse at not being able to use voice to find him, "I'm not going to believe the words of some bleeding heart brat just because you found my base and tried having a heartfelt conversation." He said, "And when I kill you and Kakashi and then the bridge-builder I should still have more than enough energy to deal with things even if Gato's as foolish as you said."

Asuma let out a chuckle, "I know I don't have any cool nicknames like Kakashi has to help people recognize me, but I didn't win my ranking in a raffle or something you know." After saying that he jumped aggressively to the side to avoid a slash that took down an entire tree with one swing. Asuma turned to face the tree that had just been felled and could have represented his headless body had he not been faster, 'And I'm going to have to prove it for the first time in a while…'

Zabuza's voice rang out again, "I'm sure you didn't. But Konoha ninja like you just aren't made of stuff that tough… the same thing I told Kakashi. When I was the age of your brats I had already taken more than my fair share of lives. "

"Good for you." Asuma said dryly, not seeing what that had to do with him at the moment, "Do you want me to tell you how cool you are or how scared I am? Oh I know, you probably want a cigarette right? Sorry, I don't share with people that try to kill me."

"Funny man." Zabuza growled out, "Well I'll clear-cut this entire forest if I have to before I slice right through you. You'll be dead before the sun is fully up."

Asuma sighed and held up his trench knives in a defensive taijutsu stance, "I'd love for you to stop talking about it and go ahead and try it if you're actually going to do it."

"With pleasure." Zabuza said before a shadow dropped to the ground from behind and rushed at Asuma. A diagonal slash from a massive sword nearly sliced through Asuma as it cut into the ground, but Asuma was able to get himself to the side of the move and cut into the figure's hip with one of his trench knives. As he heard the splash of water hitting the ground it was too much for it to be blood from a wound and he kept himself ready and composed for the next attack.

The next attack was Zabuza's sword flying through the woods swiftly, aimed right at Asuma. Seeing this almost made Asuma's jaw drop were it not for the fact that if he had stopped to gawk at it, it would have been the last thing he would have ever seen. Jumping into the air to avoid the blade, Asuma missed Zabuza darting from the dark points of the forest that had still not been touched by the low light of the sun.

Before he could touch the ground and regain footing, Asuma was knocked aside harshly from a kick by Zabuza that shot his body into a tree with a dull crack… hopefully the crack of the tree trunk and not one of his vertebrae, 'Man my taijutsu is getting sloppy. I either need to take a more hands-on approach in helping Naruto develop his or I need to find Gai when we get back, that was pathetic.'

Growling to himself at getting his solidly so easily, Asuma stood back up and noticed that Zabuza hadn't taken to hiding again as he had been before, choosing to instead retrieve his sword from the tree he had imbedded it in. Asuma pulled out a kunai and threw it directly at Zabuza without any set up or indication of his actions.

Zabuza merely rolled his eyes when the kunai was launched as he simply stepped aside, "Do you really think that a simple kunai is going to-?" He was silenced when the kunai punched straight through the tree his sword was caught in. He looked and saw that it had been where his head had previously been level with. Turning back to Asuma he saw that the Konoha jounin had vanished from his sight, and while he didn't think Asuma on his level in that department he was aware that a Konoha jounin hidden among the trees was a damnably dangerous thing. They all damn near grew up in the fucking forest.

He preferred being in the open and using his mist to mask his approach. With something like a forest this thick and with the trees so close together, any ninja worth their salt could find a way to turn the tables in this environment, and much like himself, from what had just been shown Asuma would only need one shot at him to end the fight as well, 'When he comes out I'm going to lop his head off and move on. But that kunai he used… is he a wind user? He must be for the kunai to go through the tree that easily. Throwing Kubikiribouchou couldn't even get all the way through the way that little kunai did.'

Zabuza was beginning to realize he might have made a miscalculation. If this dragged into a battle of attrition then he might not even have enough left in the tank to keep going and take Kakashi on after he won. A jounin, no matter the village, even if he believed it was _soft_ or not, was not to be taken lightly. However having a genin like Naruto who seemed to be so pacifistic on his squad he believed that the jounin was much the same way, "You're not that bad for a Konoha ninja."

"Heh…" Asuma said from where he himself was hidden, using his wind mastery to distort the air around him and space out the sound of his voice, "Well I'm kind of the son of the Hokage. If I didn't kick ass I would never hear the end of it."

Not being able to locate Asuma from the sound of his voice, Zabuza had to refrain from chuckling to himself, 'Apparently I'm not the only person that likes taunting people from the shadows.' He thought to himself as he finally yanked Kubikiriboucho from the tree.

Just as the blade was freed, Asuma dropped from the branches above and immediately broke into a taijutsu attack with his pair of trench knives. Zabuza was able to use his massive cleaver to keep Asuma from striking him and cutting into him before he retaliated with a hard swing of his own. Asuma held his knives and defended the attack, but Zabuza's raw power broke through his guard and threw him back and away.

Stopping himself by backing against a tree, Asuma lifted his arms over his head to block a downward swing from Zabuza's sword, coming so close to being cut by the blade that it actually smacked against the metal of his headband, lightly enough to be safe, but hard enough to make an audible ping noise.

Asuma grunted in effort of blocking the mammoth weapon. Shoving it over to the side and ducking out of its way as it finished its descent to the ground, Asuma rolled back to his feet and leapt at Zabuza from the side to make an attempt on him.

"Not fast enough." The former Kiri ANBU said as he stepped out of the way and let Asuma pass by him, only for a rather deep slash to form on his chest. Zabuza watched his own blood fly through the air and seemingly saw some of it stick to an invisible surface in mid-air for a moment, 'What the hell just happened?' He thought to himself. He wasn't hurt enough to quit, not by a long shot, but not knowing what happened could only be a disadvantage.

Asuma slid to a stop from his rushing attack and looked back at Zabuza and the wound he had made on the imposing ninja, 'Nice. Okay, let's get this started for real. Hopefully the kids are doing okay against their opponent. It's three-on-one, it should be fine.'

XxX

(Team 10 vs. Haku)

'This is so not cool!' Naruto thought to himself as he took another set of senbon to various places on his body, 'Which one is real damn it?' He thought to himself, picking the needles out of his body as he stared at the dome of mirrors surrounding him. Haku's reflection, staring at Naruto impassively with the mask on her face, gave him no indication of where the next attack would be coming from.

"Please surrender Naruto-kun." Haku said, almost in a pleading fashion, "I do not wish to kill someone with a good heart like you."

"I'm not going to quit Haku." Naruto said, gritting his teeth at the mere thought of giving up when his team and tons of people were counting on him, "I think I've had enough of your funhouse mirrors from hell. I think I'll leave now." He said before letting the chakra under his feet fade, allowing him to fall under the surface of the water. As he tried to swim his way under the dome of mirrors he learned that it wasn't a dome, it was an entire sphere of ice mirrors… and the ones underwater all had Haku's reflection brandishing senbon, ready for attack, 'Son of a bitch! Give me a break already!'

Trying to swim back to the surface was his only option as he was far slower underwater than he was above it. Creating some clones to form a defensive shell to surround him he quickly made his way back up just as they were all punctured by Haku's metal needles and dispelled.

Placing his feet back on the surface of the water, he began making movement, any kind of lateral movement. If he kept staying still he would only be making himself an easier target for Haku, which she didn't really need him to do for her. It seemed that for as much as he had worked on his physical conditioning after seeing and being rag-dolled by Rock Lee once, he was still nowhere as fast as he wanted to be, 'And Haku seems faster than Lee did…'

In his mind at the moment, the only solace he could take over the present situation was that he was the only member of his team currently stuck inside of the dome and getting systematically picked apart by the ice wielding ninja.

Naruto was far from slow, he was the fastest one on the team, not counting Asuma of course, he was leaps and bounds ahead of Ino and Shikamaru in that department. But he wasn't fighting Ino or Shikamaru, he was fighting Haku, and as long as he was stuck inside of this deathtrap he was just doing nothing but dragging the fight out for as long as he could. Neither of his teammates could beat Haku, of this he was certain. Confident in them he was, not for this. How would Shikamaru trap her if he couldn't even determine where she was? She was too fast for Shintenshin no Jutsu to hit her, how would Ino even begin to go about fighting her? If he couldn't win or if Asuma didn't show up then they were screwed.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" If he couldn't touch Haku then everything he had learned about taijutsu to this point was useless, thus he needed to switch tactics a bit. "Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!" From within a thick shell of Kage Bunshin that attempted to keep him covered as best they could, Naruto tried to pinpoint the exact location of Haku. Which mirror was she actually hiding in?

After several attempts of trying to get a lock on her he found himself unable to exactly do so. Every time he did it again it would always say a different spot then it had previously. As the last few clones were defeated by Haku's speedy attack from out of his effective range he came to a conclusion, 'She's moving between the mirrors. The reflections are an illusion, she only is really in one at a time, but she moves too fast for me to see.

Creating more clones, Naruto watched as Haku seemed to stop playing around and obliterated them before he could even begin any kind of effort at freeing himself. She seemed to be his exact opposite style-wise. Naruto's entire fighting style was to close distance and batter his opponents into submission or incapacitation, either by himself or by the use of his clones. From what he had seen of Haku she wasn't very good up close for someone trained by a guy carrying a big-ass sword like Zabuza. She chose to remain out of his range of effectiveness and pick him apart from afar. The senbon were beginning to wear on him.

XxX

Shikamaru had his fists clinched tightly as he watched Naruto desperately try to escape from whatever Haku had formed to separate them from him. They had attempted to throw a kunai with an explosive note attached, however it was knocked from the air by a group of Haku's senbon and diffused in the water. Part of him just wanted to say to hell with it and charge out like a samurai or something, but he knew that would make him more of a liability than a help in this case… and then there was the key fact that he couldn't walk on water.

Every plan he could think of would have Ino heading out there instead of him, and that would be worse than if he had been able to attack directly, 'So our strongest direct fighter is already out there in a fight and trapped against someone that's his exact antithesis. He wouldn't even need our help if we could just get him out of there.'

Ino on the other hand, could walk on water, and she was having to physically grab onto the bushes they were hiding behind to keep from heading out there, because she knew once she got there, she would be of absolutely no help whatsoever. There was only one thing she could think of that would get him out and she was the only one that could do it.

"Shikamaru." She finally said to him, gulping down some fear, "There's only one thing I can think of to help Naruto, and you already know what that is."

"No." He said firmly, "We don't need to do that. There's another way, there has to be." Naruto's Kage Bunshin no Jutsu was the most battle ready technique they had at the moment. If this were a board game of some sort he would be the piece meant for attack and maneuvering around defenses. Without Naruto any strategy Shikamaru could create wouldn't have as much weight as it otherwise would have. They all knew who the workhorse of the squad was, and their team dynamic was centered around that fact.

Ino wasn't stupid either. She had seen the fight up to this point, and she had also known just as well as Shikamaru did that Naruto in open space was perhaps one of the most dangerous genin period, rookie or not. Without him they were as good as a one legged man in an asskicking contest. Actually, more akin to a no legged man in an asskicking contest since Naruto was their most mobile member.

"Shikamaru…" Ino growled out dangerously at the usually lazy ninja, "You know those strategies that we've spent so much time learning and drilling? Well this is one of those situations. This is actually the best situation for one of them and you'd better know which one it is. You were the one that came up with them all."

Shikamaru narrowed his eyes at the scene and analyzed it as best he could while watching another hoard of Naruto clones split up in an attempt to fool Haku and allow Naruto to escape. As he saw Naruto's clones and thought back to the team training they had done in the past and then realized how Naruto was surrounded his eyes popped wide open, "Do you think he'll know what it is once you start it?"

Ino scoffed and rolled her eyes, "Well he'd better know. If he doesn't then I'm screwed… but at least he'll be out no matter what. That's what's important about this. If he's outside then we can win this no matter what happens to me in the end."

Turning back to Naruto's bid to stay in the fight against Haku somehow, Shikamaru narrowed his eyes, "Well go then. And be careful." Ino grinned as she formed three hand-seals and prepared to enter the battle.

XxX

Naruto had taken to making formations of clones to get through, but no kind of set up he tried would throw Haku off enough to allow him to escape, 'I should have figured that a phalanx only really works when you at least have shields though… man I'm stupid. But the four diamond formations of five clones should have confused her enough for me to get out.'

As fun as it was for him to be looking like a human porcupine and feeling like he rolled around on the ground with an actual one, he needed to get the hell out of there. He had been getting his ass kicked for long enough in his opinion, since letting go of his hold on his chakra and dropping underneath the surface of the water for a short nap started seeming like a more appealing idea than standing up with metal needles protruding all over his body and moving around.

"Naruto-kun I'll only ask you this one more time. Please give up or I _will_ finish you this time." Haku said to him, brandishing even more senbon from her person. What the hell, did she had entire bandoleers of the things strapped to her body underneath the kimono?

"There's a word that I'm looking for." Naruto said to her before creating ten more clones and trying doggedly to get out one more time, "No!"

"I'm sorry then." Haku said before blasting the charging mass of clones with her weaponry. One of the clones thought fast and shoved Naruto out of the way of an attack, keeping the original from taking damage on this particular counter-attack by Haku.

Naruto growled to himself as he looked around at all of the mirrors, "If you were sorry we wouldn't be fighting! I wanted to help you Haku, because I thought we were friends! We could have just attacked you and not warned you at all and this is what we get for trying to tip you off?"

"It is Zabuza-sama's will." Haku said sadly.

"Fine…" Naruto said with a low growl in his voice, "I guess I don't have anything left to say. You're going to try to kill us, and there's nothing I can do about that but put you down before you actually pull it off." He said that, but he couldn't think of a damn way out, he hadn't even touched the damn mirrors yet to see how durable they were! And then there were the damn huge gaps that he could have easily darted out of if he could have gotten to them, but no matter what he tried he wound up getting hit by acupuncture hell and thrown back.

"Goodbye Naruto-kun." Haku said, holding the senbon up, prepared to throw them. Suddenly she went on her guard as a puff of smoke surrounded Naruto's body. As it cleared it simply revealed… Naruto. But this Naruto didn't have any needles in him or any wounds on his body at all, "What just ha-?"

Before her statement could finish, the grinning, unscathed Naruto in the dome was surrounded by another puff of smoke, and as it cleared revealed a battle weary looking Naruto, the one that had been there at first. That Naruto turned to run away and escape, but he didn't get far before Haku put him down with her senbon, and behind her mask her jaw dropped as it burst into smoke, leaving her alone in the dome.

She looked at the lake area surrounding her dome of mirrors and saw nothing. Naruto was nowhere in the area that she could see, "What just happened? Where did he go?"

XxX

Shikamaru smirked as a ruffle of sounds next to him signified someone's presence, "Well I have to say, I didn't think one of our plans would work in this situation. Ikkaku Sankakkei Buratsuku ou Hokai (Collapsing Point Triangle Swing) complete."

Next to him, Naruto, holding Ino bridal style before crouching and setting her down low like both him and Shikamaru, was grinning like mad despite his injuries, "Ino when you used Kawarimi to switch with me that scared the hell out of me. I didn't remember making any clones that got away from Haku that would have been able to do that."

Ino's smile was so bright it could have lit up a dark room, "Well watching you get people all the time with Henge made me realize that it's not a bad plan. I'm just glad you realized what was happening before she threw those needles at me. You sure hightailed it out of there with me once we were clear. Do you like holding me that much Naruto?" She joked before actually paying attention to his appearance. Now that they were free and clear for the moment, she was able to see all of the wounds that Haku had inflicted on him, "Kami Naruto… are you going to be alright?"

"I'll be fine." He assured her tensely as he began pulling the needles out of his body, "I feel more drowsy than anything…" Naruto said, blinking back some fatigue, "I'm never tired though, but all I want to do for some reason is shut my eyes."

Shikamaru helped Naruto pull needles from places he couldn't see or reach, "Team 7 said that the hunter-ninja that got Zabuza away from them hit a pressure point on him that put him out cold. Maybe that's what was happening to you."

'Shit, I hope not.' Naruto thought to himself as the last of over a dozen and a half needles fell from his flesh to the ground. He couldn't afford to start feeling sluggish because some pressure points took some good hits, his team needed him, they were about to come up with a counter-attack and whatever the plan was, he was probably going to be vital to whatever it was.

XxX

(Asuma vs. Zabuza)

The fight between Zabuza and Asuma was becoming a rather brutal close-up affair. After it became clear that neither of them much felt like jumping around the other, beating around the bush, they simply began trying to cut the other one down with their respective weaponry.

However Zabuza was having a smidge of trouble with Asuma for some reason. Zabuza held his blade up as a slash brushed the width of the sword. The thing about it was, Asuma's trench knife blades weren't even touching his sword. Trying to use his reach advantage for some reason just wouldn't pan out for him… maybe because when he thought he was several feet out of Asuma's range the man would still wind up hitting his sword.

There was also the fact that Asuma was actually faster than he was. More than once Asuma had caught him flat-footed and had almost taken out his head while barely needing to get in range to take shots at him, 'Whatever he's doing is expanding the reach of his weapons. I can't see it so I can't accurately judge the range that he's attacking at.' That style was dangerous for someone who relied mostly on close range fighting the way that Zabuza did to face off against.

Asuma's taijutsu was purely intended for him to come close to making contact with his trench knives. His style was very hand oriented. Something of a hard boxing style that even when he missed would allow him to cut his enemy if they were close enough, and most of the time they were. Zabuza seemed to have gotten the message early on and tried blocking Asuma's trench knives themselves instead of trying to dodge, 'So he's already worked out how Hien (Flying Swallow) goes has he? Points to him I guess.'

Zabuza let out an angry grunt of exertion as another swing of his sword saw Asuma dance back out of his range., 'I can't keep wasting time with this guy, there's still Kakashi to deal with!' "Hasn't Haku gotten to finishing off those brats yet?"

"She probably won't ever." Asuma said with a smirk on his face as he stayed ready in his boxing stance, "My 'brats' as you like to call them are damn effective. They have all kinds of premeditated plans for dealing with people stronger than them. They train against me after all." He neglected to mention that they had never really gotten him before but that was because of his raw experience that helped him out when they made mistakes, "Three-on-one they've got all possible bases covered."

"Yeah I'm so sure." Zabuza said sarcastically, "That blonde brat that walked you right to my front door and thought he could leave… I'm certain he's a real killer."

"And there _you_ go again." Asuma said in a rather disgruntled manner, "The only thing you believe that makes a good ninja is how well they can kill. That's why your dream of overthrowing the Mizukage will never gain any traction." He could sense that he now had Zabuza's ire, "Who was going to lead afterwards, you? You don't know the first thing about being a leader. Your closest confidant is someone you see as a tool, expendable, and you're too aggressive for your own damn good. You couldn't even wait to hear what Naruto had to say towards Gato, didn't even listen for a moment."

Zabuza rolled his eyes at having past events from Asuma. He was there he knew what he had done, and he still couldn't care less about it. He had planned on killing Gato once they had gotten paid, the little runt seriously needed to watch who he was talking to like he owned them in the future… if he actually lived past today. All Naruto's admittance told him was that he was right on the money and needed a plan once the job was complete. But Asuma continued, "That kid has more leadership qualities than you do despite the tactical error he made getting us out here, and I don't really see it as being that bad. We can win, because I don't have any problems at all with killing you myself."

"You're a really big talker." Zabuza said in amusement, "You do know who I am right? Even Kakashi was wary of me when he fought me."

"Yeah, yeah…" Asuma said, "That's because his genin were there and he had to watch them and Tazuna at the same time. I don't have to. I can just focus on kicking your ass and to hell with the collateral damage. I don't have to hold back like he did. Plus you can't use your mist on me, I'll just blow it away."

'There's no body of water for me to use.' Zabuza thought to himself, 'Damn that brat for discovering me before they could get closer to water.' Setting his sword for another attempt on Asuma's life he prepared to come at the man again.

Asuma narrowed his eyes in preparation for the charge and made a set of hand-seals, "Katon: Haisekishou (Fire Release: Ash Pile Burning)!" From Asuma's mouth, a thick black powder spewed forth and covered a wide-scale area all over the immediate area of battle.

Zabuza immediately shut his eyes, and the wraps around his nose and mouth were able to filter out most of the bad air generated by Asuma's technique, 'Does he really think this is a disadvantage? He might as well have set my mist back up for all the good this will do him! If he can't see me that's all the better.' He thought as he began moving through the ash to find an angle to attack Asuma from.

"Time to smoke you out." Asuma said before clicking a piece of flint in his mouth with his teeth, creating a spark that ignited the ash and caused a massive explosion.

XxX

(Team 10 vs. Haku)

Haku stayed within the confines of her ice mirrors on the lake as she eventually located Team 10's hiding place not far from shore. She would have attacked them but it was three of them against one of her, she would have to leave the mirrors, she didn't think she could trap them all especially after they had already seen the move, and attacking them would mean having to again engage Naruto on his terms and she had learned a rather painful lesson the last few time he had hit her telling her that a fight where he had the opportunity to close the distance wasn't to her advantage.

For both sides at the moment they were at a stalemate. Haku wasn't about to leave the mirrors, but the longer she stayed in them the more chakra she wasted, on the other hand Team 10 didn't have to move at all. Haku was their responsibility to handle and they could just keep her there if they had to, however depending on who won the battle between Asuma and Zabuza raging on meantime it could either be a good move, or the strategy that would seal their fate.

That was the plan for both sides at the moment. Hold out for the time being until the other two finished their battle and arrived to help them finish. It was the plan until the sound of an explosion came from within the forest, easily getting the full attention of Team 10 and especially Haku, who knew that Zabuza didn't use attacks that had fiery explosions involved, 'Zabuza-sama!'

Haku rushed from her mirrors and let them fall into the water as she took off across the surface of the lake to head towards Zabuza and ensure that he was safe.

She started moving faster as she saw a shadow move from the brush towards her across the surface in an effort to cut her off at the pass. Haku diverted her direction to dodge the shadow moving at her. She had no clue what it did, but she wasn't curious enough to let it catch her so that she could find out.

Moving to avoid the shadow as she made it to land, she almost wasn't able to avoid the attack from a contingent of Kage Bunshin that had been lying in wait. Once Haku started to move back through the trees she found herself utterly bogged down from going any further by a coordinated assault from Naruto's Kage Bunshin, 'How can he still keep going? He can still make so many and have them fight so well.' Ignoring that train of thought as she had to get to Zabuza if that fireball that had erupted from over five miles away was any indication of how his fight was going, "Get out of my way! I need to get to Zabuza-sama!"

"You aren't going anywhere!" The clones shouted as six of them moved in while five more stayed back and attempted to pelt her from above with weaponry.

Naruto, and by proxy his clones, weren't Tenten, thus all that the kunai and shuriken from above did in the end was force Haku off of her intended path. It didn't even slow her down or stop her, as a pair of Naruto's infantry clones were put out of commission swiftly by two well placed senbon from Haku.

After dealing with five more clones that attempted to cut her off and stop her it was quite clear that she wasn't going to be facing off with the original as long as she was rushing to reach Zabuza. Naruto would simply stay in the shadows and keep swarming her with clones, and her speculation was proven correct as she systematically found herself forced to take detour after detour lest she find herself surrounded or cornered by the dogged pursuit of the never-ending clones.

Trapping Naruto truly had been her best option, even staying on the lake to fight him would have been better than what was currently taking place. In the forest it was his world, and for the time being the denizens of the woods were him and his Kage Bunshin and they reigned supreme.

As the sun was now high enough in the sky to stamp out all traces of night and leave no doubt that a new day had risen, Haku was moving as if she were a trapped animal that had not resigned itself to capture yet. Anything that moved in her field of awareness was completely out of luck, as she lashed out quickly and violently with her seemingly endless supply of senbon, not sparing a second or in some cases single glance at her target, only letting the popping sound of dispelling clones tell her that she hit her mark.

She couldn't lose them, for every clone she killed off, several more would emerge. He had two ways of tracking her. One was to use his sonar jutsu to hone in on her general direction and then send Kage Bunshin that way to check for her, the second way was when Haku killed a clone he would be able to tell where she was. However if she just let them live they would still find her anyway. She had long since passed the point of panicking.

Turning around she found more clones on her tail, however when she turned forward to work out a path to take to lose them or prepare to dispose of them she saw that damned shadow moving along the ground towards her again, and this time she couldn't run away, she was moving right towards it, and stopping on a dime would have brought her efforts to reach Zabuza to an end.

The only option she had left was an attack in the general direction of the shadow. She couldn't see the source of it, but she could estimate as her eyes worked double-time and found what she figured to be a good 45 degree estimation of the origin of the shadow. Figuring that no matter what she was going to be hit by the technique, whatever it did, Haku decided to at the very least go down swinging, or throwing in this case, as she let loose two fistfuls of her rather deadly senbon in front of her and behind her to rid herself of Naruto's clones.

Her gamble paid off as not only did she destroy the clones, the shadow retreated away from her and in the direction she threw, a rustle of bushes determined that someone had dodged and had been forced to let go of whatever jutsu was being used. Narrowing her eyes at the sight, she honed in on a tuft of black hair sticking out from the cover of the plant life. Quickly letting loose a barrage of needles the figure stood up, just as the needles hit him, "Ugh, troublesome." Shikamaru grunted out as he staggered back from the hits he had taken, "That almost worked…"

Sick of having gotten the run around from this team of rookie genin for so long and having had them keep her from getting to Zabuza to assist him, Haku didn't hesitate as she let fly with another set of senbon that hit Shikamaru dead on and got him to let out a gasp before falling back against a tree and slumping to the ground.

Haku moved in to ensure that he was out of commission, but a feminine shout of, "Shikamaru!" alerted her to the blonde female member of the squad heading out from her own hiding place nearby as she tried to cut off the ice wielding missing-ninja from doing further damage to her teammate.

Ino tried her best to engage Haku in close as she saw herself as the only defense Shikamaru had until Naruto was able to catch up to her himself and fight. His clones had served their purpose for what they had been intended for, but that plan had fallen to hell once Shikamaru was hurt.

Unfortunately for Ino, after dealing with Naruto and his clones which had a far greater capacity in close than her and with the fear, adrenaline and anger moving through her system by Zabuza's unknown fate and the fact that she was being held back from helping him by these kids detaining her, Haku was quick and merciless to the young girl. While Haku would be the first to admit that her taijutsu was absolutely abysmal she had her senbon in hand, and Ino wasn't as good at defending attacks as Naruto was from someone faster than herself.

Ino let out a desperate gasp as Haku seemed to float around the punch she threw to make her way to the girl's back. Ino desperately tried to turn to defend herself, but there was nothing she could do, 'She's so much faster than Naru-!' She was never able to finish her thought as a needle found its way to the side of her neck, forcing her eyes to roll into the back of her head and dropping the girl to the ground.

With the two genin around her overcome, Haku didn't feel like sticking around to try and deal with Naruto once he was able to arrive with his seemingly infinite backup. Sparing one glance back at the unmoving genin duo, she kept moving towards where she saw the explosion from earlier.

XxX

Haku's barrage on him inside of the dome of mirrors had taken a toll on Naruto. Once the needles were removed from his body he realized that he had been hit in areas by Haku that would intentionally slow him down. A few more and he wouldn't have been able to even stand up, let alone continue to fight. Ino had gotten him out at the right time. His mobility shot, Naruto made up for his new lack of speed by making 3 Kage Bunshin, his chakra dispersed evenly between them, and forced them to provide the raw chakra for his clones that he would use to corral Haku towards Shikamaru's shadow.

After bouncing her around for a bit and allowing Shikamaru and Ino to get into their positions his clones did their jobs perfectly. They were slower, but the sheer amount of them that he was able to create made up for his own physical deficiencies. He also discovered that if he used Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu his clones could get the same sight of the area that he could, this was by the main Naruto who lagged behind to triangulate Haku's position and guide his clones.

He had been impressed and unnerved when he realized the rate that Naruto was cutting a swatch through his clones, especially when she started taking out his platoon commander clones, eventually keeping his company of Kage Bunshin from being able to reform.

When she finished off his original three clones, keeping him from continuously flooding the area near Haku with clones his blood ran cold, especially when a quick check of his sonar jutsu let him know that Haku was right by Shikamaru and Ino. His legs had never burned so intensely in his entire life as his muscles seemingly demanded him to stop and rest, but he continued on. Another check revealed that Haku was no longer there, but two bodies were, and they weren't moving.

As he burst into the area, Naruto first laid eyes on Ino, on the ground face down and not moving, "Ino!" He ran over to her and turned her over to find that she gave him no reaction whatsoever, "Ino come on, wake up!" Reaching to test her pulse he pulled his hand back like he had been burned when he didn't find one, "No! Come on, you're tougher than that, just wake up!"

A cough to his side forced him to turn his head to find Shikamaru sitting against a tree, his body full of needles as opposed to the single one in Ino's neck. Carefully picking his blonde teammate up, Naruto carried her over to Shikamaru and set her down by him so that he could check him over, "Shikamaru I'm sorry! I just wasn't fast enough to keep up, you guys can't die on me here, this was our first real mission!"

"Second real mission idiot." Shikamaru said quietly with a smirk on his face, "We finished that first one so I guess we weren't completely worthless right? And as long as that bridge-builder guy is safe and finishes the bridge we finished this one too."

Naruto shook his head desperately as he felt tears stinging his eyes, "No we didn't damn it… this mission isn't successful if we all don't make it back to Konoha. Come on you lazy bastard, show some fight for once! Don't you fucking give up!"

Shikamaru's eyes started closing, "Crying Naruto? Man that's so uncool… but then again you weren't ever really one of the cool guys, just like me and Chouji… that's what I like about you." He finished as his lids closed completely. After saying that, Shikamaru's body went limp against the tree and didn't move again, just like Ino.

Naruto looked back at the young Yamanaka girl and couldn't keep his eyes on her as he looked down at the ground. With one hand he closed her eyes before punching the ground repeatedly, hard enough to break his hand. With his good hand, Naruto gathered the chakra to make Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu and let out a pulse that allowed him to see Haku moving swiftly towards where he presumed Asuma and Zabuza were.

Clinching his jaw shut tightly as tears were freely falling down his face, he couldn't comprehend how angry he was. It was his fault. He knew he was the one that needed to be near them in case of trouble as he was the only one that was suited to deal with an opponent as dangerous as Haku directly, but his body chose to crap out on him when he needed it to go a bit longer. And now his teammates were dead. All because he wanted to warn someone that he thought was his friend. All because of Zabuza and Haku.

Naruto stood up straight, pulled down his goggles over his eyes to hide his tears, and finally let out an anguished yell of rage and sorrow, "Haku!" He then immediately charged after Haku, dead-set on finding her and keeping her from bringing harm to his sensei the way she had done to his other squad members. This was a situation that he had created, and it was his fault. He was the one that had to handle it the best way that he could.

XxX

(Asuma vs. Zabuza)

Asuma had cleared back from the explosion he had caused, as it had started something of a small forest fire. Asuma was sure he could put it out, but at the moment he needed to confirm his kill. He just really wasn't looking forward to going inside of a fire to find Zabuza's corpse.

There was no way he survived that though. Zabuza had tried to conceal himself inside of the ash from Asuma as a poor man's substitute for his mist, too bad for him that was only part of Asuma's jutsu, "Whew, blew his ass to kingdom come…" He said looking at his handiwork, trying to peer through the flames, "Wish I could see in there though…"

A yell of pure anger erupted from within the flames as Zabuza emerged and swung a deeply cracked Kubikiribouchou at Asuma, who jumped backwards but still got slashed violently across the chest of his flak jacket. The density of the jacket was probably the only thing that kept Zabuza's attack from getting through to his organs and finishing him off right there.

Dropping to one knee momentarily before standing back up, Asuma clutched at his wound and glared at Zabuza, "How did you possibly walk away from that? You were right in the middle of it." He then noticed that much of Zabuza's body was covered in deep, intense burns. Most of his front was horribly wounded. His facial wrappings were burned mostly off of his face, revealing his shark-like teeth as he breathed heavily, trying to keep himself out of shock.

"Kubikiribouchou kept me from kicking the bucket on that last one." Zabuza admitted, pointing at the crack on the blade that seemed to cover the entire sword, that was until it seemed to absorb Asuma's blood that it had been coated with. After taking in all of his blood that it had taken on it reformed to its original perfect appearance, not a crack or nick on it, "Got to love this thing."

Asuma groaned in exasperation as he got back into a shaky taijutsu stance, 'This is ridiculous. I'm seriously losing blood here and that last attack should have blown some limbs off. A sword is that dense that it was able to take most of the blunt concussive force from the explosion?'

"You're good." Zabuza said, slowly lifting his large sword up in a basic kendo stance, "You and Kakashi are the best fights that I've had in a long time."

"You say that like I've already lost." Asuma said, gripping his trench knives tightly. Zabuza had gotten him good with that last attack, but from looking at Zabuza the former member of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist had also taken some serious damage from their battle. His injuries were more numerous than Asuma's but the blood loss from the Konoha jounin could be detrimental to his success in battle if he couldn't end it quickly or stop the bleeding somehow.

Before they could continue their battle further a smirk came to Zabuza's face. Before Asuma could wonder about what the issue was he was forced to dodge needles launched at him, and he bit back a curse as the person who had attacked him came from the surrounding forest, 'No, did she beat them? Did she kill them?' He thought to himself worriedly.

"Haku." Zabuza said as he watched her draw closer to him slowly, keeping her eyes on any move Asuma might make on her master, "You certainly took a long enough time to deal with those brats. Had some trouble?"

Haku nodded, "I'm sorry Zabuza-sama. I finished up as quickly as I could after I saw the explosion take place. They were better than they appeared to be."

Asuma's eyes widened before he started growling angrily at what Haku was insinuating and was preparing to attack when everyone felt a crushing presence surround them. Asuma immediately had a flashback to twelve years earlier and swallowed down a lump of fear in his throat, realizing who it was, 'Don't panic. You know who this is, and it might actually be a good thing for this once.' He thought with a wait and see attitude, all the while preparing for a response, just as an orange blur jumped through the trees and slammed hard into Haku.

The movement was so sudden that Zabuza's sword, which he had prepared for an attack, didn't come close to touching the person before whoever it was hit Haku with full momentum and propelled her and himself out of the area away from near Zabuza.

Forgetting about Asuma momentarily, Zabuza turned to chase after and attack the newcomer before Haku could be killed. With the power he felt and with the amount of bloodlust he felt from it he knew that Haku had no chance. Unfortunately, forgetting about Asuma was the last thing he needed to have happen, as it ended abruptly and without warning. For claiming that Haku was just a tool he certainly cared too much about that 'tool' for one instant, and that was all that someone as wily as Asuma needed.

Asuma threw one of his trench knives at Zabuza, and as anticipated he lifted his sword to block it with the flat of the blade, however with the chakra flow going through the special metal of the weapons it was more effective than the kunai that he threw earlier and it pierced through Zabuza's sword, burying itself into his chest up to his sternum. Zabuza's eyes went wide and he let out a gasp as Asuma got around to his side and took an angle before using Hien to cut clean right through him.

Zabuza stood perfectly still before a massive spray of blood flew from his torso and he dropped to the ground, cut almost clean in half, dead.

"So stupid… You didn't have to die here you idiot, that's why we were here in the first place." Asuma didn't spare him a glance as he began hurrying in the direction that Naruto and Haku came from, "I've got to see for myself what happened to Shikamaru and Ino… Naruto can wait for now."

XxX

Again and again it happened, like clockwork almost. Haku had stopped flying through the air and had almost come to a stop, rolling violently along the ground before trying to get steady and use the momentum to reach her feet, but each time she did she was punted or bashed away further, rather violently, by the orange blur that had hit her in the first place. Eventually her body hit the trunk of a tree with a sickening crack and she slumped to the ground, sitting against it.

Behind her mask her eyes were fluttering open and closed before she realized why she had run away from the genin she had been fighting in the first place. She shakily tried to stand up, tasting the blood in her mouth, and knowing that she had broken more than five ribs at least in addition to a broken right femur due to almost falling as fast as she stood up. Instincts suddenly started blaring for her to move somehow, and she rolled to the side just as a punch shattered the bark of the tree she had been against and cracked the trunk itself.

She was finally able to get a good look at her attacker and fought back a gasp, "N-Naruto-kun…"

Naruto growled at her angrily, his appearance now radically different from the boy that had met her not one morning previous. She was unable to see his eyes behind his goggles, but his brow was furrowed in pure malice, his nails were longer and more resembled claws, and his canines were more pronounced and sharper. His spiky blonde hair looked wilder and his whisker-marks were thicker and darker than normal. He looked thoroughly enraged from the intense and deadly glare he directed at her.

So overwhelmed from the sudden aura of darkness from the boy she was hardly able to reach for her weaponry, but it did her no good anyway, as the senbon that hit him almost immediately dropped from his body to the ground and only elicited an angrier growl from him. He blurred out of her sight, leaving an orange haze in his wake to indicate the direction he had gone in. Haku couldn't even keep her eyes on him as he bounced around the area off of trees, keeping her off balance and leaving a trail of orange that then dissipated into the air.

As she looked around, he appeared in front of her and grabbed her around her neck tightly. Haku's eyes behind her mask almost bulged out of her head at the immediate pressure that had been applied from the strangling. Haku desperately clutched at his arm tightly, audibly choking and hacking as he held her off of the ground with his one outstretched arm and shoved her against a tree hard enough to again crack the bark with her body.

The intensity of the slam against the tree removed the mask from her face and revealed that tears were coming from her eyes due to the lack of air she was getting. She was barely able to choke out the loose syllables of the phrase, "I'm sorry Naruto-kun." Shutting her now blood-red eyes, she waited for him to finish her as she had seen him cock his fist back prior to shutting her eyes.

The smash that followed, she assumed it to be her face, and there was no pain as he hit her hard enough to concuss her to the extent that she couldn't tell how hurt she was. The following five smashes then followed soon after as the tension on her neck faded and she was dropped to the ground.

She felt wet drops fall on her face and she looked up to expect Naruto's hands to be dripping her blood, but saw him leaning with his forehead against the tree, tears dripping down from the bottom of his goggles, "You killed them…"

Haku wheezed and gasped for air desperately, having no idea how he didn't kill her from choking her alone, "Why did you stop?" She asked softly, her voice unable to go any higher due to the damage her throat had taken, "I killed your friends."

"It wasn't supposed to be this way!" Naruto yelled as he smashed the tree as hard as he could with his forearm and elbow three times, "We didn't have to fight! Gato wasn't going to pay you no matter what you did! Even if you beat us here you still had another whole team to deal with! Why?"

"Zabuza-sama told me to." She said as if she was explaining the reason that the sun rose in the morning, "No matter how I felt about it, it was his command. I am his tool."

"Stop saying that!" Naruto snapped at her, grabbing her collar and jerking her back to her feet, pushing her against the tree again, "People aren't tools! You're a human being damn it, and you have free will! All of this could have been avoided if you'd grown a backbone and just spoken up! You know you were wrong, you know that this was stupid, so tell me what was going through your head when you were coming out here!"

"Let it go Naruto."

Naruto turned his head to see Asuma walking towards him with Ino and Shikamaru over his shoulders. He slowly walked towards him and stopped short by a few feet, 'Did he beat it back? Did he even know what was happening? No, he somehow calmed down… that's good.' He walked directly behind Naruto and looked at Haku, who once she got a look at Asuma looked at him rather pleadingly, asking him a silent question that she knew he had the answer to. Asuma simply shook his head, no pity in his gaze on the girl.

Haku looked down, blinking back more tears as the color in her eyes began returning to normal, "I see… Naruto-kun please kill me."

Naruto looked at her in shock before his face turned almost stone-like, "No. You're not getting off that easily." He said, getting her to squirm weakly in his grip that was like iron. Naruto pointed at Ino and Shikamaru on Asuma's shoulders, "You're going to live with that. And you're going to live with Zabuza being dead, just like I have to live with being too weak to protect them the way I was supposed to." Tears started falling from behind his goggles again and before Haku could dispute and beg for him to kill her again, Naruto grabbed her forehead and abruptly smashed the back of her head against the tree, rendering her unconscious.

Naruto picked up her lifeless body and turned back to Asuma, "I'm ready to go back to the house Asuma-sensei…" Naruto said bitterly, listlessly, in a voice that sounded dead.

Asuma reached into one of the undamaged pockets of his vest, carefully so as not to disturb Ino or Shikamaru and stuck a cigarette in the boy's mouth, lighting it for him without a word as he did the same for himself, "And that's why I do this kid. Not because it's cool but because it's a coping mechanism. You handled this as well as you possibly could have." He motioned with his head and began to carry the other two genin back to the house, "Come on."

Naruto just stood with the smoke stick in his mouth, not even trying to enjoy it before he finally started moving behind Asuma at a reserved pace. They walked for quite a while, not saying a word between them until they stepped out from the forest signifying that they were near Tazuna's. As they neared the house they saw slashes on trees in passing and a cut up boar as well leading towards the house.

Gritting his teeth angrily, Naruto looked up at Asuma who nodded at him that what he wanted to do was okay. He set Haku on one of Asuma's shoulders along with the others and cracked his neck before rushing away in a Shunshin.

XxX

On the main path towards the village from Tazuna's house, the two bodyguards of Gato's that wielded katana were leading a tied up Tsunami who walked with her head down in resignation. She fell to the ground on the offside of the path once she was shoved there by one of them, the one with the eyepatch and a lack of a shirt.

"We're in no rush right?" He asked his partner with a sick grin on his face, "All we have to do is make sure the bridge-builder's daughter gets there, he didn't say when, and he didn't say that we couldn't have any fun with her either did he?"

The white haired man in the purple hat rolled his eyes, "Fine… just hurry up damn it. I don't want to be out here all day. Hearing that brat cry and yell for us to not take his mommy pissed me off, useless runt. You could hear him cry from half a mile out while we were leaving. I might have a go myself just to spite the bitch for creating the kid in the first place."

The first man began to drag Tsunami until a voice sounded out, "Please let her go." Both of them looked down the path to see Naruto walking towards them, "I'm in a really bad mood right now and I might be overreacting, but what were you about to do to her?"

The man whose 'fun' had just been interrupted whipped around at Naruto angrily and drew his sword, "Whatever the fuck I want brat."

"Hold up on Tazuna's daughter for a second Waraji." The white haired man said as he drew his own sword, "Look at the headband. This is one of those ninja brats that Gato told us to kill if we got the chance." They both started stalking slowly towards Naruto.

Naruto sighed and flicked open his kunai pouch, putting the men all on edge, "Do you know why thugs like you like weapons like those swords you're holding so much? I'm not going to say that it's some inadequacy thing that you guys have with your equipment downstairs because I don't know and I don't really care." He said, getting them to bristle in anger, "No, losers like you like weapons because a normal guy is automatically stronger than other normal people with a blade in his hand, and he can make himself rich and feared by pointing it at others with intent to harm. Because with a weapon, even pussies like you can be tough guys if you've got blades in your hands."

The man with the eyepatch stomped forward angrily in an effort to cut Naruto to pieces but stopped when he heard his partner cry out in alarm from behind him. He turned and saw that another Naruto had appeared behind him and had grabbed him around the waist and his arms, squeezing tight enough to get him to drop his sword on the ground, "Waraji help!"

"Genshi Kujo (Atomic Extermination)!" Naruto's clone lifted the white-haired man up and abruptly jerked his body back to bridge over and slam the man harshly on his head and neck, leaving it bent at an awkward angle as his body bent over in the direction he was slammed on it in.

Waraji was about to move to retaliate on the clone when he heard Naruto's voice in his ear from behind, "And what I really hate, is a pussy with a blade in their hands. Kuro ni Utsurou (Fade to Black)." He lifted his arm high above his head from his perch behind Waraji on his shoulders and slammed his elbow down as hard as he could on the base of his neck. The mouth of the hired thug twisted in agony before he bonelessly dropped to the ground in a heap.

Naruto and his clone that had attacked alongside him stared at the two dead men before turning their attention to a clone that was cutting Tsunami loose. Upon being freed she latched onto the clone for dear life and hugged it tightly. Naruto walked over and dispelled his clones before helping her up, "Are you okay?" He said with his goggles still down over his eyes.

She ignored the cigarette in his mouth as he wasn't even really smoking it, plus he had just saved her life and probably more than that, and nodded, "Yes. Thank you, you got here just in time. Thank you so much."

Naruto's lips quirked slightly before a frown found its way back onto his whiskered face, "Well… the hero always arrives at the last minute." He proceeded to assure that Tsunami was alright until he saw Asuma walking down the road, still carrying everyone, only Haku was now tied up. The man seemed to have a serene smile on his face as he walked through, even ignoring the corpses that now littered the path.

Naruto walked over to his sensei and began to speak, "I kept them from doing anything to Tsunami Asuma-sensei. Gato tried to kidnap her."

"I hope you fucked them up… Gato's a prick…" A feminine voice said weakly from Asuma's shoulder, getting the man to grin wider.

Naruto stood as still as a statue and stared at Ino on Asuma's shoulder, "Can you say that again? I think I'm starting to snap."

"Gato's a prick…" The voice said again. Ino weakly lifted her head, locking her blue eyes with Naruto's, "I heard you won." She motioned her head weakly to Haku on the other shoulder, "I can see that you won too. Way to go Naruto." She finished with a small smile.

"Ino…" Naruto said as he lifted his goggles off of his face and walked towards her slowly, putting a hand on her neck and feeling her pulse, getting her to arc a delicate eyebrow in confusion, "You're really alive! Oh man… oh man don't ever do that again, I've never been so scared in my entire life!" He looked over at Shikamaru, "What about him? Is he alive too?" He started shaking Shikamaru, "Shikamaru speak to me!"

The boy groaned lowly and kept his head lowered, "I finally get an excuse to sleep and the first thing you do is wake me up… you troublesome bastard…"

A smile grew on Naruto's face and he put his goggles back down over his eyes to hide the tears building in his eyes again, for a positive reason this time.

* * *

How to Train Your Genin: Tip 7

Appropriate retaliatory force

Moderation for a ninja is important. Use what you need to win and nothing more. Every new shinobi wants to learn the big flashy techniques that they've heard about ever since the concept of nin-, tai-, or genjutsu was initially introduced to them, but the knowledge of how and when to use the jutsu is just as important as the hand-seals needed to activate the technique in the first place.

Jumping into a battle and using your most powerful jutsu, or tool, or whatever is all well and good if your opponent is blind, deaf, and dumb… because any opponent worth a jutsu or technique of that caliber is going to need to be worn down before anything like that would even hit them in the first place unless they're so far below you it works right off the bat, and if that's the case then there was no need for you to even use a jutsu that strong in the first place. And most powerful jutsu are very chakra costly. Unless you generate chakra like a power plant you might want to keep as much as you can for when you actually need to use it, because most battles are never straightforward.

Also, with some ninja they have been shown to be wily enough to reconstruct and reverse engineer certain jutsu from sight and memory… for those of you that are short of memory there's actually an entire kekkei genkai based off of that single ability so jounin sensei teach your genin squads some discretion. There's a time and a place for everything, and when it's not that time and place you'll know it because you're going to be taking a beatdown when you try it.

-Shiho

* * *

Jutsu List

Ikkaku Sankakkei Buratsuku ou Hokai (Collapsing Point Triangle Swing). Defensive, supplementary, collaboration jutsu. When one member of Team 10 is trapped or surrounded, another will sneak to the scene and utilize Kawarimi no Jutsu to switch places with them. Uzumaki Naruto will then create a Kage Bunshin and will use it to again Kawarimi with the still trapped team member and free the entire team, leaving the Kage Bunshin behind to direct enemy attention until it is dispelled. By this time Team 10 will either have counter-attacked or will have left the immediate area to regroup. This can also be done with only two members of the team, but the necessary member must be Uzumaki Naruto for his use of Kage Bunshin no Jutsu to provide the last expendable body meant for the final Kawarimi.

Genshi Kujo (Atomic Extermination). B-rank taijutsu. Offensive. From behind, the user will grab their opponent around the waist and if possible the arms to keep them from moving and will sharply pop their hips and lift the enemy off of the ground. The user will then abruptly bridge their body back and fall, seemingly onto the top of their head, only the opponent's head will land far before the user's and will keep the user's from smashing into the ground. Using the full weight of both the user and the victim, the victim's head and neck will take the full brunt of the weight of both and along with the speed and power used to execute the move. After the first slam, the user will roll through their bridge and repeat the process as much as needed until the opponent is rendered unconscious or dead.

Kuro ni Utsurou (Fade to Black). C-rank taijutsu. Offensive. The user drives a 12-6 vertical elbow strike to the base of the enemy's neck. This move can easily paralyze and/or kill an opponent if used by a skilled practitioner. It is fast, and is a very violent and sudden way to attack someone. It is best used while undetected by the enemy, but can also be used in a full-scale fight when used on the top of an enemy's skull where it can fracture a skull and kill an enemy as well.

* * *

**Ow… my hand hurts. Having no insurance sucks… I hate being broke.**

**Kenchi out.**


	11. Unbreakable

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. But I do own a wallet-cleaning company. First time customers get their wallets cleaned for free so send your wallets on in. Don't worry about emptying them out beforehand… I'm honest.

**Chapter 11: Unbreakable**

**

* * *

**

Despite all that had happened, the day was not yet over. As a matter of fact it had technically just begun. The sun had just finished fully coming up signifying that it was still rather early in the morning. Even though Naruto wanted to stay with his teammates after discovering that they were still alive and in one piece after the fight with Haku he couldn't, at least Asuma said he couldn't.

Gato never knew that Zabuza had tried tailing them back to Tazuna's home, therefore his men were still to attack the bridge. If it was needed, Naruto, even being spent both physically and emotionally had to be there to assist them if needed. Asuma could hold down things alone at the house, all it comprised was him securely restraining Haku, making sure Ino and Shikamaru were actually okay, and making sure Tsunami and Inari were safe from anymore attacks.

With that thought in mind, and with knowledge of his objective, Naruto kept himself on the path towards the bridge hoping that his current physical deficiency due to battle fatigue, damage from Haku, and a lack of speed that was slowly fixing itself faster than he thought it ever should have wouldn't keep him from being useful just in case.

'I've still got more than enough fight in me if it comes down to it.' Naruto thought to himself as his feet hit the path again and again in his rush to the bridge.

XxX

(With Asuma)

Asuma returned to the house to find the front door cut down and thought back to the two men that Naruto had killed, 'Idiots…' As he walked inside he saw Inari crying in the corner of the living room only to have his wails silenced when Tsunami ran in and grabbed the young boy up in a hug. He let the two have a moment to themselves while he saw to his two students that had just seemingly come back from the dead, 'You two were very lucky.' He thought as he looked at the still unconscious Haku, 'Your opponent wasn't bloodthirsty and actually went out of their way to make sure you two weren't killed.'

After setting Ino and Shikamaru down in a room on two separate futons he tied up Haku and took her downstairs with him, setting her on the couch. Naruto had actually messed her up pretty badly in the forest. Her injuries weren't life-threatening, but she wasn't going to be any kind of threat until she got some treatment.

'The kid has no idea of what he even did.' Asuma thought, looking at Haku, 'He knows he won, but he doesn't know where that power came from, or that there even was a power. He probably thinks that was anger-fueled adrenaline if he's even thinking about it which I doubt.' He let out a sigh, he knew how things were supposed to go, but this was so narrow-sighted, 'Damn it dad, you should have let me tell Naruto, either that or you yourself. Do you really think he can go much longer without finding out about the Kyuubi? By the time Jiraiya-sama gets here like you planned something bad could actually happen. I trust the kid, but not that thing.'

"Thank you."

Asuma turned his head towards the stairs to see Inari looking at him, his eyes still puffy from crying not too long ago. Asuma let out a grunt "For what? I wasn't the one that saved you mom kid. You should thank the little blonde guy when he comes back. He's the one that found her and beat the guys that took her. In one move too."

Inari thought of Naruto, the guy that he had pissed off and had gotten to berate him the other day. That was the guy that had saved his mom and beaten those two scary guys with the swords, in one move? "How?" Inari asked Asuma. Naruto couldn't have been that much older than him, "How did that guy fight against those thugs like that?"

Letting out a sigh, Asuma walked to the stairs to head up and see how his genin were doing, "Well Naruto has a few problems himself, pretty big ones. You lost your father, well Naruto never knew either of his parents. In fact, people in our village don't really like Naruto at all. A lot of people see him as useless, or something they'd like to just forget exists. How would you like that? For people to try and deny the fact that you're an actual person and you exist just like they do?" Inari shook his head, "You probably can't imagine that because you've always had people that are happy to see you and love you, people to protect you. So you see, Naruto has more of a reason than you do to cry."

"Why doesn't he?" Inari asked.

Asuma shrugged, "Because he probably knows that it won't change anything. Crying is useless and doesn't solve problems. The only time I've ever even heard of the kid crying is when he realized his teammates weren't dead…" At that, Asuma let a small smile come to his face, "But then again it's okay to cry when you're happy."

He walked past Inari to continue on upstairs when the boy called out to him again, "Wait, where is he now? Naruto. He's on your team like those others isn't he?"

Asuma chuckled and ruffled his hair, "Well let's say that Naruto's job isn't quite done yet. He's still got to protect your grandpa, and he'll give it his all, just like with everything else he does. I wouldn't worry about it, he's a ball of energy… energy and win."

"What?" Inari said with a confused face, "Energy and win?"

"Yeah." Asuma said as he made it the rest of the way upstairs, "The win's the most important part. I'd hate for him to be a ball of energy and fail." As he made it all the way upstairs and Inari went downstairs, Asuma found Tsunami leaning against the wall with a smile on her face, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She assured him, "Naruto-kun was able to stop them before anything could happen at all. And thank you for talking with Inari like that. I'm sorry this has been so much trouble for all of you."

Asuma waved it off, "It's all a part of the job ma'am. And it's not over yet. If you think anything is off at all I want you to call for me. I'm going to be routinely patrolling the place and keeping an eye on my genin. The prisoner won't bother any of you. She's no threat." A grin came to his face, "I can think of a way to repay me though." He said, getting a rather shocked look from Tsunami by the sound of want in his tone.

She was about to call him out on it until he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his vest pocket and held it up with the same grin on his face and a thumbs up gesture. Tsunami shook her head with a humorous smile on her face, "Sorry Asuma-san. I would rather the inside of my house not smell like an ashtray. You can smoke outside." She laughed when his shoulders dropped in defeat, "You know the rules."

Asuma kicked at the ground and continued on to Ino and Shikamaru, looking dejected, "Missing-ninja… my own students… even my clients don't give me any respect. Is it me?" He said to himself quietly, getting Tsunami to laugh a little more and driving Asuma further into depression.

XxX

(Bridge Under Construction)

Kakashi snapped his book shut as a boat started coming towards the unfinished edge of the bridge. He had utilized the mist jutsu he had copied from Zabuza during their last meeting as a bluff to cover that there was no battle going on. He had gotten Tazuna to get his workers to clear the bridge until the conflict was complete, but the remaining men with him working on the bridge didn't want to just leave. If they were planning to fight Gato over the bridge they would damn well be there for it.

After seeing Naruto put down a good number of them the previous day they found themselves fired up at the prospect of being able to get their own shot. The village had been stirring ever since the word of some kid that could replicate himself beating down Gato's men came through.

Thus currently on the bridge it was Kakashi, Chouji, and Sasuke in front of Sakura who was slated with protecting Tazuna throughout whatever happened, and twenty of Tazuna's workers behind them.

"Taking quite a while with the job aren't you 'Demon of the Mist'?" Gato's voice said from within the rather sparse mist, however it was thick enough for him to not be able to make out much more than silhouettes that he mistook for Zabuza and Haku. When he eventually got close enough to see the masked face of Kakashi, who seemed to be smiling at him, his senses of self-preservation kicked in and he turned to run.

"Now that's not nice, first you mistake my identity and then you don't even say hello. Those are terrible manners." Kakashi said as he drew a handful of shuriken and threw them after Gato. However with the mist in his way, Kakashi mistook his position and wound up hitting three of Gato's hired men, only managing to cut the short man on his shoulder as he continued to run.

"Anyone who kills that ninja I'll give you 1 million ryo!" Gato yelled frantically, and that finally got his men in gear.

"Good luck with that!" Kakashi said in a voice that sounded bright and honest before he pointed his fingers forward, "Sasuke, Chouji, straight ahead." This many bandits wouldn't have been enough to deal with Zabuza even if they _had_ fought a full battle and he would have won. Zabuza would have massacred more than half of them before anyone by some stroke of divinity managed to put him down.

Sasuke nodded and quickly worked through a series of hand-seals before placing his fingers by his mouth, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!" From the genin's mouth erupted a roaring flame that cut through the mist and hit a large number of Gato's thugs who were lined up prepared to charge ahead to take down Kakashi and anyone else in their way, "Get Gato Chouji!"

The screams from those hit with the jutsu preceded Chouji's body expanding to that of a ball as he tucked his limbs into his clothes and began rolling, "Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank)!" He began to pick up momentum as he headed forward and knocked around any of Gato's men that managed to find themselves in his way, either by knocking them off of the bridge entirely or smashing them into the ground under him.

Kakashi quickly dealt with anyone that managed to get through the combined assault of his two students and still come forward. The entire time the mist from his jutsu was clearing up and the workers were able to get a clear view of what was happening, namely Gato's assault squad being broken down by three hired ninja.

XxX

As a series of cheers went up from everyone who could see what was happening, a blur jumped over their heads and landed in front of Tazuna right by Sakura, "What's going on Sakura-chan? Did I miss much?"

Sakura quickly turned to her side to see Naruto staring out at the fight between their comrades and Gato's men with his fists clenched, although he had a rather ragged appearance, "Naruto what happened? How did everything go with Zabuza?"

"Not good." He said with a frown, "We had to fight them when they didn't listen and tried to kill us. But it's okay. Ino and Shikamaru are kind of beat up, but we won." Naruto's eyes narrowed on the scene in front of him, "And these are Gato's guys that we knew were coming today, right?"

Sakura nodded, "Yeah, just like you and Sasuke-kun said they would." She couldn't see his eyes behind his goggles, but she could clearly tell that there was nothing goofy or fun about this Naruto at all, nothing like the one that had been throwing rocks at her and Ino, and nothing anywhere near like the one that had been constantly pestering her in the Academy. Just as she started to think on this, she saw him bounce on his toes and charge forward, prompting her to grab a hold of his arm, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Where do you think you're going? Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke-kun, and Chouji can handle this, help me watch out for Tazuna!"

Naruto turned towards her, his goggles obscuring his attempt at puppy-dog eyes, "But Sakura-chan I can still fight… I'm still so pissed off! You can watch him here can't you?"

"And what am I going to do if Gato has another jounin waiting to attack baka? I'm all alone!" Sakura said with a tick mark on her head, "Just calm down and wait it out!" She jerked him back to her side and ignored his pout at not being able to go fight or get a shot at Gato so she could focus back on staying alert despite how well things were going, **"Just when you think the guy's starting to be a little bit cooler!"** Her inner personality griped in her place.

"Fine…" Naruto said to her, watching Kakashi, Sasuke, and Chouji beat the rest of Gato's goons with next to no effort after they had already eliminated the bulk of them with ninjutsu beforehand. He formed his signature hand-seal and decided that at least he could help out support-style, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)." Over twenty clones formed and headed off down the bridge in case there was anyone that needed help.

XxX

Sasuke finished fighting his way towards the end of the bridge through Gato's men and found his boat leaving. The young avenger narrowed his eyes at the departing vessel and took out a kunai, "Oh no you don't…" He muttered as he started wrapping an explosive tag around the handle, setting it to begin burning down as he took aim and prepared to throw. His fireball wouldn't reach out that far, and even with the kunai he needed to have impeccable aim to hit.

"Stupid brats! That was my meal ticket!" A man shouted with a small club in his hand, breaking Sasuke's concentration. He smashed Sasuke's hand, knocking the kunai down onto the ground as it continued to burn. Sasuke looked at it and let out a gasp as it neared detonation time.

Shutting his eyes, Sasuke wondered why he hadn't been blown to bits after a few seconds even though he had heard the explosion. He hadn't even bothered to move. The ground he would have needed to cover in less than a second wouldn't have been possible for him. Opening his eyes, he found himself a decent distance away from the explosive tagged kunai that would have killed him, though he didn't understand what happened. All he saw was that he and the others had been reinforced by Naruto's clones who were using their rather short life spans to take advantage of Gato's men not seeing them coming in order to put them down fast before being dispelled.

XxX

Naruto got his memory back from one of the first clones he had sent off and found that it had paid immediate dividends for the fight, as it kept Sasuke from injuring himself or maybe even killing himself by using Kawarimi to switch with him when he dropped his kunai, "Whew…" Naruto exhaled in relief.

Sakura looked over at a relieved Naruto with a raised eyebrow, "What happened?"

Naruto shook his head, "Nothing, but that explosion at the end of the bridge almost had Sasuke in the middle of it." He heard Sakura gasp and quickly assuaged her fears, "It's okay. My clone got him out, he's fine."

Sakura's face reflected the relief she felt. This was turning out well, very well. Zabuza had been defeated and was out of the way, no longer a threat, and Gato's attempt to cheapskate his way out of a deal with someone under his employ was failing epically.

XxX

Kakashi had to admit, his genin were working well. Then again, an opponent who wasn't Zabuza this time around probably seemed easy to them. Even with the numbers they were disorganized, and with seeing kids perform jutsu the little amount of a formation they could boast having quickly fell apart, especially when it became clear that Gato ditched them. And then when Naruto's clones came storming onto the scene with a vengeance and knowing what his clones had done to the last batch of thugs that came through, they had all but given up.

He quickly disposed of another of the few remaining thugs with a hard backhand strike to the face. Turning towards the site of an explosion on the bridge, Kakashi saw Sasuke running towards him, dodging the men in his way effortlessly and brutally kicking them to the ground without much thought. Once he reached Kakashi he stopped in front of his commander and spoke, anger underlying his usual rather stoic tone, "Gato's gone. He got away and he's too far to reach from here."

Kakashi sighed as that miniature headache was still around and walking about, but their mission wasn't to hunt down and kill Gato, it was to protect the bridge-builder, and they had done that. It would take time for Gato to re-amass a force that he felt comfortable with having them take them on, if he even decided to again. For now at least, everything was alright.

As he looked down at his broody-looking genin, Kakashi's words died in his throat. He instead gave Sasuke his notorious eye-smile, "It's alright Sasuke, the mission is still well in hand. Oh, and by the way, congratulations."

As Kakashi decided to do one last sweep of the bridge for injured enemies to capture, Sasuke wondered what he was talking about, and wouldn't know until his adrenaline died down and he looked into something that showed him his reflection, where he would see red eyes with a single tomoe centered around each pupil.

XxX

(A Few Hours Later)

Other than the thugs that had been killed by Sasuke's initial fireball and the ones crushed by Chouji's family jutsu that wound up dying from those injuries, the defeated hired hands were all rounded up and captured by the group of ninja and processed to an area to be held by the overjoyed townspeople. The sight of the bridge workers leading the beaten up brutes that had been terrorizing them for well over a year brought everyone from their homes to cheer for the victory.

After finding a building to hold the men inside of, and no shortage of volunteers eager to guard them until a solution of what to do with them came up, the Konoha ninja decided to head back to Tazuna's house.

As the house came into sight, Naruto, with his goggles once again out of his face, had a rather tired smile on his face as he walked up the front porch, "Yeah… I did it. I'm a winner… all I do is win, all day long… dattebayo. Kami I'm tired." He said, opening the door and walking over to a couch where he immediately sat down, tilted his head back, and fell asleep. The others stared at him from behind the couch at the door before shrugging and heading upstairs.

Kakashi stared at the loudly snoring Naruto and shook his head, "Well, he hasn't gotten any sleep or rest of any kind in over twenty-four hours. I guess it was only a matter of time before he clocked out for the night… even though it's still light outside." His eyes then rested on the still unconscious Haku that had been lain out on the same couch that Naruto sat on, further on down, "And this is our hunter-ninja I see."

"You're back." Asuma said, walking downstairs without his flak jacket on, and a new shirt on, one with no blood or cuts in it, "I assume everything went well?"

Kakashi nodded, "As well as we could have expected. Although Gato didn't want to stick around once he realized that we weren't injured in the least. He left his men behind to cover him, and he wound up getting away."

"Oh well…" Asuma dismissed with a sigh, "He'll be back, and we'll be waiting. Besides, Naruto and Sasuke gleamed the location of his base on Wave out of one of his men the other day. If you're feeling antsy we can check it out. See if we can't nip this all in the bud while we have him on the ropes." He suggested to the masked ninja.

"Maybe…" Kakashi said thoughtfully, "We'll have to think about it."

Asuma accepted that. There was no reason to go all out after they basically broke the back of Gato's homegrown force of men and the missing-ninja he went out of his way to hire. Contacting more that were strong enough to beat them would take more time than he had. The bridge would be done in less than a week at this rate. He looked down at the sleeping Naruto and smiled, "The brat did good today. He did the lion's share of the fighting against her." He said, gesturing towards Haku.

Kakashi raised his only visible eyebrow in shock, "That's… rather impressive. I'd give him some serious points for style if that were the case, because that would make this one hell of a day for a genin… or any ninja." He leveled a half-hearted glare at Asuma, 'Of course you would have been the one that strong-armed him onto your team instead of mine. I don't get any respect at all… well that is until I actually fight people, then I get respect. Or is that fear? Meh fear, respect, same difference.' He then turned his attention to Haku, "What do we do with her?"

Asuma replied quickly, as he had all day to think about what exactly to do, "She's our prisoner until the bridge is complete."

"Just until then?" Kakashi asked.

Asuma nodded, "By then the mission will be over. And even now, Gato won't be paying for Tazuna's assassination if he even stuck around. He knows what we're going to do, so he's either fortified his place on Nami no Kuni with the last of his men or he's cutting his losses and getting out of here."

Kakashi's vote leaned towards the latter. Unless he had another ninja of Zabuza's caliber lined up, and there was no way to swing that kind of contact in only a week, he would run. Sasuke neglected to mention which way Gato's boat was heading when he left. The man still had control of the sea lanes, so him hooking up with one of his supply ships on the way to the mainland was far from impossible. Still, five days wasn't enough for him to get a decent amount of any kind of force together. His criminal acts were supposed to be under the radar at large.

"He's gone from here." Kakashi confirmed, "Nami is only one place that he was trying to enforce complete control over because he saw an opportunity and could keep the place isolated so word never got out. He still has branches and branches of business elsewhere, though he may lose some face when the events of what happened here gets out to the public around the world." He said that, but he doubted it. Guys like Gato needed to be finished off or they would just cause trouble elsewhere. Oh well, there was always a chance that he would do something like this again, and he'd be waiting. Maybe if he were lucky enough someone else would get a shot at him and finish the worm for them.

"Good." Asuma said as he headed towards the front door to get some air, "Now I'm going to go into the forest, confirm Zabuza's dead, and scream in pain for a few minutes. Zabuza might have cracked some ribs during our fight, and doing your own stitches sucks because you can't use any painkillers."

"Have fun." Kakashi replied flippantly to his fellow jounin.

XxX

Sakura, Sasuke, and Chouji looked at a bed-ridden Ino with wide eyes after hearing what she said, "You're saying Naruto was the one that beat the hunter-ninja?" Sakura asked in disbelief.

Ino nodded weakly. She and Shikamaru wouldn't be moving about freely for at least a full day due to their bodies having been in total shutdown for as long as they had been. Shikamaru didn't seem to have a problem with this at all, as it meant that he could catch up on his sleeping, which he was currently doing, and this left Ino to field all of the questions that the others, namely Sakura, had after she had gotten the low-down from the others on just what they had done at the bridge.

"How?" Chouji asked. He remembered what Kakashi said about that person being powerful, and how they were caught off-guard by the hunter-ninja when Zabuza was rescued.

Ino frowned, "I didn't see that part. Me and Shikamaru didn't last that long after we freed Naruto from that weird dome of mirrors. The plan Shikamaru had was working perfectly, but we weren't able to completely keep her boxed in without Naruto there to keep up the pressure. She had injured him with tons of senbon and his muscles were shredded. I don't have any idea how he was able to win the way he was all on his own, even he said he wasn't able to move that fast, and she was seriously fast!"

Chouji looked over his sleeping best friend, "So you and Shikamaru are okay, right?" He said in a concerned manner. He wasn't even eating anything during Ino's explanation.

"Yeah." Ino said, "Shikamaru's just taking advantage of our bodies being useless for the time being and sleeping."

Sakura looked at the floor of the room apprehensively, "I don't really like Zabuza's hunter-ninja being in the same house as us. Even if she already was defeated…"

"Naruto beat her already." Sasuke said firmly, "It's over Sakura. She's not a threat anymore so it's nothing to worry about." He said, as he stood up to leave the room. He had heard all he needed to about what happened. All things considered it had been a relatively good day all around considering how it had started, especially for Sasuke. After his close call with the explosive tag he had managed to unlock his Sharingan. He still didn't know how he had gotten out of there, but decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

XxX

(Later That Night)

Naruto woke up suddenly, remembering that the last thing he did was crash out on the sofa once he got through with everything he had done for the last day and a half. He found that a blanket had been thrown over him and the lights in the room had all been turned out. The blonde genin cracked his neck, having had it hang backwards hours without moving and stretched out, bumping into something next to him on the couch.

It shifted slightly, but other than that didn't move. Naruto rubbed his eyes and looked to his side in the dark. Yawning, he quickly let out a pulse of his echolocation jutsu and saw Haku's form in his mind right next to him, tied up. From this range he could make out every last detail on her, and he knew that her eyes were open and she was wide awake, just like him.

He just sat there in the dark, not moving or saying anything, however by then he had also made it clear that he was awake as well. Eventually he heaved a deep sigh and spoke, "Haku… did you keep my team alive on purpose?"

"Yes." She said lowly.

Naruto could tell that her spirit was broken. When she saw Asuma walk over after the fight with Zabuza she knew what had happened. Naruto freaked out when he thought his friends were dead. He could only imagine how Haku felt knowing that unlike him her precious person was actually dead, no false-death state for him. Especially when Asuma left and actually confirmed his kill after they had all gotten back, but Naruto wasn't aware of that part.

"Thank you." That was all Naruto could really say to her. She could have killed his friends. It had probably taken more effort for her to find a way to simply incapacitate them instead of going for the kill.

"If you really were grateful…" Haku said in the same low tone as before, "…You would kill me Naruto-kun."

Naruto found himself getting rather angry at her again, "I told you already. I'm not going to kill you Haku. At first I was going to do it to be mean seeing as how you wanted to die, but I'm still not going to do it. What kind of way to repay you is that? You let them live and went against orders and in return I kill you. That sounds really great doesn't it?" He finished sarcastically.

"Zabuza-sama was all that I had." Haku said earnestly. Her voice starting to sound rather choked up as she gave him her story of how as a child her father had killed her mother and tried to kill her too due to her kekkei genkai, how she had managed to kill him in self-defense, and how she had roamed the streets before being found on the verge of death by Zabuza, "He was the only person in the world that acknowledged my existence and gave me a purpose, and now he's gone. Tell me Naruto-kun…" She said, and even without light in the room he could tell that she had turned her eyes to attempt to lock with his, "What am I supposed to do now?"

"Anything." Naruto answered immediately, "You can do anything you want Haku-chan." Naruto said, feeling his ire of her dying down now that everything was over, especially since everything she had known had been taken away because of this one mission, "I understand. But the difference between me and you is that if you had actually killed Ino and Shikamaru, I would have kept going… somehow. I'm not telling you to suck it up or get over it, how could I? I'm just saying, you're still alive, and living for a single person like that, while it might make you feel needed, what do you do when you fail? Look at you, you want me to kill you so you can follow Zabuza."

"I was his tool." She said, trying to defend her viewpoint on the matter, "I was a weapon only meant for Zabuza-sama to use for his goals. I'm not good for anything other than that."

He was really arguing a losing battle here. Haku was so completely devoted to Zabuza that without him there wasn't anything else to her. What could he do, get her someone else to live for? Who? Him? Yeah right.

If not a person then…

"Haku-chan…" Naruto said, getting her attention once more, "What exactly _were_ Zabuza's goals? You said he needed you for them, but what exactly was he trying to do?" He almost didn't want to know. Zabuza had not been a particularly pleasant person to say the very least. Between fighting Team 7, shooting him down when he tried to warn him of Gato's treachery, tailing them home to take out Tazuna, and trying to kill them to top it all off he hadn't exactly endeared himself to Naruto… something that otherwise wasn't that hard to do the boy had to admit to himself. He certainly wouldn't be losing any sleep over Zabuza being put down once and for all. He was a right many notches above those scumbags Naruto had put six feet deep on the path to Tazuna's house, but far from a good person.

Haku sounded… eager? Eager to explain what made Zabuza tick it appeared. As if what she had to say would make Naruto believe that he was a wonderful person somehow, "Zabuza-sama's ambition was to kill the Mizukage and wrest control of Kirigakure from him." And there that went. Another notch dropped for Zabuza. Naruto never really needed to know that. Naruto could never even consider ever trying to take out Hokage-jiji, the man was a hero to him. But then Haku continued, "The country had been suffering unrest for quite some time. The barbaric practice of Academy students fighting one another to the death to become shinobi, and the encouragement of exterminating those with kekkei genkai like myself were just a few of the examples of the man's crimes. No one else would stand against him."

And that changed things. Hearing that Zabuza actually stood _against_ something like that… that was actually pretty heavy. But then again if that was why he was fighting then why on earth was he helping Gato? That seemed rather counter-productive in the grand scheme of things didn't it?

"The money for assisting Gato was very good." Haku said, answering the question that Naruto never asked her in the first place as she continued to explain, "It would have served as a fantastic point of beginning to fund a possible return to Mizu no Kuni and another attempt at the Mizukage, possibly with far more assistance this time and a palpable chance at actually changing the regime."

Hearing how much happier in comparison Haku sounded when talking about Zabuza's ambition gave him an idea. If she was only living for Zabuza then why not live for Zabuza's ideal. He just had to make sure it wasn't something evil like he originally thought it was. Naruto put a hand on her and told her what he thought, "Hey, instead of trying to die because Zabuza isn't here anymore, why don't you try to carry out his dream for him in his place? Yeah, you could totally do that Haku-chan." He said in an encouraging manner.

"What?" Haku was rather shocked at the prospect. She had to admit that the idea had merit… and to finish up Zabuza's unfinished business would be something that she could do to find herself useful to her master even after his death. Still, how would she ever possibly pull that off? Not even Zabuza could do it, "I don't really think I could ever-."

A rather perturbed voice cut her off, "If Zabuza had told you that he wanted you to do that for him would you have said you could never do it?" Naruto fired back, stopping her from doubting her own capabilities any longer. Naruto knew that if Hokage-jiji had asked him to do something he would try it, no matter how big of a goal it was. Hell he already had a huge goal ahead of him, "It doesn't matter how long it takes Haku. That's the point of having a goal in life, to give it purpose, like me. I want to be Hokage, to protect everyone I care about, just like you said I should. Even I know that something like that won't happen for a long, long time, but I'll make it happen eventually! So you shouldn't say you can't flat out do it because you know it'll be hard. If it was what Zabuza really wanted do you think he would have just quit? Of course not. That's why he took this job, that's why he worked for Gato, that's why he fought us! Because he wasn't done with going for his goal."

Haku just lay there, still bound in place on the couch, thinking about what Naruto had just said. His voice sounded completely confident in the way that he truly believed what he was saying. There was no deceit in his tone. She couldn't find anything dishonest with how he was talking to her, and for a moment Haku flashed back to the boy in the forest she had first met. She had more or less betrayed him, and here he was trying to cheer her up and actually find her something to live for.

'This boy is one of a kind.' She thought to herself, 'He seems so kind and unassuming to those around him, but that power within him whenever he is angered is truly frightening. Like standing across from the devil himself in all of his fury.' Haku could only imagine the amount of power that she had felt earlier that morning, just packed inside of Naruto's twelve-year old body and couldn't comprehend it.

As she thought, Naruto chuckled slightly, "Besides, if I end up getting to be Hokage before you can beat the Mizukage then I'll just have to help you out won't I?" He said. She couldn't see him, but she could just tell that he had given her one of those grins he had done multiple times in the forest the other day when they had first met, "That's what friends do after all, right?"

Hearing him call her a friend again got Haku to widen her brown eyes in surprise. He really did forgive her. And knowing that, she couldn't fight down her own smile, even in the situation she was in, "Yes. That is what friends do Naruto-kun. I would be glad to accept your help in the future. But I have to become way stronger if I am ever to defeat the Mizukage."

"I will too." Naruto said, "A Hokage can't be weak can he?"

XxX

(The Next Day)

Asuma walked into the room his team used for lodging to find that Naruto wasn't there. He wasn't downstairs either, but Haku was right where he left her. Looking rather bored, but other than that she was fine. He'd have to see about having a doctor come up and check on her, that and make sure that Ino and Shikamaru wouldn't suffer any lasting effects from Haku's senbon putting them in a near-death state.

"Hello my temporarily invalid genin!" He said brightly, getting a groan out of Shikamaru and a yawn out of an awakening genin, "How are you feeling today?"

Ino sat up relatively easily and stretched her arms out, "I'm fine. A little stiff, but better than yesterday Asuma-sensei. How are things coming along with the bridge?"

Asuma smiled, "The villagers have some fire back in them, and by a little I mean a lot. It seems like all of them that are able want to work on it in some way. So are you up for guarding Tazuna today?"

"Yeah." Ino said, her hair down comfortably, "I guess I should make myself useful in some way on this mission…"

Asuma frowned at hearing her speak like that, "What are you talking about Ino? You've been incredibly useful so far. Why are you saying that?"

Ino shook her head, "I really haven't been. The only fighting so far that we did either Naruto handled it all, or when I actually had to fight Haku I wound up getting beaten. We might as well face facts. Shikamaru and I might as well have not been there. Naruto beat her without any help."

'You were more of a catalyst than you'll ever know Ino.' Asuma turned to Shikamaru who was facing away from them in his futon, "And is that how you feel Shikamaru? You didn't dispute her, and don't play dead over there. I can tell you're awake." He said, getting a sigh from the pineapple-haired boy as he turned around.

Shikamaru had his usual bored expression on his face, "Well I won't say that we were useless. We did manage to get Naruto out of that tough scrape he was in inside of that dome. But in the end he was the one that got hurt doing all of the fighting. All that hunter-ninja did was disable us in one move once we were found out. In a head-on fight, Naruto was the only one that was a match."

"And?" Asuma said questioningly. He wanted to hear what Shikamaru had to say about the matter, "What does that mean to you?"

"It's troublesome…" Shikamaru complained, getting Ino to roll her eyes at hearing him use his catchphrase, "But letting Naruto handle all of the real fighting isn't fair to him. We saw what was happening to him Asuma… he was getting torn apart in that dome, I don't know how he lasted the entire time. I got hit only a fifth of the times that he did and that was all I could take."

Ino held herself and shivered slightly, "He had so many of those needles in his body… all over. I took one of them and my entire body shut down and he stood up and fought looking like a porcupine. I can't believe it now that I'm thinking back on it." Her eyes hardened, "He's our teammate. We can't just use him and wait for him to set up Shikamaru's strategies for the checkmate. He's tough, but what if next time he fought someone with more power behind their attacks to go with the speed? How much would be too much?"

Asuma let her get out her frustrations and fears that she had after the fight with Haku before speaking, "You know, Naruto is the one that thinks he failed you guys." That got the eyes of both Shikamaru and Ino to lock firmly onto him, as if they were willing him to elaborate, "He thought Haku killed you both at first and he knew that he was the muscle behind the team. When you both went down he felt like he was too weak, that he couldn't live up to the importance of his job."

"We're supposed to be a team." Ino insisted, "It's my fault that we're so unbalanced and have to rely on Naruto for front-line fighting! He shouldn't blame himself because I couldn't defend myself!"

Shikamaru sat and thought about his role on the team. He actually enjoyed it so far because Naruto was always willing to step up and do whatever task they had. He didn't want to say that Naruto carried the bulk of the work because of him, but it was definitely disproportionate between Naruto and Ino who always seemed to do more than him. Even in the battle with Haku that seemed to be the case, and as much as it sucked to admit it that would wind up getting someone killed against an opponent that wasn't as merciful as Haku.

The laziest member of Team 10 sat up in his futon and rubbed the back of his neck, "Well… a good strategist fights on the field with his own soldiers. After all, if I feel good enough about a plan to send Naruto in I'd better be willing to step in there myself along with him." He let out a sigh, "And if I'm going to be able to keep up with that troublesome bastard I'd better start getting better at being more than just being number one at running away and hiding. So damn troublesome…"

Asuma looked at his students proudly and made a conscious thought to step up and start guiding them towards whatever they felt they needed to make them better ninja once they got home, 'And that's how you teach. Kurenai claims I'm not a good role model. What does she know anyway? My kids have great morals and common sense.'

XxX

(Forest Clearing Near Tazuna's House)

Naruto stood with his foot tapping the ground impatiently, "Come on, come on… let's get this show on the road. I want to kick your ass before breakfast is ready Sasuke-teme." Sakura, Chouji, and even Inari stood off to the side at the end of the clearing among the trees to watch from there.

"Yeah, whatever dobe." Sasuke said, stretching himself out to get ready before shoving his hands into his pockets, "We need a referee for this." He looked over at Sakura who seemed eager to volunteer and shook his head, she'd probably call the entire fight in his favor and disqualify Naruto for landing a punch, "Chouji, how about it?"

Chouji walked forward eating from a bag of chips, "I don't think this is such a good idea you guys. What are you even fighting about?"

Naruto started shaking his arms and legs out to get ready to move them in the fight, "Nothing. Sasuke called me out a few days ago, I accepted, we're going to fight. What's to understand?"

Sasuke nodded in agreement, "It's just a little test. It's not a big deal, so don't worry about it. Apparently the dobe almost got himself killed yesterday and so did I, so who cares about a spar?" He looked over at Naruto, "Rules?"

Naruto stroked his chin in thought, "Everything is legal. No shots to the groin for obvious reasons, no explosive tags, duh. When Chouji calls the fight that's it, no dispute. And to keep this from going all day long we need a time limit. 10 minutes?" Sasuke nodded, "Right, if it goes 10 minutes it's an automatic draw. We have all of the clearing, and can go into the trees a little bit. You know how far is too far, and if you go that far I'll be able to tell anyway and I'll call you on it."

"Agreed." Sasuke consented to the rules and set himself in his ready stance as did Naruto, "Ready whenever you are."

"I've been ready for almost a week." Naruto quipped before turning his eyes momentarily to Chouji, "We're going to start when you say go."

Chouji let out a sigh, "I still think this is a really bad idea, but you guys aren't going to listen to me anyway. Go!" He yelled before jumping back out of the way closer to Sakura and Inari.

At the same time, Naruto and Sasuke let fly with a kunai that flew past the other and towards the target. Both boys easily dodged and Sasuke spoke up, "You're throwing kunai dobe?"

Naruto pointed at him, "You did too, and besides, I knew you'd dodge. It wasn't supposed to hit you. Shikamaru says that the first move is always a feint."

"Feints usually mean you do something afterwards Naruto." Sakura chimed in from her place on the sidelines.

"Not helping Sakura-chan!" Naruto said before forming his cross hand-seal, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" In a puff of smoke, three clones formed and Naruto pointed at Sasuke, "Let's see what he's got!"

"Go Sasuke-kun!" Sakura shouted from the sidelines as Naruto's clones ran towards Sasuke, criss-crossing to try and disorient him. One slid low towards Sasuke with a sliding kick as a feint that was intended to get him off-balance.

'Those solid clones of his.' Sasuke thought as he quickly blocked the first kick and ducked a punch from the second one. A third came at him from his side and reached out to grab a hold of him, but Sasuke moved behind the second clone he had dodged and shoved him into the grabbing clone's path. Using this opening, he finished off the low attacking clone with a quick kick that dispelled it. He then punched the clone he had used as a weapon against the other one in the back and got rid of that one as well.

The final clone didn't waste his existence and threw a kick at Sasuke that he once again blocked. However it smirked when it channeled chakra to the bottom of its sandal and stuck fast to Sasuke's arm that he used to block with. Sasuke found that he couldn't get his arm off of the clone's leg as it used his arm as leverage to elevate and stand on him to deliver a series of stomps with the other leg down on Sasuke that he used his other arm to block, straining to hold Naruto's clone up with the first arm.

'Enough of this!' Sasuke thought as he let him arm go slack and drop the clone to the ground hard, dispelling it. Other than a few scuffs from Naruto's sandals on his arm-warmers, Sasuke didn't have any damage on him, 'Dobe's got some dangerous taijutsu. The real one won't be that easy to shake off. I know it.' He looked back where he left Naruto to see him wave at him.

"That was good teme." Naruto said before forming the ram hand-seal, "Let's try this." In a puff of smoke that completely obscured his body, Naruto seemed to disappear.

Sasuke's eyes widened, 'Was that a clone too? No, I had a clear view of him the whole time. He wouldn't have had a chance to switch with a clone and hide, so that means…' Sasuke palmed his face, "Fucking Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu). I've got to learn how to do that…" He mumbled before a smirk came to his face, "Well now it's as good a time as any to put this to the test." He said as he let his eyes activate the Sharingan, prepared for any move Naruto could and would make as he waited him out for a minute or two. All he needed was the sound of the slightest movement and he would turn his head and see anything coming his way, "Come on out dobe! There's nowhere you can hide where I won't find you!"

"Who's hiding?" A group of voices chorused simultaneously. From one side of the clearing, over a dozen Naruto's dropped from the trees, all cracking their knuckles and smirking, "You could take on three of us straightforward…" Another clone picked up where that single one had left off, "…But let's see how you can take boss's coordinated assault." He said as a few of the clones jumped into the air and threw shuriken at Sasuke to cover the approach of the infantry clones that began a rush towards Sasuke.

Sasuke quickly fished out a set of shuriken in each hand and took aim immediately, the second the clones jumped into the air his Sharingan had them pegged all the way, and by the time they reached the apex of their jumps and were prepared to let their weapons go they were already hit and dispelled by Sasuke's own.

The ground clones saw him release his shuriken, and without missing a beat or even checking to see if he hit his targets, Sasuke immediately rolled through his hand-seals for his next move, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!" From Sasuke came a towering fireball that hit the clones and roasted them into defeat, leaving behind a modest crater where it had hit them.

Sakura looked on at Sasuke handily dispatching Naruto's clones with his clan's signature ninjutsu, "Sasuke-kun is so cool! He beat all of those Narutos just like that!"

Chouji gulped in apprehension, "What if the real Naruto was in there?" He didn't want to have to explain to Kakashi and Asuma why Naruto was extra-crispy once they came back for breakfast.

"Stop!"

Everyone froze as Naruto walked casually from a hiding place from the trees and strolled over to Sasuke's crater where there were still remnants of flames flickering in it. Naruto fished a cigarette from his jacket pocket and used the fire from the ground to light it and take a long drag from it, exhaling in relief, "Okay… now I'm good." He said with a grin.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes and flicked a shuriken at Naruto, hitting him only for him to burst into smoke.

"Fucking stupid-ass clone." Naruto griped audibly as he rushed from his cover of the forest at Sasuke while other clones concealed in the foliage covered him with projectiles.

Sasuke dodged the weapons that he saw coming clearly, threw his own in return that got him the satisfying popping sounds of clones dropping like flies, and prepared for a fist-fight with the original who looked like he was through messing around. Instead of waiting for Naruto to try and make contact with that dangerous taijutsu of his, Sasuke shot a side kick at Naruto's stomach that hit him and forced Naruto to let off an 'oof' that sounded like music to Sasuke's ears.

'Teme kicks harder than Ino for sure.' Naruto thought as he latched onto Sasuke's leg and saw the realization in his eyes as he knew that Naruto had him right where he wanted him. Not accepting that Naruto had the clear advantage, Sasuke contorted his body and delivered a punch that hit Naruto on top of the head, forcing Naruto to click his teeth together when his jaw slammed shut. That was all well and good for Sasuke, but Naruto still had his leg.

'Damn! He's still stuck to me like glue!' Sasuke mused frantically as his eyes could clearly see, but do nothing about it, as Naruto still had him. He couldn't dodge, he was stuck, and no amount of blocking would save him for long. Naruto was clearly more physical than he was and could take one hell of a punch.

Naruto reached forward and swept out Sasuke's single standing leg with one of his own and sent the boy falling to the ground. Before he could even hit the dirt, Naruto already let go of Sasuke's leg and vaulted himself up, and when Sasuke hit the ground, Naruto landed on his stomach and sternum with both feet, driving the air out of Sasuke but not much more as he wasn't heavy enough to do more damage without jumping higher. Still, Naruto stuck a foot to Sasuke's chest and shot his other leg up for what was to be an axe kick to land on either his head or his chest, "Good to go!"

Sasuke saw him lift his leg for the follow-up strike and rolled to the side, knocking Naruto to the ground and allowing him to stand back up, only he found that even though he had stood back up, Naruto's foot was still stuck to his chest, and he saw the sole of Naruto's second shoe coming right at his grill in slow motion as it kicked the daylights out of him.

Sasuke stumbled back, but Naruto's foot remained attached to his chest, so all he was really doing was dragging Naruto across the ground, something Naruto had absolutely no problems with. And he found no relief or mercy from the blonde human-anchor as Naruto peppered his person with nasty up-kicks to any place on Sasuke that they could reach. Head, body, hell even legs… it didn't matter, Naruto's legs were like angry, violent pistons. And as long as he didn't kick Sasuke in the junk by accident it was all good.

One kick from Naruto got the inside of Sasuke's knee and dropped him to the ground on one leg. Sasuke saw Naruto cock his foot back for a particularly hard kick to the face that would have left him seeing stars if not knocked him out altogether. Sasuke only had one course of action, and he really didn't want to do this out here. Still it was either this, or get kicked in the face until ten minutes ran out or until he blacked out, whichever came first.

Naruto was surprised when Sasuke dropped his head, and wound up taking the kick right on the metal of his headband, 'Good defense…' He thought as he wasn't disheartened by this and prepared another kick. That plan went south when, quick as a flash, Sasuke apparently decided that getting kicked in the face at Naruto's leisure wasn't how he wanted to spend the rest of his morning and slipped out of his shirt before leaving Naruto with a parting kick; a low kick meant to sweep out the legs, but instead due to Naruto being on his back he wound up kicking Naruto right in the face.

After delivering the kick, Sasuke had never backpedaled away from someone so quickly in his entire life except for in the Academy away from his legions and legions of-.

He stopped thinking and turned towards the sidelines where Sakura was staring at him blankly. If he were closer he could have sworn that she was drooling a little bit. No way. She was a ninja no matter how much of a fan-girl she was. A ninja didn't drool while watching a fight. Naruto must have kicked him in the head harder than he thought.

Sasuke's lip and nose were busted and he had a pretty good shiner working over one of his eyes. The lesson of the day was, do not let Naruto lay so much as a finger on you or he would turn you into a fine pulp. How to fight without enough distance to stick and move was never covered in the Academy because ninja were supposed to be more nimble than others and able to avoid attacks from regular people, and Sasuke found that with no room to move, and with Naruto being just as fast as him apparently, when Naruto threw something it was almost guaranteed to hit because even if he could see it he still had to react to it. No sticking and moving for Naruto unless the sticking was him grabbing a hold of you, and the moving was him moving your jaw or rattling your brain with whatever he did next.

Naruto jumped back to his feet with a bloody lip and spit onto the ground. A smirk came to his face, one that was actually returned by Sasuke.

Sasuke prepared for the fight to keep going, "Just wait, I'm only getting started here. You've got good taijutsu, but let's see how you handle what else I've got for you."

Naruto chuckled, "I'm not even using my clones with my taijutsu. Wait until you get a load of that." They started walking towards each other slowly before steadily breaking into a run towards each other.

"Time!"

Sasuke slid to a stop in the grass and Naruto stepped over his own foot, falling to the ground on his face. Both boys looked over at Chouji who had a firm look on his face, "That's time. The fight's over."

Inari looked between the two, "So who won?"

"I won." Naruto said with a rather bloody grin, "Or did me kicking him again and again not mean anything?"

Sasuke scoffed, "As if dobe. I was working your clones over, and there was no way I was going to let you get close enough to grab me again."

Chouji shrugged in confusion and Sakura for once wasn't saying anything at all, no jumping to Sasuke's defense or anything. This was solely because Sasuke was only a few feet in front of her shirtless with sweat going down his chest. Yeah, she was no more good for the rest of the day with that picture in her head. And now in addition to having gone on a C-ranked mission that was upgraded to A-rank she had something else to brag about when she got home.

Sadly for Sakura, all good things come to an end, and Sasuke quickly noticed what the problem was. The young Uchiha ran back to grab his shirt and quickly threw it on, dusting off the shoeprint on the chest of it and casually walking back over.

Naruto rubbed his jaw, "Man that last kick snapped my head back. I didn't even see that one coming…" He tested opening and closing his mouth several times, flinching.

Sasuke wiped his nose and mouth, "I'm going to bruise like a tomato later…" He grumbled lowly.

The two looked at each other before looking away, 'Good fight teme/dobe.'

"Okay!" Chouji said in excitement, "Pissing contest over! Let's go back and get some food, I'm hungry!" He said, actually taking charge and blazing a trail back through the woods to Tazuna's house.

While Sakura preened over Sasuke, checking over the wounds on his face, Inari walked up to Naruto and fell into stride with him, "You won that fight Naruto."

Naruto looked down at Inari and saw the little boy smiling up at him, "At least someone called it right down the middle." He said, giving him a grin in return. Hey, the kid didn't hate him and wasn't moping around. That was definitely a start wasn't it?

XxX

(Five Days Later – Finished Bridge – Mainland Side)

The last five days were very low-key in comparison to the rest of the mission, especially Team 7 who hadn't had any other real missions to compare it to before this. Eventually the bridge wound up being built, and with the mission complete it was time for everyone to head home.

"You really have to leave so soon?" Inari said sadly to Naruto as he, his family, and a good number of the village and bridge workers came out to see the two teams of ninja off as they left.

Inari had tried to stick to Naruto like glue after what had happened with Naruto saving his mother. And the town had heard what had happened on the bridge from the workers; twice, once alone and once with help, one boy with powers of replication fought off Gato's goons. Seeing Kaiza's kid, the son of the hero of the country, reinvigorated back to his old happy self and hanging off of Naruto like a leech for five days did tons to improve the way Naruto was seen, especially when he took it upon himself to do things like use clones to try and fish for the people that were hungry, or even when his clones were helping to build the bridge from the underside just by sticking to it.

Naruto nodded, "Yeah. I've got to go back to my village, I've still got things I need to do myself, I can't just stay here forever." He gestured at the finished bridge, "Besides, you guys have the bridge now, no one's seen Gato since that day we beat his guys…" He then let out a chuckle, "…And you guys did wind up looting his place." A round of laughs came from the workers that had broken into his place and pretty much cleaned it out. He then noticed Inari with his head down, shaking slightly, "Hey, are you crying? It's alright to cry when you're happy you know."

"No!" Inari exclaimed, looking up and visibly holding back, "Why would you think I'm doing something like that? Are _you_ going to cry?"

"Yeah right!" And he wasn't. Naruto had already cried once on this trip, and he was lucky no one saw it to call him out on it later. He was also lucky that his goggles were dark and thick enough that no one could see the water building in the corner of his eyes, and that they were currently over said eyes, "I was just trying to set up an excuse for you when you start bawling like a baby." He smirked when he knew that he had won by Inari turning away from him to hide sniffles. Yep, no one ever checked under the eyewear for tears.

Kakashi cut everything short, "Well it's about time we head home. Our job is done." Chouji and Sakura waved to everyone while Sasuke just gave them all a stiff nod and left it at that.

"Thank Kami." Shikamaru said, "I take back what I said about C-ranks being better. Give me a good, calm D-rank mission. It's far less trouble…"

"Goodbye!" Ino said happily, "And um, try not to let some short guy take control of your country again!"

Sakura nudged Ino with her elbow for saying that before she spoke as well, "If you ever need help again come back to Konoha! Maybe we'll come back, we'd be glad to!"

After saying a few more goodbyes, Kakashi and Asuma got the show on the road and began to lead their genin and even Haku with them towards Hi no Kuni and Konohagakure.

"So father." Tsunami said once the teams of shinobi were at the edge of sight, "The bridge isn't really complete yet. You still have to name it."

Tazuna looked at her, realizing she was right and tried thinking of a name, "I've got it! How about, 'The Super Awesome Great Bridge that Tazuna Built'?" He suggested, laughing raucously until he realized no one was going along with it, "No? Okay…"

"We need a name with strength to signify how strong this bridge is."

"We need a name that will let everyone know that this bridge will stand for a thousand years!"

"I've got it!" Inari yelled out excitedly, "How about 'The Great Naruto Bridge', for the strongest guy I know."

Tazuna looked out at the horizon for the disappearing the ninja as the people behind him began to chatter about the name. Apparently it was rather appropriate for more than one reason, especially considering what the country was called before this, to be named after that person, "Alright then. This bridge is now the Great Naruto Bridge. For the person that showed us all that having the courage to stand up is real strength!"

XxX

Asuma was walking alongside Kakashi ahead of the genin and Haku, "Okay Kakashi, you owe me for this mission so I'm going to need you to embellish the tale a bit." Kakashi lowered his book to give Asuma a skeptical glance, "It's nothing major, just when this story circulates to Kurenai I need you to confirm that Tazuna's daughter was very, very good-looking. Not an embellishment at all." Kakashi nodded in agreement, "I also need you to say how she was so into me and didn't want me to leave."

Kakashi made a sound to feign thought over the matter before giving him an eye-smile, "Nope!"

Asuma groaned, "Come on Kakashi, just because you're fine about staying single and not getting laid doesn't mean I have to be too. Prop me up a little here!"

"I get laid." Kakashi said off-handedly, disputing Asuma's remark but not going into further detail than that, "And what exactly do you think a relationship based off of a lie will bring you in the end hmm?"

"Kurenai." Asuma replied as if it were fact, "And she's a genjutsu mistress. If anyone can appreciate a well woven illusion it would be her wouldn't it?"

"Not directed around her, and not based about your machismo Asuma." Kakashi said, shooting his theory down.

Asuma ran a hand through his hair in defeat, knowing her wasn't going to get this out of Kakashi, "Fine… but you still owe me."

Once they reached a section in the path that split off into separate areas, Haku brought the convoy to a stop, "I'm afraid this is where we part ways." She said suddenly, making everyone realize she wasn't taking the path back to Konoha. Haku was in her casual pink kimono that she had met Naruto in the forest with so that travelling inconspicuously would be easier.

Naruto walked towards her, "You don't have to go Haku-chan. You could come back with us. You're not really a missing-ninja right? You said Zabuza never enlisted you."

Haku shook her head, "I can't begin my goal of fulfilling Zabuza-sama's ambition by going with you all to Konoha, at least not as far as I can see right now. I have to start from the ground up. Thank you all for allowing me to bury Zabuza-sama and retrieve his savings and supplies from our base. I hope our initial meeting hasn't left any of you with hard feelings. It was never meant to be personal."

"It was no big issue." Kakashi said to her. Haku had been completely compliant and docile while she had been a 'prisoner' under their watch. Even having her hands bound for the vast majority of the time wasn't too much of a bother for her.

Haku nodded to him and turned back to Naruto with a smile, "We are still friends Naruto-kun. Thank you for forgiving me and understanding why I did what I had to, but also understand why I can't come with you."

Naruto's frown turned into a small smile, "Sure. I understand, just make sure you stay in touch Haku-chan, and get stronger."

"I will…" She said with a small bow, "And you do the same. Make sure you can always keep your precious people safe and that will bring you happiness. For what it's worth I hope you see that you have a friend in me." She began to head down a separate path and turned around one more time, "Goodbye Konoha ninja, I hope the next time we meet will be under better circumstances, and I'm certain that they will be."

With that goodbye said to Haku, the teams set out towards home once more, only Naruto now held a serene smile on his face at having in his opinion helped a good person find something for themselves in life.

"Just look at him Kakashi, I'm so proud." Asuma said about Naruto with a grin on his face out loud so that he got everyone's attention, "His first time out of the village and he's already a world-wandering little heartbreaker. Turning enemy kunoichi into close friends after just one night."

"Textbook Icha-Icha…" Kakashi said, adding his own two cents into the teasing, "And she _was_ tied up all night when he was downstairs with her. You know this sounds like the part of the story with-."

"What?" Naruto said in shock and embarrassment, "Are you kidding? Haku-chan's a friend. There's no way that would ever happen."

Ino took this moment to jump in on her sensei's delight at messing with Naruto, "That's right it won't happen. Naruto knows that he's way more into his Ino-chan than the fake hunter-ninja."

"Right!" Naruto exclaimed before realizing what he said, eyes darting over to Sakura, "Wait damn it! I mean no, no! That's not what I meant! I still like-!"

Ino victoriously latched onto Naruto's arm, "Ah Naruto I knew it! You just can't help but love me can you? Sorry though, I'm taken." She sighed wistfully, "Sasuke-kun's still the only one for me."

Sakura got into Ino's face, "Oh here we go with this again! Get out of the way of true love Ino-pig! Sasuke-kun is mine!"

And as would become the theme of the two teams, Ino and Sakura began to argue all the way up the road. Naruto, now forgotten by Ino's teasing, sighed in relief as he counted the buffer that was Uchiha Sasuke as a blessing in this instance. Asuma's hand found its way to Naruto's shoulder as he took Naruto's sigh as one of disappointment, "It's alright kid. Nice guys always finish last in things like this."

Naruto did a double take and looked up at his bearded sensei who had a sagely look on his face, "Asuma-sensei what in the hell-?"

"I mean look at Sasuke." Asuma continued, gesturing towards the Uchiha who was trying to keep his cool and nursing a pulsing vein in his forehead as Ino and Sakura stood on either side of him and continued arguing. Chouji and Shikamaru were just ignoring everything altogether as they hung out, "Doesn't give 'em the time of day, borderline treats 'em like crap, yet they flock to him. You know why?" At this point Naruto was past the point of caring and shook his head with a dry look on his face, "Because no matter what they say girls don't want a nice guy. No goody two-shoes kid."

"It's true." Kakashi chimed in like clockwork, "The harder you try, the more she laughs in your face. Or did you not pick that fact up in the Academy from Sakura?"

Asuma pointed to Kakashi for making a valid point, ignoring Naruto's twitching eye at being reminded of his past failures to woo Sakura, "Nice guys finish last kid, not like me and Kakashi. We're studs."

"Studs?" Naruto said questioningly, wanting nothing more than to move out of Asuma's iron grip.

Asuma nodded, "Quintessential studmuffins."

"The studliest." Kakashi confirmed, "And don't worry. If you stick with us you'll probably end up being a stud too. And that's not a bad thing Naruto, that's a good thing."

Naruto looked at the stoic masked man, and his cigarette-toking sensei and shook his head before turning his attention back ahead, "Whatever you say." He said, not really caring, just wanting the conversation to be over at this point in time.

XxX

(A Few Days Later - At a Port Town in Cha no Kuni)

Gato, sitting at a table in a rather posh looking hotel room, crushed a newspaper in his hands, "Great Naruto Bridge?" He said as if he were tasting acid, "Feh, I'd had it up to here with that Podunk little backwater country anyway." A grin came to his face, "There's always so many more places in the world just waiting for my 'investment'… and now that I know what works and what doesn't, and what not to do the next time, it should be far easier for me."

He laughed to himself and poured himself a glass of wine, "Yes… it's just good business after all."

* * *

How to Train Your Genin: Tip 8

Motivation is key

It's very difficult in this world to get someone to do something for nothing. Everything in this world is done with a particular positive reaction in mind. You do your job well so that you get paid and can possibly make more money the next time around, people do other people favors in the hopes that one day the favor will be reciprocated. And the same approach can be taken with training from time to time to give your genin a little extra kick in their routine.

Just getting better at something will only be an incentive to work their hardest for so long. Many ninja of the genin level peter out because they run out of motivation to improve and get better, they simply become content with their lot in life. Having a high top goal helps with this, but as a jounin sensei you can help along their improvement if you can simply find what it takes to get your genin to get themselves into gear to work a little bit harder right then.

Offer to treat them to something they otherwise wouldn't get that often for completing a task important to their growth or development. Get them to go back and drill that formation and execution exercise again and again by saying that if it's done flawlessly enough they'll be allowed a day off, or their choice of the next mission. Things along those lines will slowly build over time, since any improvement is marked improvement, and that is your job as a sensei; to help your student improve.

A cheap little trick like basic bribery is more than acceptable to get your genin squad to exert a little more effort, because sometimes when 110% is desired you have to coax it out.

-Shiho

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Team 10

Sarutobi Asuma

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 31.5**

Uzumaki Naruto

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 0.5  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 17.5**

Nara Shikamaru

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 17**

Yamanaka Ino

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 1  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 14**

Team 7

Hatake Kakashi

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 5**

**Total Score: 33**

Uchiha Sasuke

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Total Score: 17.5**

Akimichi Chouji

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 0.5  
Intelligence: 0.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 1  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 13.5**

Haruno Sakura

**Ninjutsu: 1  
Taijutsu: 1  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 0.5  
Speed: 1  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 14**

Miscellaneous Affiliation

Haku

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 1  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 21**

**

* * *

**

**I'm done with Wave. I don't think I'll write it again. There are only so many ways to do it. I've only written it twice before and I think I'm finished with it for good. It's a narrow path of the storyline that can only be taken in so many ways no matter how you slice it. But hopefully my way pays dividends later in the story because I've got some still planned that should blow your mind! So make sure you start reading this story with a helmet after I take it past the chunin exam arc. Or maybe later than that. I'll have to see where the ideas factor in.**

**Gato's alive because a big businessman with nearly inexhaustible funds is a fantastic antagonist, and he's so slimy you can't help but to hate him, this is furthered by the fact that unlike every other villain he can't fight or defend himself against even a genin, hell probably not even an Academy student, so you know that when he gets his it's going to be good… and I plan on making it damn near orgasmic… because I am an evil bastard as you may or may not know and will come to see at some point. I can guarantee though that when the time comes, many of you may be screaming for his blood, and I will laugh like a lunatic because that's what I wanted all along.**

**Anyway, drop me a line like always and I'll turn shake into kind.**

**Catch you later, Kenchi out.**


	12. The Futility of Preparation

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. When I get married Kishimoto will be getting an invite, and he'd better fork over the rights for my goddamn gift… or he won't be walking out of that reception in one piece, best believe that Kenchi618 is getting his one way or another. Be warned.

**Chapter 12: The Futility of Preparation**

* * *

Naruto let out a yawn as he sat in Shiho's house at her kitchen table. It had been a few days since he had returned from his very long excursion on dual missions; his original C-rank mission and Team 10's A-ranked reinforcement mission for Team 7. Asuma had told everyone that after the compounding missions had been completed, they all got a week off from doing anything, and Naruto decided to spend a few of his days doing nothing to keep from burning out.

So he decided to hang out with his bookworm friend and see what she had been up to while he had been gone. He had given her the play-by-play of both missions and saw her face light up in excitement when he told her how well things had turned out, however he saw her frown visibly when he got to the part about Zabuza and Haku.

"I'm glad that worked out for you Uzumaki-kun." Shiho said, taking a seat at the same table with tea she had prepared for both of them, "But the next time, don't ever do that again." She noticed him look down, "I know that you just wanted to save someone that you thought was your friend, but when your 'friend' is supposed to be your enemy it could be really dangerous. What would you have done if this Haku person had been bloodthirsty enough to kill your teammates instead of incapacitate them? No report would have been able to explain that away. You would have lost your team and probably your career."

"I know…" Naruto said out loud. He really did know. He had played it through his head a thousand times since it actually happened. If Shikamaru and Ino had been killed because he had wanted to 'do the right thing' he would probably have never gotten over it. Even now he still kicked himself eight times every day over it. The fact that he could replicate himself and the fact that his clones had a propensity to talk shit to him when they weren't fighting didn't help matters at all either, "I don't like it, but I know that now Shiho-chan. It won't ever happen like that again."

When he said he didn't like it, that was probably the most honest thing he could have said at the moment. So now trying to be a decent human being would end up getting him and his friends killed? Apparently the world really _was_ that messed up. And he was still too weak for what he needed to be. For him being the muscle of Team 10 he just wasn't strong enough and the battle with Haku proved a very valid hole in his game that Sasuke had not-so-subtly wordlessly pointed out afterwards, although the young Uchiha himself was unable to take advantage of it during their skirmish.

If Naruto and his clones couldn't get close enough to grab his opponent then there wasn't much he could do. If he could get close, but his opponent still could kick his head in or stab him before he grabbed them then all of his taijutsu was pretty much useless.

Now granted, not every opponent he faced would have the Sharingan to clock him and each of his clones position in slow motion as they came towards them, but that simply wasn't going to cut it any further. That just wasn't going to fly against anyone stronger than him. If he had to fight Sasuke again he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get close that easily again, and if he ever wanted to beat Tenten he needed to step it up, because she would be throwing more weapons than Sasuke did and he and his clones both knew that she didn't miss. Another Henge trick like the one from before wouldn't save him the next time, and he wasn't as fast as he thought he was. He could be outmaneuvered and then he and his team were in trouble.

Shiho had let Naruto come over for lunch as she had been granted a short day at work and was free. It gave them both some time to catch up, and finally getting to hear about his first mission seemed like as good a way to do so as any. But now it seemed that the conversation had settled into the negative parts of his most recent experience, "What are you thinking about Uzumaki-kun?"

Naruto's face twisted slightly before he spoke, "I need to get better. I didn't need you or Asuma-sensei to tell me that we shouldn't have walked away from that, I already knew, I thought they were dead. I messed up." He looked over at Shiho who was listening to him intently as she drank her tea, "So do you know what I can do? Until I get bigger the scroll says I can't learn anymore of the Nebaiken moves that it has since I'm still short…" He finished with a grumble.

Shiho smiled at him, "I'm glad you're taking the scroll's advice instead of trying to force it along, it takes a big man to admit that they're little." He glared at her, getting her to laugh a bit, "I'm just messing with you… but if you want my advice you should go to your sensei about this. I don't know any ninjutsu that would be good for you and like I said I'm not much of a fighter."

Naruto bucked out a snort from his nose as he thought about it, "Do you think he'd teach me a new jutsu if I asked him?"

Shiho shrugged, "I don't see why not. It's not like you aren't already the most adept user of Kage Bunshin in the entire village so you don't need to finish mastering that jutsu, and you just told me you can't go any further with Nebaiken without making things up the way you told me you did. I think he'd be happy to help you if you asked him to." She said supportively.

Naruto perked up significantly after hearing that, "Alright then, I'll wait until the next team meeting and-."

Shiho cut him off, "You should probably ask before that. The sooner the better."

Naruto nodded and stood up, "I'll go right now then." He said, rather excited at this point towards the prospect of maybe learning something new, "I'll see you later Shiho-chan, I've got to find Asuma-sensei right now."

Shiho waved to him as he headed out towards her front door, "Well I hope I helped. Don't be a stranger Uzumaki-kun. If you'd like the next time you see me I'll probably have something set up for you to start learning. You might like it." He gave a small wave back as he grinned at her through the spaces in her bookcases and shut the door behind him.

After leaving his friend's house, Naruto grumbled to himself as he stood in the middle of the street scratching his head, "Well this sucks… I don't know where Asuma-sensei lives or where he hangs out… or anything about him in general." Naruto bonked himself on the head a few times to try and jog his memory in case he had forgotten something, "Grr, maybe one of the others knows where he is?" He quickly let off a preliminary burst of his sensor jutsu and smirked, "And I can tell where one is right now." He said to himself as he took off down the street to find someone.

XxX

(Yamanaka Flower Shop)

Ino leaned against the counter inside of her clan's shop waiting for business. Not much had been happening during her week off, and to keep from doing absolutely nothing for the entire week she had been conscripted to work for a day in the shop which was still rather slow going, only now at least in addition to being bored she was also being 'productive'.

A ring of the door opening barely registered her attention as she prepared to drone out the usual response to customers entering, "Welcome to Ya-. Naruto?" She said in confusion as she saw her fellow blonde teammate enter and look around, pumping his fist victoriously, "What are you doing here?"

"Yes!" Naruto shouted to himself, "I thought I messed up for a second and still couldn't read signs with my jutsu." He then noticed Ino looking at him blankly as if wondering why he was there, "Hey Ino, how's it going?"

She let a humorless smile come onto her face as she sat her elbows on the counter and placed her hands under her chin, "I'm so bored Naruto. Please tell me you've been doing just as much of nothing as I have."

"Pretty much…" Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head with a salty look on his face. Ino laughed slightly, by now she knew that Naruto hated not really doing anything so this week off was probably killing him slower than it was her, they weren't even half-way through it yet, "Listen I need your help really quick, can you?"

She blinked her blue eyes in a confused manner before pointing around at the store, "I'm working right now Naruto. I can't leave, what if a customer comes in later?" Naruto stared at her and slowly brought his fingers up into the cross-seal he used to form Kage Bunshin before Ino cut him off from doing so, knowing exactly what he was about to do, "No Naruto, that's a bad idea! You don't know anything about these plants and you'd leave a Henged Kage Bunshin?"

He brought his fingers down to cancel attempting the jutsu, "Well damn Ino, I know how to water and take care of the plants and act like you long enough for you to help me out. I just want to know where Asuma-sensei is."

Ino arched a feminine eyebrow at hearing what Naruto needed from her, "Well how would I know where he is if you don't? Check his house or something."

"I don't know where that is." Naruto admitted, putting his hands in his pockets and kicking at invisible dust on the ground, "That's why I'm here. Where does he live?"

Ino shrugged helplessly, "I wouldn't know. I figured either you or Shikamaru would know where he lived if anyone would know. You're out of luck this time with me." She then had another thought, "Why are you looking for him anyway?"

Naruto frowned, "I'm going to see if there's anything he can do to help me get better. I almost got you guys killed back in Nami no Kuni. Kage Bunshin are cool and everything, but if that's all I've got to go with my taijutsu then I'm still too easy to scout."

Ino gave him a dry look that showed her lack of amusement at how he perceived his own skills. Yes, If Naruto couldn't grab you then there wasn't much he could do other than exhaust you, and the bulk of his solo offense was directed around him doing whatever it took to get close and get a hand on his opponent, but he really underestimated his own ingenuity when it came to doing just that. Naruto's masterful use of Henge to deceive his enemies was even something that Ino had worked on trying, and Shikamaru had even worked it into one of their regular strategies.

If anything, Ino was the one that figured she needed to pick up something new, hence why she had taken to watching the shop today with no complaints. If she could get on her dad's good side then maybe she could get him to help her with something else, maybe help her come up with new ways to hit Shintenshin no Jutsu without anyone helping her keep the enemy busy, or even a new jutsu altogether.

Ino opened her mouth to talk Naruto down about how what happened in Nami no Kuni was all of their faults when an aadult male voice sounded out from behind her, "So this is Uzumaki Naruto, the third teammate I've heard so much about." Ino didn't need to turn around to know who that was, she had been hearing that voice every day of her life, and from the look in Naruto's eyes as he looked up at the man she knew she was right about who it was.

"Hi daddy." Ino said without turning around, laughing inwardly at the deer-in-the-headlights look Naruto had on his face as he looked up at her father, "Yes, this is Naruto. Naruto this is my dad, Yamanaka Inoichi."

The man had long blonde hair in a ponytail like Ino had, only his was darker in shade and spiky on top, not like his daughter's. He had blue-green eyes and wore the usual Konoha shinobi outfit and flak jacket as well as wrist and hand-guards and a sleeveless red coat.

Naruto slowly raised up one hand and waved weakly, "Hi Ino's dad." Ino palmed her face at Naruto's introduction to her father while the youngest blonde male continued, "Nice to meet you."

The man kept a rather unnerving gaze on Naruto that lasted long enough for Ino to even turn around as she wondered what exactly the man was doing. Rolling her eyes, Ino spoke up to her father, "Daddy, stop trying to read Naruto's mind!"

Inoichi face-faulted and abruptly stood up, "I wasn't trying to read the boy's mind!" He defended to Ino, who simply glared up at him and placed her hands on her hips as if to challenge him, "I'm being honest, I wasn't trying to!"

"Then why were you staring at Naruto so hard?" She asked, gesturing back to Naruto who seemed to be seriously considering what having someone in his head reading his mind would be like.

"I was trying to judge the boy's character at first glance." Inoichi said as if it were obvious, "If he had backed up or flinched or started sweating then I would have had to consider the boy of lower caliber character and he would have had to work harder to earn my respect. Thanks to you, you messed it all up and now we'll never know." He said to his daughter who sweatdropped at her father. He ignored her and walked from behind the counter up to Naruto, "It's good to meet you Naruto, I've heard a bit about you recently."

"Really?" Naruto said happily, the way he said that sounded promising. He wasn't used to people saying that they'd heard of him sounding positive about it, but Inoichi hadn't glared at him yet, or anything really. He half expected the man to kick him out when he first saw him, and after that point he started feeling more at ease about things.

"Yeah." Inoichi said with a toothy grin, "For instance, 'More-Muscle-Than-Brain', 'Sticky Fingers', 'Junior Smokestack'-…" Naruto's face fell to one of a deadpan with each title he had apparently been given that Inochi recited. His vision slowly turned to Ino who was smiling apologetically and actually mouthed the word 'sorry' to him, "-…and then there's-."

"Daddy, Naruto gets it." Ino finally said with her face in her hands, just wanting it to end. Maybe if she was lucky Naruto would only stop talking to her for a week until she could prove she was sorry for coming up with all of those fake aliases for him. She was so getting Inoichi back for that one whenever she got the chance.

"Why? There were still so many more, they got better." Inoichi chuckled back at her before looking over at Naruto who had the proverbial rain cloud over his head at the moment, "It's okay Naruto, she had way more names for you." That seemed to make the rain pour down harder so to speak as Inoichi continued to talk, "You're lucky like that. Shikamaru only has one, so does Asuma, and I don't think that Sasuke kid has any."

Ino had to avert her eyes from Naruto as he gave her the teary puppy-dog look. Damn he did that really well. Giant, quivering, emotional blue eyes were super-effective.

Inoichi finally noticed that Naruto wasn't taking these revelations very well and he laughed as he patted the boy on the back, "Oh, I didn't explain. That's how Ino shows that she actually gives a damn about you kid. The more names she uses when she talks about you means that she actually thinks about you enough to pull up something about you to name you with. Like I said, they get better."

That actually prompted him to stop acting down in the dumps, as if someone had flipped a switch. With a blink his eyes turned back to normal and he looked up at the towering adult, "They get better? Like what."

Ino's eyes widened and she looked up at her father desperately, "Daddy no, don't you-."

Inoichi grinned and grabbed Naruto's shoulder, "Well there are a few, but my favorite one is when she calls you her long lost big brother… *laughs* I think that one's rather cute, and I can actually see it a little bit." He turned back when he heard something bang against the counter and saw Ino with her head down, "Alright Ino, I'm done picking on both of you now."

Ino let out a huff and blew her bang out of her face before turning her attention to Naruto, "Sorry about that. Anyway, I don't know where Asuma-sensei lives or where he hangs out. Sorry." Naruto nodded with a frown on his face, "And stop talking about Nami no Kuni… it happened, we're not dead, you're stronger than the rest of us. Don't make me go into your head and switch your wiring around until you get over this."

"I'm over it, I'm over it!" Naruto exclaimed, knowing enough of Ino's family jutsu to not exactly desire having her poke around in his head. Who knew what she would find in there? He definitely didn't. After all, Iruka said his mind was scary, he remembered that, "I've still got to do something though. If it's not just because I want to get better it's because I'm bored. What the hell did he expect me to do for a whole week?" He shouted the last part indignantly. Growling to himself, Naruto turned and headed towards the door to the shop, "I'll see you later Ino. Maybe Shikamaru knows where he is?"

Ino waved to Naruto as he left, "Bye Naruto." As Naruto disappeared from the doorway of the shop and headed off towards wherever he planned on heading to next. She then turned to Inoichi with a dry look on her face, "Did you have to tell him the 'long lost big brother thing' daddy? That was a slip."

Inoichi laughed as he started returning to the back, "Yeah, a slip. Just like the other slip that you called him, or did you want me to tell him about _that_ instead?" He said, getting Ino to give him a wide-eyed look, "I could go find him right now and tell him the other thing you called him, he might like that one."

"You tell him that and I swear to Kami daddy I'll-!" Ino threatened, prepared to fight a losing battle against her old man if he was even slightly sincere with his previous suggestion.

Inoichi just waved her off as he vanished from the front area of the store, "I thought it was just a slip." He taunted, "I like that boy more than the Sasuke kid you've been talking about for the last five years anyway."

Ino didn't bother chasing him back there as someone still had to watch the front and her shift wasn't over yet, she simply seethed in the front, gritting her own teeth to keep from yelling, 'I'm going to make him teach me how to erase memories and then I'm going to rip that one out of his head damn it!' She sighed and calmed herself down as she pulled a scroll from under the counter and blew the dust off of it, "Why was this one so far back in the storage room? It seems like something useful to me." She said to herself as she started to read it mostly out of boredom, "_Poisons, Toxins, and Venoms: The Equalizers of the Ninja Arts_…"

XxX

(Later – Nara Clan Compound)

'Where the fuck is Shikamaru's house?' Naruto thought to himself as he rushed through the grounds owned by the Nara Clan. He really didn't know where he was going, he just knew the general area of the village. He hadn't had any friends before being on this team, let alone friends that lived deep within specialized areas of property like clan grounds so he only knew where to begin looking for where people lived. He had been running through the forests that were abundant on the grounds and so far all he had seen were the wrong houses and tons of deer. Letting out another burst of his sonar jutsu to see if there was a person around to ask where he was he turned around abruptly, stopping his movement through the forest, "And who the hell keeps following me?" He yelled, waving his arms spastically, "Come out already damn it! If you can help me out then come on, and if you're trying to kill me… then still come out, let's get this over with, I've got stuff to do today!"

Nothing sounded out in the forest except the natural sounds that would have been there regardless. Naruto bared his teeth, "Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!" With his next pulse he noticed the person that had been hanging back and following him had left the area again, "Seriously… who is that?" He didn't know who the person was by their signature, but every so often he'd catch the person shadowing him when he tried to use his jutsu. It irked him before, but it was starting to unnerve him now, especially after the last time he had been shadowed by someone it led to his battle with Haku that by all rights should have ended with his team's deaths.

All he could do now was continue on through the Nara Clan grounds, hopefully he would run into someone that could help him soon. Didn't any of these people get up and go outside, or were they all just as lazy as Shikamaru? What, was it genetic or something?

The forest started thinning out and Naruto saw a smattering of clan houses and prayed in relief. He had wasted upwards of two hours looking for Asuma by way of both Ino and Shikamaru whom he had yet to find and even ask. He then cursed when he began looking at the addresses on the house, 'Come on already! Cut me a break!' Naruto wanted to yell again, but in a mellow place like the Nara Clan area it seemed wrong.

The reason for his disgruntled attitude this time was because every house had the address and the name Nara… and he didn't know Shikamaru's personal address. In his defense however, he was sure that none of his team knew where he lived either so as far as he was concerned when he found Shikamaru he would have a leg up on him in that department.

As he started wandering around, a grin came to his face as he finally found who he was looking for, sitting in the front of a house with an older man that looked like him, only he had two scars on the right side of his face, a goatee, a mesh shirt under a flak jacket, and over that he had on a deer skin coat and hand-guards. The two were playing some kind of board game that Naruto had never bothered learning how to get good at. Shogi just wasn't for him.

"Shikamaru." Naruto said in relief as he ran up to them, "Do you know how hard it was to find you?"

"Why were you even looking for me in the first place?" Shikamaru asked him as he stared down at his pieces while his dad waited for his next move. Suddenly Shikamaru's eyes drifted up towards Naruto and narrowed, "Did Asuma cut our break short?" He said, sounding somewhat miffed at the prospect.

Naruto shook his head, "That's the thing, I don't know where Asuma-sensei is. I was hoping that you would, but seeing as how you don't know where _I_ live…" He said, trailing off.

Shikamaru sighed and looked back down at the board, finally moving a piece, "You live on the south side of Konoha, edge of the residential and business districts, Monument View Apartments, third floor, apartment number 3."

"Why do you know that?" Naruto asked him incredulously, "Nobody knows that."

"Asuma knows that." Shikamaru responded as he waited on his dad to make a move, "I know it too, and so does Ino. We know where you live because of that day you didn't show up because your clones put you into a coma or something. We went to see what the problem was, you don't remember it because you weren't even awake when it happened."

Naruto's shoulders dropped, "Aw man… I suck. I don't even know where Ino or Asuma-sensei lives and I just now found where you live. Meh…" He grumbled, "So do you know where Asuma-sensei is? Please say yes, I've been looking around for more than two hours."

Shikamaru sighed as his dad made a move, prompting him to think about changing up his strategy. Having Naruto ask him a question was distracting him from his game with his dad. He wasn't going to lose this one damn it!

"Answer your friend Shikamaru." Shikamaru's dad Shikaku said lazily.

"Yeah, yeah, troublesome old man…" The younger Nara boy said before stopping to think about it, "If I had to look for him, and I never have, I would check with Kurenai. If you can find her you can probably find him."

"Damn it!" Naruto said pulling his goggles off of his head to scratch his forehead, "This sucks, I just want to ask one question, is that so much to ask?"

Shikamaru moved another piece, "Apparently it is. Find Kurenai, that's your best shot."

Naruto frowned but nodded as he still held his goggles in his hands, "Fine… I'll see you later Shikamaru." He said as he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Shikaku watched Naruto's smoke dissipate quickly before he addressed his son, "He can do Shunshin?"

Shikamaru nodded, still focusing on the game and not on something he had already known about for the better part of the last month, "Yeah. Now stop trying to distract me."

Shikaku yawned, "Just accept that you lose already so that I can take a nap… and go train."

Shikamaru scoffed, "You're supposed to be training me old man. I told you about our last mission."

"I will…" Shikaku said as if he were trying to placate his son, "…I will when you beat me at this."

Shikamaru's eyes moved from the board towards Shikaku's as they just stared at each other for over a minute, "You're really going to make me get up and tell mom aren't you?"

"You wouldn't." Shikaku said, still relatively comfortable at this point, "You're bluffing."

"I would." Shikamaru fired back immediately, his face not changing to illustrate his point, "Who do you think she'd be upset at; her son for wanting to get in some training with his dad, or her lazy-ass husband that wouldn't bother training with his son when he didn't have anything better to do?"

Shikaku gave his son a blank stare before moving one more piece on the board, "Fine, check. Now let's go already. I think your mother can sense when we talk about her… you troublesome brat."

Shikamaru looked hard at the board to see if there was another move he could make before slumping back in his chair, "Ugh… checkmate then." Both of them stood up slowly and headed towards the forested backyard to begin, "How the hell did you do that? My entire strategy-."

"-Was to wear me down with stonewall defense and let me beat myself." Shikaku finished for him, "I know. That was your problem. That was too conservative, you never tried to attack. I left my gold general and rook open for you twice to see what you would do, no trap involved, just to see if you'd attack when given the chance and you didn't. Sometimes it pays to be a little reckless Shikamaru."

XxX

(With Naruto)

Naruto eventually came to a stop on a rooftop with a twitching eye, "Wait, what am I doing? Why should I be running all over the village five times over just for a hint or a clue of where Asuma-sensei is? I've got unlimited help!" He quickly formed two dozen Kage Bunshin, "Go look for Asuma-sensei, or someone who would know where he is like that Kurenai lady."

One of the clones spoke up, "Where are you going?"

The original Naruto sighed with a dejected look on his face, "Where else do I go when I know I need to train but don't have anything to train on?" He asked rhetorically as his clones already knew the answer to that question, showing that they knew by cringing, "Yeah, I think I should go to the library to see if I get lucky…" All of his clones let out low hissing noises at the prospect of going to the library, "I know… be happy that I'm not making any of you go. I'll make other clones for that to help me look for something later. Now get going."

The clones saluted and took off in their search for Asuma while Naruto made his way towards Konoha Archive Library to see if there was anything worth digging up like the gold mine he had found in his taijutsu theory scroll.

He doubted it, since his clones had scoured the place with Shiho, someone who actually knew what to look for, once already over the period of an entire week and pulled up nothing, 'Yeah, I'm not going to the library.' He thought to himself as he dropped back down on the street and began walking, 'If I want to read a book I'll just go to Shiho-chan's house and ask if I can get anything from her, she has enough books in her house for it to be a library by itself.'

"Gah, why is having time off so irksome?" Naruto said to himself as he dropped back down onto the street, "Ino's working, Shikamaru's being Shikamaru, I can't find Asuma-sensei, and I don't have anything to do today!" He blinked after subconsciously letting off a pulse of his sonar jutsu before twisting his face rather angrily, "And come out or stop following me already, damn! I can sense you, I just don't know who you are!" He yelled into the air, confusing all of the villagers. Letting off another wave of it, he shook his head at the signature vanishing again from his radar.

Taking his headband off to scratch his forehead momentarily he stared at it before pulling his goggles up in their place over his forehead. As he continued walking through the village he loosened his headband so that it took on the shape of a bandanna that he tied back around his neck. With nothing to do but play the waiting game, Naruto decided to just walk about the village. Maybe something would find him and fall right into his lap.

After a while of walking through the business district on the way home to grab something to eat for the late afternoon, Naruto heard someone call out to him, "Naruto!" He stopped in his tracks and looked around but didn't see anyone in the streets trying to speak to him. Shrugging, he was about to go on his way again when he heard the voice again, "In here, look harder!" He turned around again as the voice started to guide him, "That's it, keep walking that way. Ten more steps and then turn right." He did as instructed and wound up looking inside of a doorway at Tenten, standing inside of a shop, stocking packs of shuriken, "How are you? Long time no see Naruto-chan."

And just like that his good mood at finding someone to hang out with for a bit was gone, "Do you have to call me that?"

"Am I your senior in age and rank?" Tenten asked him in turn, a grin on her face, "So what's up?" She asked him, finishing her task that Naruto walked in on her performing.

"Not much." Naruto replied flippantly, "I'm supposed to be looking for my sensei, but I don't know how to find him so right now I've got nothing to do. What are you doing stocking stuff?"

Tenten gestured around the store, "I work here sometimes. Why else do you think I can afford so many weapons on a genin's regular salary? I'm not a part of any clan that has a storehouse full of them. By now you should know we don't make that much money."

"True." Naruto admitted. With the missions they did he only had enough money really for his necessities and not much for anything leisurely. Hey since he was there he might as well have a look around and restock on his stuff. As much as he didn't want to spend all of that money on new stuff, he had to eventually. He used a lot of weapons in Nami no Kuni, "Do you mind if I have a look around?"

Tenten shook her head, "Not at all. Why would I? You want me to help you out?"

Naruto smiled slightly, "Yeah, if you're not busy. I need a new set of kunai, and a few shuriken to restock with."

Tenten nodded and began leading him around, "That sounds easy enough. Come with me, I'll get you all set up." After being pelted with pinpoint accuracy by the bun-haired girl's weapon prowess once before, Naruto trusted her knowledge on armaments enough to let her get his gear together. As she grabbed the equipment they had gone around to collect she tried making small talk, "So anything happen lately on those ever so exciting D-rank missions?" She teased.

Naruto's eye twitched, that's right she didn't tell him that he'd be doing odd jobs instead of actual ninja stuff when he had clearly talked to her about it before he ever started doing them. Thus when Naruto put a vindictive smirk on his face he didn't feel too bad about it, "Oh, I wouldn't know. We did like ten and I got to do a C-rank." That got her attention, and Naruto decided to go in for the kill, "…And before we even got back from it we were given an A-rank mission to reinforce another team. We had to fight missing-ninja and help a country free itself and everything."

And Tenten's reaction didn't disappoint. She simply stared at him blankly as if trying to process what he was saying, "How-? Why-? What?"

"Yeah." Naruto said, taking the kunai and shuriken off of her hands for her, "Oh, didn't you get an A-rank mission by now?"

"Not in the first two months!" Tenten yelled at him, waving her arms, "That's so not fair! What the hell?" She actually pouted at Naruto getting a mission like that so soon after getting started. It totally wasn't fair to her, and Naruto seeing her pout for the first time ever started laughing at it, "Are you going to tell me about it or are you just going to keep laughing."

Naruto stopped laughing enough to speak, "Can I do both?" He was enjoying actually getting to one-up someone for once. Tenten shook her head as Naruto told her about the mission and before long they wound up at the checkout counter, "So how much is it?" He said, already dreading the total due to the last few times he had gone to buy himself weapons.

Tenten added everything up, confused at the way Naruto spoke all dejected over paying, "Cheap aren't we Naruto? It's 910 ryo for everything. You didn't get that much."

Naruto raised an eyebrow, 'Normally I have to pay twice that… man this store has good deals.' He thought to himself, 'I'm definitely coming here from now on.' He grinned at Tenten and eagerly fished the money out of his wallet, "Great! I've still got so much money left over!"

Tenten laughed slightly at his reaction to the price, "Well do you want to keep looking around for something else?" Naruto looked around before turning back to her and nodding, "Alright then. How much money do you feel like spending?"

Naruto looked through everything he had left in his wallet and answered, "I think I can spend another 2000 after buying this stuff and then I have to save the rest… rent, food, and savings you know?"

"2000 ryo…" Tenten said to herself as she started leading Naruto back through the store to find him something else, "That's pretty frugal, but I think we have something right up your alley."

Naruto looked around in the specialized weapons section as Tenten led him through it. His eyes ran across all kinds of weapons; swords like a nodachi, chokuto, katana, even broadswords like claymores and the like. He stopped there, but when he looked at Tenten she gave him a small smile and shook her head before leading him on further. Looking at the price tags he saw that they were out of his price range anyway. They passed all kinds of things, even maces and kusarigama… he was kind of glad Tenten didn't stop him there. With a blade at the end of a long chain he probably would have ended up cutting his own head off sooner or later with that thing.

She eventually brought them to a stop in a section of short blades as she started perusing through them, picking something up and putting it behind her back. Naruto cocked his head in confusion until Tenten presented him a sheathed weapon, "One of these would normally be around 720 ryo, but this one is made of special metal that can allow chakra to flow through it. All kinds of higher level ninja can use weapons like that in cool ways, I haven't gotten exactly how they do it down yet."

Naruto took the weapon from her into his own hands and looked at it. It was in a black sheath with a plain black handle that had no guard. Naruto pulled the weapon from the sheath and held a 26 inch blade in his hands. As it went further to the top, it curved forward and then directly back, leaving the flat of the blade straight. Tenten had given him a machete.

"It's 1650 ryo because of the metal it's made of and I think it suits you better than a regular sword would. You look like the kind of person that would appreciate functionality over having to learn too much technique." Tenten said as she walked back towards the checkout counter, "If you want it I'm sure it would be a cool weapon for a genin to have, it's pretty easy to use and they're really versatile. The sheath even has a sharpening stone in it so when you put the weapon up it sharpens itself."

For years when Naruto thought of himself with a weapon he always saw himself with huge shuriken or a wicked looking kunai or a katana, but now holding the machete in his hands he had to say… his daydreams were overrated. He marched up to the counter and put it up there with his other things, "I'll take it." He said, more than happy with it. It was light and it looked very sharp and pretty easy to use just like she said.

Tenten nodded and finished adding everything up, "Okay, that'll be 2560 ryo Naruto." Naruto quickly forked over the necessary funds and Tenten placed a scroll and some strange papers with a little bit of ink on the counter, confusing him and prompting her to explain, "We got a shipment of sealing supplies so as a promotional thing we're giving away samples of ink and papers to start with to people that spend over 2000 ryo in here. Maybe if we end up getting some to someone that enjoys it a bit we can sell more of the stuff quicker. I tossed in a sealing scroll too, like what I had for my weapons, it's just that mine is special."

Naruto grinned at Tenten as she placed all of his stuff in a bag to take out. This was great, not only did he get his kunai and shuriken for under half price, he wound up getting a special weapon and some sealing stuff too. He remembered Tenten putting all of that stuff away in one scroll instead of lugging them all around and figured he had to get him some of that too, "Thanks a lot Tenten! Man this is great!" Before he made it to the door he stopped and turned to her, "When do I get my rematch?"

"Has it been five months yet?" She asked him with a bored look on her face and a small smirk.

"It's been two… maybe three… damn it!" Naruto said before walking out of the store into the street, getting Tenten to laugh a little, "I'll see you later Tenten."

"Later Naruto-chan." She said to mess with him one last time, not being let down when she heard him curse from wherever she was down the street, "That was a pretty interesting run-in." Tenten said to herself as she went back to waiting out the rest of her shift.

XxX

Naruto had dropped his stuff off at home before heading back out. His clones had systematically dispelled over time, having found no sign of Asuma and having used all of the chakra he gave them letting out pulses of the sonar jutsu over time. Grumbling to himself for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, he patted himself down and pull a cigarette from his pocket as well as a lighter and lit himself a smoke, "Where is Asuma-sensei? Is he ducking debt collectors today or something?" Naruto then laughed to himself slightly as he blew out a cloud, "Nah, Asuma-sensei's a jounin, the best of the best. There's no way a ninja that good would do something like that."

XxX

(Elsewhere in Hi no Kuni)

"Achoo!" A woman with blonde hair in pigtails sneezed as she sat on the floor of a gambling den. She rubbed her nose and growled before slamming money on the ground, "I'm upping my bet, now my wager is on han!"

The dealer in front of her shrugged and lifted the bamboo cup on the ground, "Sorry, the dice are chou. You lose again ma'am."

The woman's eye twitched, "Fuck!"

XxX

Naruto absently realized as he kept walking through the village that he was getting too used to smoking these things. He wasn't even coughing a bit anymore. In his defense, after the day he was having so far, failing miserably to find his own sensei just to ask him a question, he earned that damn thing.

"Where the fuck is Asuma?" He reiterated once more for the benefit of his own sanity at this point. It was sunset at this point and Naruto was pretty much ready to call it a day and grab some dinner at Ichikaru Ramen. He had looked as hard as he could and failed, no shame in that.

"Did someone just call out my name?"

Naruto turned around and saw Asuma walking towards him with Kurenai… however both Naruto and Asuma had something of a symbiotic thought the exact instant that Asuma saw the little white stick in Naruto's mouth and Naruto saw Kurenai. Luckily Naruto was able to think fast… and by thinking fast he swallowed the cigarette whole without a second thought. Asuma had to hide his own surprise at seeing his shortest student pull that one off, 'That was gross and extremely manly… I'm a good role model.' He decided at that very moment.

As the two jounin got close, Kurenai wrinkled her nose, "Why do I smell cigarettes?" She asked as Naruto had on his best possible poker face, ignoring the fact that he had just swallowed a goddamn lit cigarette.

Naruto stared at the scary jounin lady with wide eyes, "Because you've been hanging out with Asuma-sensei?" He said as if that were the exact reason why, and from the look on her face she was about to buy it, thus it was time to change the subject, "Nevermind that." He turned to his sensei, "Where the hell have you been all day? I've been looking all over the village for you." He started listing things on his fingers, "I asked Ino _and_ Shikamaru, I ran my own errands and still kept looking for you, I had clones all over the place, I've been getting stalked all freaking day by someone I don't know and haven't seen just looking for you. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Kurenai looked at him strangely, "You were stalked?" She said unbelievably.

Naruto pointed directly at her, "Don't change the subject Kurenai-sensei, where have you two been?"

Asuma and Kurenai looked at each other before looking back at the rightly pissed off genin, "Um… don't worry about where I've been all day." He said to Naruto, hoping things didn't go much further than that as did Kurenai.

"No." Naruto said shaking his head, "No, no, no, no. Hell no. This makes no sense at all. It doesn't matter that I don't know where you live or what you do in your free time or anything. I have been out and looking all over the place for both of you and didn't find a single thing. What the fuck have you been doing all day that made you both so damn hard to find? It's like you were ducking every single form of life."

'I kind of was kid, shut up now…' Asuma said in his mind. A day with Kurenai like the one he had really didn't need to slip down to his cute little genin students. Because if Naruto knew then Ino would know, and if Ino knew then Inoichi would know, and if Inoichi knew then Anko would know, and then they were both screwed because then _everyone_ would know. And _nobody_ was supposed to know, "Well I'm here now, so don't worry about it anymore. What do you want?"

Naruto let off a sigh, "Alright, here goes. Asuma-sensei can you teach me something new?"

Asuma shrugged, "Alright." He said, easily and with no hesitance whatsoever.

However Naruto was still stuck in explanation mode as to why he needed the help, "…Because right now I'm as good as I'm going to get at using all of my other-. Wait, you said okay? That easily?"

"Yeah." Asuma said, scratching his head, "I told you that I'm pretty much the only one that can help you out with… well, anything. You don't have a clan to help you out or any shinobi relatives… or relatives period. If I didn't help you out with learning new things then who in the world would?" He saw Naruto's face light up and that brought a smile to his own face, "So I'll drop by your place sometime tomorrow if that's alright. Since you came to me for help I'll help you and let Ino and Shikamaru alone for the rest of the week, maybe we can start you on something."

"Yatta!" Naruto jumped into the air excitedly, "That's so great! I can't wait! Thanks Asuma-sensei!" With that, Naruto made a ram seal and used Shunshin to vacate the scene.

Kurenai blinked at the fading smoke and pointed at where Naruto used to be standing, "Did he just-?"

"Yep." Asuma said, alluding to nothing else.

Kurenai raised an eyebrow, "It's only been-."

"I know." Asuma cut her off as he got them to move along again to whatever destination they had been heading to before they came across Naruto, "What can I say? The kid's gold, pure gold. He's like a raw lump of clay that's just steadily shaping up. He's got some moves you'd never think a genin could pull already."

Kurenai nodded. Asuma had been the one to say that Naruto could have been good way before the teams were even finalized, "So what about _it_? Does he know after you told me what happened on your last mission?"

Asuma frowned at that, "I already talked to dad about it… He still doesn't want me telling him yet. He wants to wait for someone that could explain it better than I could to show up." He let out a sigh and rubbed his beard, "I still think it's a bad idea to keep it from him. Dad means well, but how can he keep on going without knowing what's in him?"

Kurenai took a moment to think about that. According to Asuma, Naruto wasn't even aware of any weird powers coming from him during his fight with Haku he was so angry. He didn't attack Asuma or turn into a machine of destruction the way everyone around him always figured he would, hence why most every adult in Konoha treaded lightly around the good-natured, bright-personality boy.

"There's nothing you can do about it though Asuma." Kurenai reasoned with him, "It's still a law that none of us can tell him about it… we could even get in trouble about talking about it out loud like this without really saying anything. Just trust in Hokage-sama's judgment for now and go with it. He's been doing fine without knowing what's in him, it can wait a little longer."

"I still don't like it." Asuma said, fishing a cigarette out of his vest pocket. Kurenai didn't even bother admonishing him for smoking around her seeing that he was really sort of upset about things at the moment, "It's like putting Naruto in a minefield and telling him to run laps. There's so many things that can go wrong."

Kurenai could see that he was going to be overthinking this for the rest of the day and then some. She only had one more thing left to try to get Asuma out of his slump or else she might as well have left him alone to think right then and there, "So… are we going back to your apartment or mine?" As she noticed him freeze up and look at her blankly she knew that had worked towards snapping him out of it.

XxX

(The Next Day – Team 10 Training Ground)

Naruto still had his headband in the form of a bandanna around his neck and his goggles set squarely on his forehead as he looked at his sensei who was grinning widely, "Asuma-sensei why are you in such a good mood?"

"Studly reasons kid." Asuma said cryptically as he walked over to Naruto fishing something out of his pocket, "Okay brat, you can walk on water like a pro at this point and from you showing off with Shunshin yesterday I guess you've got that down. So now we're going to get you jumpstarted on something advanced. It might take you a while to get it though, even with your clones." He pulled out a slip of paper and put it into his hand, "Channel chakra into that."

Naruto looked at his sensei and then at the paper in his hand before doing as he was asked. The paper split in half, surprising him, "What happened? Did I use too much?"

Asuma had a look of noticeable surprise on his face, "No, no that was just fine. Exactly what was supposed to happen." A smirk came to his face, "It looks like as a sensei I picked right going for you again. Naruto you have an elemental chakra nature of the wind variety just like me. Lucky you."

"So…" Naruto said, not necessarily getting what the big deal was at the moment, "What does that mean?"

Asuma chuckled and put a hand around Naruto's shoulder as he led him along, "I'm glad you asked. Let me explain to you, you're really going to like what I have to say. I can almost promise you that."

* * *

How to Train Your Genin: Tip 9

Sleep is for the weak… not.

You want your genin to work hard, but there's a point when training hard turns into overtraining, and there are some problems with that. Overtraining can result in injuries and over time these injuries can accumulate and wind up shortening your genin's overall career… you know, unless you've got some kind of weird genetic disposition to healing yourself up as good as new like nothing happened (he he he).

The same thing goes for missions as well. There is only so much of the time that you can force your squad to keep giving 100% before their performance begins to suffer for it. You can't always go full-blast. Have light days where you don't train as hard, or even give them days off, especially after difficult missions. If your team is well rested then that just makes them all the more better in the long run.

If you have an overachiever… well, you tie him/her up and make them rest. Who cares if it's not his/her choice? What is this, a democracy?

It's for their own good. In the end, if you don't let or make them rest then eventually their best just won't be as good as it would have been otherwise and that could prove to be fatal, both to the mission you wind up on, or to their very lives.

-Shiho

* * *

**Nothing to say… hope you enjoyed... I'll update again soon enough… later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	13. 44 Ways To Kill You With A Pimento

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I own nothing… I'm the definition of a starving artist right now with none of the talent that could actually wind up making me some money. That's why I fight, because maybe if I impress a sparring partner with my hand-to-hand awesomenicity they'll treat me to a sandwich or something.

Not really, but the point is I'm broke as fuck. Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 13: 44 Ways To Kill You With A Pimento**

* * *

The week of Team 10's sensei prescribed 'downtime' had come to an end and before long they were right back to work, as all three of the young genin-class shinobi had incentive for wanting to get stronger. Ino, for wanting to provide more than a mere support role to the team. Shikamaru, so that he could find himself capable of going through with his own plans instead of having to use his teammates as living chess pieces as well as bettering his strategies that his father showed him he was still lacking somewhat in. And last but not least Naruto, who believed that he wasn't strong enough to still be accepting of his role as the team's direct conflict fighter and overall self-professed guardian of sorts. But with him, things were coming along smoothly especially after the little boon bestowed upon him by Asuma during their down week.

_(Flashback – Three Weeks Ago – 4 Days Into Team 10's Break)_

_Naruto sat cross-legged on the ground in front of Asuma under the shade of the single tree in their team training ground's clearing against a rock. The man himself was leaning against the tree trunk itself with a very satisfied smile on his face, "It's really a good thing for you that I'm your sensei. I think I'm the only other wind user in Konoha other than you now."_

_Naruto nodded and stayed silent for the time being, he was aware of elements at the very least. Like for instance he knew that Sasuke shot big-ass fireballs around at his leisure, something that Naruto actually wished he could do. Why couldn't he have been fire-natured? That seemed so much cooler than wind. I mean who didn't like fireballs and explosions? And when he set the explosion he would just turn around and walk away, because after all, everyone knew that cool guys don't look at explosions. He tried practicing his 'not-looking-at-explosions' cool guy gestures when he first joined, but Asuma didn't want him using explosive tags like that… and he didn't want him turning the training ground into a cratered mess._

_Asuma gave Naruto a deadpan look as he could see Naruto had stopped paying attention and had a glazed look on his face with a content smirk, "You were thinking of the 'cool guys don't look at explosions' thing again weren't you?" Asuma said, getting Naruto to snap out of his daydream, "It's all over your face. And now you have that look of 'why didn't I get fire or something so that I could make explosions like Sasuke'."_

_Naruto just chuckled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his neck, "No… So come on and tell me already, what's so great about wind and what can I do with it?"_

_Asuma sighed, having to defend his best element to this kid wasn't how he anticipated his training to go, "Alright, wind in my opinion is the best element for you out of them all. Fire is too wild for someone like you, lightning is too precise, water is too loose and flowing, and earth is too straightforward and set. With wind it's the best for the way that you fight, close-to-mid range."_

"_How?" Naruto asked him skeptically, "Won't wind just blow stuff away from me? That's cool and all I guess, but it won't really beat anyone. I need to be close for my taijutsu to work and everything."_

_Asuma shook his head, "That's a misconception. While a lot of wind ninjutsu blow things around there are more of them suited towards cutting things." He pointed to a nearby tree and pulled out one of his trench knives, "You see that tree?" Naruto nodded and Asuma threw it._

_As the weapon stuck itself into the tree, Naruto waited for something to happen but it never did, "That's it?" He said, turning back to Asuma, "If I knew how to throw that thing I could have done that."_

_Asuma pulled out his other trench knife, "Fair enough, okay you see this one?" Naruto again nodded, but with less enthusiasm this time, "Move." Naruto raised an eyebrow but got up and moved towards Asuma who threw the trench knife against the rock that Naruto had been standing by. The weapon split right through the stone, kicking up dust from the destroyed stone._

_Naruto pulled his goggles down over his eyes and pulled his headband in the style of a bandanna up over his mouth and nose until the dust cleared, "That was awesome! Teach me how to do that!"_

"_Can't yet." Asuma said, "Learning how to manipulate the wind chakra you have takes work. You can't even generate your chakra the way it's supposed to be for that to even work." He told Naruto as he walked over and picked his trench knives up._

_So he couldn't learn how to cut through a rock like butter right off the bat. Okay, he could deal with that for the moment. Walk before you run after all…_

"_So if I'm not going to be doing that-." Naruto said, pointing at the destroyed rock, "Then what _am_ I going to be doing?"_

_Asuma turned his head up, "Get a leaf." Naruto shrugged and ran up the trunk of the tree they were under to retrieve a leaf as instructed before jumping down again, "Now split it in half." Asuma fought the urge to facepalm when Naruto just ripped the leaf in two, "Okay, that was my fault… I meant with your chakra."_

_Naruto tilted his head hard to the right, "Okay… how do I do that?"_

_Another leaf fell to the ground nearby and Asuma picked it up, holding it out for Naruto to see, "For you, take your chakra and mold it into a cutting form. Just will your chakra to cut through the leaf. Because you've got the wind element that's how it will work for you." He saw Naruto nod, "Now it won't be as easy as it sounds, but you have your Kage Bunshin, so I believe you'll be able to cut the time that you'd normally need to do it down by a large amount."_

"_Alright." Naruto said before rubbing his hands together and forming the cross-seal, "Let's do this, __Tajuu Kage-__."_

"_Hey." Asuma cut Naruto off from forming his clones with a frown on his face, "What did I tell you five days ago?" He asked Naruto in a voice that sounded almost like he was scolding._

"_Nothing." Naruto replied, "All you told us to do all week long was to take the week off and rest."_

"_Exactly." Asuma said with his arms crossed over his chest, "That wasn't just limited to doing missions and training exercises I'm meant to give you, that was also meant to mean that you aren't supposed to train at all."_

"_What?" Naruto couldn't believe that, "I can't train at all?"_

"_Yep." Asuma said, "But it for more than just making sure you get your rest. When we start training again I'm going to give each of you solo tests to see where you've grown as individuals since I already gave you your team test before we took our C-rank mission." He saw Naruto grumble about the order he was given, "I didn't say you can't do _anything_, I just said no physical training. Let your body rest for a while. All you do is kill your body when you train, you're only human kid."_

_Naruto still didn't like it, even if it was just for the rest of the week, "Well what am I supposed to do for the rest of the time off then?"_

"_I don't know, I can't tell you what to do for the rest of the time." The older man said, before contributing a thought, "Why not take up a book or something?" He noticed Naruto glaring at him, "What? What's wrong with that?"_

_Naruto kept up his heated look at the jounin, "You were trying to be funny just now weren't you?"_

(End Flashback)

And for the last few weeks in the time that he and his team hadn't been working on their missions or going with exercises that Asuma had given them to improve as a team, Naruto had been doing his best to split a leaf when they were given time to train on their own things, which was what he had been doing at the moment. Yep, him and about thirty clones all with leaves in their hands.

Naruto and all of his replications were focusing hard on the leaves in their hands. The one thing Naruto could say after a few weeks of on and off working on his elemental manipulation training was that it was a lot of standing around and concentrating… but if doing this would lead him to picking up a new move or two he would do it. Not everything could be exciting and over-the-top awesome all of the time.

With a grunt of exertion, Naruto stopped generating chakra and heaved out a few heavy breaths, looking over to where he saw the rest of his team sitting about. Naruto narrowed his eyes and walked over, getting a small chuckle out of Asuma, "That's another reason why I felt that your elemental training would go faster than most. Because first learning how to use your element takes a lot of chakra, something you have no shortage of most of the time." He never looked up at Naruto as he had his eyes on a shogi board sitting between him and Shikamaru.

'Not this stupid game again.' Naruto thought to himself. Okay, so he was kind of biased since he couldn't really play it. He understood the rules, but shogi just wasn't the game for him. It took too much patience and he was too impulsive. Most of the time when he would play Asuma or Shikamaru he would walk right into their traps that they had been setting up for ten turns while he had been going around the board trying to pick off officer pieces. He could beat Ino more often than not however, he had a habit of pulling off some surprising gambits that actually worked against someone on his own level, "What are all of you doing?"

"Kicking Asuma's ass." Shikamaru replied as dryly as ever as he moved another piece, putting a frown on Asuma's face, "Your turn."

Asuma scratched his beard as he looked over his pieces, "How in the hell have I not beaten you once yet?"

Naruto stopped paying attention to them and looked over at Ino who was laying out on the ground as if she were sleeping, "Great… yeah. I didn't know 'free training day' to me meant 'chill out day' for everyone else." He said as he walked over to Ino and crouched down in front of her, waving his hand in front of her face and getting no reaction, "Ino… Ino wake up."

"Ino is awake Naruto." Asuma said, scowling over how Shikamaru was working him into a corner on the shogi board, "She actually is training right now."

Naruto blinked before opening his mouth in understanding, "Oh, her clan jutsu. But where did she go? There's nothing around here." Just when he said that, a bird landed on him and pecked at the top of his head three times, "Oi!" He almost managed to swat the bird, but it managed to fly away first.

After a moment once the bird landed in the tree that marked the center of their training ground Ino's body then began to stir on the ground, "Ugh, you're so lucky that you didn't hit me while I was in that bird Naruto…"

Naruto looked at her as she sat up rubbing her eyes, "You can hit birds with that move?"

Ino nodded, "Well it didn't know I was coming, it's not that big of a deal." She then noticed that Naruto had stopped training and popped up to her feet quickly, "Oh, there's something that I've always wanted to try Naruto and I need your help! Make a Kage Bunshin."

Naruto quickly did as she asked of him and in a matter of seconds a second Naruto was standing right next to the original, "So what's up? What did you need?"

She made the hand-seal for Shintenshin no Jutsu, "I wanted to see if I could take control of a clone, but you're the only person I know that makes tons of them the way that you do. You Kage Bunshin and most other solid ones have consciousnesses, that's why they can follow orders, I just want to see if this would work." Naruto nodded and moved away from his clone, "Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu)!"

Naruto's clone's head snapped back in an alert motion before slumping down while Ino's body fell back down to the ground in a heap. Even Asuma and Shikamaru stopped what they were doing to watch. Asuma was only thankful that Ino hadn't tried to take the real Naruto's body, but what would happen in a clone body?

Ino inside of the Kage Bunshin started looking at herself in Naruto's form, flexing the fingers and testing out the basic motor skills, "Wow, Naruto's body is really rigid and stiff."

Naruto gave her a dry look as she continued to go through the motions in his clone's body, "Well what did you expect Ino? You're a girl, you're way lighter than me, and all of that other stuff."

"Yeah, yeah I know." She said as she kept looking at her hands, "But I can just feel how much stronger your body is than mine, it's kind of cool. I feel like I can lift anything right now."

Asuma chimed in, putting his game with Shikamaru on hold for the moment, "I really wouldn't do that though Ino. Naruto's clones are pretty fragile, too much strain on one and they'll pop. Then what will happen to your mind?"

She looked over at Asuma and blinked, "Well it depends on what happens to the clone. If I just get punched or something then I'll go right back into my body, only my body will take the damage from the punch. If I get stabbed or burned or whatever then that will happen to my real body too."

That made Naruto pale slightly. His clones took obscene amounts of punishment of the fatal variety. They were his buffers, and they were subtly how he knew what to avoid himself when he took to directly fighting his enemies. In Nami no Kuni Sasuke must have killed like thirty of them at least in rather heinous fashion, "Okay… I don't think you should try to use my clones for your jutsu Ino. Get out of him now." Ino put her hands on her hips… which looked really weird inside of the body of one of Naruto's clones, but did as he asked and released her jutsu, allowing Naruto to dispel the clone.

"What's the worst thing that could happen?" Ino asked once she returned to her own body and sat up to look at Naruto.

Naruto just deadpanned at her, "Do you pay attention to the things that my clones do? They die harder than any real person does." She gave him a confused look, "The way you just talked about my clone getting set on fire like it's not a big deal proves my point."

Ino blushed when she realized that everyone had just been playing off the amounts of damage that Naruto's clones took regularly. Everyone on the team had been responsible for killing more than their fair share of them since the squad's inception, "Sorry Naruto."

"It's okay, I'm just looking out for you." He reassured her before grinning at her, "After all, I have to protect my long-lost little sister don't I?" He said in humor, remembering his run-in with Ino's dad.

'Damn it, that better not stick with him.' Ino thought to herself, although she could see that he was teasing her. If she reacted to it angrily or something then he definitely would have kept calling her that just to mess with her. He was just being good-natured when he said it the way he was at the moment. Still, he'd better not start seeing her like that for real.

"Checkmate." Shikamaru said to Asuma before yawning.

Asuma looked at the board from every angle he could find as he tried to figure out an excuse of some sort, "Maybe if I-."

"Nope." Shikamaru said with finality, cutting off whatever he was going to say.

"Yeah, but-."

"It's over Asuma." Shikamaru started putting all of the pieces away, "Lose with some dignity why don't you?"

Asuma finally sighed and conceded that he was still unable to beat Shikamaru at shogi… what was with that kid? He had an answer for everything. It hadn't taken him long to figure out that Shikamaru was a genius, but to put it into action at a young age like this was something else entirely, "Fine… dismissed for the day." He said in a defeated manner, "We'll be taking another mission tomorrow." Asuma said as he slogged away in a dejected fashion.

Ino looked at Asuma slowly leaving the training ground and turned to Shikamaru, "I think you broke him."

Shikamaru picked up his shogi board and smirked, "Well it was only a matter of time. I've beaten him like thirty-seven times already." He started walking away as well, "I'm going to go see if Chouji is done for the day too and see if he wants to hang out for a bit, do either of you want to go?"

Ino shrugged, "Why not? I was just going to go home, but all I was going to do was start to dip into my extra training… and I could do that anytime tonight for what I was going to do for it. Sure."

Naruto shook his head, "Nope, sorry not this time." He said, dispelling his clones and dropping to one knee because of the backlash. He quickly shook it off due to it not being that many and turned to his teammates, "I've got to figure out how to cut this stupid leaf, it's killing me."

"Okay." Ino said, unsure of Naruto's intentions to keep training with something so hard after being dismissed for the day, "If that's what you want we'll see you tomorrow."

Naruto smiled at both of them before disappearing in a puff of smoke. Shikamaru just shook his head, "Show-off… Is he still trying to look cool like on the first week? I thought he knew by now that guys like us aren't supposed to look cool when we do stuff."

Ino shook her head, swinging her ponytail back and forth slightly as she followed, "A little effort wouldn't kill you. Maybe you could pull it off if you tried. Naruto's starting to anyway."

"Nah." Shikamaru said, shooting down her comment, "For what? It's not going to help me any in the long run. Who cares if anyone thinks I'm cool, it's troublesome."

XxX

(Later – Konohagakure Ninja Academy)

Konohamaru stood outside by a large bag of erasers as he clapped two together repeatedly, coughing every now and then, "I said I was sorry Iruka-sensei… That pepper extract fell into your mug by accident."

Iruka stood nearby against the wall of the school overseeing his work, "And why did you even have it on you in the first place?" He asked with a perturbed look on his face. It hadn't even been six months since his last prankster had left the Academy, he'd be damned if he'd let another one start honing their skills on his watch. No way, not again.

"Lunch?" Konohamaru said desperately, "That's a no go huh?" Iruka nodded and the boy sighed, continuing to clap erasers and cough until a hand pulled the goggles on his forehead down over his face, "Huh?"

"So you can at least see what you're doing without getting dust in your eyes." Konohamaru looked up and saw someone else with goggles over their eyes and a bandanna around their nose and mouth with the village insignia on a metal plate, "If I said that this was half of the reason I bought goggles in the first place would that seem like it was about right Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka smirked and chuckled, "Well how am I supposed to know what made you go out and buy those weird things one day?" He said as he walked from the wall over to Konohamaru, "Long time no see Naruto."

Naruto pulled the cloth down from his face and grinned widely, getting Konohamaru to point up at him suddenly, "Whoa! Boss what's with the new look?"

"It's not really new." Naruto said, pulling his goggles back onto his forehead and tugging at the bandanna around his neck, "I just thought this would be more useful if I wore it this way."

"No way, not just that!" Konohamaru said abruptly, "I haven't seen you in forever and you've got this new look and everything, with the clothes and all of that! Just because you look stronger doesn't mean anything, I'm still going to beat you really soon, you'll see!" He waved his little fist at Naruto aggressively.

Naruto shook his head in amusement and turned to Iruka, "Iruka-sensei I was just wondering if you could help me really quick."

Iruka saw how serious Naruto's face was and he looked down at Konohamaru, "Alright Konohamaru, you're done for today since this was your first offense, you can go home. And there'd better not be a next time or else I'll have you clean every last eraser in school." He threatened to the small boy who nodded fervently.

"Okay." He hurriedly dropped his erasers in his hands and ran towards the edge of the schoolyard before stopping, "Hang out with me soon Boss, I've got some people that want to meet you!" He said before taking off, not really into the whole 'staying afterschool' scene.

Iruka sighed as he watched his current student leave the grounds, "It hasn't even been a year yet and I can already tell he's going to be a handful. Not as much as you, but still…" He turned to Naruto, "So what is it that you need Naruto? Do you have my jutsu down?"

Naruto grinned, "Yep. I'm getting better with it, I can sense stuff that's like 100 yards away, and I can even read signs and other stuff too." It then fell from his face, "But that's not why I'm here Iruka-sensei. I was wondering, what do you know about training an elemental affinity?"

Iruka smiled when he heard what Naruto was practicing, "That's a pretty advanced form of chakra control. You're saying you can water-walk and all of that?" Naruto nodded and Iruka let off an impressed sound, "Well this coming from the kid that couldn't focus for long enough to balance a leaf on his head. Good for you." He then pondered Naruto's question, "Well, something like this isn't supposed to happen overnight."

Naruto nodded, "I know, and I already know what I'm supposed to be thinking about when I try creating the wind chakra; my chakra as sharp and as thin as I can make it, like the edge of a blade."

Iruka scratched the scar on the bridge of his nose as he thought of how to answer, "Well, there aren't any tips on how to get it down faster. It is what it is, all you can do now is work until you get it."

Letting out a sigh, Naruto placed his hands behind his head and squinted his eyes, "Yeah, but there are so many people out there stronger than me Iruka-sensei. I mean, just on the last big mission I had, it was a close call… if we were fighting a different person then Ino and Shikamaru might have died." By now he was over it, way over it. It had happened, they actually all walked away from the fight in one piece, there was nothing more to dwell on. That still didn't mean that he couldn't use it as a lesson that there was still going to be people out there stronger than him.

Iruka placed his hand on top of Naruto's head, "You're still a rookie Naruto. You've got all the time in the world to get better and from the looks of things you're improving quickly. Just take your time. There's no rush at all, I don't want to see you go overboard and burn yourself out."

Naruto moved Iruka's hand from his head with a smile, "Alright Iruka-sensei, but you won't ever have to worry about me burning out. I can't stop until I get to Hokage can I?"

Hearing the confidence that had seemed lacking earlier slip back into Naruto's voice after his question time was done, Iruka smiled back at his former student, "Of course you can't. Good luck, and remember you can always come back and ask me anything." Naruto nodded and gave Iruka a two-fingered salute before making the ram seal and disappearing in a puff of smoke, "He can do that already? Whoa…"

XxX

(The Next Day)

Asuma and his team stood in the room where missions were accepted and he noticed his team's eyes harden as they were handed another C-ranked mission from the pile, 'Calm down you guys, this is C-ranked, not A-ranked like the backup mission we went on.' Asuma took the scroll provided for them and led them outside where he stood in front of them and read the mission to them, "Alright we'll be back in a week just like how we were supposed to be the last time." He heard Ino scoff, "I said like how we were _supposed_ to. Anyway, this one should be pretty easy."

Shikamaru by now was skeptical of whenever anyone said that things would be easy by now, because nothing was ever easy… at least by his standards, "So then what are we doing?"

"It's just another simple little transport job. Nothing out of your scope to be able to handle." Asuma said, motioning for them to follow him, "Let's go get what we're supposed to be taking."

XxX

Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru were all positioned in front of a large cart hauling hundreds of pounds of lumber. All three genin were pulling the materials down the path towards where they were going. Naruto grunted in exertion before speaking, "Where is this farm?"

Asuma walked alongside the cart keeping watch for any signs of someone looking to boost their hardware for a quick buck, letting his eyes drift towards his genin team every few moments, "You guys holding up okay? Do you need a break?"

"Yes." Shikamaru said immediately, getting a glare from both Naruto and Ino who weren't about to be stuck doing this for a few more extra hours because one of them was lazy. The sooner this ended for them the better.

"No." Naruto and Ino said simultaneously. Even though in all honesty she could have used one after pushing the cart for several hours, Ino wasn't going to stop first. But looking over at Naruto, other than the act of actually forcing the cart to move which was at this point basically them using their momentum, Naruto didn't seem fazed at all by the rather hard physical labor. He was always like that, and the other day when Ino took over his clone's body… well she had never felt so much chakra in her entire life. Inside of his body there was so much energy that she couldn't even stand still, which was why she kept looking all over the body spastically. She was about to take off into a run and do something in it until Naruto asked her to go back into her own body.

And the thing about it was, that Kage Bunshin required him to split his chakra evenly between the clones that he made, which means that the single clone he made had half of his chakra… which meant that all that energy she felt wasn't even all of it. She couldn't imagine how Naruto felt all of the time if that were the case, no wonder he thought he could have kept training after they were dismissed that day.

Naruto chuckled as he continued to keep the cart moving forward alongside his teammates, "Come on Shikamaru, it's just walking. We're just dragging stuff while we're doing it."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, "Do you not feel the 400 pounds that we're dragging behind us?" Oh who was he kidding? With all three of them pulling it at the same time of course Naruto didn't feel it. Both he and Ino could carry at least a good 100 pounds all on their own each, and Naruto was at least twice as strong as they were. Not to mention the fact that he had more energy than Konoha's power substations on his worst day.

Where the hell did he get so much energy? It was always that way, even back in school. Naruto was never seen training to get his stamina up above anyone else's but he was just able to purely outlast everyone else during the physical exercises that they did to condition the students for the things they would do as shinobi. Naruto was giving him a headache making him think about all of this stuff, but since all they were doing was hauling a cart he had plenty of time to think.

"It's good for you." Asuma said, about them dragging the cart, "When was the last time you all did anything physical like this anyway? Just think about how good the trip back will feel without the cart and that will make you feel better."

With that being said, the only sound coming from the immediate area was the sound of the cart's wooden wheels bumping along the road. After a few minutes, Naruto sighed and spoke again, filling in the silence of the ordinary C-rank mission, "Seriously Asuma-sensei, where is this farm?"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Hokage Tower)

Hiruzen looked over the correspondence from the message that had been sent to Kusagakure. It was much the same as the responses that he had been receiving from other villages, the idea of carrying out the chunin exams in Konoha this year did not appeal to any of the other villages and there was no other location that the villages could all agree upon. None of the five major villages felt like going to any of the others this year to allow their genin to compete.

The old man furrowed his brow as he tried thinking of a solution, as the location had to be finalized within the next month or else this time around it wouldn't be happening as at least another month would be needed for preparation, 'This won't do. All of this back and forth over the matter won't solve anything. What is needed is a neutral site for the exams to take place this time around. A place that none of the other villages can complain about, and joint proctors can be provided from each village. A place that won't tolerate anything other than complete impartiality over the issue.'

This might solve another problem of accused bias from the hosting villages that inevitably came through year after year and in all honesty quite a bit of it was well-founded. Even if it hadn't been intended there was never really a level playing field. Whenever coded messages were used that needed to be deciphered it was always a code that the host village was already well versed in. Battlefields were usually well suited for use by the hosting competitors' genin due to how they had trained for the duration of their careers. There were a myriad of ways that each time bias was founded, and sometimes a genin passing the exam and getting promoted wound up being because of the village they were in to take the exam in the first place.

It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was better than arguing back and forth and wasting valuable time that could be better served to set things up. Now even if the proposition was accepted it would still need to be cleared with a third party, the country that would be the host of this exam. If everything fell into place as it should then the plans could be finalized in a matter of around two weeks, leaving six-to-eight weeks for everything else to come together. Plenty of time.

Hiruzen smiled triumphantly, it would go through as no one would have any reasons for things not to proceed as he would suggest. After all, there was no more neutral nation around than Tetsu no Kuni (Land of Iron).

With this fact in his head, Hiruzen began writing out a reply to continue correspondence and a proposal to all of the villages that would potentially be sending teams. With things the way they were now, this had the potential to be the largest chunin exam that had ever been put together.

A letter needed to be put out to all of the villages now. This could be a major event seen worldwide, a boon to each participating villages' economy and then some. A true joint meeting of the best of the best from the future shinobi of the Elemental Nations.

XxX

(With Team 10 – Within Hi no Kuni)

It had been a day of travel as the genin team and their jounin sensei continued on towards their destination. And even though Naruto's clockwork cry of "Where is this farm?" was starting to grate on more than a few nerves, Ino and Shikamaru had to agree with him in wondering just where the hell this farm was. And their moods didn't improve in the slightest when they found that the farm they were meant to bring lumber to… was positioned in the middle of a rather plentiful forest. It was like a slap across the face to the three kids hauling the materials, especially Shikamaru who had actually deemed it necessary to exert himself dragging that crap all over for an entire day.

"Where is this farm damn it?" Naruto growled out for what seemed like the thousandth time for the span of their mission.

Asuma still stayed supervising the trio of genin as they dragged the cart along a forest road, "It's close, just keep on going. If you look hard enough you can see it through the trees. And it's more of a ranch Naruto."

Naruto mumbled as he kept on working, this was like a D-rank mission except they actually had to travel a ways outside of the village to get it done, "Farm, ranch, whatever. I can't see anything Asuma-sensei… I can't even get anything with Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu). All I get are trees. These woods are pretty thick."

"Which brings us to part two of our mission." Asuma said as he pulled the scroll dictating their mission parameters, "After we deliver the lumber we've been hired on to transport, we're to stay back and protect the livestock and other animals until they can put up the fences that they need to build. That should take a few days."

Shikamaru sighed in relief. That sounded good to him. Just watching animals for a few days and nothing else sounded pretty laid back to him, thank goodness the harder part was about to end.

And just as Asuma said, it didn't take much longer for them to finish making their way through the forest to find themselves in a clear-cut area, rather large, with a pretty good sized house in the middle of the property near a farmhouse. Near the farmhouse there were tons of penned animals; cattle… _a lot_ of cattle.

The team finished pulling the cart up to the front of the farmhouse as a young looking black-haired man in a plain brown shirt and tan pants walked outside overlooking the genin bringing things to a stop. As soon as they stopped pulling the cart, Shikamaru walked out away a few feet and fell out directly on the ground staring up at the sky from his back, "Finally done…"

The man they had brought the materials to chuckled as he walked towards them, "Well you Konoha ninja sure work fast. I wasn't expecting you all here until at least this evening. You all got here bright and early this morning."

Asuma grinned at his team, Ino leaning against the cart, tired from dragging that thing for over a day, and Naruto who yawned as if that was just his warm-up for the day and he was still waking up, "Well there's no reason to go slower if we can actually keep a faster pace, right? It wasn't that far out from Konoha."

The man rubbed the back of his head, "Yeah, but I don't have any workers here except for me and my little cousins, and they would have been all kinds of useless when it came to dragging that stuff, even though they're just as old as your team here." He extended his hand to Asuma, "By the way shinobi-san, my name is Kojima Katashi. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise." Asuma said, grabbing his hand and shaking it heartily, "I am Sarutobi Asuma, and these are my genin; the boy on the ground is Nara Shikamaru, the girl is Yamanaka Ino, and the blonde boy is Uzumaki Naruto."

"Who's outside?" A youthful male voice called out from inside the house as footsteps sounded out towards the front door.

"And these are my cousins that I had been talking about." Katashi said, gesturing minutely towards the door. The first person outside was a boy around the kids' age with black hair and a straw hat on his head. He wore blue jeans and a dust colored shirt that had the look of a poncho, "This is Shigeru." He looked towards said male younger cousin, "Where is your sister? It's about time to start for the day."

"She's inside, do you think she'd actually be out here or somewhere else?" Shigeru said as he walked down the stairs of the porch, looking at the new arrivals, "Who the hell are they?" His eyes stopped on Ino however, who wasn't paying the least bit of attention to him beyond seeing who had asked about them.

Katashi pointed at the Konoha ninja with a smile, "These are the shinobi I hired to bring the lumber up here and watch over the cattle until the fence is built since you and Kiyomi fought so hard to not drag last of the stuff that I had to buy back here." He finished chidingly.

"That was a seriously long trip back here!" Shigeru complained, "And you wanted us to drag that stuff all that way? What are we, the cattle we keep?"

"Oi!" Naruto and Ino replied indignantly at being compared to cattle. Shikamaru didn't respond because he was busy catching up on the sleep he had missed that morning… right there on the ground, "Who's cattle?"

Shigeru waved his hands in front of his face indignantly and hurriedly made his way over to Ino, "I didn't mean you of course. No way! I was just saying…"

"Why is he trying to apologize to just her?" Naruto said to himself, "He insulted all three of us, right Shikamaru?" He looked over at Shikamaru who was on his back with his eyes closed on the ground, "If you don't stop acting like you're asleep I'm going to draw on your face again."

Shikamaru immediately sat up with a groan, "Damn you Naruto. Can't a guy take a break?" His response was a fleet kick to his side from said blonde, "Bastard…"

"Yes, I'm a bastard." Naruto said, shrugging his shoulders and kicking Shikamaru playfully three more times, "Or have _you_ met my father?"

Katashi turned towards the house and yelled through the open door, "Kiyomi get out here already! I already let you two sleep late today because supplies were still getting here!"

"I'm coming!" A girl's voice yelled from inside before rapid footsteps made it outside. A girl with black hair like Shigeru and Katashi appeared on the front steps only hers had been done in twin braids down her back. She wore jean shorts that came to her thighs and a white shirt over a jean vest to go along with white boots and gloves, "Is it time to work already?" She said, blocking a yawn from coming forth.

"You've got it." Katashi said, "Meet the group of ninja that will be keeping watch over the cattle until everything is done. The leader Asuma-san, and the genin under his command; Ino, Shikamaru, and Naruto."

Shigeru grinned at Ino lecherously, "So your name is Ino is it? It's fitting for someone as pretty as you."

"Yeah… I guess." She said with a sigh. It really didn't as far as she was concerned and she could tell already that this was going to be a long few days.

Naruto grabbed Shikamaru by the back of his vest and yanked him to his feet, "Say hi Shikamaru. Even you can do that."

"Whatever…" He muttered before stepping back as he found the girl Kiyomi danger close to him, "Um, can I help you?"

Kiyomi had a light blush on her face as she studied Shikamaru, "So you're here to help us out for a few days?" Shikamaru looked over at Naruto who gave him a look saying that he was just as lost as he was, "So what can you tell me about yourself? Like what do you like to do?"

'Who cares?' Shikamaru thought as he took a few steps back, "Nothing. I don't like doing anything." He said.

Kiyomi frowned when Naruto spoke up, "He's seriously telling the truth, he doesn't like doing anything." He then recoiled slightly when he felt the girl's glare on him.

"I wasn't asking you." She growled out before changing back to a sweet tone and looking at Shikamaru, "I was asking Shikamaru-kun here."

Naruto felt rather offended at how he had been treated not even five minutes into meeting these people, and then finally noticed Shigeru hitting on Ino as she steadily ignored him and tried blowing him off. With a sigh he walked over to Asuma and Katashi shaking his head, "This is going to be a long goddamn mission isn't it?"

"Sorry about that." Katashi said to the shorter blonde boy, "My aunt and uncle gave me the money to buy this land and cattle to start my business on the condition that I would take my little cousins and show them the concept of hard work. It hasn't really worked though since they're both kind of…"

"Brats?" Naruto suggested, turning around to see his two unfortunate teammates and the two siblings that had apparently found love at first sight. Asuma palmed his face at Naruto's choice of words, "What? We were all thinking it, I just said it out loud."

Katashi crossed his arms over his chest, "Well he's not really that far off with it to be honest. But today they're going to be working their tails off because now that we have all of the lumber I sent out for we can get to building the property gate around the farm."

Naruto looked up at Asuma who knew what Naruto wanted to ask, "No, he didn't pay for you guys to build the fence as well, he just paid for us to transport the materials and guard the cattle until everything was all up."

Hearing that, Naruto's eyes lit up, "So other than watching the cattle we don't have anything else to do?" If all he had to do was babysit some stupid cows for a few hours and in return he could do whatever he wanted then maybe he could get in some training and make this trip a little productive.

"That's right." Asuma said before he found that Naruto had darted away to the pen holding the cattle shouting that he had the first watch shift at the top of his lungs, speeding past his teammates.

"Wow." Katashi said as he could still see the dust that Naruto had kicked up from running towards the pen, "Good little ethic in that one." He scratched his head and called out to his cousins, "Shigeru! Kiyomi! Help the Naruto kid get the cattle out to graze around the area and then you can help me get to work on putting up the fence around the property!" The two younger family members of Katashi jolted to attention and ran off to do as instructed.

Asuma called his genin over and gave them the rundown of how things would go, "Naruto's watching the cattle first while they graze. It'll be either one or the other's job after that this afternoon and early in the evening. Any questions?" Ino and Shikamaru shook their heads to show that they didn't have any, "Until then you two can do whatever you want, just be ready for your shift. You can both decide who gets that one."

Shikamaru waved and went off to find a quiet spot, "What was that Asuma? Did you say, 'Go ahead and find a quiet spot to catch some z's Shikamaru. Naruto will find you and kick you awake when it's your turn.'? I'm way ahead of you."

Ino watched her lazier teammate leave and she turned her attention back to her sensei, "Well while I'm waiting for something to do I think I should test out a poison I made on myself."

Asuma went wide-eyed at her, "You made a poison?" He then picked up the second half of what she said, "You're going to test it on yourself? What the hell's wrong with you, you're on a mission. This is no time to build up an immunity to something."

Ino laughed slightly, "It's a weak numbing poison Asuma-sensei. I wouldn't use anything worse than that. I can't even make the good stuff yet." She then scowled, "Though maybe I should use the hallucinogen… It would really make dealing with that punk Shigeru more amusing later."

Asuma weighed the benefits of Ino walking around until her shift either physically numb, or mentally out of it and figured that the latter was more dangerous for everyone, "Why don't you save that second one until you get back home." He didn't want her to potentially go berserk because she was building an immunity to something, "You can use the first one if you're sure it will wear off by the time you have to go on watch."

Ino nodded brightly, "I'm not sure how long it will take to wear off since I don't know for sure, but it won't last any longer than a few hours I'm sure. Maybe a day."

On second thought, if Ino were out of commission for a bit then Shikamaru would have to do actual work. "Do you have the antidote?" Ino pulled it out of her supply pouch and presented it to him, "Then you might as well do it now." He shooed her off and rubbed his temple, "A slacker with a genius IQ and no desire to actually use it, a loudmouth that can steal your body and then poison it, and the single most impulsive genin in Konoha… ladies and gentlemen let me present to you Team 10." He said, starting a slow clap for the benefit of no one.

Katashi sweatdropped and gave him a dry look, "Are they really that bad?"

And right on cue… "Whoo!" Naruto yelled, waving a machete around wildly as he chased a herd of cattle out into the open fields with a bunch of his Kage Bunshin, "I've been drinking green tea all goddamn morning! I pray to Kami every goddamn Sunday, you're gon' bring out the demons in me! Yah bitch, yah!"

Asuma didn't even visibly respond, having become more or less accustomed to it by now, while on the other hand Katashi was staring at Naruto and clones in horror, "Naruto don't you injure any of those cattle with that damn thing, that's money you're scaring the hell out of!" Asuma yelled to him before placing a cigarette in his own mouth and lighting it.

"I know!" He yelled back at his sensei before turning a manic grin to the cattle, "I want some steak with my next meal damn it, dattebayo! Get. In. My. Ramen!"

Turning back to Katashi, Asuma offered him a cigarette only for the man to robotically shake his head as he saw his cousins walk after in an effort to keep pace with Naruto, "I wonder how well he can even use that thing… He's never asked me about it." He mused mostly to himself.

Katashi waved his arms frantically at his cousins, "Get the horses! Don't try to follow them on foot you guys, that ninja kid is way faster than you, don't let them run free like that!" Anime tears started streaming down his face, "Why is good help so hard to find?" He cried desperately.

Asuma blew out a plume of smoke and patted the younger man on the back, "Because first of all you aren't paying for it. Cheer up, it's not that bad."

XxX

(Hours Later)

Naruto stood by the grazing cattle with a leaf in his hand while the sounds of stakes being hammered into the ground rang out. While Katashi would dig holes for the poles Shigeru would set them and hammer them in and Kiyomi would place the fence portions in while they kept working, "Why isn't ninja boy here helping us? He's about as useful as a poop-flavored lollipop." Shigeru said out loud.

"Because we didn't pay him to, so this isn't his job." Katashi said as his shovel kept forming holes for the fence posts, "All he's doing is making sure the cattle don't wander off while they graze and get hurt. Those clone things of his are doing a great job of that. If he wants to stare at a leaf he can do that."

Naruto got a tick mark on his head, but they weren't shinobi. How would they know that he was training? All he had to do was focus on his training. Split the leaf. Sharper, thinner, get his chakra the way it needed to be. He was going to get this down in no time, he just knew it.

Shigeru then commented again, "I wish his teammate was here, the hot one, Ino." Naruto rolled his eyes and tried to ignore him, "Did you see her playing hard to get?"

"I wish my Shikamaru-kun was here." Kiyomi said rather dreamily with a sigh, "His attitude is so hot, he acts so detached but I know he's a softie. And I know _he'd_ help us out without any questions."

Naruto's eye started to twitch, 'I'm not getting paid for this, and I don't like any of you enough to help, except for maybe Katashi. He's alright.' Besides, if that girl thought Shikamaru would lift a finger to help out she obviously didn't know a damn thing about the guy. She'd probably be one of those girls that went gaga over Sasuke back in Konoha if she thought Shikamaru's attitude was cool.

"Alright, focus on the job you guys." Katashi said as he moved onto digging another hole, his pace far outworking the others by this time, "The faster we work the sooner we finish up. As long as this fence isn't up the cattle can wander off easier in the middle of grazing, and from there who knows what can happen to them."

Kiyomi shook her head as she went to grab some more lumber, "I don't know why you decided to do this with your life Katashi. Our parents would have kept supporting you, we never really saw why you wanted to raise cattle like this."

Katashi frowned, "Because I wanted to make my own way in the world, not ride along on my family's coattails. How could I mooch when your parents did so much for me already after my own died? I'm going to make my own money and I'm going to pay them back for everything they've done for me. You've got to learn how to do things yourself once in a while."

"I still don't get it." Shigeru whispered to his sister who nodded, "He doesn't have to do this, it seems really useless to me."

"He's doing it for himself." Naruto said to the both of them, surprising them that he had been listening, "He's trying to prove that he's his own person and that people can rely on him. I kind of know where he's coming from on that."

As they thought about what both Naruto and Katashi said, Shikamaru came up and tapped Naruto on the shoulder, "Hey, your shift is over. I'm taking the late afternoon and early evening shift."

Naruto looked at Shikamaru and tilted his head, "Really? You're actually taking a shift? Did Ino threaten you?" He questioned.

Shikamaru frowned, "Hardly. Is it really that unbelievable that I came here all on my own?" Naruto gave him a deadpan look in return, "Okay, Ino can barely move because she's apparently building up an immunity to something. It's not close to being fatal, but she has terrible mobility and wouldn't be any good trying anything with herding these cattle back into the pen."

Naruto grinned and patted Shikamaru on the shoulder, "Well in that case have fun looking out for the cows. You saw them all on the way here, and I'm just going to dispel my clones because I'm training. I need all of that chakra." Naruto almost skipped away, he was so happy to leave the area.

"Shikamaru-kun!" Kiyomi shouted out to him, waving happily, "Would you mind helping us out with this?"

"Yeah I would." Shikamaru said as he turned around to watch the cattle graze. This wouldn't actually be that bad until it was time to put them back in their pen. Watching these cattle would be right up his alley he thought to himself as he sat down in the grass and watched. He had a lot of things to ponder about anyway, like Naruto. After months of being on the same team he had yet to figure out what made Naruto tick exactly. The kid was a mystery and there were no clues in his reach.

"He's so cool…" Kiyomi said, getting his attention, "So calm and aloof. I wonder what he's thinking." Shikamaru heard her say.

XxX

(A Hidden Location – Hi no Kuni)

"D'ya know how much money all of that guy's cattle'll bring us?" A man said before cackling manically, "He's just a baby rancher, the guy probably doesn't even have the heart to brand any of those things. If he's the guy runnin' the place then taking those stupid things'll be like taking candy from a screamin' brat."

Another more gruff voice spoke up in response, "Be quiet Kei. Don't think about the money we'll get until we take the livestock. Then once we've sold them off you can think about it."

"Mou, you're so boring Manabu." The cackling voice of Kei said again, "Can't ya let a guy fantasize about living large for a moment? Ya big stick in the mud."

"Now, now brothers…" A third calm and authoritative voice said, getting the other two to pay attention to him, "It won't matter after tonight because Kei's daydream will be real. This little ranch hand and his little brat cousins won't dare raise a hand against the Yunokawa Brothers."

"Sure thing/Yes Satoshi-oniisama." Both Kei and Manabu said respectively.

Satoshi chuckled softly, "Now my dear little brothers. Prepare for tonight, we move on that little ranch then."

XxX

(That Night – Kojima Ranch)

"Stop messing with that leaf Naruto." Ino said in a rather strained voice as she slowly stood up from the kitchen table inside of Katashi's house. Naruto was sitting down across from her staring at that leaf like the world ended with it, "You've been trying to cut it all afternoon since you came back in."

Naruto looked up from the leaf at the blonde girl sitting across from him, "Yeah, well you've been sitting there all day doing nothing."

Ino's eye twitched as the feeling started coming back to her body quicker than before, "I used more poison than I thought. You should have known that when you sat here and tickled me for ten minutes when you first walked in you bastard." And there had been nothing that she could do since he and her were the only ones in the house, yelling for Asuma wouldn't have done any good. A seductive smirk came over her face after thinking about it for a moment, "Did you like touching my body like that Naruto?"

Naruto's face started turning red, "Y-You're wearing bandages under your clothes. I didn't really touch anything." He muttered, turning away from her.

Ino batted her eyes at him to tease him further, "That's no excuse you liar… If you couldn't feel anything then you wouldn't have done it for so long. Even when you do stuff like that you're so gentle with me, it's so sweet how you take care of your Ino-chan. I always knew you were the more responsible one to put in charge of my body." Tickle her when she couldn't fight back would he? It's a good thing that no matter what she could always push his buttons like this.

"Stop saying stuff like that damn it…" Naruto said, pulling his bandanna up over his face to cover his red cheeks, "It's not fair. I can't do this kind of stuff to you."

Ino sauntered over to him as he had his back turned and draped herself over his back and the back of his chair, "Why? What's wrong with touching me? I'm just your long-lost little sister aren't I?" She then lowered her voice to a whisper as she pulled his bandanna back down to his neck, "You've never done anything naughty with my body while I wasn't in it have you Goldie-kun?"

Naruto was about to yell at her, but found that he couldn't muster up the voice to do it. Just the tone of voice Ino used made him shiver. In his opinion she just had to find a way to use that in her fighting… although maybe he was the only person that it would work on.

"I'm not hearing a no." Ino chided further, right next to his ear, "You big perv."

"Not a perv…" Naruto growled out as footsteps from upstairs eventually led to Kiyomi walking in, and Ino slipping back into her seat almost unnoticed by Naruto. The lack of her pleasant scent in his sinuses was his only initial indication. And the extremely satisfied look she had on her face due to making the last few moments very hard for him was very hard to ignore, especially when she winked at him.

Kiyomi walked in and placed her hands on her hips with a pout, "Where is Shikamaru-kun? He should have come in by now. Even Katashi came in."

Naruto and Ino both frowned at her, Naruto's was far more pronounced though. Katashi had let them stop for a short rest and for a little snack and they had never gone back outside, even when he did.

Ino stood up from her chair and headed towards the outside, "He's probably bumming around somewhere outside. I'll go find him. I need a walk anyway." She said, cracking her back, stiff from her numbing poison, "I'll just stretch my legs a bit."

"Go ahead. I'll just keep trying to split this-." He looked at the leaf in his hand, crumbled from when Ino had been making him hot under the collar, "Goddamn it…" He muttered before standing up and leaving Kiyomi in the house as well as he went out the back, "If you see him tell Asuma-sensei I went to take a walk and get another leaf. I'll be back in like ten or twenty minutes."

XxX

(With Ino)

"Come on you lazy jerk where are you?" Ino asked rhetorically, not really expecting any kind of answer as she walked outside. She had gone all around the pens and she already knew that Shikamaru wasn't in the house, "Are you really going to make me look all over for you?" He hadn't been seen since he somehow got all of the cattle back into their pen, though she was sure that Katashi did most of the work there.

As Ino walked out away from where the cattle pens were placed away from the barn and ranch house out into the open fields, she figured he must have taken the time after putting the animals up to hang out and look at clouds, 'He probably fell asleep outside or something.' She thought with a humored smile.

"Well hello there Ino-chan." She cringed once she heard that voice, "What are you doing out here all by yourself?"

Ino turned around and put a strained smile on her face, "Hello Shigure. I'm just taking a little walk, stretching my legs out a bit." She said, but her thoughts were quite different, 'Go away! You're not nearly good looking enough to make up for the fact that you're a brat and have a shitty attitude.'

Shigure walked around with his hands in his pockets trying to look cool, "Yeah, I guess if I had to deal with that blonde kid all of the time I'd want to take a break when I could too. You had to spend most of the day with the guy, I could barely take four hours around him." Ino got a tick mark on her head when she heard him start talking about who she knew to be Naruto, "The guy's so weird, and I can't even believe he's a ninja. He's shorter than me." He said with a small laugh, "I don't know how someone like you could stand being around the guy."

'I can stand being around the guy because he's a friend. I can stand him because he makes being on this team fun, because he thinks we're more important than him. Naruto's four times the man you'll ever be you stupid punk, shorter than you or not, and it's not by that much! We're not old enough for it to matter!' Ino thought to herself as she held her teeth tight.

Shigeru obviously didn't sense Ino's disdain for him, "So why don't you spend your time with me? You shouldn't be all by yourself even if I could understand why you'd want to be."

Ino furrowed her brow rather angrily. Didn't this guy get it yet? If she had given a damn and had shown the least little bit of interest in the jerk she would have said something hours ago, "Look, I'm really busy right now. I can't really socialize, I'm on a mission."

"Hey! Now wait just a damn minute!" Shigeru said forcefully, reaching out and grabbing a hold of Ino's arm, "You should listen to me, I can-." And laying a hand on her was his mistake.

When fighting Naruto she was outclassed, but that was Naruto, and she'd pay money to see any genin go head-to-head with Naruto and see how they did. Shigeru wasn't Naruto, he wasn't even close to being as strong, and his grip was like someone wrapped a cobweb around her wrist.

Without even registering what had happened, Shigeru found himself face first against the ground with a mouthful of grass and dirt as Ino had a knee in his back and his arm bent behind him, "Don't touch me you toad. I don't appreciate you trying to cut down my teammate, and I don't want you hitting on me. Now go back to the house before you get yourself hurt and stop thinking with that thing between your legs. We're twelve you idiot." She said as she let go of him and walked away. She almost snapped his arm like a twig, what the fuck was he thinking trying to lay a single hand on her.

Shigeru sat up, spitting out the soil he had taken a big bite out of when Ino slammed him to the ground, "What's your problem you bitch? I'm going to-." He shut his mouth when a kunai neatly deposited itself blade first in the space between his legs on the ground.

"Please go back to the damn house and leave me alone." Ino said to him in a sickly sweet voice that actually put a chill down his spine. She had her back turned to him although she didn't walk forward another step, "Now."

She didn't turn around to see, but she could hear him clamor to his feet and run away from her at full speed. Once she was sure he had gotten far enough away she let out a sigh and brushed her bang out of her face, "Okay, now I really do need to take a walk. If I see that asshole again when I go back to the house I might do something I'll pay for later." She took pride in her appearance as did many kunoichi, but the phrase 'look but don't touch' could never have been more fitting for another group of women than female ninja.

What exactly was Shigeru's grand plan, hope she didn't tell anyone after he tried to force himself on her? Even if she hadn't been able to defend herself there was still the fact that after he had gotten away with taking advantage of her; Asuma, Shikamaru, and Naruto would have ripped his innards out with their bare hands for it. They were paid to protect the cattle, not the punk kid that was supposed to work on the ranch.

Ino stopped walking and stewing in anger when she heard a squish under one of her feet. She looked down and paled when she saw that she had stepped in something dark brown that she hadn't seen due to it being dark out, "Eww… That better not be what I think it is. Stupid ranch." She lifted her foot only to find it stuck fast to the ground, "What the-?" It was at that point that she began to hear cackling from the open space, "Who's there?"

"Well I was hoping to get one of those rancher brats as a hostage to make sure we got away clean or at least use my jutsu to slow down any pursuit attempts, but it looks like I caught somethin' way prettier." A man said as he walked over to Ino with his hands in his pockets. He had long spiky brown hair that travelled down his back all the way to his knees and he seemed hunched over somewhat. He wore no shirt and loose brown pants with black sandals on his feet.

"Who the hell are you?" Ino asked him, trying to buy time as she was still trying to pull her foot free from whatever it was stuck in. Maybe she could get enough time to shimmy her foot out of her sandal.

The man stopped and grinned manically at her before bowing in a grand gesture, "Where are my manners?" He said before breaking into rather wild laughter, "Kwahahahaha! My name is Yunokawa Kei; rogue ninja and all around friendly guy at your service."

Ino narrowed her eyes at him, 'Another nuke-nin?' She opened her mouth to keep him talking, "What do you want? Why did you want a hostage?"

Kei cackled again, "Well me and my two older brothers were looking to liberate these lovely cattle from this upstart wannabe rancher punk, ya know? Get 'em with someone that properly deserves the profits they'd net. Like us. Kwahahaha!"

"You're a thief." Ino accused him, still trying to subtly work her foot free.

"Thief, bandit, crook, outlaw… I personally prefer being called a desperado quite personally." Kei said as he held back his laughter, "I swear… You and your brothers steal a few kinjutsu from your village and suddenly it gets so hard to make a living. Though I guess the people trying to kill you would do that, huh?" He pulled his hands from his pocket to reveal a claw weapon on his right hand, "Now it's time to come with me and all of that livestock my brothers made away with my dear."

"Yeah, I'll do that." Ino said just as she finally worked her foot free of the substance she had been caught in and she drew a kunai, "Not!"

"Ooh feisty." Kei said as he jumped back to stay away from Ino, "But do ya think I anticipated someone walking into that exact spot only? Keep your eyes open girlie." Ino looked down and saw that she was about to step in another pile of whatever it is she had stepped in the first time and stopped abruptly. Kei smirked and took advantage of her misstep, driving a kick hard into her body that sent her flying back across the ground, "Oops, I guess ya shoulda been looking at me after all. Sorry!"

Ino attempted to get back up only to find herself stuck to the ground by her forearm that held her kunai, "W-What now?"

Kei laughed loudly when he saw her stuck again, "My stolen jutsu; Takumina Nenchaku Hisan (Skillful Sticky Splatter). I can form a material inside of my body and then use it to set traps or hold my enemies down or whatever I want. It's like rubber cement, ya won't break it by just pulling on it!" The way she was trapped, her kunai was stuck as well so she couldn't even try to cut herself free.

Ino slipped her trapped arm out of her arm-warmer , 'Okay, this isn't good. I'm far away from the house. There's got to be some way to tell my team where I am. In the meantime he's so much faster than me though, I have to slow him down somehow.' She thought as Kei ran towards her again.

Kei had his claw drawn back, ready to strike, "I'll cut a few chunks out of that body of yours! It doesn't matter as long as you're alive to be a hostage for us!"

Ino would often hide it with her evasiveness in spars, but the fact was that she had no business in a taijutsu battle, and now instead of just having to deal with fists she had to contest against a claw. No thank you, she didn't want any part of that. Ino, now disarmed, had to find a new way to fend off a few strikes from the berserk Kei who took a sniff of the air and grew more depraved looking than before, "A blonde, from Konoha by the looks of the thing around your waist, and ya smell heavily of flowers of all kinds seemingly mixed together. Ya wouldn't happen to be a Yamanaka by any chance would'ya?"

"Why do you care?" Ino said as she backed away from him and watched his eyes shine over in delight.

"That's great!" He shouted, licking his lips, "A big time Konoha clan like that would probably have tons of money to pay for ya if we could catch ya. And even if I killed ya I'm sure we could sell your corpse to some other village for big bucks! Hey, another hidden village would probably pay more for ya if we left ya alive! Those clan secrets of yours and all." Ino took a step back as his body started to shake as if he were having a small seizure, "Okay then, no more holding back on ya sweetie! Here's the scatter-shot, Takumina Nenchaku Hisan (Skillful Sticky Splatter)!"

Ino watched Kei jump into the air and spin rapidly as he began to shoot brown globs out of his mouth at a fast pace all over the place. The ground was littered with brown stains from the jutsu and after all was said and done Ino even had taken a few direct hits with the stuff, "So gross…" She said to herself as she had to keep from trying to wipe it off of her clothes lest she wind up sticking her hands to them. Kei then landed directly on the ground, grinning madly at her, 'That bastard can't even catch himself in his own stuff! That's so unfair!'

Not only did Ino have to watch her own step lest she get caught again, her opponent didn't have the same issue and he was already faster than her to begin with. Ino dodged a few more swipes until another splat noise told her she had caught her bare foot in the substance. Keeping her eyes on the entire field and her enemy at the same time was very tough for her to do.

"Gotcha!" Kei lunged towards her in a stab with his claw intending to go right through her. Ino slid back on her free foot with her other one stuck. She placed herself in a split, dodging the stab of the claws and saw an opening that she just couldn't pass up. She cocked her right hand back and let it go just as hard as she could right into Kei's proverbial 'twig and berries'.

Kei let out a breathless gasp and backed away, holding his goods with a look of horror on his face. Ino smirked at getting a momentary reprieve, but that wouldn't keep any ninja worth a damn down for any good length of time and her leg was still stuck. She reached for the supply pouch she kept on the back of her hip and felt around for a kunai to try and cut herself free with while she had the chance.

"You little bitch." Kei growled as he stopped dry heaving over his testicular damage, "I'll ransom you back to Konoha in pieces! 10,000 ryo for a finger, 50,000 for a limb, 100,000 ryo for your head!" He yelled as he ran towards her, swinging his claw wildly in rage.

'Come on!' Ino's hands fumbled around in her pouch before she finally grabbed a kunai and pulled it out in a vain attempt to try and defend herself from her place on the ground.

"Ino!"

Two masculine voices yelled out before a loud clang of metal rang out in front of her. Ino blinked at the sight of an orange short-sleeved jacket, the back of which had a swirl emblem on it set in front of her.

As she focused what had been her moments-before-death-tunnel-vision back on the wide scope of things she saw Naruto standing in front of her protecting her from Kei's claw, "Are you alright?" She heard him ask her.

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine." Ino replied, grateful for the timely intervention, "How did you know I was here?"

_(Flashback – Just After Ino and Shigure's Encounter)_

_In his search for another leaf to cut, Naruto had run into Asuma and both had decided to walk back to the house with Asuma enjoying the quiet night with a calming smoke. Asuma at first had thought that Naruto had cut the leaf and was about to show his amazement when Naruto told him that hadn't been the case. When grilled on what exactly happened to the leaf Naruto kept mum on the matter._

_As they both came out front of the house they saw Shigeru standing outside holding his arm and yelling somewhat at Katashi, "…That Konoha girl tried to break my arm!"_

"_Well what did you do to her?" They heard a lazy voice call out as the barn door opened to reveal a seemingly well-rested Shikamaru with some straw in his hair that he picked out, "Ino's troublesome, but she knows better than to just beat people up so what did you do?"_

_Shigeru glared at Shikamaru only to get one right back that made him back down quickly. He turned to find Asuma and Naruto staring at him coldly as well, and when he was about to complain about it to Katashi he saw the man sitting on the front step of the house giving him a stern gaze that showed no pity, "So what _did_ you do? You lie to me and I swear to Kami I'll work you into a puddle for the rest of your stay here."_

_Feeling the triangle of pressure from every male on the ranch at the moment, Shigeru tried to word his way out of trouble, "All I was doing was trying to show her a good time, you know? It gets boring out here."_

_However that wording didn't fool Katashi in the least as he angrily stood up, "You what! Don't try to spruce it up, you tried to force yourself on her didn't you! What the fuck's wrong with you? You're twelve!"_

_In a flash, Shigeru found himself on the ground bleeding from the mouth after taking a punch from Naruto as Asuma didn't even attempt to hold him back, "You son of a bitch!" _

_Before Naruto could step towards him again, Asuma grabbed a hold of him this time and turned him around, "Go find Ino alright? I'll take care of this." He turned towards Shikamaru who was glaring down at Shigeru with his fists shaking, "Shikamaru go with him and cool off. That's an order."_

_Shikamaru looked up at his sensei and nodded as he and Naruto walked away, neither of them taking their eyes off of Shigeru until they got further than 30 yards away._

_Shigeru wiped the blood from his lip and worked his jaw in case Naruto had fractured it or something before standing back up. Before he could even try to walk away Katashi turned him around abruptly and punched him in the face himself, laying him out on the ground. Katashi cracked his knuckles as he glared down at the boy, "Sorry about all of this Asuma-san. Apparently I need to work some goddamned conduct into him too before I send him back to his parents."_

_Kiyomi walked outside and saw Shigeru on the ground, "What happened?"_

"_Your brother tried to force himself on a girl." Katashi said without the least bit of remorse for what he just did, "You guys have been wasting my time for the last month since I got you out here. Tomorrow you're both going to learn the value of work the hard way. But you'll be getting it far easier than Shigeru so just be ready." Hearing how serious and angry Katashi's voice was, all Kiyomi could do was just nod, "Good. Now go back inside and get ready to eat. The food should be ready by now."_

_Meanwhile Shikamaru and Naruto stomped off to look for Ino as the genius looked over at his blonde comrade, "So I take it you're more pissed off than me somehow…"_

"_Damn right." Naruto growled out, "…Trying to mess with Ino like that and try to pin it on her… If anyone's going to make my teammate cranky and psychotic it's gonna be me!"_

(End Flashback)

Naruto struggled against Kei as he answered her, "Me and Asuma-sensei showed up just in time to find Shigeru-teme complaining about you putting him face first in the dirt. I went looking for you and found Shikamaru who heard what had happened too, and when I tried sensing you out I felt someone else with you fighting you."

"The cattle are gone." Ino said as she tried in vain to pull her leg free.

"We know." Naruto assured her, "A clone already went to tell Asuma-sensei and Katashi." His attention was then fully on Kei, whose stab attempt he had blocked by holding his machete up holding the weapon in place between the claws, "This guy probably stole them didn't he?"

"Got it in one runt." Kei taunted as he tried to push down and drive his claws into Naruto, "The cattle belong to me and my brothers now so why don't ya just give it up."

"I've got a better idea." As another voice rang through Kei's ears he felt himself go rigid and unable to move, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possesion Jutsu) complete."

"How did you sneak up on me?" Kei asked as he was unable to turn his head, but could feel Shikamaru's presence behind him.

"I walked." Shikamaru admitted, "You always notice whenever someone tries to sneak up on you, but you never see it coming when someone just walks past you normally. Naruto already had Ino covered, there wasn't a rush. Now you said something about cattle missing?"

Kei cackled, "It's too late now! With my brothers' abilities they've gotten the animals far away from here by now! I'll never tell you anything! It was always going to be death for us, we're missing-ninja! Nothing you do to me would get me to sell out my own blood! My only allegiance is to Satoshi-oniisama!"

Shikamaru rubbed the back of his head, "Man, you're going to make this hard… we're going to find them anyway. Unless they're herding them through the thick woods there's only one way they could have used to take the cattle and we have a walking sonar with us. We don't really need you…"

"And you're expendable." Naruto said to him, holding the machete to his neck close enough to draw blood.

Shikamaru didn't really want to kill anyone though, "Ino can you read his mind?"

She shook her head side to side, "No. That's a super-advanced technique that daddy didn't let me learn yet, he says it's for people that intend to go into interrogation. I don't know it."

"Well we can't just wait…" Shikamaru tried to think about how they would handle this.

'Oh for fuck's sake…' Kei thought to himself as he rolled his eyes. Stupid brats… he was caught by a bunch of genin. Didn't they realize that the longer they waited the further away his brothers would get?

Shikamaru finally let out a sigh after thinking for a bit and looked at Naruto, "Are you good to go?" Naruto nodded firmly and the pineapple-haired genin looked at Ino, "Ino turn around right now." Ino did it with a frown on her face, averting her eyes from Naruto and Kei, "Go ahead Naruto, we're wasting time with this guy."

Kei's eyes widened as he felt Naruto draw the machete across his throat cleanly, 'So the brats had the sack to go through with it after all…' His body was being held up by Shikamaru's jutsu keeping control of his body as he steadily lost blood from his neck and choked on it. Eventually he let off a death rattle and Shikamaru let his body drop to the ground, free of his jutsu.

Ino kept her eyes shut until she felt Naruto grab her ankle and cut her leg free, "Thank you Naruto." She said, getting a nod from him as Shikamaru threw her the missing sandal that he had managed to cut free in the meantime.

To date, Naruto had been the only one out of them to directly kill someone, and now that count was up to three. From the way he wiped his blade clean on the grass and sheathed it, it was obvious that even though he clearly didn't like it he could and would do such. They all knew how to kill, but watching a person die was way different than watching the small animals they had been forced to put an end to in the Academy in preparation.

"Let's go." Shikamaru said once he saw Naruto was finished and ready to continue on, "They could have only taken the main road out of here with all of those cattle, and we can't wait for Asuma to get here, whatever he's doing. As troublesome as it is, it's up to us for now."

Ino finished securing her shoe back onto her foot and stood up, ready to keep going, "Right." She had been saved yet again. It was time to show that she could be useful when it counted. As a member of this team she had to better carry her own weight, "Um… does this still qualify as a C-ranked mission?" She asked Shikamaru absently.

* * *

How to Train Your Genin: Tip 10

Professionalism

Ninja are not normal people… period. The fact that no shinobi worth their salt doesn't have something about them that sets them apart from the other regular people walking down the street proves this point clearly. I'm nothing special as far as regular shinobi go, but I'll say that I'm one hell of a codebreaker and a heck of a smart cookie, and if you ever spoke to anyone that met me they would say that I'm extremely strange… and honestly I'd have to agree.

Eccentricity is the name of the game. When you want to hire a shinobi that knows how to get the job they were instructed to do done, the crazier the better usually, but on the other hand going too far with it will not do for repeat patronage in the future to your hidden village. Most experienced ninja know this, so for all of the jounin sensei out there; please keep your genin on something of a tight leash when out and about and in direct contact with your client.

Be friendly when you can, and don't be overbearing or too scary to the civvies. Always work hard and complete the mission as efficiently as your ethics and the circumstances at hand will allow. You represent the shinobi program and the entire village when you go out to work, and whatever you and your team wind up doing please make sure things shine through for us all in a good light. The pay we get from clients that like our work and choose to hire us again for more expensive matters is very important in case you weren't aware, now go out and make us some money dummies!

-Shiho

* * *

Jutsu List

Takumina Nenchaku Hisan (Skillful Sticky Splatter). Supplementary, hijutsu, ninjutsu. This special technique allows the user to create a sticky substance inside of their body and excrete it in the manner of their choosing for a myriad of purposes. The more skilled users will have multiple ways to use the jutsu while rank amateurs will only have one or two ways to do so. Due to this fact, skill with the jutsu is very evident quickly upon entering battle against a user. Once the material is down and around, it will stay abound for the duration of 13 days. It can be cut, but only the most powerful physical force can ever hope to even come close to tearing it.

* * *

**Whee! Okay… I should not have been writing this chapter. I should be writing papers as we speak, but for fuck's sake this is an addiction I tell you. Anyway, you don't care. The chapter's over so you probably hit the little x at the top of the screen once you saw the actual chapter end, so I guess I'm writing this for my health.**

**Kenchi out.**


	14. Teen Outreach Summit

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Such a bad week and the hits just keep on coming. The reason I'm writing so much is because this shit is therapeutic to me. God I want to stab someone right now, and that isn't hyperbole, I'm really pissed off and disconcerted at the moment.

**Chapter 14: Teen Outreach Summit**

* * *

(Kojima Ranch)

By this time, Katashi had found that his cattle had been all cleared out of the pen that they had been put in after they had been allowed to graze for the day. The young rancher was panicking until Asuma calmed him down, "It's fine. My kids are already on it."

"How do you know?" Katashi said in a panicky fashion, "They could have been killed, or caught, or got lost or who knows! Aw man, I was just starting to get this place to work out for me!" He said, crying heavy anime tears.

Asuma cleared his ears out, not really wanting to see or hear a grown man cry in front of him, "Because one of the guys that took your animals is laying dead just over the hill over there." He said, pointing to the left, "They probably headed on ahead to catch up and take the others on. But don't you worry. I'll be right behind them." He scratched his head, "Tracking isn't my strong suit, but with a large herd of cattle there aren't many places they could take them out of here. I doubt whoever took them knew we were even here."

"Why?" Katashi wondered.

Asuma smirked, "Because they actually tried taking the cattle in the first place."

XxX

"Kei hasn't returned yet Satoshi-oniisama." Manabu remarked as he brought up the rear of the cattle that they had managed to steal from the Kojima Ranch as they directed them down the forest path leading away from said ranch. Manabu was a thickly muscled man that had a brown Mohawk on his head and red war paint over his eyes. He wore a tan pair of shorts and an open sleeveless jacket, and around his mouth he had a facemask that had a demonic mouth printed on it. The facemask had tubes coming from the back going into his jacket, "He should have caught up by now, we can't keep going slow like this if we want to get away clean."

A tall, lanky man with a long mustache and shoulder-length brown hair made a pondering noise. He wore an olive sleeveless shirt and brown pants to go with the red bandanna around his head as he calmly lead the herd forward at the head, "Well then I guess we'll just have to leave him behind won't we? He was the most expendable of us anyway. As long as I'm still here then everything is fine, the plan will still go off without a hitch."

"Of course Satoshi-oniisama." Manabu said, not really caring much for the fate of their brother, "If he is a liability then his fate is his own. He was only supposed to be the diversion anyway. If he was unable to get away from a ranch hand and the brats he keeps with him then he wasn't strong enough clearly. Not like you and I."

"My sentiments exactly." Satoshi replied coolly in an even manner, "Get these cattle to pick up the pace, it's time to get moving."

XxX

(With Team 10)

Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru leapt through the thick trees of the forest surrounding the path that the cattle had been driven down. Shikamaru looked over at Naruto, "Can you sense anyone yet?"

Naruto shook his head, "No, there are too many trees in the way. My range is getting better, but with all of this solid stuff in the way there's only so far I can scan out. All I can do is half a mile from an open spot anyway." He frowned visibly, "Like this, I can barely sense 500 feet."

Shikamaru grunted, "Fine. Ino? How about you, any ideas?"

"Don't look at me." She said in a stumped manner, "Maybe if we run into an owl or something I can take over a bird that wouldn't be too weird to be seen flying around so I can find them, but other than that I've got nothing."

Shikamaru let out a sigh, but put his game face on as he got himself ready to put that brain of his to work, "Fine… they have to use the path through the woods if they really do have all of the cattle. We all know that the path is a troublesome bitch… I mean why not just make the thing a straight shot right through? What's with all of the twists and turns? Who the hell designed this thing, a-?"

"Shikamaru!" Ino and Naruto yelled at him to get him back on track, "The plan?"

"Oh, right." He said, looking sheepish at being caught rambling, "Anyway, what I mean is; there's no reason for us to try to look for them and jump right into a fight against whoever took the stupid cows. The path in the woods has a ton of choke points, Ino uses some poisons and can take over bodies, I'm smarter than hell apparently, and we have with us the number one unpredictable prankster in all of Konoha that has inexhaustible manpower by way of his clones. So who thinks that a little ambush is in order?" He finished with a smirk that Ino and Naruto returned.

"Just find a good spot and see if we don't blow them away." Ino said with a gleam in her eyes that scared Naruto and Shikamaru slightly.

"Um Ino…" Shikamaru said matter-of-factly, "We can't really 'blow them away'. We can't kill the cattle, just remember that. They still belong to that Katashi guy and our job is kind of dependant on them staying alive."

"Of course." Ino said with her cheeks showing her embarrassment about actually forgetting about that fact, "I knew that. It was a figure of speech." She turned away from Naruto and Shikamaru both giving her deadpan looks with a huff, "Both of you just shut up and find an ambush spot so we can put the damn plan together already!"

XxX

The cattle were steadily charging down the path directed from behind by Manabu who was smirking behind his facemask, "My jutsu is perfect for getting these stupid animals to tow the line."

Satoshi ran ahead of the pack that he was directing, "As is my own for making sure they stay together Manabu. Kei really served us no purpose towards our steering these cattle. When we cash in I think his cut should be smaller than ours. It's only fair for amount of work done by each of us. How hard can it be to ensure a simple rancher doesn't come after us?"

"He never was the brightest you know." Manabu commented on their youngest brother Kei, "He could have gotten himself lost… even though there's only one trail to follow he's done simpler things in his time." He chuckled at their absent brother's expense.

"Keep Kei off of your mind at the moment." Satoshi said seriously, "We're still busy." He pointed ahead, "Make sure they stay together, we can't lose any on that cliff, if any fall off then injured cattle are no good to us." Up ahead of them the sides of the path elevated into pair of forested cliffs surrounding the path on both sides.

One of the cattle seemed to stumble in their steps before turning away from the pack and heading up into the exact area that Manabu was instructed to keep them herded away from, as if the thing just went crazy. Manabu blanched before breaking away from his spot at the back of the pack. He was on it before Satoshi ever even barked out his order.

"Get the thing back in line with the others! That's good money that's running away you fool!" Satoshi shouted at Manabu as the latter took off after the wayward livestock, "I'm not stopping for you either so you had better hurry up, we've had enough hindrances to what should have been an easy job tonight."

"I'll get it back quickly onii-sama!" Manabu said fearfully as he chased after the single far-gone animal.

Satoshi glared as his brother disappeared into the foliage to chase after their potential money, "Why are my family members so incompetent?" He said to himself before shrugging, "Fine, I don't need them anyway. My skills are more than enough to get these cattle to market to sell…"

XxX

"Stupid steer." Manabu muttered out loud as the animal came into sight. For a stupid cow that thing took to the woods as if it knew where it was going, but it could only go so fast and with his ability he could get the damn thing back to the rest of the herd in no time flat.

Eventually the fleeing animal came to a stop in the middle of the woods and looked around in confusion as if it didn't know how it had just gotten there. What, did it realize that cows and cattle have no business being anywhere inside of a forest or what?

'Wait.' Manabu thought, 'This was too easy, it should have kept running no matter where it was going.' He narrowed his eyes as in the moonlit forest he could see shadows stirring and jumped into the trees to avoid one of those moving shadows that just so happened to be moving towards him, "A trap." He growled out, "I didn't know there were even any other ninja in the area besides us."

In hiding nearby, Naruto turned his head as he sat crouched down. Ino was stirring from her place being carried on his back, her body coming back into use after her successful Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu) on the steer, "That was good Ino. We couldn't finish him because he smartened up, but we separated them, that's good."

Ino's sense of awareness quickly returned to her and she got off of Naruto's back, "Shika didn't get him?" Naruto shook his head, "Damn."

Meanwhile, where Shikamaru had been hiding, away from Ino and Naruto, the boy didn't seem to be too concerned with his shadow missing its mark. Even a genin like him or one of his teammates would have felt the suspicion of walking into this situation. It wasn't that big of a deal that he dodged the first move, every good opening ploy is a gambit after all; something that could end the battle or set the tone for the entire engagement.

Shikamaru pulled out a kunai and cut a nearby wire that released a spring-loaded trap that launched over a dozen kunai in Manabu's direction. The large man vacated his spot from the tree he had taken refuge from Shikamaru's shadow in and landed back on the ground. Shikamaru didn't panic and launch his shadow in a desperate bid to capture the man, he had to be smart and pick his spot. There would be plenty of times to end things, it was three-on-one, they knew where he was, he didn't have that advantage.

"Whoever you are…" Manabu said, cracking his knuckles in a foreboding manner, "I suggest you leave right now and let me get back to my work. You don't want to tangle with me tonight, ruining what had been a good mood for me would be a bad idea."

From their hiding place, Naruto was ready to pull out his machete and take the bastard on at the first opening, "How you feeling Ino?"

"Good enough to take this guy down a peg." She said, pulling a senbon from her supply pouch. Hey, Haku had made using them seem like something worth picking up, "I'm not very good with these yet, but if I hit him with even one, wherever I hit it'll be no more good for a few minutes at least. If I get a leg he'll slow down enough to be easy to finish. It's coated in the paralyzing poison I used on myself earlier." Her eyes darted towards his and blue met blue, "Whenever you're ready."

Naruto nodded and braced his muscles to prepare to attack, "The second I take off, let 'em fly."

Ino cocked her arm back and the second she saw Naruto make a step forward out from their cover she threw the senbon she had in her hand and frowned when she could just feel that it didn't fly right, 'Damn it, my aim from far away is still terrible! How'd Haku get so good with those things?'

Naruto ignored Ino's miss as he saw Manabu turn his head after easily dodging her senbon. Naruto reached towards his waist for the handle of his machete, but he saw Manabu's eyes widen as he got closer, "A stupid brat?" He rushed forward to meet Naruto and just as Naruto pulled back to unsheathe his weapon, Manabu grabbed him by the wrist he was using to pull out the weapon and threw him hard away from himself, "Are you kidding me? Fine, I'll just squash you quickly and get back to business." He said, marching towards Naruto before finding himself caught in place.

A smirk came to Naruto's face as he picked himself up off of the ground, "Wow Shikamaru, did I give you enough of an opening there or do you want him to throw me harder?"

Manabu's eyes turned towards the direction where he heard a chuckle, "Well it's not like I thought he was actually going to grab you and throw you. That's more your thing isn't it?" Shikamaru sighed and made a motion with his foot to ensure that he had Manabu caught.

"You think this can hold me you brats?" Manabu said with a growl, beginning to use brute force to power his way out of the hold.

Naruto and Ino who was still in hiding noticed Shikamaru focusing on holding his rat seal, straining heavily, "Man this guy's a powerhouse. He's actually breaking my hold on him."

"Damn it!" Naruto and Ino both said simultaneously, one moving with a machete to hurriedly end the man's life before he broke free, the other moving from her cover to attempt to cut him off with her Shintenshin no Jutsu to stop his struggling.

The noise of Manabu biting into something from behind his facemask sounded out before a loud slurping noise followed it. Naruto was the first to reach Manabu due to his being faster than Ino, prompting her to back off lest she wind up getting herself killed after switching bodies. This time Naruto freely drew his machete and held it over his head to unleash a downward slash to Manabu.

"Chikara no Honshitsu (Essence of Power)!" Manabu exclaimed in a gravelly voice before actually breaking through Shikamaru's jutsu and unloading a vicious punch directly to Naruto's body that sent him bouncing off of it like a rubber ball, "I told you that wouldn't hold me!" He said as his body seemed to double in size and mass, veins clearly visible all over the bared parts of his body; arms, legs, and all over his forehead just to name a few places.

"Naruto!" Ino ran towards him as she saw his body bounce off of the ground a few times before smacking into the trunk of a tree. Naruto let out a pained groan as he pulled himself into a sitting position, "Are you alright?"

Naruto's breathing was slightly labored as Ino helped him back up, "Luckily this tree was here to stop me…" He muttered, holding his back, "Am I too young to slip a disk?" He asked, holding his back as his legs shook underneath him.

Meanwhile Shikamaru was being pursued by Manabu, intent on not letting the hulking menace hit him. He somehow had to keep the man busy while Naruto recovered. Ino would be helpful in that regard, but after seeing Naruto get cracked it would probably have been better to have someone with him while he got his legs back beneath him… if he would be able to recover.

So that left it up to him.

"Troublesome." Shikamaru said to himself as he got on his proverbial bicycle and got the hell out of Manabu's way, as the punch aimed at him hit the ground where he had been and formed a crater, 'This guy's all size and no brain… but even with no brain all that muscle he could still beat us.'

Ino and Naruto could see Shikamaru keeping Manabu's attention by being elusive, but his jutsu could simply be broken by this monster of a man so his shadows were useless at the moment, "He needs our help." Ino said, preparing to help now that it was clear all Naruto needed was a moment to rest up.

Naruto moved himself before cringing in pain and holding his torso, "Gah, it hurts… I swear he must have broken some." He said, talking about his ribs as he slid to the ground. Ino nodded and Naruto stopped her arm when he saw her guiding a senbon towards him, "What are you doing?"

Ino blinked when she felt Naruto holding her arm in his grasp and answered as the more time they wasted the worse things would be, "My 'poison' is more of a simple numbing agent. If I can stick you right where you hurt I can at least make it so that you can't feel what hurts. It's dangerous though because you can't tell how hurt you are until it fades, but…" She trailed off, looking at Shikamaru.

Naruto also looked out at Shikamaru as he saw Manabu rip a tree from its roots to swing at the pineapple-haired genin, narrowly missing him, "Fuck it, go ahead and do it." He said, lifting his shirt and windbreaker and showing her his torso that had deep bruising from where he was clearly badly injured. Ino winced at the sight before putting it in the back of her mind and lining up his injuries in conjunction with where she knew his organs were, lest she shut one down by accident. As she stuck him with the needles she saw his eyes cloud over in something akin to relief.

"Do you feel better?" She asked him," Can you still move?"

Naruto wiggled his arms and legs and stood back up on spaghetti legs, "It'll have to do, dattebayo." He said, looking at Manabu battle Shikamaru, "This guy's so slow, but he's like a bull."

"You're telling me. He's bigger than an actual bull." Ino said almost fearfully before her eyes locked onto something nearby, "Huh… I'll be right back." She said almost trance-like as she ran off somewhere.

Shikamaru grunted in effort as he could feel the wind from a missed punch by Manabu's hulking arms, 'Man that one would have ripped my head off if it hit me. Come on, I can't just keep running away, doesn't this guy ever get tired with all of that muscle?'

"Incoming!" Multiple Naruto voices shouted as they jumped from the trees around both Shikamaru and Manabu. Shikamaru got the hell out of the way as twenty Naruto clones surrounded their enemy, with a few even landing on Manabu's massive shoulders. These clones were prepared to cut into the man's neck, but they were grabbed and thrown away violently, dispelling on impact with whatever they hit. The remaining clones however, were able to charge in and deliver slashes to his body, "Good to see you up and about Naruto." Shikamaru said as the original Naruto stopped at his side.

"One sucker punch isn't going to beat me no matter who it is." A frown then crossed the blonde's face as he looked at the bruises under his shirt again, "Besides, I doubt I'm going to get hit by too many people stronger than this guy anyway…"

XxX

(Elsewhere in Hi no Kuni)

"Achoo!" A blonde woman at a bar sneezed, alerting the sleeping pet pig nearby that freaked out momentarily at being abruptly jolted awake. The well endowed lady wiped her nose and grunted as the cup of sake she had been holding spilled all over the place. She just shrugged and filled it back up happily, not letting that ruin her night. She had given her assistant the slip for once, this was her night.

XxX

Naruto and Shikamaru didn't know what to make of it once they saw Manabu begin wildly swinging his arms, knocking Naruto's clones away in multiple amounts, "Um, I know I didn't cut his throat or anything, but shouldn't he be bleeding out by now. This is a machete. I cut him all over the place."

"Yeah…" Shikamaru said with a bead of sweat rolling down his face, "This is getting annoying more than anything."

"You stupid brats!" Manabu yelled at the top of his lungs once he finished off the last of Naruto's clones, "You can't beat me like that! My muscles are expanded and tempered by the effects of a secret serum my village created. He started laughing to himself, "It's like cutting through layers and layers of nothing but the toughest muscle! You'll never hit anything vital enough to even slow me down, let alone wound me badly enough to kill me!"

"Ideas?" Naruto asked, holding up his machete, ready to keep fighting, "Because my plan would have been to just keep cutting chunks out of his ass until he stopped moving."

"Brilliant." Shikamaru quipped sarcastically, "I think I've got an idea, but it's going to be explosive as all hell. You remember that time we were supposed to clear that noble's house in Konoha of rats and vermin and how that worked out?" Naruto nodded in remembrance, "Yeah, we're going to be doing that again, only on purpose this time. Now where's the stupid cow Ino led out here?" He wondered, as he would have to account for where it was to make sure whatever their next move was didn't kill it or injure it.

"Moo!"

And just like that, Manabu was smashed from behind and knocked away by the cattle that had been forced to head away from the herd by Ino's jutsu. The speed and momentum that the animal had built up had been placed behind that smash that seemed to knock even the steer itself for a loop.

Naruto pointed at the valuable animal and exclaimed, "Holy crap, did you see that? That was awesome!" Naruto waved his arms at the thing that had just given them some help, "Thanks a lot, that was great!" He was taken back slightly when he saw the animal apparently wink at him, "Ok?"

Shikamaru smirked, "That was Ino Naruto." When he saw the cow seemingly stumble about for a moment he nodded accordingly, 'Great. This guy still doesn't know that Ino can do Shintenshin no Jutsu. She still has her trump in her back pocket.'

Manabu slowly got back up holding his back, "Gah! Am I too young to slip a disk?" He said to himself as he slowly straightened out, his back cracking.

"Get him now Naruto!"

Manabu was then seemingly mobbed by a gang of Naruto's Kage Bunshin that seemed to latch onto his every appendage, holding him down. When it looked as if he would begin to move to get rid of them they would seem to multiply and hold him down even more, "Your jutsu!" Manabu managed to grit out from between his teeth, "It's different from his… but it has so many advantages of its own."

Naruto didn't know what he was talking about and didn't care, all he knew was that Manabu was primed and ready for the finish, "Okay Shikamaru, do it!"

"Gladly." Shikamaru pulled out a kunai with an explosive note attached to it that he began to burn down before throwing it at their enemy.

"You idiotic punk kids can't kill me like this!" He exclaimed as they could see the cloth of his facemask ruffle.

"Yeah we can." Shikamaru replied before throwing the kunai, "Just like this." He said right as the weapon buried itself into Manabu's chest that the clones left exposed. The man let out a gasp just as an explosion rocked the woods, knocking down trees on top of the fiery explosion that resulted. Shikamaru sighed and sat down on the forest floor, "And that's game people…"

Ino wandered out of the surrounding area holding her head, "Kami, I swear headbutting that jerk in the cow's body gave _me_ a concussion. What was he made of, bricks?"

Naruto sighed, feeling an ache in his body again, though it was more muted now than before, "Man Ino, did you not put too much of that stuff on the senbon you stuck me with? Because it's wearing down."

"No way." Ino said, "That was one that I had prepared for actual fights. You shouldn't have been able to feel anything that I stabbed for at least an hour." She couldn't see how his body burned through the poison so quickly unless he had the immune system of the gods or something like that.

"Let's go." Shikamaru said, pulling himself back up to his feet, "We've still got to get the other guy before this really ends. I don't even want to think of how far away he got while we were fighting. We're going to have to move it to catch up to him."

"Stupid brats!" The trees that had fallen on top of Manabu after Shikamaru's explosive note were tossed casually aside as Manabu stood back up, towering above the kids larger than ever, smoke billowing from his mouth. His clothes were in smoldering tatters, he had a wound that didn't seem to be bleeding at all on his chest, and his skin was covered in burns. In some places on his body he was burned enough for the muscle to be seen underneath his flesh.

Naruto's eyes widened, "Holy shit, did he get bigger?" The blonde asked, machete back up and ready to fight.

Shikamaru shook his head as if he were hallucinating, "He took a point-blank explosion, his arms were spread wide open, and his mouth was wide open when it went off. Why isn't he dead?"

"You can't kill me!" Manabu yelled to the wilderness, "No matter what you do my body can just create more muscle to make my body denser and protect my vital areas! You can't reach anything that can kill me! You can't win! With my serum fueling me you can't win!"

"I don't know." A mature, calm voice said from around them, "I think they've been kicking your ass pretty good so far." From the surrounding area walked out Asuma with his trench knives already out and at the ready, "You three get moving and get to the cattle. Guys like this are stubborn ones. Hard to take down fast, kind of like cockroaches."

Ino looked over at their sensei worriedly, "Asuma-sensei he's tough as nails. He's been taking everything we've been throwing at him."

"I can take him Ino, it's okay." Asuma said with a smile, reassuring her, "Now go on and get out of here."

Manabu sneered from behind his facemask, "You think I'll just let them leave?"

"Yes." Each member of Team 10 said blandly before Shikamaru reached into his supply pouch and threw a flash bomb. After the flash, the only one still there was Asuma, "I guess Shikamaru being number one at running away works out after all. Now let's get acquainted shall we?"

"I'll make short work of you…" Manabu said, punching into his palm, "Now that I don't have those kids splitting my attention I can focus on just one target. Easy."

Asuma didn't seem very concerned by his large opponent, "That's funny. I was just about to say the same thing, I was just going to be nicer about it than you seemed to be."

Manabu used even more of his serum and bulked up to now over three times Asuma's size, "I'm going to kill you, and if your runts catch Satoshi-oniisama then he'll kill them too."

"You sure?" Asuma asked, "Because they seemed to have killed your other brother back on the ranch and handled you pretty well before I got here."

A scoff came from Manabu, "Kei was easily the weakest of the three of us. That fool probably killed himself by holding his own kunai the wrong way. But onii-sama, he's stronger than me." A shake of the head came from the towering man, "Those kids don't have a chance… just like you!" He shouted before grabbing into the ground and ripping up a chunk to throw at Asuma.

Asuma moved out of the way of the earthen projectile that had been directed at him and rushed towards Manabu who cocked his fist back to meet the man. Asuma slashed as Manabu threw his punch and cut clean through his punching arm, leaving a stump attached where it had been cut from, "RARGH! You cut off my arm!"

"Duh." Asuma said as he watched his opponent recoil and step backwards as blood poured from his wound, "What did you think would happen?"

Manabu was only grateful that his jutsu made his wounds close quickly or else he would have bled out. He may have been missing an arm, but at least he was still alive, "Nothing has cut through my entire body before when I've used this much of the serum…" He then began chuckling darkly through his pain, "I guess I just need more!"

"I guess I just need to kill you now." Asuma said, not wanting to see how much of that serum he spoke of the man could use. From the looks of him he had been using it to fight his kids the entire time and if he could still use more that would make things harder than they needed to be. Asuma muttered the name of his technique that had severed Manabu's arm as he planned to end the battle right there, "Hien (Flying Swallow)."

Asuma kept himself far wide of Manabu's arm as he cut into the right side of his chest with his extended wind chakra blades from a slight range. Blood spurted from the wound and from Manabu's mouth as Asuma had managed to cut all the way through his tough muscle not once but twice, "How?" He asked as he dropped to his knees.

"Wind chakra can cut through pretty much anything." Asuma said, putting his trench knives up, "Bad luck for you, but even if I hadn't fought you, my team would have beaten you themselves. It was just a matter of time. I like my team way more than I thought I would at first. Konoha's got some good future stock if those kids are any indication."

"Konoha…" Manabu said, his eyes growing heavy, "I see. No wonder they were so persistent and rather talented… and why you were so overwhelmingly strong. But Satoshi-oniisama won't be as easy as me. His jutsu is the most powerful one that we took from our village of Kusagakure, the most troublesome one out of all of us. They referred to him as… Fukusei no Satoshi…" Manabu said as his eyes closed and he slumped forward, still on his knees.

"Satoshi the Replicator?" Asuma said, translating Manabu's brother's apparent epithet. A grin slowly formed on his face before he started laughing harder and harder and walked over to the dead body, planning on possibly taking it back to Konoha with him much like the other. Pulling out a sealing scroll, Asuma set it down as his laughter subsided, "Replicator…" He cracked up and started laughing again, "Okay, I guess I need to hurry this up and get that cow back to the ranch…"

XxX

(With Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru)

"Damn this is wildery…" Ino complained as another branch smacked her across the face, "Why are we taking the way covered in the most underbrush?"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, "So we can cut off the last guy who still has to take a beaten path with all of the cattle." His eyes then widened in inspiration, "Wait, I have an idea. Naruto, how good are you at Henge?"

Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "You guys both know that I'm awesome at Henge."

Shikamaru looked over at Ino and then back at Naruto, "Do you think you and Ino could work out a single transformation?"

"Anytime." Naruto said with a smile while Ino looked apprehensive, "Come on Ino, we've got this. It's just a Henge."

"Good." Shikamaru said, his plan for approaching the final cattle rustler all mapped out in his head, "When we get close be ready for it."

XxX

Satoshi found it far easier to move the cattle once the path he was on set itself into being surrounded by the cliffs. The walls that had raised up basically kept the cattle corralled as they moved along. His job was simpler this way.

"Satoshi-oniisama."

He turned his head to see Manabu making his way back over to the back of the pack with the missing cow back in the lineup, "I see, you've returned." A smirk came to his lips, "Did you have trouble finding the cow?"

Manabu grunted, "The stupid creature had me running all through the woods chasing it down."

"Did you have to use your serum to get it back here?" Satoshi asked off-handedly.

Manabu nodded, not that his brother could see it, "Yes I did." A nod came from Satoshi before he abruptly turned, stopping the herd, and launched himself at Manabu who wound up being kicked in the stomach away from the herd. Upon being hit, Manabu turned into Shikamaru who sat on his butt holding his stomach, "Troublesome…"

Satoshi slowly walked towards him, glaring at the Konoha genin, "If you had been Manabu and you had used the serum the way you said you did then you wouldn't be that large. You would be rather puny. The serum was always running through his system as long as he stayed hooked to it, it was just that taking it directly through his mouth allowed him to greatly increase his mass and strength." He then smirked, "Good try though, and a good gamble by bringing me the actual cow that ran away."

Shikamaru returned his smirk and Satoshi wondered why he was when he heard a popping noise behind him and turned to backstep out of the way of a machete slash that was aimed right at his face. Ino however, was able to take advantage and launch a kick that hit Satoshi right in the body and sent him stumbling back towards Shikamaru who had initiated his own attack, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu)!"

Satoshi backflipped over Shikamaru's shadow and Shikamaru himself, kicking him in the back to get him away from him, "I see… so you must have defeated Kei and Manabu, hence why they aren't here." He shook his head, "Very well. I didn't need them anyway."

Ino narrowed her eyes at the uncaring man, "They were your teammates, don't you care about them?"

"They were more than my teammates, they were my brothers." Satoshi said, putting his right hand over his head before deadpanning at them, "And no, I don't. Who needs a team when you're your own team! I didn't even need them for this job, I could have done it myself!"

"How?" Naruto asked, "Even if you were good at solo missions you still need a team for something like this. How could you keep all of the cattle going how you wanted them to?"

"Because of my jutsu!" He exclaimed as he brought his hands up to form a seal that made all of Team 10's eyes widen, "I'm more than a one man team, I'm a one man army!" His hands were in the cross-seal that Naruto used pretty much every day, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

In a puff of smoke that surrounded them all, Team 10 found themselves surrounded by thirty copies of Satoshi, "Wow…" Ino said, looking around, "He can do this jutsu?"

"Looks like it." Shikamaru said.

"Do you see?" Satoshi said, all of his clones smirking in a manner similar to him, "All I had to do was steal this kinjutsu given to Kusagakure as a show of good faith from Konoha, and now I am my own army. No team of ninja can defeat me!" He said, sweat on his brow from the exertion of the jutsu.

Naruto however, was far from impressed, "So this is all you can do? You and your clones look half-dead."

"Shut up brat!" Satoshi growled, sneering at Naruto who didn't seem to be shaken in the least, "What would you know about my magnificent technique?"

Naruto simply brought his own hands up in the same seal that Satoshi had formed. The missing-ninja's jaw dropped as he felt his advantage fall immensely after seeing the grin form on Naruto's face and hearing the boy call out his jutsu in response to Satoshi's own, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" In an even larger puff of smoke, surrounding all of Satoshi's clones as well as Ino, Shikamaru, and the original Naruto in the center, there stood Naruto's clones, all drawing their machetes and smirking, "I think I know a little more than you about it."

Satoshi counted out a number that dwarfed his clones as he stopped counting once he saw the number reach one hundred and fifty, "How? I had to steal this jutsu! I had to be outlawed from my own village to learn this jutsu! Why does a brat like you know it! It's a Konoha kinjutsu!"

Naruto flicked the metal of the headband tied around his neck bandanna-style, drawing attention to the leaf insignia on it basically saying he was from Konoha, "I stole it too… by accident after I got tricked. But I did manage to get this jutsu out of the deal and I wound up graduating for it, so I guess everything worked out. You did it just to be greedy though, and for your information you suck at using this jutsu." With that, Ino and Shikamaru were switched out from being surrounded by Naruto's clones who used Kawarimi to quickly get them out of the circle they were in.

"You can't beat me!" Satoshi shouted, "I'm the master of this jutsu!"

"Not anymore." Naruto said as his clones moved in to attack while other clones bombarded the surrounded clones of Satoshi from the cliffs with weaponry. Meanwhile Ino, Shikamaru, and a few other Naruto clones led the cattle away.

The original Satoshi crawled away from the melee of his clones being obliterated by the sheer numbers and coordinated assault from Naruto's own. He got back to his feet and prepared to run when he found himself caught in place, "Gotcha…" Behind him, Shikamaru had managed to catch him in his family's signature jutsu, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu)… and I don't think this guy is going anywhere this time."

Satoshi growled before he felt a pull and smirked. In a puff of smoke a clone had managed to switch places with the original, allowing him to escape Shikamaru's grasp.

"Naruto!" Ino yelled out as she ran back towards the fray between Naruto and the few remaining Satoshi clones, "Give me a boost!"

One of the Narutos heard her yell and held his hands in a way that allowed him to boost and throw Ino into the air per her request. While in the air she saw one Satoshi escaping the battle and aimed herself at him, smirking as she drew a pair of senbon and held one in each hand, "Incoming you asshole!" Ino said as she descended upon him and stabbed him, once in lower back, once in the upper back, and she smiled brightly once he dropped to the ground bonelessly, "Got him!"

"Whoo!" Naruto's clones all cheered after getting rid of Satoshi's. The clones went overboard with their celebration, throwing their weaponry into the air, "Oh… what the fuck did you idiots do?" The original Naruto yelled as he freaked out and ran away from the falling weapons before cancelling his clones and their raining weapons of death. Shikamaru and Ino watched him with a sweatdrop as he checked himself over for any 'self-inflicted' injuries before finding none and crossing his arms, squinting his eyes, "Yep… I'm the master." He said with a grin.

"Great." Shikamaru said as he pointed at the paralyzed Satoshi and then at the cattle that Naruto's clones had been keeping from wandering off, "Now have to drag that guy back to the ranch and get the stupid cows back there too."

"Easy." Ino and Naruto both said simultaneously. They both grabbed the paralyzed Satoshi and threw him on the back of one of the cows while Ino tied him to it. Ino grabbed Shikamaru and forced him to climb onto one as well, while Naruto got behind the cows and made more clones while pulling out his machete, "Get your asses back to the ranch or you will be my dinner tonight! He yelled manically, waving his machete wildly, "I didn't get to eat tonight damn it!"

XxX

(Two Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato)

The mission concluded the next day, as the amount of work Katashi forced his younger cousin Shigeru to do put the majority of the protective fence up double-time than what had been put up the previous day. Naruto still found it hilarious that the brat couldn't even look at him or Ino and make direct eye contact, and also found it hilarious that the girl Kiyomi spent the rest of the time trying in vain to hit on Shikamaru, something that he and Ino teased him about all the way back to the village.

From that point everything went smoothly, and the Konoha ninja, with Satoshi in tow, headed back to their village to conclude their mission that probably got raised a level again.

As Team 10 returned from their latest mission dragging their prisoner behind them, Naruto held his arms open and turned his head up to the sky, "Oh man… thank goodness. That mission sucked!"

Asuma let go of the end up the rope that Satoshi was tied up with and grabbed a cigarette as a pair of ANBU dropped down surrounding the prisoner, "Yeah, this guy is supposed to be a missing-ninja from Kusa." He then tossed them two scrolls, "They are too, but they're dead. I'll report it to Hokage-sama myself though." The two ANBU nodded and took Satoshi away, allowing Asuma to light his cigarette, "And that's the mission kids. You can all go on home now."

"Yay…" Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino all said in a half-hearted manner.

"Lazy punks…" Asuma muttered, exhaling some smoke as he shook his head, "Alright, meet me tomorrow somewhere for lunch so-."

"Ichiraku Ramen!" Naruto perked right back up as he bounced in place excitedly.

Asuma just stared at him before continuing to speak, "Yeah, sure. Anyway, meet me tomorrow for lunch at noon, at Ichiraku Ramen." He added, getting a grin from Naruto, "No training, no missions. Just so we can meet up for a bit. Got it?" He got nods from all of them, "Good, now I'm going to go debrief and then spend the rest of the afternoon doing Asuma-stuff." He finished as he began to walk away.

Ino smirked, "Tell Kurenai-sensei I said hi." She said slyly.

"I wi-." He turned and gave a glare at his female genin before sighing and continuing to walk away, "A team full of smartasses… I'm so lucky." He muttered sarcastically.

"And I-!" Naruto said loudly, getting everyone's attention before getting a conspiratory look on his face, "-Am going to split a goddamn leaf if it's the last thing I ever do!" He growled and started stomping off on his own.

"Where are you going Naruto?" Ino asked him.

"Home." He said waving over his shoulder, "See you guys later."

Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck, "Hey, do you guys want to hang out or something?" He looked towards Naruto, "At your house, because if we went to my house my mom would be troublesome."

Ino then thought about how her dad picked on her and Naruto when he showed up at the flower shop and agreed with Shikamaru's idea of not going to her house either, "Yeah, I could do that, but it's Naruto's choice."

Now this was rather confusing. Naruto had never really had anyone at his house except for the Hokage a few times. Other than that, he was unaccustomed to anyone coming over to _his_ house. But they were his teammates, and friends as far as he was concerned, so what the hell, why not? "Sure." He said, somewhat thrown off, but other than that he just decided to roll with it.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Hokage Tower)

Asuma found his way into the mission control room only to find the room full of some of the more prominent jounin in the village and many of the chunin, "Uh, I was going to debrief, but it looks like it's kind of busy in here." He looked over and saw a man with brown hair and dark eyes with bags under them that wore his headband like a bandanna on his head and had a katana on his back, "Hayate, what's going on?"

Hayate coughed before speaking, "Well Hokage-sama called for a meeting after it was told that you were back in the village from your mission. So I guess your debrief is going to have to wait."

"Shit…" Asuma said, palming his face, "I just got back, I don't want to sit through a long-ass meeting. I've got places to be, people to see."

Hayate pointed his thumb deeper into the room, "Kurenai's over there *cough*."

Asuma face-faulted and stood back up abruptly, "How come all of you motherf-?" He regained his composure, "Nevermind. What's this one all about?"

"Chunin exams. *cough*" Hayate said, answering Asuma's question, "Yeah, apparently this time around it's supposed to be some kind of big deal. Messages have been going out and coming in about it for a while now."

"It's that time already huh?" Asuma said, stroking his beard as his thoughts immediately flickered towards his own team, 'You know, I wonder how they'd stack up to be quite honest.'

The room quieted down once Hiruzen walked in through the opening in the crowd that cleared for him once he entered. Standing at the head of the room he looked out at his shinobi and smiled, "Good to see everyone here. I would have called this meeting sooner but many of you were away and busy, my apologies." He cleared his throat and continued, "As I'm sure you've all heard by now, this is about the upcoming chunin exam."

A woman with a spiky purple ponytail that wore a mesh bodysuit and a tan trenchcoat spoke up, "I heard that it was a total clusterfuck getting it together this time around."

Hiruzen chuckled, "That it was Anko, but it's finally come together. The major sticking point was the meeting place that the villages would all go to for the exams. Each village did not trust any of the other five major hidden villages to run an impartial competition after the last few years, so a neutral site has been established. The exams will take place in Tetsu no Kuni. The samurai of the realm have already given their consent, though there will be no room for any ulterior activities. Security will be tight the entire time. This is so no village will overstep their bounds, lest they find themselves punished by the samurai."

A whistle sounded out as a random chunin spoke, "That place is no joke. I can only imagine what the tests are going to be like."

"Indeed." Hiruzen said, "There will be joint proctors from all villages for the tests so there can be no foul play nor can any village accuse the other of any. If there are any of you interested I will be accepting volunteers, and you will be dispatched to Tetsu no Kuni to prepare the exam with proctors from other villages. I anticipate this exam to be the largest in recorded history." He then smiled, "Which leads me to my next topic. If there are any jounin-sensei abound that wish for their teams to participate in the exams, you know what they are capable of better than anyone, and if you so desire to send them, speak now."

A man with a bowl-cut and a green jumpsuit with a flak jacket stepped forward, "I, Maito Gai, nominate my Team 9; Hyuuga Neji, Tenten, and Rock Lee for the upcoming chunin exam! Their flames of youth will burn right through the infamous cold climates of the country!"

"Here too."

"I nominate my team too."

And so it went around the room, several more jounin spoke up and entered their teams into the exams before Kurenai spoke, "I, Yuhi Kurenai, nominate my squad, Team 8; Hyuuga Hinata, Aburame Shino, and Inuzuka Kiba for participation in the upcoming exams."

Asuma saw and heard her do this and figured why not? If she was doing it then why shouldn't he? Lifting his hand he voiced his own support for his team, "I, Sarutobi Asuma, nominate Team 10; Yamanaka Ino, Uzumaki Naruto, and Nara Shikamaru for the chunin exams."

Kakashi decided not to be left out on the fun as well, "Hatake Kakashi nominates Team 7; Akimichi Chouji, Uchiha Sasuke, and Haruno Sakura for the exams in Tetsu no Kuni."

"Now wait just a minute!" Iruka said from where he had been listening in the room, "You're nominating the rookies? Are you trying to destroy these kids?" He said in bewilderment.

Asuma sighed, "I was a chunin when I was their age. These kids are damn good Iruka, I wouldn't send them otherwise."

"Do you know what's going to happen to them out there?" Iruka said, keeping up his argument, "If this thing is really going to be as big as you say it's going to be there are going to be tons of teams, teams with more experience, all gunning for easy prey."

Kakashi spoke at that point, "Well then they're in for a rude awakening when they find out that there's nothing easy about these kids at all." Iruka opened his mouth to keep disputing, but Kakashi cut him off, "They aren't babies Iruka, they're ninja, and we know them better than you would at this point. You're underestimating them all, just like the others at the actual exams will, and that's one reason why they won't lose. Age means nothing."

Asuma put a hand on the man's shoulder, "They'll be fine, just watch. You won't even know that you're watching the same kids you were teaching in the Academy, especially Naruto."

XxX

(Naruto's House)

"I'm just saying Naruto." Ino said as she stood out on Naruto's balcony with the door open so that they could hear her, "We could keep some things over here, maybe get an extra bed or two, help you pay your bills and all of that, and this could be like the official team house or something. This place is big for a place that a genin can afford."

"I don't really pay rent." Naruto said loud enough for her to hear him as he unpacked his stuff from his mission inside of his room, "I mean I do, but it's really cut down from what it should be. Hokage-jiji was really good about that." He said, laughing a bit.

Ino turned and saw Shikamaru sitting at Naruto's kitchen table with his head down on, asleep, "Really Shikamaru? Yeah, this is you hanging out. Sleeping on Naruto's table."

"I'm tired woman." Shikamaru said, cracking an eye to get a look at her.

Shaking her head, Ino walked inside from the balcony and shut the door, walking over to Naruto who was still in his room, "How are your ribs?"

"Ribs are fine." Naruto said with a grin, tapping himself with his fist right where the horrible bruises had been during their last battles, "See? I'm good. I was all good by the next morning. If I wasn't I would have said something."

"How?" Ino said, not understanding much about medicine, but knowing enough from her work with senbon and poison to comprehend that people don't just heal from injured ribs over one night with some good sleep. Actually, people with broken ribs don't get good sleep so that was another thing, "You should be limping or walking gingerly all over the place."

Naruto blinked in confusion. Why? The injury hurt like hell, but he had gotten over it just like he usually got over his other injuries, "I don't understand."

"People don't just do that Naruto." Ino explained to him, kneeling down next to him where he was sitting and unpacking as she poked him in his torso, "You're telling the truth… that's actually really weird Naruto. Nobody gets over broken ribs that fast and yours were definitely broken. Did you use a jutsu to heal yourself?"

Naruto's eyes widened, "Whoa, _I_ could have been doing that?" He squinted his eyes in thought, "But I probably won't be able to find anything like that either…" He muttered, put off at not being able to learn any ninjutsu despite having been going to the library for months now.

'So it wasn't a jutsu either?' Shikamaru thought to himself. Naruto had gotten hit by a guy that could fell a tree with the same punch and he had not only survived, he had gotten over it by the following morning enough to travel with no hindrances to the group, 'He really does heal like that. What is it? I've never even heard of anything like that before.'

"Well…" Naruto stood up and walked over to his bed, falling on it and yawning, "It doesn't matter. I've still got to split Asuma-sensei's leaf." He said, fishing one out of his windbreaker pocket before jumping back up and channeling chakra to it, not getting anything for his trouble.

Shikamaru got up from the table and walked in to see Naruto struggling, "Well I have a question about that, are you only cutting it from one side or both?" Naruto stopped training and looked at him like a confused deer, "I mean with your clones you should have gotten this by now, so either your element isn't really wind or you're not doing it completely right. So why don't you try whatever you were just doing, only from both sides of the leaf."

Naruto just stared at him before glaring at the leaf and focusing again. After around five seconds of work, he cut the leaf right down the middle, and threw the scraps to the ground, "I can't believe that crap! Why didn't I think of that?" He yelled, grabbing his head.

Shikamaru shrugged before patting him on the shoulder, "Because you were following orders and you didn't even think about other ways of doing it. There is never only one way to do something Naruto, but if you'd have kept doing it that way then eventually you probably would have gotten it once you got the skill to use enough power with your wind to cut right through it." Ino deadpanned him a look, "Is it that weird that I would have picked the process up? I see him do stuff with leaves every single day."

Ino's look didn't lessen a bit as Naruto marched around the room cursing about how he could have finished this two weeks ago if he had even just thought about doing it that way, "I still have no idea how we make this team work the way it does…"

Shikamaru chose to ignore Naruto's ranting about how he was going to freak Asuma out tomorrow when he showed him that he could cut the leaf to respond to Ino's statement, "Our dynamic is… unique? I want to say unique but I really know that-."

"It makes absolutely no logical sense that we even survived what happened in Nami no Kuni, let alone that we keep on winning, and that you have no idea at all how we work so well together." Ino seemed to finish for him as Naruto's ranting seemed to start losing steam, "Yeah, it's not like we have generational experience to work with like our parents do. Naruto's kind of the odd man out in our team makeup."

"I heard someone say my name, what's up?" Naruto said, catching Ino's last lines, now officially done with his insane ramblings.

Shikamaru looked at Naruto with an appraising eye, 'Maybe he is the odd man out, but there's something about Naruto that we're just not getting. He doesn't have _any_ family history? There has to be someone that knows of his parents since he isn't a Yamanaka and he has a very particular look, and he's a good guy, why didn't anyone ever try to take him in? Then there's this healing stuff, and all of that chakra he has. There has to be something genetic that does that; maybe a clan or something?' A frown came over his face, 'This is going to bother me until I figure it all out, I swear…'

* * *

How to Train Your Genin: Tip 11

How to get the job done

The entire reason you're there to train your team in the first place is so that they can eventually get good enough to handle things all on their own. At first you will need to help them out, and in true dangerous situations you will always be the go-to shinobi, but after a while you'll have to hand over the reins sometimes in order to teach them.

As a sensei you will be responsible for teaching them standard procedure and how to handle any and all suspect incidents. The most important part of teaching these things is making sure that when push comes to shove they can handle themselves even without you there. This is pretty much the point of them being promoted to chunin, them showing this not only to you, but to everyone that could possibly promote them.

Eventually you will need to take a backseat and allow them to make their own mistakes, come up with their own plans on how to do things, and you will only be there as a fail-safe just in case things go south quickly. That is your purpose as their sensei, because if you just handle all of the trouble then who's really getting better because of it. Steel sharpens steel and the cream always rises to the top. If your genin are as good as you want them to be and believe that they are then you should let them prove it to you. By the time they graduate to chunin you should be acting as _their_ support, not the other way around.

* * *

Jutsu List

Chikara no Honshitsu (Essence of Power). Supplementary, hijutsu. A special serum, designed with most of the raw materials of soldier pills ingredients that boost strength and other forbidden drugs that artificially increase muscle mass. The serum is perpetually circulated through the user's body to keep their system accustomed to it so that use of it does not force a body into shock; this will naturally increase the size of one's body and physical mass, however actually ingesting the serum orally provides the true effects. The user's body will expand and their strength will double, triple, etc. depending on how much is used. Overuse of the serum will result in the body shrinking and becoming fragile and brittle for a time after the use is done. If one can get the fluid circulation to stop or break this can also kill the user, thus the visible wires that move around the outside of the user's body are generally well hidden or protected for the most part.

* * *

**Hello all. It's me back with another installment of a story I hope you all enjoy. Not much to say as my bravado has taken a hit lately due to extenuating circumstances in my own life that may stunt an entire year of my education and it's not even anything involving my academic performance because that shit was pure gold, but this is therapeutic and helps me calm down… otherwise I'd be a horrible dick to everyone around me right now and I don't want that.**

**But hey, whatever. Life goes on, world keeps turning yeah?**

**Kenchi out, I'll catch you all soon enough. Maybe next time I'll have some good news and my arrogance will be back full-center, I doubt it though.**

**Later.**


	15. From Parts Well Known

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Says who? Do you know who I am? I am… some guy that doesn't own jack… go ahead and laugh it up… douchebag.

**Chapter 15: From Parts Well Known**

* * *

"You want us to what?" Shikamaru asked as he and his entire team sat at the ramen bar that Naruto loved to frequent. After meeting Asuma and allowing Naruto to indulge in what was turning out to be his seventh bowl of ramen, Asuma got to talking about the next thing that they would be doing, namely something that none of them had been expecting as he handed them forms of consent for some kind of examination.

"You heard me right the first time." The jounin of Team 10 said resolutely, "You guys have what it takes. I want to see you guys excel, and that's why I'm entering you in the upcoming chunin exam taking place in Tetsu no Kuni." He got the attention of Teuchi and Ayame who were both listening in to what the man responsible for their number one customer was saying, "You guys believe in them right?" He put his hand on the nearby Naruto's head as he was busy slurping up what seemed to be a neverending stream of noodles into his mouth, "Because this… this is the face of a man of intensity."

Naruto stopped eating long enough to stare at Asuma strangely and finish chewing anything leftover in his mouth, "Whatever you say Asuma-sensei… oh! And by the way I can cut the leaf."

Asuma then gestured to Naruto in a grandiose manner as if to say something to Shikamaru, "And you don't think you guys can do it? Let me tell you something. You, Naruto, and Ino are actually way better than most genin teams I've personally seen. You guys have pretty much knocked my expectations out of the park. It's your choice though, I can only push you so hard. In the end it's the option of each of you to compete."

"I'm in." Naruto said with another mouthful of food. He had a month of pent-up frustration to work off after trying to cut that damn leaf every single day and getting nowhere. A good fight would do him some good as far as he was concerned, and that wasn't even glossing over the getting promoted prospect of the proposal. If he had freaked out over getting one step closer to Hokage he would have spilled his food.

Naruto was not going to spill his goddamn ramen under any circumstances. He could freak out later.

Ino interjected from her seat as she swirled around her food in the bowl, "I'll do it too. Asuma-sensei is right, we can beat anybody."

Shikamaru shook his head, "Nope, no way." He asserted, "Being a chunin just means more work and me being stuck in more troublesome situations. It hasn't even been six months since I became a ninja and I think I've had enough of it already to last me a lifetime."

Ino simply shrugged as she continued to eat her food, "Fine. Have fun telling your mom the reason you skipped out on getting promoted when your own sensei said you could pull it off was because you want to stay a genin for life. I'm sure that'll go over great for you." She said off-handedly, a satisfied feeling coming over her when she saw Shikamaru freeze in place.

"That was dirty Ino." Shikamaru said with a sigh, "Why'd you have to bring her into it, even though you're absolutely right couldn't you just let me do something without thinking all about it for once."

"Nope." Ino chirped brightly, "You're the brains of the team, so if you're not thinking which one of us will?" Naruto raised his hand as he continued to eat, "Exactly. And that's why Shikamaru has to do it. I like living."

"Oi!" Naruto said, finishing off his bowl of ramen, "Now I've been getting over-. Hold on." He stopped his own speech so that he could spend around fifteen seconds drinking down the leftover broth in his bowl, sighing contently when he polished it off before continuing, "Now I've been getting over that 'Naruto is stupid' thing since the day we became a team, I want some credit here."

Ino smirked and rested her hand in her cheek, "Then say something smart that is actually useful to what we're talking about. Right now."

Naruto squinted his eyes and crossed his arms in thought, "Um… Tetsu no Kuni is cold. Really cold."

"Duh." Ino remarked, "It's so fucking far north, how wouldn't it be? Keep trying Naruto." She said, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.

Naruto grumbled before tapping his head with his chopsticks, "Fine, Tetsu no Kuni doesn't have any shinobi. Is that enough for you? They have samurai, real samurai, not the thugs with shitty swords that I beat up in Nami no Kuni in like six seconds. They can use chakra too, just not like a ninja can. Did you know that?" Ino stared at him before shaking her head, "There, so kiss my ass. I knew something you didn't. Ha."

"But now I _do_ know it, so that just adds on to the amount of information that I already had, thus still keeping my intelligence ahead of yours." Ino said with a sly smile.

"Goddamn it." Naruto said, bouncing his head off of the counter, "I just can't ever win…" He lifted his head to reveal him crying anime tears, "I'm smart… really smart. You'll all see."

Teuchi chuckled at Naruto's animated reaction while Ayame rubbed Naruto's head consolingly, "It's okay Naruto, you're sharp…-er. You're sharper than you used to be for sure and it's definitely noticeable. Don't give up, Konoha wasn't built in a day after all!"

Naruto grabbed his hair and exclaimed, "Why do people keep saying that about me getting smarter?"

XxX

"Why are you guys following me?" Naruto asked as he found himself being followed by Shikamaru and Chouji. Teams 7 and 10 ran into each other and once Ino and Sakura started getting into it, Naruto, Shikamaru, and Chouji decided to slip away and enjoy their day off. Sasuke, the reason behind the two girls arguing found time to slip away shortly into the conflict to head home, choosing not to follow the boys or stay around the girls.

"Because…" Chouji said as he took a second to throw some chips from the bag he was carrying into his mouth, "We have the day off to think about if we want to go to the chunin exams next month and we don't have anything to do."

Shikamaru followed up on his friend's statement, "Did you really think we'd stay there with Ino and Sakura fighting over Sasuke like usual? If you've seen it once you've seen it a million times. You'd think _they'd_ be sick of it by now."

"But they're not." Naruto added, "All I'm going to do is hang out with Shiho-chan for a bit since I never told her I left on a mission or came back. It's going to be boring for you guys."

Chouji shook his head, "Not really. If she's a friend of yours… why not be a friend of ours too? Besides, if we didn't then we wouldn't be doing anything today anyway."

"Which I would probably prefer if I'm going to be doing all of this chunin exam stuff." Shikamaru said, walking with a slouch and his hands in his pockets, "This is going to suck. Why is everything moving so fast for us? Do rookies even get chances to be chunin?"

Naruto turned and grinned at him, "Maybe it's because we're just that damn good?" Naruto said as they reached the doorstep to Shiho's home, "I mean, of course we are! Who cares if we're rookie genin going into the stupid chunin exams, we're going to kick ass, and do you know why? Because-!" Just as Naruto reached to knock on the door it flew open and smashed him in the face, sending him flying back, "Ow…"

Shiho stood with her hand on the doorknob and a frantic look on her face, "Did you just say you were going to be in the upcoming chunin exams?" She asked all three of them.

"Um…" Shikamaru looked over at Chouji who shrugged, "Yeah? Why does it really matter?"

Shiho rushed over to Naruto and grabbed him by the collar of his windbreaker as she dragged him inside, "In the house, right now you guys!" She said to Chouji and Shikamaru who were both standing outside in confusion of what was going on, "We have things to talk about!"

Both boys looked at each other before deciding to do what the crazy girl asked of them, heading inside and navigating her maze of bookcases to reach the table where she had deposited Naruto to sit. They sat down as well to fill the quaint little table, "So…" Naruto said, holding his nose from where he had been hit by the door, "What's the big deal? Yeah, chunin exams."

"You don't get it?" Shiho said before laughing sheepishly, "Well nevermind, you guys aren't privy to the stuff that I know so I guess I overreacted." She cleared her throat and took up a lecturing pose, "If you're telling me the truth then this will mark the first time in 5 years that a rookie team will take part, let alone more than one rookie team."

"No pressure though." Shikamaru said sarcastically, "Man this is going to be more troublesome than I thought."

Shiho looked over at Shikamaru and blushed slightly before returning to her point, 'Y-Yes, well these exams are supposed to be rather harsh. I'm afraid I don't know too much about the process of examination however… I never really took the exam you see." She said, adjusting her glasses on her face before pointing at herself, "I'm not much of a fighter at all. No team would really take me and risk being killed."

With hearing that, Shikamaru threw his hands into the air, "And we can die too? This just sounds better and better all the time. Why the hell are we taking these exams?"

Chouji's fingers were nervously tapping the tabletop, "It really doesn't seem like something that most people want to find themselves involved in huh?" Chouji commented in agreement of Shikamaru.

"We'll be fine." Naruto dismissed the worries of the other two fresh genin there with him, "I still want to go, that's definitely for sure. It's the chance of a lifetime!" He said excitedly, "How many times am I going to get a chance like this?"

"Actually Uzumaki-kun, the next exam will happen again in six months." Shiho interjected informatively.

"Six months?" Naruto said with a raised eyebrow, "To hell with six months, I want to do it now. This is going to be so cool! We're going to get to fight so many new people, see new stuff in a new country!"

"…Run into all kinds of new troublesome situations…" Shikamaru said, still not looking forward to the effort that the exams would undoubtedly force him to exert just to make it back home in one piece.

"…New country…" Chouji said with his eyes glazing over at the thought of something, "All kinds of new food that I haven't tried yet. And we're the main point of the chunin exams which is apparently some kind of big deal so you know if we do well they'll totally feed us with a huge feast! I'm in!"

Naruto could still see that Shikamaru was apprehensive over the whole chunin exams thing as he threw an arm over his shoulder, "Chill out Shikamaru, if you don't think we can do it we still have a few weeks to get ready. You're a kid from a clan just like Chouji, you have tons of ready-made things you can study. I'm the one that has to find my own ways to train."

With that, Shikamaru's mind turned to something he had been thinking about with Ino after they left Naruto's house the day before.

_(Flashback – Yesterday)_

_Ino looked rather apprehensive as she walked with Shikamaru back to their respective homes in the setting sun, "I still think Naruto should have gone to the hospital when we got back to the village. I swear that he should be coughing blood, breathing hard, or something you know? It hasn't even been two days since that fight with those guys."_

_Shikamaru nodded before throwing his own thought in, "Could it be a kekkei genkai?"_

"_You mean like Sasuke-kun's Sharingan?" Ino wondered, getting a sigh out of Shikamaru for bringing up Sasuke, "Well we don't know anything about his family lineage, and neither does he now that you mention it."_

"_It would explain a lot about him." Shikamaru added, trying to narrow down the little mystery that had been building in his head, "The whisker-marks on his cheeks that look like clan markings, the shit-ton of chakra he has no matter what, the healing thing that he has… tons of stuff would be explained like that."_

_Ino racked her brain trying to think before growling as she held her head, "I don't know any clans with abilities like that in Konoha, but Naruto's been here for as long as I can remember hasn't he? Born and raised." She then blinked, "Well, not really raised, but you know what I'm saying."_

'_Any one of the abilities that Naruto has would be something that we would have heard of from prominent clans in the village before.' Shikamaru thought to himself as he and Ino kept walking, "It's just weird. He doesn't know anything about his family? Nothing at all? No one ever told him? He had records in the hospital of his parentage, everyone does, even orphans."_

"_Hasn't he ever just tried asking anyone?" Ino wondered._

"_Who would he ask?" Shikamaru replied, "If no one ever really tried to take care of him then who would know enough to be able to tell him anything? Besides, he's probably heard people tell him they didn't know anything so many times he just stopped asking."_

_Ino could only think of not knowing anything about where she came from. She loved her family and was proud of her clan's history and the respect that they got. She couldn't possibly begin to wonder what it would be like to not even know who her parents were, let alone not having all of those other things, "That's… that's really terrible." She said honestly as she thought about how he lived in that apartment of his all alone for who knows how many years._

"_There's got to be something though." Shikamaru said as he continued to think, "Why do things have to be so troublesome whenever the subject is Naruto? The guy is just one big headache… but he's our big headache I guess."_

"_Definitely." Ino said with a smile, "Somehow we'll find something. He came from someone somewhere, and there's an explanation for the things he can do as well. How hard could it really be to run something down?"_

(End Flashback)

'And then there's the way a lot of adults in the village treat him like he isn't even there.' Shikamaru thought, 'People know something, but they're really not willing to let anything slip, especially around kids like us.' Shikamaru decided to plant the seed in some minds at the moment, especially since the super-smart girl with actual time to look something like this up was there, "You know Naruto, you have some weird abilities like all of the chakra for no reason, the ability to heal so fast, all of that stuff. There's got to be some reason for all of that." He then noticed Shiho faintly tense up out of the corner of his eye.

"Uzumaki-kun's a normal guy to me!" Shiho said, waving her hands as if to dismiss Shikamaru, "He must just have good genetics or something like that."

"That's exactly the point." Shikamaru said, pointing at his head, "I'm smart just like pretty much every other guy in my family, Chouji's big just like everyone in his. Naruto has tons of things that make no sense for him to have just developed for no reason. All of that stuff didn't just come from nowhere."

"Hey, yeah…" Chouji said, poking himself in the stomach, "It's definitely a clan thing Naruto. If you really have chakra like that then it's not just something that happens, it's a genetic thing, like someone in your family."

Naruto felt hopeful that he'd find out something for once but he then crossed his arms and squinted his eyes, "Yeah maybe, but Asuma-sensei said that I have more chakra than… well, anyone really. He didn't even name the person with the next amount of chakra in the village so that doesn't say anything. Besides, I don't know too much about the clans here, but if there was a clan with people that could do the stuff I can do in Konoha I'd have known about it." He said with a frown. Other than the Hokage, Naruto never knew where to ask about anything regarding his lineage and no one ever gave him an answer.

Shiho didn't know how relieved to feel over the part of them thinking that Naruto's abilities stemmed from a clan instead of from _something else_. But even the fact that they were going to be searching for some inkling of what gave him his healing abilities and massive chakra reserves was rather precarious. It was clear that Shikamaru wasn't dumb, and it wouldn't take him very long to hit a brick wall in thinking through Konoha's clans. If it took longer than ten minutes for him to drop the whole clan thing altogether she'd have been shocked, and then he would turn his attention to other ways Naruto could have had abilities like he had.

The question would eat at him and he would search for some kind of answer. A guy like that hated not knowing things and would happily try to look for the reason behind his confusion. It wouldn't be long at all, no it wouldn't, 'Oh… why do the cute ones always have to be so much trouble?' Shiho thought about Shikamaru.

Meanwhile, Naruto's brain was working in a different direction on the matter at hand, "Hey Shiho-chan, do you have a book or something on the known clans?" She reacted in surprise at being spoken to, but quickly recovered to hear the rest of what Naruto wanted to say, "Not just in Konoha though, any book of clans from anywhere in the world might help." He let off a chuckle, but anyone actually paying attention could tell that there wasn't any actual humor behind it, "I mean at this point who knows where my parents are actually from, just that they wound up here somehow."

Shiho looked at him with a sad smile, "Sure thing Uzumaki-kun. I'll see if I can check something out the next time I'm there. Leave everything to me, you just focus on getting yourself ready for the chunin exams." This was also two-fold. Even if they found Naruto's clan, if it even existed she had no idea but it was worth a look if for no other reason than to possibly give him some perspective, but even if they found Naruto's clan that would steer them away from possibly digging up the Kyuubi information somehow.

As loathe as she was to follow the law, it was still the law and breaking it would get her locked away, 'I still don't know why Hokage-sama is keeping this from him. If anyone needs to know it actually would be him. It's really not fair, it's like some kind of inside joke.'

XxX

(Hokage Tower)

Asuma poked his head inside of Hiruzen's office and looked around before resting his eyes on his elderly father, "Can we talk for a minute or are you busy dad?"

Hiruzen smiled and placed his hands on his desk, "Come on in Asuma. I always have a free moment for anyone's concerns."

Asuma nodded and walked inside, standing in front of the desk that was the clear focal point of the office, "I've got to tell him." He saw Hiruzen's eyes meet his own, "There's no reason not to by now. Even when he used it in Wave he was still in control. He never tried to attack me once, only the person he had been slated to fight."

"Then why can't you wait for just a little bit longer?" The old grizzled kage-level shinobi asked his son. He explicitly remembered telling Asuma that there would be someone along very shortly that would be able to tell Naruto and answer any questions on the matter that he would have. Someone that really wanted to meet Naruto too, "I made a promise Asuma. I haven't broken it myself by telling Naruto of his burden yet even though I probably should have when he graduated, all so that I could keep the promise I made the man that intends to tell him."

Asuma was still not a fan of keeping this from the boy, "Then why did you let me enter my team in the chunin exams? This is a really volatile situation if you're still not going to let me tell him."

Hiruzen stood up and turned to look outside of the window of his office, "Because you said that they could do it. By now it is more than clear that Naruto has never had contact with the Kyuubi, that even when he draws on the power in desperation that he is never truly under its will. And also because the man that desires to be here to reveal the Kyuubi to Naruto will be here before the teams are ever to set out for Tetsu no Kuni."

"That's not exactly a good thing dad." Asuma remarked, grabbing his temple and rubbing it, "The last thing the team needs going into the exams is him fretting over something else completely unrelated. Why is it taking so long for this guy to get back here to tell Naruto anyway, and who is it in the first place?"

Hiruzen turned again to face Asuma, "The man is perhaps the most powerful shinobi in Konoha and the reason he hasn't been able to return sooner to tell Naruto himself is because of the long-term information gathering missions he has been on."

"Name?" Asuma insisted. If this guy thought that he could just walk on in and tell his student something that by all rights he should have been able to reveal as soon as he had earned Naruto's trust then the guy had better have been a damn demi-god in this village.

"Jiraiya." Hiruzen said in response.

"Bullshit." Asuma said skeptically, "Why the hell would Jiraiya of the Sannin give a rat's ass about telling Naruto anything?"

"Who was the person that originally placed the seal on Naruto that held the Kyuubi back in the first place?" Hiruzen asked him before answering the obvious question, "The Yondaime Hokage as everyone knows, and who was the instructor of the man?"

Asuma scoffed at the moderately explanatory answer, "But he doesn't know Naruto. Naruto doesn't know him either. At the very least can I be there when he tells him if I can't be the one to do it myself? He's not going to take it well at all."

Hiruzen nodded in consent, "I never said that you couldn't be there Asuma, I just said that Jiraiya was the one that wished to tell him."

"Good." Asuma said, slightly satisfied with how things turned out before his mind snapped back into focus-mode, "No, no, no, wait a minute there's still tons of things that don't make sense. Why was it even Naruto, why does he have the Kyuubi? That's one thing I've always wanted to know. And after Jiraiya-sama tells Naruto, then what? What happens then? Is he just going to deliver the message the way he planned to after his student's death and leave me and Naruto to deal with it ourselves?"

Hiruzen shook his head, but was able to say that he was happy that Asuma was so defensive of Naruto and that he was suspicious. It meant that he actually cared for him. That was good. If Asuma was like this then the boy's own team must have felt the same way, "I can assure you that Jiraiya would do no such thing. If it would make you feel better I can inform you of the moment that I learn he's in Konoha so that you can talk with him about this."

That sounded good enough to Asuma. This way he could actually gauge Jiraiya's intentions on why he wanted to be the one to talk to Naruto about the Kyuubi, and maybe he could find out some other things as well, "Alright dad. But when do you think he'll get here?"

"Well before it's time to go." Hiruzen informed him, "Just go about as if you were preparing them like usual until Jiraiya arrives. If your team is to go to Tetsu no Kuni then they'll need to be adequately prepared for just about anything in this exam. I'm sure you know that."

Asuma nodded and began walking away, "Oh they'll be ready, just you wait and see. All I'm worried about is Ino and Naruto finding a way to whip Shikamaru into shape, but they should still manage to pull that off."

Hiruzen smiled as his son left his office, "Of course. I'm looking forward to seeing what all of the young Konoha shinobi in the exams are capable of, especially the rookies. You can drop in anytime Asuma, and take care of your team."

"I always do dad." Asuma said as he shut the door behind him.

XxX

(The Next Day – Team 10 Training Ground)

Asuma flipped through all three signed consent forms in a satisfied manner. He knew they would have accepted, for different reasons, but that was neither here nor there. The important thing was that he could now officially begin whipping their asses into full shape for the chunin exams, and with Naruto's newfound completion of leaf-splitting he could find something new to do. Not the final exercise, since that might be too much right now, and the next few weeks would be him getting final preparations all set up for his team. It wasn't the time for a lengthy training exercise.

"I'm glad to see that you're all planning on doing this thing." Asuma said honestly to his crop of genin as they all sat under the shady tree that marked the center of their training field, "Now there are a lot of people that are going to resent you, from other villages and your own as well, because you guys are going to the exams, but just remember that this exam is to show your skill, and your maturity as shinobi. Now tell me, what do you guys plan on working on until then?"

Ino raised her hand, "I planned on working on my first fatal poison to add into the mix that I have already." She sighed to herself, "It's going to suck building an immunity to it. And I'm going to work my ways of distributing my poisons too since I'm kind of bad at throwing senbon right now. I'll come up with different ways to use them."

"You'll get it." Asuma said encouragingly as he turned to Naruto, "What about you, as if I didn't know."

Naruto grinned and held his fist up, "Well I finished cutting the leaf, I did it three more times before I got here, so I was wondering if I could have something else to do with that? Other than that I've got nothing."

Asuma nodded, "I'll show you how to use your wind chakra to enhance your weapons like for what I did with the trench knives when we first talked about your element." Naruto didn't need to know the last exercise right now anyway. That was only for if he wanted to create his own jutsu involving wind. As he was now at least Asuma could teach him some wind ninjutsu when he felt Naruto was ready to learn them. As Naruto beamed at the chance of learning how to make his weapons cut through rock, Asuma turned to Shikamaru, "And you?"

Shikamaru answered in his usual uncaring manner, "I have about six different battle plans and team techniques worked out for all three of us." He saw Asuma giving him a look that was saying 'Is that it?', "And I'm working with dad to improve my skills with the clan jutsu. Ways to hit it, ways to sneak it on in tough one-on-one situations, bluffs, things I can do by myself once I have an opponent, things like that."

Asuma held up three fingers, "You have three weeks, twenty-one days, to get together what you all think you need for the exams. A few of your classmates; Team 7 and Team 8, will be there, and I'll tell you right now, once it slips that you all are rookies you're going to have every last participant gunning for you guys…" He then smirked intently, "But it's too bad for them that you guys aren't normal rookies. Hell, you guys aren't normal genin period. And whoever tried to pull anything against you will be going home sorely disappointed in their choice of target."

"Damn right." Naruto said with a grin still on his face as he sprang to his feet. And he still had three more weeks to go before he could even really begin speculating about what the chunin exams were going to be about, "I'm ready today, let's go kick some ass!"

Ino rolled her eyes and tugged on the back of Naruto's windbreaker, pulling him back to the ground, "Calm down hothead. Save it for the training."

As Naruto turned to glare at Ino who wasn't looking as if she would back down from her previous action, Shikamaru took a look at the red swirl that was emblazoned on the back of Naruto's top and his eyes widened. Why had he never paid attention to this before? Oh yeah, because he saw that damn symbol every single day. Even when they were in the Academy and Naruto wore his old bulky clothes he had it on the back, and every Konoha ninja that walked around in flak jackets had that marking on the backs of them as well. He just figured it was a Konoha thing, but still, nothing was that simple, why wouldn't it be a leaf? A swirl didn't have anything to do with the village.

"Asuma." Shikamaru said, planning on asking his question, "What's the swirl on the back of your jacket mean? Naruto has it too and I never really got what it meant."

Asuma looked at the genius boy and scratched his head, "Kid I don't know. It was one of those things that was glossed over in the Academy for one of your little history tests. I'm sure I've heard of the reason but I've never thought about it. I don't know why it's on Naruto's clothes. Shouldn't you know what the hell it means?"

Ino pointed at Naruto and Shikamaru, "You're talking to the kid that almost failed and the guy that was right behind him in that department. Come to think of it I don't think I paid much attention either." She tapped her chin as she thought about it, "It definitely means something though, I just don't remember what."

Asuma stood with his arms crossed, "Well you guys can think about it later, right now we need to get some work in to get you ready to roll when the time comes. Now you three have ten minutes to come up with a way to fight me and win." He said before using Shunshin to leave the area.

Shikamaru groaned, back to the old grind it seemed, "Naruto?" Naruto nodded and released a pulse to see if Asuma was still around. He'd never let them forget it if he caught them the way he did one time they didn't check to see he was there before planning, "Fine. Let's brainstorm guys."

As Naruto scooted closer to soundboard ideas and take in what would eventually be the final plan, Ino looked around for Asuma before addressing her teammates, "Are we going to be getting beat up a lot for the next month?"

"Probably." Both Naruto and Shikamaru said plainly, having accepted their painful fates. Ino only cried pitifully at it in denial.

XxX

(Two Days Later – Naruto's Apartment)

"Why the hell are you guys here all the time now?" Naruto asked as he poured himself a glass of milk. The bruises on his face from his day of training fading away due to his lack of current violent activity, "You guys have actual houses with actual food and beds of your own…" At this point he yelled down towards his room where Ino was resting in his bed, "…That you could be sleeping in instead!"

Shikamaru was in a chair seated at the table with his head down, "Your house is so much closer than ours. Come on Naruto, Asuma kicked the crap out of us again today." The genius boy smirked, "The best part was when you thought you had gotten a grip on him and then he knocked you down and peeled you off like gum."

"Ha ha ha." Naruto laughed humorlessly, "What about the part where he threw Ino in the path of your shadow and then kicked you in the face and knocked you out. That was priceless."

"Shut up." Shikamaru said half-heartedly.

Naruto smelled the milk in the glass to ensure it was good before shrugging and downing it, "Make me." He said as he caught a breath after drinking.

"Troublesome." Shikamaru said, letting the issue drop at that. Immediately after that, a loud series of bangs came through from Naruto's front door, "Get the door."

"Kiss my ass. You jerks don't live here so you shouldn't care." Naruto replied, lifting his glass up, "I'm thirsty. The door can wait." He said as the bangs sounded out again.

Ino's voice echoed from Naruto's room irritably, "One of you answer the damn front door! If I have to get up I'm going to-."

"You're not going to do a damn thing. I'm getting it!" Naruto shouted as he slammed his glass on the table by Shikamaru's head and stomped to the front door, swinging it open with an agitated look on his face, "Yeah?" And immediately had a book shoved into his face, "Meh?"

"Found it Uzumaki-kun!" Shiho said as she pushed the book back against Naruto's face and made her way into the apartment, shutting the door behind her with her foot, "I told you I'd get something and that you could count on me!" She shoved him back excitedly until Naruto tripped over something on the floor that he couldn't see and fell, "Whoops. Sorry about that." Shiho apologized with a blush for her rash action.

Shikamaru had no choice but to pay attention to all of the commotion, "Found what exactly?" He asked, "Also note that I'm tired, so whatever it is you came over here to tell him better be something you can communicate with just words because I'm not getting up."

"Ah right." Shiho said as Naruto sat up on his floor to see what she was there for, "I found something on Uzumaki-kun's clan. It's really quite remarkable!"

Naruto's eyes widened, "I have a clan?"

Shikamaru sat up at full attention, "He has a clan?"

"Naruto has a clan?" Ino asked from Naruto's room, still not getting up.

Shiho nodded, "Yes, apparently-. Wait, why is your team all here Uzumaki-kun?" She stopped explaining to inquire about that.

"Hell if I know." Naruto replied before getting excited, "But what about me having a clan? Let's get back to that, come on, tell me! Are they cool? Are they in the village? Where are they? Can I find one of them now?" Clan meant family. Family meant not being alone anymore. A team was great, but when everyone went home Naruto still only had himself. Ino, Shikamaru, and Asuma had their own lives and families.

Shiho sat on the floor with him and showed him the book she had brought along. On the page she had open there sat the spiral pattern that sat on the back of Naruto's clothes and on the back of the more elite ninja's flak jackets, "Right here. This is your clan crest."

Shikamaru actually found this interesting enough to get up from his chair and walk over to sit down by them to read himself. Something that put a large blush on Shiho's face as he plopped down right next to her since the book was turned her way so that she could read what she had found to Naruto, "Huh, hey Naruto this says that your clan has their own hidden village; Uzushiogakure."

"No way!" Naruto exclaimed. He couldn't believe it. Not only did he have a clan, they had their own village like Konoha. Why the fuck didn't he know this any sooner? Someone had to know something about this, it was an entire village that his clan ran, "What else?"

Shiho, happy that she was able to help Naruto find something relevant on his surname quickly, got right back to informing him on his family, "Our village and their village had a very close-knit relationship, which is why we wear the seal on the back of our flak jackets." She adjusted her glasses before reading on, "And they had a specialty that's very rare in our time as well, they were so good at it, it was something that they were feared for. Fuuinjutsu."

Shikamaru let out a whistle, "Sealing techniques? Good luck with learning that stuff."

Shiho nodded, "It's another ninja art that I didn't go over with you because it's not easy at all to get the concept of." She explained to Naruto who was looking at her with squinted eyes. By this time even Ino had made her way out from Naruto's room, standing over the others to hear what was going on, "No genin does fuuinjutsu beyond basic item sealing because it's not like nin-, tai-, or genjutsu. It requires intimate knowledge of chakra, time, space, all kinds of things."

Naruto frowned visibly, "Meh… so it's another 'I'm stupid, nevermind teaching it' thing isn't it?" The silence seemed to be his answer, "I don't care, if it's my clan specialty then shouldn't I know how to do at least a little bit of it? I want to learn it." Right after saying that, a small book was tossed to him that he deftly caught, "What's this?"

Shiho smiled, "I knew you'd say that so I checked this out for you. The person that wrote that is the leading living expert of fuuinjutsu in the village. No need to thank me."

It was a small, handwritten brown book that seemed a little worn and felt a little over 200 pages, but was still completely readable. The hastily scribbled out title said _Hey, You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu._ Also quickly scrawled out was the name of the author, a man named Jiraiya. Naruto held the book up with a deadpan look on his face, "First of all, this title sucks so hard. Second of all, it looks like I could have written this myself. Are you serious with this Shiho-chan?"

"One-hundred percent." Shiho asserted resolutely with a firm nod, "I couldn't go through it myself, but the person that wrote it is the real deal. There's no one better in Konoha to learn fuuinjutsu from, this is definitely what you want. The art is a lot of theory, but with your imagination I'm sure you can work it out. Fuuinjutsu is a lot of mental understanding. Mind stuff."

Naruto blinked at her blankly, "My mind is scary."

"Then you should love this stuff." Shiho replied with a smirk. She reached over and tapped the book, "Don't let the little bit of ragged parts put you down on reading it. It's just a little rough around the edges, but read it cover to cover. I'm sure there's lots of good stuff inside of it. Kind of like you, yeah?"

Even though it was just a book, Naruto really couldn't literally judge it by its cover. People did that to him all the time, and if Shiho said that it would help then damn it he'd give it his best shot to make it work for him. As he thought about how he would use the book he found Ino had thrown herself over his back as she gently took the book from his hands to look at it herself, "So this rinky-dink book is going to help Naruto learn fuuinjutsu? Why would a book like that be in the library anyway?"

Shiho shrugged, "It isn't a clan secret book as the author is just a shinobi without a clan. He committed it to the library, it's public domain. He's just an unselfish shinobi that put his knowledge to paper and it wound up in our archives." It had taken almost six months but damned if there wasn't something in there that Naruto hadn't picked up in addition to his Nebaiken scroll. Having friends everywhere certainly paid off.

"It doesn't matter what the thing looks like Ino." Naruto commented as he took it back from her, getting a whine of disappointment from her, "If this thing can help me then I don't care."

Ino nodded in agreement, "True, but is there anymore about your clan? Wouldn't more people know your name if they were that powerful to be feared for sealing?"

Shikamaru had by now taken the book and had scanned through it, only to frown as he kept going forward, "This book is very old you guys. Like, Nidaime Hokage old." He said as he skimmed through the year it was published.

Shiho scratched her cheek, "Well there wasn't anything in any more current issues of clans of notability in the shinobi world. This is a backlog."

None of this was making what he was about to say any easier to Shikamaru, "Did the other later volumes have the clans in this book in it?"

Shiho nodded, "Yes, but the last most recent one didn't have the Uchiha Clan in it." Shikamaru sighed, "What's the matter?"

Shikamaru rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I was afraid of that…" He looked over at Naruto apologetically, "This book is called 'The Quintessential Shinobi Almanac volume II'. These books keep up with clans that are current factors in the current world at the time the books are written. The books only got bigger as time went on didn't they?" He asked Shiho, getting another sad nod from her as she understood what he was implying, "Clans don't fall out of prestige and they wouldn't have been excluded from the book unless-."

"-Unless they don't exist anymore…" Naruto finished for him with a sad look on his face as he pulled his legs towards his chest, "Damn it…" If the books only got bigger then it was like an almanac that compounded information, only taking out irrelevant things that would have fallen out of use. Sasuke's clan wasn't in the most recent volume, his own clan stopped being in the books a long time ago.

In an attempt to console him, Ino wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind in a hug, "I'm sorry Naruto. You were so close…" It was terrible that such a nice guy like Naruto kept getting such shoddy breaks in his life. It explained at least why it wasn't taught in the Academy. It wasn't relevant, and it wasn't close enough to home to be labeled as history that they needed to know along with everything else they were learning. At least _they_ knew now.

Naruto's whiskered face kept the dejection on it as his eyes stayed locked on the crest affixed to the almanac page. They slowly drifted towards the handwritten book in his hand and his blue eyes shone over in determination, "This is actually something good though. I have a clan." He said with a short laugh, "A real honest-to-goodness clan. Like your clan Ino, or your clan Shikamaru. Even like Sasuke-teme's. All I have to do is bring it back. Easy." He said with a careless shrug as a smile affixed itself to his face, "I was going to be Hokage anyway, and what's a better way to make people know how kickass you and your bloodline are than by pulling that off?"

Ino found his attitude to be infectious, as if the mood in the room just swung back positively, "With all of your weirdo abilities like the healing and your chakra stores to go with the fuuinjutsu if you can learn that stuff, why wouldn't they?"

Shiho laughed nervously at the mention of Naruto's pre-existing abilities once she saw Shikamaru narrow his eyes and read over the part about the Uzumaki Clan again. Shikamaru's brow furrowed once he skimmed through it again, 'Wait. None of the things that Naruto can do were glossed over in here except for the strong life-force part that kind of explains some things, but not the healing. And they don't have his cheek-markings either. They don't have any markings. We're still all missing something here.' He thought to himself.

Shiho took her advantage and shut the book as she got up off of the floor and dusted her dress of, "Well I have to go Uzumaki-kun, Shikamaru-kun, Yamanaka-san." She said abruptly, "I hope the book helped at least a little bit, and I hope the fuuinjutsu text works out for you too. Bye." She called out as she made her way to the door and slipped out, leaving the three teammates sitting on Naruto's apartment floor.

Shikamaru watched her leave with a watchful eye, 'That was weird, and really suspicious… She reacted to us talking about Naruto's abilities, does she know something? Why does this all have to be so troublesome?' He thought as he stood up off of the floor and cracked his neck, "Well I guess I'll see you tomorrow Naruto. I have to go home before my mom raises a fuss about where I've been."

Ino got up as well, planning to leave with Shikamaru and head home, "I have to go too Naruto. Are you going to be okay by yourself?" She asked in a concerned voice to her fellow blonde. Hopefully none of this brought him down.

"I'll be fine Ino." Naruto said as he stared at the book still in his hands, "I'll see you guys tomorrow for sure." He couldn't tell what it was, but just looking at the book made him want to read it. Maybe it was the smartass title calling out to him, who knew? He looked up with a grin on his face, "I'm going to get started with this. If my clan were masters of fuuinjutsu then I will be too. It's a tradition, dattebayo." As his teammates left him alone in his home, Naruto flipped the book cover open, "I'll make everybody proud. My clan, Iruka-sensei, Hokage-jiji, Asuma-sensei, Shiho-chan, Shikamaru, Ino… all of you."

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Acknowledgements and a foreword

To Sarutobi-sensei for teaching me how to be a man… and for not outing me for my, shall we say, healthy interest in the fairer sex. (You know what I'm talking about guys that know what I'm talking about. Yeah!)

To my lovely female teammate who shall remain unnamed in the case of this book getting the reader killed due to my teachings. You didn't tear my sackie off that time I peeped on you and you caught me. Thanks for that.

To Namikaze Minato for believing in me, respecting the things that I say, and for not telling me that my first book sucked. Thanks kid, you're an all-around good man and a hell of a student. If I ever find one half as good on all fronts as you I'll take him in a heartbeat.

To the letter q for being exotic.

To Sanshouuo no Hanzou for _not_ ending me and my teammates' miserable lives all those years ago on that wretched battlefield near Amegakure. Thanks for that. Without you not killing me this book would never have come into existence.

To broccoli for smelling like farts before you eat it and for being difficult to spell.

To Konohagakure no Sato for recognizing how badass I am, and respecting my sexy sage talents. Also for having hot-springs that are agonizingly easy to peek on, and for having the sexiest women on earth thoroughly populating your shinobi forces to go along with them. (I swear to Kami, it has to be a prerequisite to enter the Academy. They've got to have genealogists screening the little girls to find out which ones will become smoking hot bombshells when they grow up and the ones that do are let right in the door. Nothing less than eights all across the board. No joke.)

Okay, if my actual first foray into the wonderful world of literature is anything to go by then this book will suck in a storytelling sense, which is good because I'm not telling a fucking story, I'm here to fill your obviously empty head with all kinds of smart things. It doesn't matter how I write so long as you understand what I'm writing so I don't have to write like a proper author. By virtue of that, shut your lips and get ready to learn lads and lasses (Who am I kidding? If a girl was actually reading this, she probably dropped this book at the acknowledgements). Pop those bifocals on your faces you blind little brats, it's learning time.

Now if you were to ask anyone that knows better they would tell you that I'm a grade-A bad motherfucking shinobi… although you couldn't since most of those people are dead. If you asked me personally for my honest opinion on myself, I'm nothing special. No natural advantages or presets towards battle, no genius anything. Just a hard-working guy that took advantage of the things provided to him. And this book was written for guys like me. Guys with guts. If you're a little punkass that can't see anything through to the end then you've wasted your time picking this up, go do something easy.

Despite saying all of that, the one thing I know I'm good at, damn good at, is fuuinjutsu. Say what you will about me if you've met me, when I say something about sealing you had better shut the hell up and listen. This is more than scribbling on something and making a hand-seal or two. You will have this ingrained in your head by the time you get through this manual. You will be seeing sealing arrays in your head 24/7, and you will have nightmares about fucking up and mutating yourself with potential backlash. You will make so many brush strokes in practice that you will swear you're giving yourself arthritis by doing this. You'll see things that no one else sees in everyday things because you know the potential each thing will have for sealing. Your head will be filled with the most asinine pipedreams of what you can do with seals and you'll spend years dicking around with a design as a hobby or side project just to toss it when you get bored and find something cooler to work on with seals. Everyone that masters seals does, so you will too.

In this book you will learn all of these things, and in addition to that the life lessons that can only be taught by a man with decades of experience in the field as a seasoned, battle-hardened shinobi. This book will make you a man… even if you're a girl.

You scared yet?

If you're still reading and taking this seriously then you're crazy. The good kind of crazy. The kind of crazy that might be able to finish the things I've got set for you in this book. In other words you're my kind of crazy.

If you can pass the quiz on the coming pages then feel free to partake in the wisdom that lays within the annals of my epic tome. That is, _if_ you pass. This test will be the most widely covering test you'll ever take with questions you won't expect, and questions that you think you won't be able to answer. But it must be done. If you fail then you will be locked out of this book due to a seal I set that will tally your score from your pencil strokes and will take your blood upon completion.

You cannot skip the test as the pages after will be blank until the test is completed. You have one shot so don't fuck it up. If you pass I'll be glad to call you my student by proxy.

Good luck.

* * *

**Yeah, yeah. What up world? Kenchi618 back in this bitch with more to settle the score. Next chapter will be the last preparations before the chunin exams in a foreign land that I'm excited to write for you guys. I hope you like what I cook up for you.**

**Until next time friends. Don't let the world get you down, I'm not. See you next time.**

**Kenchi out.**

**P.S. If you read this, if you write stories that I read and you know that I read them then please update. I need something cool to sink my mental teeth into. You don't want me to keep feeding the need with my crappy stories do you?**


	16. Based on a True Story

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. As a matter of fact I don't own anything cool or anything that would bring me money or anything that anyone would actually enjoy. I don't even own any good ideas. If I owned Naruto then there would be more violence… because there is something wrong with me deep down. Seriously, it's like rooted in my psyche somewhere and only years and years of therapy has even the slightest chance of bringing these demons to light before I lose control and end a life with my bare hands. Oh well, at least when it happens it won't be you.

Or will it be? Who knows? Not I of course.

Enjoy the chapter… and watch your back.

**Chapter 16: Based on a True Story**

* * *

(Hokage Tower – Hokage's Office)

Hiruzen stood on the lookout point at the top of the tower with Naruto standing behind him. He knew the boy was there, Naruto had been standing there for at least five minutes, probably trying to correctly word what he wanted to say. Hiruzen could tell from Naruto's lack of a boisterous greeting that it was important so he hadn't goaded him into speaking.

"Old man…" Naruto finally said. His voice was rather low, showing the brevity of whatever it was he wished to speak about. Naruto swallowed down a lump in his throat and finally chose to raise his voice closer to its normal timbre, "I've read some things recently… and I know that my name is from a clan. A clan that was supposed to be pretty famous. The book told me lots of stuff, about how they were the best at fuuinjutsu, and what the crest on the back of my clothes meant. So I just want to know two things now."

Hiruzen turned around to face Naruto, showing the boy that he was taking his questions seriously, "Alright. Go ahead and ask away Naruto-kun. I'll answer what I can."

Naruto nodded and began to fire away, "Are there anymore of them left or is it just like what Shikamaru said? The part saying clan is extinct."

Hiruzen let out a sigh as he answered, "It is true. It happened long, long ago. Any of them that may be left are scattered to the corners of the world, and none of that bloodline claim the surname Uzumaki any longer. I'm sorry."

"Huh…" Naruto said, as he had expected that much from the whole 'they're extinct' thing, "Well that sucks."

Hearing Naruto's blunt summary of his clan's current state actually put a small smile on Hiruzen's face, "Yes it does I would imagine. I have worked with members of your clan in the distant past and I can certainly tell you that the book you read was accurate. They were fearsome fighters, energetic much like you but not nearly as much so." He said with a chuckle, "And they were as good at fuuinjutsu as you were informed. It eventually led to their downfall in the end. Having a village spearheaded by masters of such a complex technique led to their enemies teaming up to eventually destroy them in the end. I'm afraid all of their possessions were lost with them so there's nothing I can hand down to you in that respect."

Naruto waved it off. He didn't care much for anything material at all, "Don't sweat it, I've dealt without for this long back when I didn't know anything, it doesn't matter now right? I'll make my own clan stuff." He scratched the side of his head and laughed uncomfortably as he asked his next question, "If you knew anything about my family, anything worth telling me, like about my mom or dad could you tell me?"

'Well now that he knows his clan was famous and extinct it isn't so farfetched to believe that someone would know who his parents were. I mean how many people named Uzumaki existed in this village? He had to come from somewhere and someone would know of that name.' The old kage thought before he was struck with something else, 'Well he's telling Naruto about what's within him so he can tell him this too.' "I'll tell you what Naruto. There's a man that you'll find in this village at some point. He's a big tall man with long wild white hair and he wears wooden sandals. He's a pretty flamboyant person, you can't miss him."

"How will I find him?" Naruto wondered, excited at possibly meeting someone that could tell him about his parents, "I mean, finding one guy is hard when I've never met him and the only person with white hair that I know is Kakashi-sensei."

Hiruzen let out a chuckle as he put his hand on Naruto's head, "Trust me Naruto-kun he won't be that hard for you to find at all. He'll probably drop right into your lap. I hope this helped, and when you do talk to Jiraiya, I want you to know you can come to me and I'll try to fill in whatever he couldn't." Naruto nodded and smirked before making the ram seal and vanishing in a puff of smoke," Hmm, he _is_ just as fast as Kakashi and Asuma said he was."

XxX

(Days Later – Team 10 Training Ground)

It had been a few days since Naruto's meeting with Hiruzen over his desire to bring his clan back to prominence. Time was winding down and preparations were coming to a close with training time for the chunin exams that would be taking place in Tetsu no Kuni. Any jounin sensei in Konoha worth their salt was making sure that their genin squads that intended on participating were up to snuff for the harrowing challenge.

Including the jounin sensei of Team 10, "Come on people. Laps, laps, laps. Keep those hands moving! I'd better not see you miss a single seal in the line-up!" Asuma currently had his team running full-speed laps around the edge of the training field while making hand-seals on the fly. This sounded like something ridiculously easy for Naruto, and it was… even with two backpacks full of rocks strapped to his chest and back, "Shikamaru pick up the pace you're three behind Ino and ten behind Naruto!"

They had been doing this for the last two hours straight.

"I'm not Naruto Asuma!" Shikamaru uncharacteristically yelled, "Why are you even comparing my lap count to his? He can do this for the rest of the day as long as we stop for lunch. He could outrun you if he had to."

"So *pant pant* tired…" Ino huffed as she kept moving. She had fought back the urge to puke not too long ago so she was cool to keep going as much as it sucked going full speed.

Asuma cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled to her, "Stop complaining out loud you guys! Talking makes you tired faster!" He turned towards Naruto as the boy was about to book it past him again, only the sweat pouring down his face telling Asuma that he was even feeling it, 'Yeah this isn't doing anything for him.' He stuck out his arm and stopped Naruto in his tracks, "Hold up. You're done. Ino and Shikamaru will only have to do two more each and then we can move on."

"I can keep going." Naruto insisted.

Asuma nodded, "I know you can, that's why I'm ending it here… because the point of this was to get you tired and make you keep pushing through it. If I wanted to do that with you we'd be here all day long and most of the night. So for now I'll teach you how to add your wind chakra to your weapon." He pulled out his trench knives, "It's simple after you've gotten splitting the leaf down. Just treat the weapon as if it were the leaf itself. Generate your chakra the same way around the blade."

Naruto pulled his machete from his waist and began to do what he had been accustomed to doing with his leaf before today. Like with the leaf he could feel his chakra had reached cutting potential, but seeing as how he couldn't cut metal with just his chakra, it further sharpened the already razor-sharp edge of his weapon, "So…"

Asuma gestured towards the edge of the clearing where there were trees abundant, "Go hack into something that you know that you wouldn't have gotten close to cutting through before this."

Naruto shrugged and ran towards the nearest tree that wasn't their unofficial team meeting point with a battle cry before jumping at it with a diagonal slash that cleaved cleanly right through the wood, "Whoo! Yeah!" Naruto exclaimed happily, celebrating his weapon's newfound cutting prowess by jumping around. He used both hands and started swinging around his machete in a theatrical manner while making whooshing noises with his mouth, "All hail Uzumaki Naruto's clear-cutting machete! Fear my high-flying flow!" He pointed the machete at Ino and Shikamaru who stopped to look at him rant, "Fear it!"

"Oookay." Ino said, hands on her knees as she took the time to catch her breath.

Shikamaru on the other hand was laying on the ground, not even looking up at Naruto from where he was still gloating to the world with his machete, "So what's next Asuma?" He asked the bearded jounin who walked over to them.

"There's only a week left before we head out to Tetsu no Kuni." Asuma started to say as he grabbed Shikamaru's hand and dragged the groaning boy off of the ground, "I want to do something together as a team before we go and right now is as good a time as any while I'm letting you all come down from that workout." Hearing this, the blonde boy and girl followed behind their sensei.

XxX

(Konoha Hot Springs)

Naruto, Shikamaru, and Asuma shared a on the male side bath, sighing in relief while sitting in the hot water. Asuma cupped a hand in front of his mouth and yelled towards the gate separating the two sides of the hot spring, "How you doing over there Ino?"

"I'm fine!" She yelled back, enjoying this time given to her to just rest up, "It's fine since I can still talk to you guys over here, it's great!" Being on the women's side and knowing who was on the other side closest to the fence made her feel rather safe, as neither Naruto or Shikamaru would be the type to try and peek on her, especially not with Asuma there too, "So do you think we're really ready for the exams Asuma-sensei?"

"Absolutely…" He said, leaning back against the wall of the bath he was in, "Ino, your new offensive attacks are going to catch tons of enemies off guard if you actually have to fight. Shikamaru's actually been training in-depth and managed to get some offense behind him now that doesn't consist of him sneaking up on someone-."

"Whatever…" Shikamaru replied in response to the playfully backhanded compliment, "Troublesome adult."

Asuma just smirked at him and kept talking, turning his attention to Naruto who had gotten a cigarette in the bath with him and was currently partaking in his smoke, "And then we've got Manic McSpaz Pants over here-."

"I am not a spaz!" Naruto replied heatedly before blowing his smoke directly into the air, "I haven't done anything spazzy in..." He started counting on his fingers before speaking again, "At least a week."

Asuma shook his head in amusement, "Well you having your nose in that book of yours is keeping you occupied. Are you getting anything out of it so far?" He asked Naruto in interest, wanting to know how another facet of his student's private studies were going. He didn't know anything about fuuinjutsu, so having one of his genin begin learning it was kind of cool, especially if he was teaching himself.

Naruto made a tiny hand gesture as he grinned, "A little bit. The basics. I'm not nearly good enough to do anything cool. I'm doing exercises that just amount to me making storage seals. I tried to read further but I didn't really get what it was talking about. It said something about how just sealing objects was thinking too small. I don't know what that means since the book said that you could seal pretty much anything. So why would sealing an object like a house or something be thinking too small? It's a brain-teaser…" He said, running his hand through his hair.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, "That Shiho girl and I told you that fuuinjutsu was going to be hard Naruto. Just don't try skipping ahead and blowing off your arms. We need you in one piece so we can take that test."

"I'll be ready to roll, don't you worry." Naruto said, slapping some water over at Shikamaru jokingly.

Ino spoke from her side of the hot spring, "I thought you didn't want to go do the exams in the first place Shika. What, did Goldie finally kick you into gear with that energy of his?"

"Don't call me Goldie…" Naruto said, seething at the name, "You're blonde too."

"Not blonde like you though…" Ino responded, and Naruto could just see the smirk on her face through the wall, "…Goldie." She heard a thump bounce off of the wall and let out a laugh, "Oh cheer up, it's a term of endearment. You should be happy yours is so nice. Asuma-sensei and Shikamaru aren't so lucky."

Asuma's eye twitched in reference to the conversation, "Yes because the names 'Bum' and 'Smokestack' are so endearing Ino." He then noticed Naruto getting out of the hot spring on their side, wrapping a towel around himself to leave and get dressed, "Where are you going Naruto?"

Naruto looked over his shoulder, cigarette still hanging out of his mouth, "I've had enough of soaking in the water, I'm going to go for a little walk. I won't go too far."

"Alright." Asuma said, dismissing Naruto to do what he wanted to. Sitting in one place doing nothing was still something that was just out of Naruto's range of possibility.

XxX

Naruto's walkabout outside of the hot springs were just so that he didn't fall asleep while he was in there. How could his team just chill out and relax like that? He was all fired up for the chunin exams, he wanted to get rolling again! He was ready for whatever was in store for them, no matter what it was. This exam was a test in more ways than one. It was a test to see where they stood among ninja that were supposed to be on their level. No fighting shinobi that were supposed to be head-and-shoulders better than them like Haku. And he wanted his rematches; with both Sasuke and Tenten. Sasuke because they never truly got going with their fight, Tenten because he wanted to get his win back to say the very least… and that wasn't even mentioning Tenten's teammates, especially the kid with the white eyes.

He knew that there was no way they weren't getting themselves a piece of these chunin exams as well. He almost felt like seeking Tenten out just to brag about the fact that he was going, but the element of surprise appealed to him more.

He then heard some light giggling, but he decided to ignore it until he heard it again. He looked around but didn't see anyone, however once he heard another set of giggles he growled to himself, thinking someone was messing with him, "Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)…" Naruto's control of the jutsu at this point was so great he could walk around blindfolded if he kept letting out constant pulses of the jutsu. He had never done this to test it out, but the way things were now, he could see up close with his eyes closed and feel things at a distance out of his eyeshot, and to his right behind the shrubs and bushes he could feel a large living presence.

Naruto dropped his cigarette from his mouth and stomped it out under his foot before he walked over through the foliage and saw someone crouching by the fence keeping the hot springs away from the outside, "Um, what are you doing?"

"Quiet kid." The man said, not even turning to pay Naruto any mind, "Are you trying to get me caught here?" He then let out a thoughtful sound, "Hmm that blonde girl looks like she'll probably wind up being a 10 when the time comes… something to think about for later." He said to no one in particular.

Naruto's face twisted in confusion before he realized what was happening and gave the strange man a deadpan look, "Are you really peeking on the women's side of the springs?" A set of giggles gave him his answer, "That's really sad, you know that?"

The man waved him off, "Whatever kid. Hey, you want to get in on this?" He offered, "A kid like you needs to learn about the healthy female figure at some point. Now's as good a time as any. Consider it a gift from the magnanimous Jiraiya-sama."

Naruto's eyes widened and he fished through the pockets of his windbreaker before pulling out the book that he had been reading recently. As he read the name of the author on the front he lowered the book in shock, "You're Jiraiya? You? You're the guy that wrote the book I'm reading!"

Hearing Naruto almost yell, Jiraiya turned around and stood up to his full height, towering over Naruto as he walked closer, "Get real kid. There's no way a runt like you has read my works. They're for adults only."

Naruto gave him a strange look and held up his fuuinjutsu help manual, "This is for adults? I know I had to take a test to read this thing but other than that there wasn't a restriction. Are you sure?"

Jiraiya squinted and looked at the book in Naruto's hands, meanwhile Naruto scrutinized Jiraiya's appearance, 'Wild spiky white hair… big, tall man… big wooden sandals. Holy crap this is the guy that Hokage-jiji told me to talk to!'

Jiraiya's face finally smiled as he recognized the book Naruto had with him, "Oh yeah, that thing. I almost forgot that I wrote that. You managed to get into it? Way to go kid. It's almost like you're my student. So what's your name?"

"Uzumaki Naruto." Naruto told him, "And the Hokage told me that you were the guy I needed to ask about a few things."

After smiling at having found Naruto so easily, Jiraiya's face turned grave, 'So he knew enough about what was going on inside of him that he went to Sarutobi-sensei? Man, this was good timing to meet the kid anyway from the looks of things.' He smirked and pointed his thumb at himself, "I'll answer any question that you've got for me kid! There's no way I can let an apparent disciple of mine go without knowing things that the grand sage Jiraiya can inform him on!"

"Great!" Naruto said, getting excited now. Not only did he find the man he needed to see rather effortlessly, it was also the guy that wrote his book. What a great day to be him. And then the female voices from over the fence started acknowledging their presence.

"Who's talking out there?"

"There's a hole in the fence!"

"I see orange!"

Jiraiya and Naruto both paled, knowing their fate if they were to be caught here, "We need to get out of here now kid!" Jiraiya hissed in a whisper as he grabbed Naruto and took off running before any women could get dressed and chase them, or worse, knock the fence down and kick the crap out of them.

"We?" Naruto asked indignantly as he found himself tucked under Jiraiya's arm, "What do you mean we? I didn't do anything, you were the one peeking!"

"They won't care!" Jiraiya yelled as he used Shunshin to cover his movements of leaving the street, "Lesson one; female anger is an unguided weapon!"

And just as they disappeared without a trace, a crowd of women wearing towels emerged from the changing room, charging out onto the street to search for whoever it was they saw getting looks at them, "Damn it! Whoever that was they were fast!" The woman who spoke pointed to the side, "Some of you go over the bridge and search over there. The rest of us will keep going this way and search. Remember, orange." And with that, the angry mob split up and took off.

As the sounds of the angry women vanished from the area, Jiraiya's voice whispered, "Man kid you are strong." Under the bridge crossing the steaming water of the hot spring, Naruto had his palms and entire body stuck flat to the underside while Jiraiya held on to him like a leech, "Is your entire body stuck to that thing?"

"Yeah…" Naruto said, focusing on keeping himself stuck to the bridge with the heavy extra added baggage attached to him, "Can you let go now? I think they're gone."

"Are you sure?" Jiraiya asked almost fearfully. He didn't want to get himself beaten up today on the word of some kid he met not even five minutes prior.

"I don't sense anyone." Naruto assured him, as with the positioning he was in he couldn't see through the bridge with his jutsu, he could still sense life though, "It's all clear Jiraiya-sensei."

Jiraiya dropped off of Naruto and landed on the surface of the water, barely blinking in surprise when Naruto did the same, "Jiraiya-_sensei_?" Naruto pulled out the book and tapped it, "Oh! Okay, I've gotcha kid." They both started walking on the water and jumped back up onto the street now that the danger had subsided.

"Naruto."

Both Naruto and Jiraiya turned to see Asuma and the other two genin on Team 10 walking towards him, fully dressed like himself. Once Asuma saw Jiraiya he quickly acknowledged him, "It's good to see you Jiraiya-sama. We should have a talk sometime."

"What's up Asuma-sensei?" Naruto said with a smile, "I was just going to talk with Jiraiya-sensei here. I've got some things to ask him about."

"I don't mind." Asuma said, looking down at Ino and Shikamaru, "Well that's all I had for us to do today. You guys are all dismissed for the day."

Shikamaru nodded, however Ino stood there with an angry look on her face, tapping her foot on the ground as she glared at Naruto, "You know all of the commotion just now was from someone wearing orange. You wouldn't happen to know anyone wearing orange, would you Naruto?"

Naruto grabbed his windbreaker, "No I don't." When he could feel enough anger radiating off of her to get Shikamaru and Asuma to step away he said more, "Oh this isn't orange, this is tangelo. See? _Tangelo_."

Ino narrowed her eyes and pointed at them with two fingers before pointing back at Naruto and walking away, "Hmph."

Shikamaru put a hand on Naruto's shoulder and shook his head, "Yeah, you're dead Naruto. Watch your place for traps when you get home later, that's what I'd do. Later."

Asuma waited until his other two genin had left before turning to Jiraiya who nodded. Jiraiya looked towards Naruto, "Hey kid do you have a place to relax so that we can talk? Some of the stuff you're probably going to ask me might be sensitive information."

"Yeah, sure." Naruto said, gesturing for them to follow him, "Let's go."

XxX

(Hokage Monument)

Naruto sat down on the head of the Yondaime Hokage and looked out over the entire village for a moment before turning around to look at both Asuma and Jiraiya who were standing beside each other with similar looks on their faces, "Hey why are you here Asuma-sensei?"

"You don't want me to be?" The man asked in amusement, getting Naruto to fervently shake his head, fearing that he might have offended him, "Calm down Naruto. I'm just here to help. Who knows, I might be able to help with something that you find out here."

Naruto didn't know what that meant but it didn't matter in the end. He saw Jiraiya take a seat on the ground as well and let off a sigh, "It's kind of ironic that you picked this head to sit down on."

Naruto grinned at him, "Well the Yondaime Hokage was the coolest, at least as far as I'm concerned. Whenever I look at his face up here it just, I don't know, clicks with me for some reason. I can't explain just why he's my favorite when I actually personally know Sarutobi-jiji but he is. Why'd you agree to do this so easily anyway? And seriously Asuma-sensei why are you here? I thought you'd be more inclined to go find that Kurenai lady after we were done like you do sometimes."

Asuma sat down on the ground as well, only with more weight behind it in an irritable manner, "You guys just love to take shots at that don't you? You saw me with her once."

"-That you know of." Naruto replied cheekily. He then got serious, "So really, what's this about? Because Jiraiya-sensei you shouldn't know me well enough to be okay with me just asking you any kind of question. I expected some kind of fight or something."

Jiraiya crossed his arms, wondering how he should start this, "Well the thing is Naruto, I'm here to tell _you_ something. It's pretty important, and it has to do with the Yondaime Hokage, which is a reason that I'm the one telling you since he was my student."

Naruto's eyes widened, "No way… I thought the only person you trained was that Namikaze Minato guy that you talked about sometimes in your book."

Jiraiya gave Naruto a dry look, "Don't they teach you kids anything in the Academy these days? That name is the name of the Yondaime Hokage… that's him. And I'm here to tell you something that you didn't know. It's actually a major secret that no one is allowed to talk about, and it's directly about you."

"About me?" Naruto asked as he could feel his heart start to beat faster. What was special about him enough for there to be a secret surrounding it? He was just some kid, and even though he found out just recently that he was a part of a fallen clan, that wasn't a good enough reason. He wasn't special… yet. That would come when he could prove to others that he was, "What about me? What is it?"

Asuma could see that Jiraiya didn't know how to word things, and for some reason his father Hiruzen wanted the toad sage to be the one to tell this, so all he could do at the time was nudge things along, "Naruto tell me what you know about the night that the Kyuubi attacked the village." And like a switch was turned, Naruto told them everything that he knew about it, the only topic that Naruto fresh out of the Academy could recite back to anyone with textbook accuracy. Just like they expected him to know, "Good job Naruto, all of those things are absolutely right. But do you know how the Kyuubi was defeated?"

Naruto squinted his eyes in thought, not quite remembering what was told about how the demon was defeated, "I don't know. A really super-huge big-ass jutsu?" Jiraiya shook his head, "No? I'm wrong? So wait, I've heard that the Kyuubi could flatten mountains and make tsunamis with swings of its tail. How could anything except a huge jutsu beat that?"

"Fuuinjutsu kid." Jiraiya said, seeing Naruto's eyes widen, "You see why it's important now?"

"So what did he do?" Naruto asked, excited that the new thing he was studying was the source of such a huge victory, even more inspired by the fact that the Yondaime Hokage was the one that did it, "Is it something that I'm going to learn?"

Asuma frowned at that, "I hope not Naruto… what the Hokage used to defeat the Kyuubi took his life. I never want to see or hear about you using anything like that. You're not supposed to die before me, especially like that."

Jiraiya nodded in agreement. If Naruto got that good at fuuinjutsu he'd be proud of course, but he was nervous when he found that Minato learned the Shiki Fuujin (Dead Demon Consuming Seal), and the damn thing wound up killing him in the end, "Still, Naruto I want you to tell me, have you ever felt… I don't know, different? Have you ever felt any kind of strange sensation coming from your body?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow in confusion, "Why in the hell are you trying to give me 'the talk'? I know what 'the strange sensation' is Jiraiya-sensei, I'm not stupid."

Jiraiya palmed his face as Asuma began laughing at the legendary ninja, "Not that strange sensation you brat! I'm being serious here, I mean have you ever felt overly angry, scared, helpless?" Naruto nodded grimly, remembering that he felt all three of those things when he thought that Haku had killed his team. Remembering that having befriended a spy almost got his team in serious trouble, "Can you remember what happened when you did?"

Naruto started to think, trying to remember what he did when he fought Haku, "I caught up to her… and I beat her up pretty bad. I don't know how I got to her so fast though, Haku had more speed than me. It was like I was seeing red or something. I didn't stop until I was just about to beat her to death. I think I broke a tree." His eyes then widened, "Wait, I did! I almost broke a tree with just my body, I couldn't do that before and I haven't done it since!"

Jiraiya figured that in the heat of battle Naruto didn't care much why he was so strong, just that it happened and it got him the win that he needed, "Naruto there was no way for Minato to actually kill the Kyuubi. It's not mortal in the sense that you and I are, it's a force of nature more than anything else. All he could do was seal it away. What do you know about sealing? You've read my book, what is the basic concept of it?"

Naruto looked at his hands as he realized where this was going, hoping that he was wrong about it, "Fuuinjutsu seals things within another object… that's the basic concept of the art." That was the definition given when Naruto first started the actual manual portion of the book.

"Now when were you born Naruto?" Asuma asked him, "When's your birthday?"

"October 10th." Naruto said without missing a beat, "Same day as the attack…" He then let out a sigh, "I have been thinking about how weird it was. So it's sealed inside me? Where?"

Jiraiya lifted Naruto's shirt, "Channel some chakra." Naruto did as instructed and a spiral mark with eight prongs around it appeared around his navel, "That's where the seal is."

Naruto looked down at it with a deep frown on his face, "Well if that isn't a kick in the head. And to think, if I'd actually done more things shirtless I probably would have caught that. That kind of sucks." Naruto took a few deep breaths, trying to process what he had just been told, "I'm having a little trouble wrapping this around my head… um, who all knew about this?" Asuma pointed behind Naruto at the village they were overlooking, "Everyone. Okay, well that's fun for a bunch of different reasons." He said sarcastically, "Here's another question. Why am _I_ just now finding this out?" He asked, waiting for a damn good excuse.

"Dad thought it would be better if you didn't know so you'd think you were normal. Only the adults knew, and they weren't allowed to tell the younger people, no one was even allowed to speak of it." Asuma tried to explain. It didn't explain why no one told him after he became a ninja, but seeing as how Naruto hadn't compared himself to the demon itself that book on fuuinjutsu was a good thing, and he hadn't asked that so it hadn't crossed his mind, "I was honestly going to tell you, but dad told me to wait for Jiraiya-sama here to return from his missions to tell you himself. You had to find out eventually, there was no way you could walk around forever without knowing. That's irresponsible for a ton of reasons."

Jiraiya watched Naruto's stone expression, "How are you feeling kid?"

Naruto was currently running his tongue over his canines as he thought, "So what does this mean? I have the Kyuubi sealed inside of me. What? Am I supposed to unseal it or something and do something with it? Because I don't know how to-." He said, lifting his shirt up and making a half-ram seal as he attempted to unseal the Kyuubi as if it were equipment.

"No!" Both Jiraiya and Asuma said simultaneously. Jiraiya because that was a dangerous route of thinking, Asuma because he didn't know much about how complex sealing like this worked and if Naruto actually could do something like that.

"Then what the hell does any of this mean?" Naruto yelled back, pointing at his stomach, "Everybody knew about this thing; that explains why no one ever hung out with me or anything, why the adults didn't trust me, why nobody liked me before they ever even met me. Tell me what the fucking point was!" Naruto yelled as he jumped to his feet, "Why me? Why was it me? Did he just grab the first orphan from the attack he could find and stick the Kyuubi in me?"

Asuma let him get his anger out as did Jiraiya. He was still just a kid. How else was he supposed to respond to finding these things out? He had questions, questions that Asuma couldn't answer. Why was it him?

Jiraiya let Naruto pace around angrily for a few more moments before speaking, "The Yondaime believed that you could hold that power back, and he was right since you've done a fantastic job so far."

Naruto whipped around towards Jiraiya and narrowed his eyes at him, "Why?" He nearly hissed out, "Why did he know that? How did he know that? What made him so damn sure that _I_ could do it? I was just some random baby." And he was since no one seemed to know about his clan roots. Being angry at something he had no original control over and no actual person to vent on just wasn't in Naruto's nature. What had happened happened. It was done to save the village, and in the end it had saved him too. If there was no one else then that's all there was to it. Nothing had changed from two hours prior when he didn't know, except now he had more things to think about.

Naruto lay down completely on the cool stone that made up the head of the Yondaime Hokage on the Hokage Monument, looking up at the sky. After a while he let out what seemed to be his millionth sigh of the day, "So, what does this mean exactly?"

"Nothing." Asuma said firmly, "This doesn't mean a single thing. Absolutely nothing has changed now that you know these things Naruto."

Jiraiya cut in at this point, "I'm telling you this now because you're a shinobi and you can either embrace this part of you that's been there since the beginning, or you can try to ignore it. But something like what happened with the Kyuubi before might happen again one day. Tell me how you felt when you fought this Haku person."

Naruto's eyes shut in the light of the blazing sun in the sky, "Like I wanted to kill her. That hurting her was the only thing that mattered, the way she hurt me and my team. I hated feeling like that but I tried to just forget about it and take the basic lesson from it."

Jiraiya nodded, "That was the influence of the Kyuubi's chakra. Have you ever felt so angry that killing someone was the first thing on your mind prior to this?" Naruto sat up and shook his head, "The angrier you get, the more influence the Kyuubi can have over your emotions. If you just ignore it then it can use its chakra to turn you into something savage. That time your anger was directed, the more power you feel flowing through you the harder it will be to remain in control, and you may attack those close to you."

"Man…" Naruto said, looking between the two elder ninja there with him, "What a day… I really didn't see this coming at all. I think I need to go home and think about this for a while." He looked over at Asuma, "Do I have to tell Ino and Shikamaru?"

Asuma shook his head, "I told you that you finding this out didn't change anything. You don't have to tell them if you don't want to, it's your own secret and everyone has something that they keep to themselves. It's your call in the end." Naruto nodded with a small smile and stood up as he walked towards the edge of the cliff, "Are you going to be alright Naruto?"

"Yeah I'll be fine." Naruto replied as he got to the end of the Yondaime's head, "I'm going to head on home Asuma-sensei. I guess I'll see you around too Jiraiya-sensei." With that, Naruto started walking down the face of the statue, "Man this would have been useful to know how to do right before I graduated."

Once it was clear that Naruto was gone, Asuma turned towards Jiraiya as the two men stood up, "Kid never even asked those questions he wanted to ask you..." He said in an off-handed manner, "So what are you planning to do now?"

Jiraiya looked at the edge of the cliff where Naruto had started walking down, "Well I'd like to have a hand in training Naruto. I think there are a few things that I can teach him that I think Minato would have wanted me to let him in on. And he technically is my student if he's reading that book of his." He noticed Asuma's frown, "Hey, I'm not going to take your student away from you Asuma, I just think it would be nice for me to teach him some things. I won't if you don't want me to. It's a week until you're supposed to take your kids to Tetsu no Kuni right?"

"Yeah." Asuma said, grabbing a cigarette and placing it in his mouth, "I've got 'em going into the chunin exams. They're damn good, they'll clean up for sure."

Jiraiya made a noise, signifying that he understood, "You know, maybe I'll head on up to see once they reach the final stage if they get that far? It's going to be some great gigantic affair. Every single hidden village is supposed to have a stake in this one. It sounds like it's going to be a total clusterfuck. Entertaining to say the least." He said with a grin.

Asuma returned the grin once he thought about it, "You know that all of that just means one thing. That it's time to show off."

XxX

(With Naruto)

Naruto was taking a walk through one of the forested areas that made up Konoha's namesake. Naruto stared at him hand as he walked along, "He trusted me with it… and even if that was a total load of crap what am I going to do, just let it get to me? I've gotten through tougher things than this. This isn't even a setback." He stopped talking as he noticed a rock following him. A square rock with eye-holes in the front.

The entire time he had been walking he had been trying to burn chakra by putting wind chakra into his hands for practice. However he hadn't been thinking of this. With his skills with Nebaiken and with as much time as he had spent using wind chakra to split leaves, building it and holding it had become something of a second nature to him. Smirking to himself, Naruto stopped walking, getting the rock to stop as well.

Naruto performed a theatrical gesture that ended with him slamming the palms of his hands to the tree, both of them linked by the wrists with one hand facing up and the other down, subconsciously sticking it there, "You know, there's one thing I hate… randomly placed rocks." Naruto stopped the flow of chakra to his hand and turned around, but his hand momentarily stuck fast to the tree. Once he turned around and he pulled his hand free, the tree inexplicably imploded in an area the size of his hands, felling it as it had been destroyed clean through.

Naruto was so surprised by this turn of events that he didn't even register the fireworks that came from the rock that had been following him, nor did he pay attention to the kids that came from the rock until one of them spoke, "Wow Boss that was so cool!" Naruto turned to see Konohamaru with two other kids. One was a girl with orange hair tied up in two very large pigtails and a red blush on her face, the other was a boy with brown hair and glasses that had a drip of snot hanging from his nose. All of the children were wearing goggles, all similar in design to Naruto's that he currently had on his head, "See Moegi, Udon? I told you guys he was a super-strong ninja didn't I?"

Naruto blinked and looked at the tree, 'How the hell did I do that? Can I do that again?' That was what he thought. On the outside his self-confidence needed a little pick-me-up and this was as good a reason as any for an ego trip, "Yeah I guess I am huh? How'd you guys like that?"

The girl, Moegi ran up to the fallen tree and looked at the destroyed trunk, "What do you call that move Boss?"

So now the girl was calling him that too? That was just fine with him. And now he needed to come up with a name for it? Well it technically was his jutsu, even if he'd be hard pressed to do it again if he had to right then, "Call it…" He stopped talking to think. He didn't want to be like Iruka and come up with a jutsu only to have it saddled with a shitty name. This needed to be catchy, "Call it Giga Shintou (Giga Impact). It's pretty badass isn't it?" Meh, he could claim it if he wanted to. He knew what happened, now he just needed to recreate it, or better yet get his clones to recreate it.

The boy Udon walked up to him with Konohamaru and sniffed before addressing him, "Wow, that really looked strong."

Naruto laughed and rubbed the area between his nose and mouth with his finger, "Well I have to be strong right? I'm going to the chunin exams next week in Tetsu no Kuni aren't I? If I'm going to get promoted I've got to be on my game!" As the kids stood wowed and started to beg him to play ninja with him, wanting to actually play with a real ninja, Naruto smiled to himself as he thought, 'Man I know that whatever all of this Kyuubi stuff brings me I can handle it. I don't know too much about it, and I still don't know why it was me. There are a lot of things I don't know, and I don't know how I'm ever going to look at a few things the same way again… but if the Yondaime Hokage really believed in me the way Konohamaru seems to believe in me without knowing much about me at all then I'm not going to let either of them down.'

XxX

(That Evening – Naruto's Apartment)

As Naruto walked into his apartment he blinked as he saw the Hokage sitting in his living room, "Hokage-jiji how did you-? Nevermind, you're the Hokage, duh." He said to himself as he walked in and shut the door behind him.

"How are things Naruto-kun?" The old man asked him as he looked out of Naruto's window at the Hokage Monument, of which Naruto had a clear view of from there, "I know that you know of your burden by now. How do you feel? Do you have anything to ask me?"

Naruto shook his head as he held his stomach, "No, I think I've got it. The Kyuubi's in me, I can somehow use its chakra or something or another, every adult knew about it, I didn't." He gave the Hokage a wry look, "I'm kind of upset about that jiji."

"I'd imagine you would be Naruto." Hiruzen said as he turned around to look at the young genin, a far gone look on his eye, "The ANBU with me when I came across you after the Kyuubi's sealing inside of you were quick to spread the word of what happened to others and the news spread like wildfire. All I could do at that point was keep your peers from finding out in the future without your wishing by my decree." He turned towards the window again as he continued to speak, "Naruto remember this. A person is smart, a person is very intelligent, but people are stupid. If people were allowed to separately make their own opinions on you by themselves then things may have been better, maybe. But when people talk about something that puts them at unease then mob rule takes over and that unease turns to fear or hatred."

Naruto frowned and spoke up, "And they didn't bother trying to see me for me, just for what they knew I had inside of me."

Hiruzen nodded, "That's why the few people that gave you a chance and forged relationships with you did so, because they were able to get their own opinions of you away from the populace. And you've handled the treatment of neglect from most of the village magnificently. I'm proud of you every day, never more so than now after you've found the truth."

Naruto walked over to Hiruzen and looked out of the window with him, "Well things are getting better. Iruka-sensei was always there for me like Asuma-sensei is now, Shikamaru and Ino are cool, Tenten helped me a lot when I first started out, Kakashi-sensei is weird but I like him too, Chouji's cool to hang out with, Sasuke-teme I like punching in the face, and Jiraiya-sensei is weird but I think he likes me. Konohamaru and his friends really like me because for some reason they think I'm the greatest, and who am I to crush a kid's hopes and dreams?" Hiruzen chuckled a bit as did Naruto, "I don't know where we are though jiji since you didn't trust me enough to tell me this sooner. I could have handled it."

"Maybe." Hiruzen replied, "But the night you came closest to finding out and the way you are now are two very different Narutos. How do you think you would have handled it if you had found this out the night of your genin exam, because Mizuki was about to tell you if you hadn't cut him off from doing so."

Naruto gulped. He knew that he wasn't in the best state of mind that night. If he had found out that night then there might have been a five-star freakout on the horizon. Someone might have gotten really hurt… someone other than Mizuki.

Hiruzen could see Naruto thinking about it, "And even if I had told you myself, after that night and all that happened, all that you heard Mizuki say, would you have taken it nearly as well as you have here today?" A smile came over the elderly man's face, "I've always expected great things out of you Naruto and you continue to deliver on that front."

Naruto grinned despite the day he had been having, "Old man you haven't seen anything yet. I haven't even gotten close to cutting loose. Just wait until the chunin exams."

"I'm looking forward to it." Hiruzen said, putting a hand on Naruto's shoulder, "If you need anything in the future I want you to feel free to come to me or Asuma. As close as you are you us and Konohamaru at this point you're a full-fledged friend of our clan."

"You've got it Hokage-jiji." Naruto said as he stared at the mountains that had his attention since he had been a child.

XxX

(One Week Later – Team 10 Training Field)

Asuma stood in front of his three seated students as they looked up at him intently, "I'm glad you all decided to show up today and none of you got cold feet." At that, all eyes drifted over to Shikamaru who muttered a quiet 'troublesome', "It's been a crazy five months huh?" Asuma said, thinking back on his time with his team, "And in just a few days we'll see just how you guys stack up in the grand scheme of things."

Ino's eyes shone at the prospect of the challenge lying ahead of them, "I'm ready for it Asuma-sensei. Team 10's the best." She put her hands on her hips and flipped her hair back haughtily, "Naturally you should know that. You did train us after all."

"That I did." Asuma said in amusement.

Naruto stood up next, dusting off the back of his shorts, "Do you think that after the stuff I've been finding out lately I'm going to be anything other than 100% on doing this? Let's get this show on the road already!" He exclaimed.

Shikamaru stood up as well, shoving his hands in pockets of his pants as if he didn't care, "Someone has to make sure these two get through this thing in one piece, and as troublesome as it seems…" He took a hand from his pocket and pointed at himself, "That someone just so happens to be me. Besides, mom would bitch me out for the next six months if I didn't go and do this. So let's get this done." He said, putting his hand out, having it quickly covered by the other two genin on his team, "Are we all set?"

"Absolutely." Ino said.

Naruto grinned widely and nodded, "Let's go kick some international ass."

Asuma smiled and clapped, "Now, now kids… we still have to get to the convoy so we can all head out with the other teams. We don't want to be caught behind and have to travel all the way to Tetsu no Kuni alone."

It was finally time to get underway. For better or for worse the chunin exams were here, ready or not.

* * *

Jutsu List

Giga Shintou (Giga Impact). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive. This jutsu requires the user to be able to manipulate wind element chakra and also have advanced skill with the tree-walking exercise, enough that they can use it on other parts of their body nearly flawlessly. The user will stick their hands to the target with wind chakra and will then suddenly and quickly twist and yank their hands away, still keeping the pull active. This will create a vacuum inside of the target that will cause intense internal damage.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

You must take this test before reading this book

Every elite program in the ninja world requires one to first pass some sort of test or examination before becoming a member. Now in no way is my book as cool as say, becoming an ANBU, still I have imposed a restriction on my book for those of you that wish to read it. It's pretty simple. Pass and you're golden, fail and you're screwed. Please return this book to where you got it from and walk away from it slowly, looking over your shoulder with a hangdog look expressing sadness and disappointment.

Now if you score above 40 on this test then walk tall my friend, you can partake in the knowledge on the coming pages. If you score between 30 and 40 you've still got a ways to grow, but you can read this book… still, no one can know you're reading this book. If anyone asks you if you read this book you must say, "No I tried, but Jiraiya-sama's epic tome is far beyond my mental comprehension." If you score below 20 points then sorry about your luck, please put my book down, you cannot use it. Sucks for you. Now let's do this. The book will be keeping score, but for your own mental anguish you should do it yourself as well.

Answer each question to the best of your ability. Leave nothing blank or else the test will not conclude and tally your score. And remember, when in doubt answer the question the way that you think I would, because as we all know I am infallible.

**Question #1: Which way is north?  
**a) Toward the mountains.  
b) Over by that lake.  
c) Down by the stream.  
d) Toward that mangrove forest.

**Answers:  
**a) -5 points. No stupid, the mountains are in the south.  
b) -5 points. The lake is in the southeast. Either your compass is broke or you've been eating too many paint chips.  
c) +8 points. Correct! You score big!  
d) -8 points. While you were answering this question somewhere I am laughing at your topographical ignorance.

**Question #2: You know you are about to get into a full-scale fight against a shinobi that you know is on your level. Your chances of victory are 50-50, nothing more, nothing less. He/She knows that you are coming and is prepared for the fight just as much as you are. You look at your supplies or at the area around you. You have to set the tone for this battle. What do you use to begin?  
**a) A kunai.  
b) Your hands.  
c) When you enter the battleground, take note of everything around you that you can possibly be used to Kawarimi with at a moment's notice.  
d) Launch your best jutsu right off the bat.  
e) Try to start a conversation and make witty banter.  
f) Teamwork.  
g) None of the above.

**Answers:  
**a) 0 points. Having a weapon at the ready when you enter a fight is usually a good idea because your opponent will probably have one too. That's just common sense when you're about to begin a fight to the death though.  
b) -2 points. There are exceptions to this rule, such as people that are proven to be able to beat down armed opponents on their level with their bare hands, but if you can do that then why the hell are you reading this? Go put this book down and punch a tree into firewood.  
c) +5 points. A well timed substitution can save your life, confuse your opponent, and give you an opening to finish the fight. It's a basic for a good reason you know. Also, it makes your opponent look stupid which can psyche them out.  
d) -5 points. No, what's wrong with you? Look, I already said that they knew you were coming so unless your jutsu can liquefy a person's mind from a mile out when they're aware that you're on your way there's no way that would work. There's no surprise and they're on your level as I've previously stated. It's quite clear that you've never been in a fight.  
e) 0 points. If you're going to get into a face-to-face fight then you're probably going to start talking to the guy you're fighting inevitably. It calms down the nerves that you might be having. Putting a voice to the face of your enemy lets you know that he's human just like you, and just like you he can be defeated.  
f) +10 points. Remember this now if you don't learn anything else from this book. If you have the option of waiting for backup then you'd damn sure better do it. Two or three on one presents a better opportunity of you sleeping in your own bed that night than sleeping on the cold ground for all of eternity. If you have the means then I highly suggest making your fight a team affair. It works out better for you that way. Teamwork: It makes the dream work.  
g) +15 points. If you picked this then that means that you have something way more badass up your sleeve to begin that fight with… either that or you were smart enough to realize that I never stated why this fight was happening and that it was pointless. If there's no reason to fight then you don't fight, you go around the potential conflict. No one dies that way and we all keep on moving forward, no harm no foul.

**Question #3: Rock, Paper, or Scissors?  
**a) Rock  
b) Paper  
c) Scissors  
d) Volcano

**Answers:  
**a) +3 points. You are a very direct person. You solve most problems you see by going straight at it and handling them as they come to you. You're not very subtle, but you make up for that by being hard to break both mentally and physically.  
b) -15 points. You are weak and serve no functional combat purpose to the things going on around you or your comrades. You would rather try to keep things from happening than solve actual problems and when you do you're too useless to change anything in the first place. You can't solve problems because you're weak and you are easily bent to the will of another. You can't even really stop problems from happening, all you can really do is say that you tried and then tell others what happened.  
c) +5 points. You're sneaky and can make moves. You can turn things into what you think they should be to serve your purposes appropriately. You're dangerous when people are stupid around you, but are an invaluable asset when people do the right things in your presence.  
d) -5 points. Pssht. Volcano… you freaking cheater. You might as well have picked meteor. If you're going to play like that then I'm not playing this game with you anymore.

**Question #4: The leader of your village walks in right now and tells you that he/she wants to promote you and only you alone. You work on a team and you ask him about your teammates and what will become of them. He/She tells you that they aren't cutting it and that they will be left low on the totem pole forever. You are given the option of declining your promotion however, as the leader wants to make sure you think you're ready first. What do you do?  
**a) Take the promotion and leave your team to take their chances.  
b) Ask if you can stick with your team once you get the promotion.  
c) Decline the promotion and stay with your team, do your best to get them up to snuff so that eventually you can all be considered for promotions instead of just one at the expense of the others.  
d) Stand there and hyperventilate over the choice until you pass out or your village leader walks away taking the choice out of your hands.

**Answers:  
**a) -10 points. Chances are, you will have been with this team for quite some while before you get this promotion, and unless they're all despicable human beings that try your patience every waking moment you see them you will somewhat like if not utterly enjoy them by this time. To just leave them to wither on the vine is not what is appropriate. You were put in a team in the first place to cover each other, the only thing being covered in this case would be your own ass as you climb up the ladder. Good luck getting anyone to trust you again after this though... douche.  
b) 0 points. In the end this sounds like the right call, balancing out the best of both worlds, but eventually your team will grow to resent you. You have the promotion and you're not moving on. They won't take it as you looking out for them, they'll take it as you lording your higher rank over them, and that will lead to some problems.  
c) +5 points. Your leader never said that they wouldn't promote you later if you declined now. You can always get promoted later, your team needs you now. Find out what they need to work on and drive it into their heads to improve. If you're the one up for promotion then take the reins and be a damn leader, get things together!  
d) -15 points. Good going. Now you're in the same boat as the rest of your team. Hope you like being a 35 year old genin you poor bastard.

**Question #5: The Hokage has the ability to use a crystal ball in his office to observe happenings on the people within Konoha's walls when there is a free moment in the busy schedule of the modern kage. The restrictions to this are the fact that the knowledge of the person's chakra signature for whom you are searching is necessary, and people with the ability to properly hide their own presence from the sight of the jutsu needed to activate the ball can avoid scrutiny. Now with this in mind how would you use this power in your free time?  
**a) To keep Konoha safe by scanning all points of interest and possible persons of interest that may pose a threat.  
b) To keep tabs on that sweet little hottie that you have eyes for.  
c) To spy on the women's side of the hot springs.  
d) To spy on the men's side of the hot springs.  
e) To see if you can check up your nose to ensure that you really don't have a booger and that it was just a hair making your nose twitch.

**Answers:  
**a) 0 points. A noble goal indeed. But do you have any idea how many people live in this village and how many of them are shifty as hell? There's nobody in this entire village that isn't at least a little bit suspicious, and by the time you get the seat of Hokage you'll know that. We're ninja for fuck's sake, it's our job to keep secrets and that makes us suspicious by nature. You don't have all the time in the day to keep an eye on that many people. That's why you have ninja out there under your employ to do it for you and report things of interest back to you. Duh!  
b) -5 points. First of all that's creepier than all hell to keep watch on one person that you like all day long. If the person isn't your spouse then it's not cool, and even then it's pretty messed up… and besides, you're thinking too small with it if this is what you're doing.  
c) +10 points. Oh yeah, now that's what I'm talking about. Nothing wrong with that at all, no sir. And if you're a woman you still get +5 points because that's kind of hot actually.  
d) …Because of my impartiality and realizing that it takes all kinds in this world I will _not_ subtract points even though I want to take away -75… so I'll just strike a happy medium and give you 0 points for this… unless you're a woman taking this test in which case you will receive +10 points as well because I'm equal opportunity.  
e) -5 points. This question was supposed to be a gimme but you still somehow managed to fuck it up. Great job!

**Question #6:** **A small company manufactures small metal ninja tools with a fixed cost of 2000 ryo per day and a total of 35000 ryo at a daily output of 200 weapons. Assume the total cost of this function is linear. Find the average cost function.  
**a) 35000 = 200x + 2000  
b) You can't answer because you are desperately trying to find a graphing calculator of some sort.  
c) You took this problem to your super-smart friend to get the answer because damned if you know.  
d) You have stared at the problem for the last half-hour trying to work it out to no avail.

**Answers:**  
a) +20 points BUT! Are you sure? I mean are you _really_ sure? Really, really sure? Then show your damn work step by step, and then tell me what the average cost per weapon will tend to be as the cost of production increases. I want to see your junior smartass actually work the problem out right here, right now. If you can't, this part after the answer remains blank, and you were stupid enough to state something that you couldn't aptly explain by marking this answer then you lose -20 points for trying to pull a fast one and being a know-it-all.  
b) 0 points. Good idea, but those things cost 800 ryo for just the old models. I doubt you have one on you at the moment. And once you even find it would you even know what to put in to find the answer? Didn't think so.  
c) +10 points. If you've got the resources then use them. We're not mathematicians here, we're shinobi. If you can handle the person calling you stupid and lording this over you for the next two weeks then you've earned it. There's nothing wrong with admitting you don't know how to do something, that's why shinobi work in squads. You might want to fix that little problem though if you get the chance.  
d) -10 points. Inaction breeds loss. You're on the clock and wasting valuable time as you read this. You've got to come up with the answers quick. No one's going to give you time to think in a battle. Oh wait, you didn't know this test was timed? My bad… Bwahahahaha! Ahem, you've got five minutes left by the way. Yeah! Wishing you didn't skip that brain-bending question number 1 right now aren't you?

**Question #7: You step into a battle against Sanshuuou no Hanzo and things don't go quite as planned. How do you respond?  
**a) The moment you regain consciousness you bolt for the border as fast as your stubby little legs can carry you.  
b) Go outside of Hanzo's house and call him out, except this time you use some kind of weapon such as a baton, a broadsword, or a handful of explosive tags duct taped together in a giant ball of apocalypse.  
c) Quickly invent some kind of excuse, such as glaucoma, as to why you lost that you can use for the next two or three decades when people ask you why you lost.  
d) It just so happened that you didn't get your ass kicked all alone, nope, your team was there to share in the fun. After you wake up from dreamland get into your teammates' faces for getting in your way.  
e) Throw your hands in the air and pretend you won. Brag about how you made Hanzo leave you alone all the way back to your hometown.  
f) Remain in the area and lick your wounds, taking your defeat on the field of battle like a man.

**Answers:**  
a) +8 points. Excellent choice! If you're in good enough condition to get up and go then go ahead and get your ass out of dodge. Why would you stay after getting your ass reamed by someone that didn't see you as enough of a threat to kill you. Hell, he didn't even capture you. Go fool go!  
b) -8 points. Bad choice. Hanzo is a master with exploding tags as well. Most likely he will claim your weapon of choice and beat you to death with it. Don't ask me how you can be beaten to death with a ball of exploding tags because I'm more than certain there's a way.  
c) +2 points. I am not a fan of people making excuses, but if you cite glaucoma as being the reason for your loss then you get the 2 points for originality. However if you made up some generic excuse such as you slipped, or your experimental finishing jutsu crapped out on you halfway through then take away -10 points. Why? Because shit happens. It's called an anomaly, mere chance. Those aren't good excuses for jack.  
d) -5 points. After suffering such a terrible loss with a man-up advantage, the last thing you want to do is get beat up by your female and effeminate male looking teammates. That would be a career killer.  
e) -5 points. An excellent way to look like an even bigger jackass.  
f) -2 points. Now some people would say that this is the way to take all losses such as this one but if you chose this answer, fuck you! You think you're better than me? You try getting your ass handed to you on a silver platter by Hanzo and then sucking it up for a bonafide post-fight humiliation interview with those three kids and that dog that were watching us get stomped. Ugh… I had to hang around and help those kids out for years after that just to make them think I was cool… though I wonder what that girl with them grew up to look like… I'll bet she's a 10.

**Question #8: You accompany your sensei who is the current Hokage and your student who is the best damn shinobi you've ever seen to a treaty signing with Iwagakure no Sato. Instead of hashing out the details to the treaty and brokering for peace as you would expect him to do, especially after that student of yours tap-danced on the proverbial nutsack of the Iwa war-machine single-handedly, the Sandaime Tsuchikage spends the entire meeting taking sniping little verbal shots at you and your contingent. You don't want any more bloodshed so you don't just leave and return to war, what do you say to handle the situation?  
**a) "Tsuchikage-sama if you would please just sign the treaty. The losses on both sides have been far too staggering for us to continue this war any longer. It doesn't serve any purpose to anyone at this point.  
b) "You'd better hurry up. I hear the shinobi surplus store nearby is selling lifts for sandals half-off for today only to celebrate the end of the war. You're probably all over that deal huh?"  
c) "Yeah Konoha huh… I can see why you hate it. All those trees of ours… so tall and arrogant."  
d) "If you sign the treaty I'll give you a shirt for your birthday that reads _Mustache Rides: 50 ryo_."

**Answers:  
**a) -10 points. Is this the diplomatic response? Yes. Is this the way my sensei addressed the issue when it actually did come up at the meeting? You bet he did. The thing about that was, the Tsuchikage was pissed and knew he had to surrender at this point and he was trying to save face by, for lack of a better term, punking us out. Hearing sensei say this just made things worse and my student didn't make matters any better. Everything he said was in the same vein… at the moment.  
b) +2 points. If you were there then you would know that this incident was irritating as all hell. He ran his mouth for at least 45 minutes straight one time, giving me plenty of time to get angrier and think up smartass remarks in response. This was one of the first ones.  
c) +4 points. Look at a full body picture of the Tsuchikage and tell me that you wouldn't have at least put a smirk on your face when you heard this. This was actually the joke that got my student in on the fun.  
d) +25 points. I did not say this. Believe it or not my student Namikaze Minato let that one rip all on his own. That girlfriend of his really must have influenced him on that one because the look on that old troll Onoki's face when Minato spoke up with that one: priceless. This was the comment that stopped the meeting, Onoki had nothing left to say after that one, he just signed the treaty and left. I was never so proud in my entire life, it was way more original than any of my rips.

If you've passed the test then congratulations. Feel free to walk tall and read at your leisurely delight. You are my proud-pseudo protégé, good luck with that. Let your light of greatness shine just like the gallant Jiraiya himself! People like us… we've got tiger-blood! If you failed, then sorry for you, hope you enjoyed reading the book so far, please return it from where you got it. Sucks to be you right now!

* * *

**Chapter complete. Next chapter will be the beginning of the portion of the story that I've wanted to write the most. And I hope I have a new set of thrills for you as a part of the chunin exams in a totally new setting. I'm sure that you guys will enjoy it since it won't be like anything you've read before… I hope. Because if anyone wrote anything like it I might snap, I thought that what I came up with was original as far as I'm concerned. Next chapter will be the setup for that arc along with some foreshadowing for those that are attentive.**

**This is just the beginning of the Kyuubi stuff. It's just as important as I made it out to be towards the storyline earlier on, and hopefully that will manifest itself later on in the story, because as of now only Naruto knows about it while Shikamaru and to a lesser extent Ino are curious about his abilities.**

**Anyway, Kenchi out. Later days folks.**


	17. Light the Powder Keg

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Unless when you say 'own' you mean 'cry' and by 'Naruto' you mean 'repeatedly over the fact that I _don't_ own Naruto'… If that's what you mean then yes I own Naruto.

**Chapter 17: Light the Powder Keg**

* * *

"It's so cold…" Naruto groaned as he rubbed his hands together to make heat for himself in the frigid temperament of the Tetsu no Kuni climate. To adjust to the climate, most of the shinobi were wearing tan cloaks over their regular clothing. Naruto on the other hand had opted to merely switch his short-sleeved blue shirt under his windbreaker to a long-sleeved one with some extra padding in it. Was it warm and comfy? Yes it was, but then again this was a harsh winter climate, "This wind is disrespecting the hell out of my jacket."

Team 10 was in the midst of a convoy of Konoha ninja heading towards the exams in the foreign country. There were 21 Konoha teams that were travelling to take part, all in all making it 63 genin from the village heading out to try and get themselves promoted. If that was what Konoha was sending then who knew how many others the rest of the villages would be sending?

Ino rolled her eyes as she watched Naruto pop a cigarette in his mouth and light it up, "What?" He said in response to her reaction, "It's freezing out here, let me get a little bit of heat. We all can't afford those nice little ponchos you know... I've got bills to pay."

From over elsewhere, Kiba took a whiff of the air and smirked, "Kurenai-sensei, Naruto's smoking again."

Kurenai turned her gaze over towards Naruto who wasn't even trying to hide the fact that he was smoking. As he looked over at her red-eyed glance he gave her a deadpan look, "What are you going to do in the middle of nowhere Kurenai-sensei? Are you going to make me smoke a ton of them again?" He let out a chuckle, "I might like that actually."

Asuma smacked Naruto on the back of his head and tried to alleviate the situation, in vain, but trying should count for something, "Kurenai he doesn't smoke that much. Seeing him have more than one every few days is rare. It's more of a comfort thing than anything else." He didn't add that Naruto was merely subsisting off of the cigarettes that Kurenai had bought to 'teach him a lesson', as he hadn't bought a single pack himself. As funny as that would be to see the expression on her face it wouldn't make anything any better, "Besides, it is colder than hell out here."

Naruto shoved Kurenai's disapproval of his smoking to the back of her mind. It was kind of her fault anyway, not that he was complaining, he didn't hate it. The genin traveling that he knew of, not counting his team were Sasuke, Sakura, Chouji, Kiba, Hinata, Shino, Lee, Neji, and Tenten. That would be a stiff enough challenge, but then there was the fact that there were 51 others from his village alone. His heart was starting to beat a little faster just thinking about it.

Kiba grabbed Naruto in a pseudo-headlock as Akamaru yapped on top of his head, "So you ready to get dusted off in the exams?"

"Whatever…" Naruto muttered as he freed himself and kept walking along, blowing smoke into the air, "You're going to be going home a little earlier than me if you're unlucky enough to go up against me. I'm at the top of my game for this one."

"You think you can beat me?" Kiba growled at him while Akamaru yapped at Naruto from the top of Kiba's head, "Me and Akamaru would tear you apart. You're still the dead-last of our year for a reason you know."

Naruto normally would have been all up in arms about the whole dead-last thing, but why would he be? From the looks of the other genin that weren't his team or Team 7 who knew better than to assume Naruto was weak due to his graduation placement, hearing Kiba call him out for being the dead-last of their year made them feel safe with him in the running, that he was easy pickings. If any of these people here were as good as Haku then why were they still genin, and if they weren't then he could beat them.

Asuma picked up Naruto by the back of his windbreaker and deposited him on his opposite side, away from Kiba, "Knock it off you two. Man, the exams haven't even started yet and you're all fired up."

Ino took this moment to chime in, "How is that surprising Asuma-sensei? This is Naruto after all, he probably jumps out of bed in the morning ready to go like a hummingbird. But then again that's our Goldie-kun isn't it?" She finished, pinching Naruto's cheek teasingly.

Naruto growled and positioned himself away from her in the procession, not needing anyone to see his cheeks redden as he slipped back out of sight of his team. He didn't care if he was out of their sight or not, it wasn't like he'd lose them, he could locate them with his sonar jutsu. Ino was with Asuma arguing on and off with Sakura about Sasuke, Shikamaru was with Chouji and that meant that they were all around the rest of Team 7 who was also near Team 8.

The rookie genin were sticking together for the time being, easy to locate again when he needed to get back. Though the thing about Hinata looking at him must have meant she could see how awesome he was. She was trying to find a weakness in his greatness before she ever needed to face him. Good for her to know a powerhouse when she saw one, he respected that, "How have you been Hinata?" He asked her suddenly, getting an 'eep' out of her. He had just gotten through messing around with Kiba, almost resulting in physicality, and Shino creeped him out. If Hinata was one of the rookies here then she was pretty much the only one he hadn't spoken to yet.

"I'm fine Naruto-kun." Hinata said quietly, so much so that he had to strain his ears to hear her. Why was he talking to her? He never did before out of the blue, but maybe since they had more common ground he thought it would be a good idea to. Of course she knew already that when it came down to it Naruto was exceedingly friendly and easily bored so it might have just been a combination of that, "W-What about you?" She asked, pointing at his uncloaked person, "Aren't you-?"

"Cold? Nah." Naruto replied confidently before a wind blew through the group that nearly froze him solid, "W-Whatever gave you that idea? I'm good." He said, doing his best to keep his teeth from chattering. He made sure to turn away from her when he blew out his smoke since after being hit once by Ino after blowing smoke in her face he learned to not ever do that again.

Hinata was about to reply when she was cut off by Kiba shouting to her, "Hey Hinata, you should get away from Naruto and get back over here! Don't you know you secondhand smoke is still harmful?" He joked, getting a satisfying growl that he heard from a distance out of Naruto.

"I wasn't even breathing in her direction dog breath! I don't breathe smoke on other people!" Naruto snapped back, shaking his fist angrily at Kiba.

Hinata giggled at how offended Naruto seemed by Kiba's words, "Naruto-kun is very considerate." She said before realizing that he was now looking at her, bringing a cherry red blush to her face as he made eye contact, "I h-have to go now Naruto-kun." She said, fidgeting with her fingers before moving back towards her team.

Naruto squinted his eyes at her back as she left, scratching his head, "Strange girl." With a shrug he kept walking through the mass of genin moving in route to the host village of the chunin exams

As he moved through the crowd, slipping further and further back he noticed that the other genin were all sizing him up, most of them smirking at him arrogantly once they got a full view of him. He obviously didn't look very special of intimidating to them, but he should have. Why would a twelve year old be there if he wasn't damn good? They were five years older than him, some older than that.

"Naruto-san!"

Naruto turned his head and saw a bushy pair of eyebrows in his field of vision, "Aah! Don't try to kick me again, I'm totally serious!" Naruto said, jumping almost ten feet back away as the rest of the figure in the green bodysuit came into view, "What's up Lee?" Naruto asked, having not seen the older genin since he blindsided him two days after he had graduated from the Academy.

"You're in these exams?" Lee asked him curiously, getting a nod from Naruto that put a blaze in his eyes, "Yet another opponent for me to test my flames of youth against! I will not fail to defeat you as well!" He grabbed Naruto around the wrist and began to drag him before Naruto could protest, "Yosh! I have found Naruto-san and he is indeed one of the genin in the exams!" Lee called out loudly as he deposited Naruto in the vicinity of his team, "Good eye Tenten!"

Naruto noticed that Tenten was giving him a stern glance forcing him to shrug. Could he get a moment to enjoy his cigarette? It was probably the only one he was going to get that day, "What? Was I supposed to tell you I was going to be doing this?"

"Yes." She said in return.

"Why?" Naruto said, blinking in confusion, "Besides, ever since I went to your store I've been busy, that was my day off. When was I supposed to find you anyway?"

Before she could try to answer that well posed question, a seemingly larger version of Lee positioned himself between Naruto and Tenten, giving Naruto a smile that much like Lee seemed to shine… which was funny because there was no sunlight peeking through the cloudy skies of Tetsu no Kuni, "I see that you're familiar with my splendid team of genin students!"

Naruto wasn't really listening however, instead opting to stare at the eyebrows that were on the man's face, 'Holy crap what the hell do you have to eat to get eyebrows like that? Someone needs to tell me so I can stay away from it!' He was so engrossed in wondering how both Lee and this random sensei of theirs both had massive eyebrows that he didn't pay attention to what the man was saying, only noticing when he stopped talking, prompting him to try a response, "Uh, yeah sure whatever you say."

"Excellent!" The man said, scaring Naruto into standing up straight, "I Maito Gai will be eagerly awaiting to see how you measure up to my youthful team Naruto-kun!"

Lee stepped in front of Gai, tears streaming down his face, "Oh Gai-sensei you're a shining example of just what a true shinobi should be!"

"Oh Lee you make me so proud to be your sensei!" Gai responded, crying just as heavily.

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

"Lee!"

"Gai-sensei!"

Tenten's eyes widened as she seemed to know just what was about to happen. With the knowledge in her head she ran up to Naruto and began shoving him away as fast as she could, "Go, go, go, go, go!" She said frantically, "Go and for the love of Kami do not look back this way!" She said, giving him a boot in the rear to make sure he kept walking, "We can talk later!" She said in closing to the very confused but obedient Naruto.

It was a good thing he followed Tenten's instructions to the letter, and whether he knew it or not he owed her a thank you, otherwise he would have found himself staring at a rocky sunset-clad beach with crashing waves as the two shinobi that were strong in the way of the eyebrow hugged it out on shore. He didn't need something like that poisoning his mind before he was to compete.

By now Tenten had been numbed to the staggering effect that this event would have on people, as did her teammate who walked up to her while the other teams who had seen Gai and Lee begin to hug it out found themselves frozen in place with their eyes affixed to it, "I don't see why you keep associating yourself with that loser Tenten."

'Here we go again…' Tenten thought to herself. She liked her team despite their quirks, but Neji's little habit of looking down on others was rather annoying. It was pretty hard to be friends with other genin when Neji would tear into them with his sliver tongue if he didn't think they were worthy of his station, "Neji there's nothing wrong with him. What's your problem?"

"He's a failure…" Neji said as if it were a fact of life, "You don't need a hanger-on like him, you're better than that. He'll merely drag you down, and that will drag the team down as well." He said as he turned his attention back on the path ahead of them, leaving her with one more comment, "We can't afford to help along weaker people that are 'friends'. This is a competition."

As much as she tried to get him to lighten up it was pretty obvious by now after over a year on her team that this was just the way Neji was. No amount of her chiding him on his lack of people skills was going to change anything about him. It didn't give him the right to be a dick to people that were friends of hers though…

Meanwhile with Naruto, he wandered his way back to his team and fell into line as the sight of the village that they would be residing in for the duration of the exams came into view. A trio of mountains that towered over the others in the area seemed to be their destination, with the three separate mountains looking like large open mouths with large sharp teeth. Asuma saw Naruto looking and explained to him, "The Three Wolves, the famous mountains of Tetsu no Kuni. Our destination…"

XxX

The site of the chunin exams looked to be in a village comparable in size to any hidden village. Most of the buildings were grey in color though they varied in size. They all shared the same stone construct though, and the same snow covering.

As they entered the snow covered village that they would stay in for the duration of the chunin exams, the Konoha contingent came to a grinding halt upon finding about fifty samurai in their imposing plate armor and heavy helmets with masks blocking their way.

A single one of them, the only one not wearing a helmet, came forward towards the shinobi. He was of advanced age, had long grey hair and bandages wrapped around the top of his head to go with a grey goatee and mustache, "I am Mifune. I would like to welcome you visitors from Konohagakure no Sato to Tetsu no Kuni, and I would just like to warn you of the repercussions of acting out of order in our lands. We will be watching you as we will be watching all of the other villages here to represent themselves."

Taking initiative and surprising the genin on Team 7 and 10, Kakashi walked forward to Mifune respectfully, "We understand, and you have nothing to worry about as far as the shinobi from our village are concerned."

Mifune nodded, "Do not take my words as overtly threateningly. It's the same warning that all of the others have received as well. If we were that worried about things we wouldn't have allowed your chunin exams to take place here." Mifune bowed slightly and moved back towards his line of samurai, at which time they separated and cleared the way for the Konoha crowd to pass through, "We will escort you to the hotel that you are to be stationed in. I hope there are no issues with you inhabiting the same hotel as Suna ninja, since you are both allies I figured it would be for the best."

All of the jounin seemed to be fine with this arrangement. Konoha had heat with Kumo and Iwa, one because of war another because of mistrust and treachery that was still fresh in the minds of many.

As they began moving through the village towards their hotel even the people seemed to reflect their environment. They didn't seem to be in awe of the foreigners coming through their town, nor did they seem to care too much. This place really was the correct venue for an impartial exam, favorites weren't even being picked by the people.

Observant of her surrounding as she tried to take in anything she could that might be useful, Sakura spoke up with a frown on her face as the teams kept walking, "This place doesn't look very fun."

Kakashi responded to her, "I don't think you'll be having very much time for fun Sakura, the exams begin tomorrow. You'll need to be ready as if you were preparing for a mission, but that shouldn't be any problem, you all have your packs with you anyway."

Sasuke smirked, sharing roughly the same sentiment as Naruto did about the exams, "What'll be _fun_ is passing these exams. We've got this in the bag." He looked over at Chouji who looked at him and nodded confidently, "We'll beat everybody in this thing."

"Don't be so eager to fight Sasuke." Kakashi chided half-heartedly, "If you go in with that kind of mindset you'll be putting yourself at risk. This isn't to show who's the best fighter, it's to see who has the ability to handle all the responsibilities that come with the title of chunin." Sasuke's good mood vanished as his face took on the same usual stone look, he nodded to Kakashi to show that he understood.

XxX

The Konoha group all got themselves checked into the hotel set for them. Some teams were taking time to relax after the long trip, others were working out last minute plans and the like. Anything that they could do with the resources provided to them since none of the jounin sensei were telling the genin about what they would have to do during the exams.

The incredible lack of any possible competitors out on the streets of the host town showed that everyone was taking the samurai warning not to cause trouble very seriously by keeping their genin inside until exam time since everyone knew that things wouldn't stay cordial for long with genin from every village there. If fireworks were going to happen it would best be served to keep things as low-key as could be expected until tomorrow.

"Tomorrow you all will head to the main meeting building in the village to begin the exams." Asuma instructed his team from their hotel room. He was sitting on one bed next to Shikamaru while Naruto was sitting on the other one next to Ino. Asuma saw Naruto raise his hand and rolled his eyes, "Yeah Naruto?"

Naruto grinned and asked his question, "You're talking about that huge building that looks like a huge pyramid made of boxes?" Asuma palmed his face at Naruto's description of the building in question, "That's the building he's talking about." Naruto said to Shikamaru and Ino with a firm nod, confident that he knew what was the intended point of meeting.

"Yes Naruto…" Asuma said with a sigh, "The huge building that looks like a pyramid made of boxes. You guys have to be there by 9 am to begin the tests so good luck."

"Wait that's it?" Shikamaru said incredulously, "No last minute warning? No briefing us on what we're doing? Not even any hints or words of advice to help us out on this one?" He really didn't believe that they were supposed to go in half-cocked like this and get through everything. Were all the chunin exams supposed to be like this?

Asuma shook his head, "It just so happens that I happen to have _none_ of that for you. Your guess is as good as mine as to what the actual exams are going to be like. You've just got to be ready for anything and deal with it accordingly. If it makes you feel any better everyone's in the exact same boat that you are."

Ino let out a sigh as she pulled her legs to her chest on one of the beds, "We're not coming back to this room again are we?" She asked before thinking of something else, "What will you be doing the whole time while we're gone?"

Asuma pointed to himself, getting nods from all of his genin, "Well that's easy. I'll be sleeping, smoking, betting with the other jounin sensei on you guys when I can, and just doing nothing of any real importance really."

"-And trying to hit on Kurenai-sensei." Ino finished for him with a smirk on her face, getting a glare from Asuma in return, "Look me in the eyes and tell me that you aren't going to. I'll call you a liar right to your face sensei."

Asuma grumbled before turning back to Naruto, "Are you adequately prepared for winter conditions now Naruto?"

"Yep!" Naruto exclaimed happily before hugging himself, "I'm wearing so much stuff under this windbreaker and this blue sweatshirt, I could stand outside all night if I had to." He then switched to a stern glare, "If you make me go outside to test that I will destroy your life when we get home Asuma-sensei."

"How could you possibly do that?" Asuma said with a lazy yet amused look on his face.

Naruto pointed at his own head, "My mind is scary."

"Yes it is Goldie-kun." Ino said in something of a baby voice, grabbing Naruto in a hug around his neck as she rubbed her cheek against him, "It's very scary, but we still love you anyway. It's hard to think of the team without you." Man, there had to be something wrong with her, because making Naruto blush was turning into something of a pastime for her. After four months he still hadn't gotten used to it yet, it was kind of endearing.

'Really?' Naruto thought, almost in disbelief. Naruto wasn't the kind of guy to throw around the word love even though he knew it was totally platonic. He didn't doubt that Ino cared to an extent or else she probably wouldn't hug on him the way that she did... not that he minded her hugs too terribly by the way, what did he look like? Still, no one had ever even said that to him meaning it that way before. It honestly meant a lot to him, 'Maybe these guys won't care too much about me having the Kyuubi in me. I think... maybe I should tell them later, after we're done with all of the chunin exam stuff.' He thought with a smile on his face.

Shikamaru shook his head with no shortage of amusement on his face, "As troublesome as Ino just made it sound she has a point. As loathe as I am to be here I really don't feel like getting beat up or killed. Good thing we're supposed to be at the top of our game huh?"

Asuma stood up and made to leave the room with a smile on his face, "Get your stuff together for tomorrow. I'll just be in the room that's provided for _me_ being the famous powerful jounin." He felt Ino glaring at him because she had to share a room with two boys while Asuma apparently got his own, not that he cared. As long as she stayed out of his head with that jutsu of hers he was fine.

Ino switched off her glare with a sigh as Asuma left the room, "Oh well…" She said before returning her attention to squeezing the uncomfortable genin she still had her arms wrapped around, "At least I get my blonde teddy bear for the night." And with that she had to hold back a laugh as a red-faced Naruto began to try and struggle to escape her grasp.

"Couch… couch! I'll take the couch!" Naruto exclaimed in vain, with Ino seemingly having an iron grip on him from behind. If Jiraiya was there at the moment he would probably be giving him a thumbs up, as a matter of fact Naruto was absolutely sure he would be after the run-ins with the man he had been having all week, "Shikamaru make her let go!"

Shikamaru stared at him for a moment before blinking and laying down in his bed, turning his body away from Naruto and Ino, "Nah, I need my chakra for tomorrow. I'm not a walking battery like you are, you'll be fine."

"Ino let go!" Naruto shouted as he tried to wriggle free. And if Jiraiya had seen him trying to actually get out of Ino's grasp he probably would have kicked him for it. Why did she like messing with him so much?

Ino's eyes quivered with false crocodile tears, "Goldie-kun doesn't want to spend the night with his Ino-chan?" Damn it, such a painfully pretty face should not cry, even if it was faked in order to get him to cave into something, "I thought we had something special."

So easily flustered… how could Ino pass up such a target? And besides, despite having everything as ready as they could make things she had nerves about tomorrow's exam. It was just some harmless messing around, she would only have so much longer to find it effective before Naruto became immune to her playing with him… and admittedly she would miss it, because with Sasuke it was like throwing yourself at a brick wall. At least Naruto responded, and it let her know that she was rather pretty to get something like that from him. She'd never say it out loud but it was nice.

But she just had to break him out of that being so timid thing. Stuff like this had happened hundreds of times already, one would think he'd be used to it by now. At least his face wasn't so red anymore, but he was still struggling, "Ino we should be resting for tomorrow." He said lamely. Man even he knew how much that excuse sucked. Since when did he have to rest for anything?

"And we will rest." She replied falling backwards with him still in her grasp, making him lay down as well "You're going to rest right here with me. Consider it training." She caught his disbelieving look and with a huff blew a bang out of her own face, "What exactly are you going to do if an enemy kunoichi pulls this kind of stuff on you Naruto? It's for your own good you know. You've got no bluster when it comes to girls."

"Whatever…" Naruto grumbled, "I do too. Trust me, hanging out with Jiraiya-sensei for most of the week was… well I don't think I can repeat it out loud. And hearing what you wish Sasuke would do to show you how much he really loved you…" After saying that, Naruto had to block a dry heave. As if Sasuke would ever say any of the stuff Ino thought about regularly, "I think I have a general idea. Besides Ino, it's just you. No one else could make me even flinch." He finished confidently, although that confidence broke to confusion when Ino seemed to hug him against her tighter.

"Oh I knew you loved your Ino-chan! Does Goldie-kun want a kiss for being such a sweetie?" Ino's teasing came back full force once again, big doe eyes and all.

"Ye-. I mean no! No! Now let go!" Naruto cried out, wishing he could reach his hands to form his Kage Bunshin hand-seal. Maybe some extra manpower would get him free.

Shikamaru rolled over in his bed and rubbed his eyes, "Both of you pipe down. I'm trying to get some shuteye over here." He complained, yet he didn't lift a finger to assist Naruto and end things there. Nara Shikamaru; a walking… well, a sleeping contradiction.

XxX

(The Next Day – Assembly Hall)

Shikamaru let out a massive yawn as he and his team walked into the massive building intended to test their capabilities, "Why'd you wake us up so early Naruto? Asuma said we didn't have to be here until 9."

Naruto looked over at the lazy genin with a twitching eyebrow, "It's 8:30…"

"Exactly." Shikamaru said, taking in the grand looks of the hall they had just walked into. Many pillars and the place looked like it was made of marble. And then his eyes locked onto all of the others that were already there as well as them, "Oh hell…"

Ino just blinked at the pure sight of all of the humanity in the room, "Um… headcount?"

"Good luck with that." Naruto said, having stopped trying to count all of the people that were just standing around in the massive front room of the main building of the village, "I don't even count my own clones, do you really think I'm about to stand back and count all of these people out." He let out a short chuckle, "It doesn't matter because they're all going down anyway."

Ino frantically shushed him, noticing that quite a few eyes cut towards them when Naruto said his last sentence, "Are you trying to get them to kill us before this thing even starts Naruto?" Her eyes panned over the room. The insignia of Konoha on the headbands were only a small amount of what she saw, "Kumo, Iwa, Kiri, Suna, and there are villages I can't recall out for the exams too."

Naruto nodded sagely as he took in the information from Ino, "More victims…" He was then rapped hard enough to snap his head down, "Ow."

Naruto was saved from Ino's verbal wrath by the arrival of another fellow rookie team, "Man this is a big-ass room. And look at all of these people!" Team 10 turned around to see Team 8 heading right for them as they hadn't gone far into the room before they had initially come to a stop. Kiba and Akamaru looked more excited than ever to be there, "Check it out Akamaru, victims from all over the world…" He then noticed Team 10 standing in front of them, putting a smirk on his face, "And from home too." From within Kiba's jacket Akamaru yapped.

Before Naruto could loudly begin an argument with Kiba, a calmer voice broke into the scene, "Kiba took the words right out of my mouth." And with a turn of their heads, both rookie Konoha teams turned to see Team 7 led by Sasuke walk up to them.

Shikamaru turned his eyes toward Ino and prepared to plug his ears to stave off the squeal of 'Sasuke-kun!' from his female teammate, but for some reason that never came to pass. Something that seemed to confuse Sakura too as she had been prepared to come to her Sasuke's defense from the blonde harpy that used to be her closest friend, putting her off slightly when nothing happened.

Sasuke looked over at Naruto and let off a smirk similar to the one from Kiba, "Looking forward to beating you up again dobe."

Naruto would have felt put off by that if he had indeed lost to Sasuke in Nami no Kuni, but because he knew he had done a magnificent job, light-years ahead of how he would have done when he was still in the Academy. As far as he was concerned he had won that little fight, and he had only gotten better since then, "Looking forward to marking the bottom of my shoes into your face again teme." He said with a grin.

Ino slapped Naruto on the arm and put her hands on her hips, "What did I tell you about provoking people? Don't pick fights for no good reason, that's not the smartest thing to do Naruto."

Naruto grumbled and crossed his arms, turning away from Sasuke, "Fine whatever. You're way bossier of a twin than I thought you'd be, you know that?" He said, harking back to when he called her his blonde twin as a joke, getting him another playful knock in the arm.

XxX

Over in a certain part of the room there stood a team from Suna consisting of an older girl with her hair in four spiky pigtails and a light purple garment that extended to her knees and cut low around her shoulders revealing the mesh clothing she wore underneath, an older boy wearing a black bodysuit and a hood that looked like it gave him cat ears to go with the face paint he had on as well, and the last member was a boy that looked to be around the age of the Konoha genin. He had messy red hair, dark circles around his eyes, a red kanji for love on his head, and wore a black bodysuit with short sleeves, a white cloth over his right shoulder, a leather band over his left shoulder that had a large gourd over his back that also had his headband tied to it, and black pants.

The boy with face paint glared over at the Konoha rookies, wanting to spit on the ground in front of them, "Stupid brats… they're just wasting space. All they're going to do is help someone else along that doesn't deserve to be here."

"Calm down Kankuro…" The girl with pigtails said, "Don't get Gaara agitated with your complaining." She said, shooting a quick look at the smallest member of their team, "We'll just have to walk all over them when the time comes won't we? There aren't any treaties to uphold in these exams."

"Kankuro… Temari…" The smallest of them said, his eyes not looking anywhere interesting in particular, "Be quiet."

Kankuro held back a gulp and nodded, "You've got it Gaara."

XxX

In a separate area leaning against one of the great white pillars there was also another team glaring at the new genin of Konoha, but for abjectly different reasons than the team from Sunagakure. This team was from Iwagakure instead.

"Look at those tree hugging bastards…" One of the Iwa genin said. He had a black fauxhawk and wore red overalls with a grey shirt underneath, "They think a bunch of babyfaced runts of theirs can take on experienced genin? Especially a hardened team of Iwagakure's?"

Another one of them, a genin with a shaved head and a long brown poncho who also wore long black gloves, noticed something else of substance about the Konoha rookies, most notably a few members of Team 10. Something that made his blood boil at the sight of it, "Look at that punk in the orange Masaru, you too Jun. Who does he look like?"

The third member of the squad, Jun, was wearing a red long-sleeved shirt with the Iwa insignia on it along with brown pants. He squinted and looked at Naruto and went wide-eyed, "Whoa he looks just like that Namikaze guy… and that girl has blonde hair and blue eyes too…" A smirk crossed his face as he looked towards the second Iwa genin that seemed to be seething at the sight of Naruto, "So are we going after them Hisashi?"

"The very first chance we get…" Hisashi muttered lowly, his eyes never leaving Naruto's person, 'The guy looks like he jumped right off the page of a textbook. He looks like a chibified version of Namikaze Minato, Iwagakure's most infamous butcher.' The boy thought at his fists shook out of sight, "Go tell the others…" He finally said to his teammates who went off to correspond with the other Iwa genin in the area.

XxX

By now the more alert Konoha rookies like Shino and Shikamaru were well aware of the fact that they were being given a wide berth away from the other participants. Every eye in the room was directly on them because they were the youngest and looked to be the easiest pickings due to inexperience. By this time Sakura had realized that they were being sized up as well by generally everyone there, something that shook her up a bit, "What's with the death stares?" She asked to no one in particular in their little group.

Naruto noticed what she was referring to, and while he wasn't scared or shaken up it was honestly starting to piss him off. Still it was better than the other stares he got on and off when he was at home. At least these were saying, 'We know you exist and are confirming that you do by trying to punk you out.' With a confident grin he turned to the pink haired kunoichi, "Don't worry about them Sakura. They're just scared or jealous or something. A friend of mine named Shiho told me we were the first rookies to be in these exams in five years."

Sakura blinked once she received that information, "Wow, really? That's actually pretty cool now that I think about it. And Kakashi-sensei thinks we're ready for this?" That was something of a confidence booster.

"Heh." Kiba smirked, "Naruto's right. These chumps are all just trying to get into our heads." Akamaru yapped from his place in Kiba's jacket excitedly.

XxX

A boy with spiky black hair wearing a snake patterned scarf around his neck, a yellow shirt with the kanji for death on it, snake patterned pants, and a headband a faceguard under the cloth scoffed at the sight of the kids that everyone seemed to be paying attention to, "Konoha must really be high on these punks to let them in on this one. They might just get themselves embarrassed or killed out here."

"Whatever happens happens Zaku." A girl with very long black hair said. She also had a snake patterned scarf, a pale green vest, and snake patterned pants, "What do you think Dosu?" She asked the third member of their team.

'Dosu' had bandages covering most of his head, leaving his left eye visible. He also had a snake patterned scarf and pants, but he also wore a poncho with long sleeves and a straw raincoat. He had a hunched appearance, "I think we should all focus Kin. There's no need to worry about the runts, they'll just get themselves put out of this anyway. See to it that none of us wind up in the same predicament."

XxX

"Man you kids sure know how to attract attention."

All nine of the rookies turned to see a young man with silver hair in a ponytail coming towards them. He wore a purple sleeveless shirt over a grey undershirt and purple pants with a white obi around his waist. The Konoha headband on his head diffused what might have ended up being a tense moment, "I know that it's probably your first time this far from home doing something like this, but you guys should know how to keep a low-profile."

Ino bristled at his remark, as if they were babies or something, "Well who the hell are you anyway and why do you even care?"

The newcomer let out a chuckle and held his hands up in a defensive placating gesture, "My name is Yakushi Kabuto, an ally from Konoha. And you could say that I'm here because it would hurt my conscience if I didn't try to help the cute little rookies from my village along."

"That's great!" Sakura said, happy that not everyone seemed to be out for their throats the way it had seemed when they walked in, "Someone actually doesn't want us to drop dead."

"Wait…" Naruto said giving Kabuto a squint-eyed look, "This whole thing is a big competition, so how are you just going to walk over here and say that you want to help us when no one else does? Where's your team even at anyway?" He could be trying to sabotage them, or maybe slip them some sucky information, or maybe he _did_ want to help them because he thought they would be pushovers, easy to get rid of later in the exams when things got harder… or maybe Naruto was overthinking this whole thing… or underthinking it. Oh, he didn't know, 'Man, being suspicious makes me jumpy…'

Shikamaru could see the gambit of thoughts running across Naruto's face and probably would have let out a chuckle if he wasn't completely right to be thinking that way. Shino felt much the same, without the chuckling part, 'Troublesome. Who goes up to other teams in front of everyone and starts talking like we're old friends? He's going to turn the whole damn room against us more than they already are.'

'Maybe we should test him?'

Whether they knew it or not, Naruto and Shikamaru thought the exact same thing.

Naruto walked up to Kabuto as he was talking to the others about how this was his seventh time taking the exams and tapped him on the shoulder giving the older genin a big wide grin to play off his own suspicion, "So since we're supposed be allies and everything is there anything you've got for us? Anything interesting to tell us?"

Kabuto smiled at Naruto as he pulled out a deck of cards, "Well I do have these…"

Naruto just looked at him with a confused squinty-eyed glance, "Are we really going to gamble before we start this test? I mean I'm all for it, but that's keeping it a little too loose isn't it?" He then noticed Kabuto stare at him with a twitching eye, "What?"

"These are Ninja Info Cards." Kabuto said, getting his composure back, "I have all kinds of things stored onto these cards. Information on the villages along with climate and terrain-."

Naruto rolled his eyes at hearing that, 'Yeah, because by now we all don't know the fucking terrain.' He thought sarcastically, 'It's fucking cold and there's snow and ice everywhere! It's wildery as fuck in this country!'

"-I even have information on you guys too…" Kabuto finished with a smirk.

'Gotcha.' Shikamaru thought, narrowing his eyes on Kabuto's form.

'Gotcha bitch.' Naruto thought himself, 'I wonder what kind of stuff he has.'

"Like what kind of information on us?" Kiba asked. Was it anything that everybody didn't already know? Because most of them were from clans, so an astute ninja knew of them already, especially since they were from the same village as the guy who seemed to have it all.

Kabuto kneeled down and placed a blank card face down using his fingers to channel chakra into it, "How about a little something on our blonde friend here?" He turned the card over and began to read, "Uzumaki Naruto. Age 12. Teammates are Yamanaka Ino and Nara Shikamaru. He has completed 17 missions: 15 D-rank, 2 C-rank, 0 B-rank, and one mission under A-rank that was upgraded from a C-rank. Very skilled at ninjutsu, very good at taijutsu, he's a good little rookie." He finished with a smirk that got a growl out of Naruto, "Anyone in particular that you're interested in?"

Naruto blinked and looked out at the crowd of amassed genin, "Yeah actually. What can you tell me about a guy named Hyuuga Neji?" He noticed Hinata let out a gasp but before he could look too much into that, Kabuto got to work.

Kabuto let out a low whistle, "Even for a showing of each village's best and brightest, someone's shooting high around here." He said as he channeled his chakra into another card, "Hyuuga Neji. Age 13. Teammates are Tenten and Rock Lee. He's completed 34 missions: 26 D-rank, 6 C-rank, 1 B-rank, 1 A-rank, and 0 S-rank. Immense skill with taijutsu which shouldn't be a surprise considering how he's heralded as a genius of the Hyuuga Clan. The best talent to emerge from their ranks in quite some time. He was the Rookie of the Year of last year's graduating class."

Sasuke smirked at hearing how there was someone else that many thought to be a genius, "Sounds like a good fight." He looked over at Naruto, "What dobe, are you making a habit out of trying to beat geniuses or something?"

Glaring at the card of Neji, Naruto let out a humorless chuckle, "Yeah I'm trying to go for a complete set, I've got one hell of an axe to grind. I'm not stopping until I personally beat the piss out of every single Rookie of the Year in this test." With that he turned to the large crowd of genin, "Is there anyone in here that's called some kind of genius of their village or Rookie of the Year for their grad class?" He shouted out to the people.

The amassed genin were confused at first until they realized he was actually waiting for an answer. A few hands went up here or there, some people pointing them out all over, and Naruto counted them out, "-Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four… Forty-five of you." He said to himself before nodding, "Okay, chances are I'm going to wind up kicking all of your asses before this test is over with, dattebayo! Uzumaki Naruto, remember the name!"

The sound of Ino and Shikamaru facepalming went up through the silence of the room.

XxX

"Omoi stop pointing at Samui already." A dark skinned girl with long red hair and amber eyes said irritably. She had a Kumo headband with a white cloth worn in the style of a bandanna on her head and wore a long grey dress with short sleeves. On her back she carried a rather large katana with a white handle, "That kid is obviously off his rocker."

Omoi, a boy with short white hair wearing a hooded sweatshirt and dark pants frowned as he stuck a sucker into his mouth and shifted around his own katana, also with a white handle, on his back, "But Karui what if that guy is a proctor out here to give byes to the next part of the exam for teams with a Rookie of the Year on them?" He then gasped silently, "Or what if he's eliminating teams with a Rookie of the Year on them? Shit." He pointed over to the third member of the team, "This is all your fault Samui."

"Idiot!" Karui said as she hit Omoi over the head, "That's completely asinine!"

Samui, a girl with neck length blonde hair and sharp blue eyes simply looked over at Naruto who was done with his little outburst. She wore a low-cut grey blouse that did very little to hide her impressive bust for a girl her age, a short skirt in a darker shade of grey, and high heeled boots. Horizontally on her lower back she had a tanto strapped to her person, "You two are seriously going to argue over something a blowhard kid said? That's really not cool." She said calmly, 'Still that name Uzumaki seems very familiar for some reason…'

XxX

For a few more minutes the teams were all in glorified stand-off mode until the massive set of doors at the farthest end of the room opened up wide enough for a person to walk through. A tall dark-skinned man with shaggy white hair and a laid-back look on his face walked into the main meeting room. He wore a high-collar sleeveless black zip up shirt and black pants with a Kumogakure white flak jacket. On his right and left shoulders he had tattoos of the kanji symbols for water and lightning.

The man stopped in his tracks and looked over the room full of international genin, "There are now 158 teams comprising 474 genin. Sixty-three from Konoha, 66 from Iwa, 48 from Kiri, 102 from Kumo, 51 from Suna, and the rest of you know how many of you there are here. Sorry guys I'll just get to the point." He gestured to the hall that they were in, "Welcome to the chunin exams. This is your shot."

"Trying to inspire the brats Darui-san?" A gruff voice said as heavy footsteps rang out. Through the open doorway a large imposing man with a Konoha headband in a full bandana style on top of his head walked out. He wore a black uniform underneath an open black trench coat that he currently had his pockets in, "Alright punks shut up and listen! As I've just said my colleague from Kumo is named Darui, I am Morino Ibiki… and as of now I own you all until this test is complete." He and Darui looked at each other before nodding and turning on their heels to head through the doors, "Get off of your useless asses and follow us." Ibiki ordered.

Darui shook his head at his fellow lead proctor's rashness, "Stay with your teams and prepare to get into lines as you come through the door." He informed the genin. Thus they did as instructed and stood side-by-side with their teammates as they walked through the doors that had been opened wider to accommodate the coming crowd.

As the teams entered through the doors they found themselves standing in a very long corridor with multiple doors lining the walls on both sides, each with a number pinned to it and with chunin of multiple nationalities standing guard in front, one for each door, "This is the first test." Darui said as he began to calmly explain how things were going to work for the first exam, "It's easy, but it's going to suck for one person on each team. Sorry." This gave ways to looks of confusion on many faces, "You will all be given a password that will open the door to your room from the outside by way of the proctors standing out front. Two of each team will be posted in the room while the third member will be in the room across the way."

Ibiki gave the genin a manic smirk that unnerved many of them, "It's so good that there are an even number of teams. It means that no one gets a bye. The member that is alone in the room with another team's pair will be bound in some way keeping them from escaping. From there the team that has the hostage will proceed to… 'coax' the password to the room that has their own teammate trapped across the way." His smirk turned into a full-blown grin, "The only restraints on getting this information are that you cannot kill or maim your hostage. No permanent damage can be done. You have 45 minutes to get the password needed to free your teammate. If you fail to free your teammate in the allotted time, if your lone teammate cracks under whatever pressure he's put under before he is freed, if you lose your hostage then you fail the exam. This way the numbers will be immediately cut in half… at least."

"What?"

"That's not fair?"

Ibiki sneered at the simpering protests, "The ninja world isn't fair. If you haven't realized that yet then you obviously aren't ready to be promoted. If you choose to refrain from taking part then you are automatically giving the team you are assigned across from a free pass to the next round." He turned with his trench coat flowing dramatically, "The choice is yours in the end."

Darui shrugged and tried to follow up, "The entire team has to take part… and I know that it sucks, but it'd be dull for you to come all this way and cop out without even trying just because you're scared."

Shikamaru was sweating as were Ino and Naruto, 'Troublesome… why didn't he just come out with it and say that the one team member separated from the others will be getting tortured? It's so not my day today.' His train of thought stopped as he and his team were handed a plain closed scroll per person. They all opened their scrolls and got their room number and password from the scroll.

Naruto looked at his scroll and nodded before shutting it and patting Shikamaru on the back, "Well I'll see you guys in a few." He said as he immediately marched to the room directly across from the one they were assigned.

"Wait!" Ino shouted, moving in front of him before he could get there and get tied up by the other team, "Why are you the one that has to go? Send Shikamaru instead!"

Shikamaru paled before glaring at Ino, "Why don't we just send you?"

Ino looked over at the team of all male Suna ninja giving her creepy looks that made her skin crawl, "Um… no?"

"Exactly." Naruto said with a dry look on his face, "What's the worst that can happen? They mess me up for a good thirty minutes until you guys get the password out of the guy they send. I can do that." He waved it off and rubbed the space between his nose and mouth absently, "I'll heal from whatever they do in like ten minutes anyway won't I?"

Shikamaru sighed, 'I guess that just means that me and Ino will have to work double-time to get him out… alright Naruto. I don't like it but whatever.' He finally decided that it was the best course of action. As shitty as the ultimatum was, someone had to go and Naruto was volunteering. It wasn't like they had a better option anyway.

Darui waited next to Ibiki for ten minutes and allowed the genin to work out who was going. There were still arguments going on, teams were falling apart all over the corridor over who would be sent as the hostage. Others looked prepared, albeit grim… but they looked ready to go.

Ibiki then looked at the door that had Team 10 in front of it looking at the Suna team across the hall that they would be swapping hostages with. Shikamaru and Ino looked deadly serious, but Naruto was just stretching out as if he was about to exercise, not a hint of apprehension on his face, 'That kid's either got a poker face that could clean a casino out or he's got no nerves at all… or he's crazy.'

Darui sighed and called out in the hall with a massive echo in his voice, "Hostage swap now!"

Naruto gave one last confident look to his team before walking across the hall, an older Suna genin taking his place as Ino quickly bound his hands and feet as the guided him into their intended room. Before shutting the door, Ino looked back at Naruto who had been tied up, only with his hands tied behind his back, and had been led into the room, turning to give her one last wink to assure her he'd be fine.

"The moment these doors close you have 45 minutes to extract the information you need!" Ibiki bellowed to everyone competing, "Remember your rules and parameters! And may Kami help you…"

With that the doors closed and the first test began. Ibiki looked over at Darui who was rubbing his temple, "What's the matter?"

"Kind of a messed up test isn't it?" Darui responded.

Ibiki chuckled, "Yeah, it's great isn't it?" His chuckles grew to full laughter after a moment, "Did you see the looks on a few of their faces? What's the over-under for the first person to quit? I give the first one 5 minutes."

Darui took a step away from Ibiki and the proctors guarding the rooms all shivered at the intimidating Konoha ninja's amused laughter.

XxX

(With Naruto)

Hanging off of the ground by his hands which were bound behind his back, Naruto had to admit that this was a pretty uncomfortable position to be hung off of the ground in… for people that didn't have his stamina, because he could just hold himself up in a position that didn't feel like he was tearing his arms out of the sockets. He wondered how long he could hold it for. Sure as hell not 45 minutes with his life not on the line.

The room was bare with white walls, the only thing there was a sturdy wooden chair. That was probably what he was meant to be initially bound to, but his captors decided to waste five minutes being creative by turning him into a party favor. And the sounds of thuds from other rooms could be heard… probably someone getting physical with their torture.

Speaking of physical torture…

"Oof!" Naruto let out another short grunt of pain as another fist bounced off of his face and had him swing around like a piñata.

"What's the password?" The Suna genin standing off to the side asked calmly as his partner administered the beating to Naruto. Why not? Bruises, cuts, and busted bones weren't permanent.

Naruto's stinging cheek wasn't even inconvenient yet. His clones hit harder than this, "Your mom." A timeless classic witty response. Unfortunately, this answer resulted in Naruto taking the blunt metal ring of a kunai bouncing off of his dome. This split him open over the eye, "Ah, bastard!"

The one that hit Naruto looked at his teammate who was giving him a distasteful look, "What? It's just a little wound. How's that permanent damage?"

"Why don't you tell us the password?" The Suna genin standing off to the side suggested again.

"I don't know." Naruto said, shutting his right eye so that his blood didn't drip into it directly and irritate it, "I wasn't paying attention."

Both Suna genin's jaws dropped at hearing that admission, "Why the fuck weren't you paying attention?" One of them snapped, "Are you just going to let us kick the shit out of you the entire time?"

"Well that's a good question." Naruto said, smirking. One thing he had learned from Jiraiya over the course of one week was how to piss other people off by just talking… even though he was pretty good at that in the first place. It's just that this week expanded his lexis of insults and slurs, "I was sidetracked… You see the thing is your mom, and I'm sure you've heard this, gives the best fucking blowjobs, and she's waiting in my team's hotel room… and I was just so excited to just get back there and get some of that, I completely spaced out on the whole password thing. I mean your mom is an absolute pro."

The two Suna genin just stared at Naruto in complete shock. This kid was five years younger than them, tied up, and with the largest satisfied smirk on his face that they could have ever thought possible for the situation he was in. And then he took it to a whole other level when he opened his mouth and poked the inside one of his cheeks repeatedly while rolling his eyes. The only thing that would have made it worse would have been if his hands were free so that he could make the hand gesture to go with his facial gesture.

Smart? Hell no, he was tied up and his hands were put in a position where he couldn't make a single hand-seal to save his life.

Was it satisfying to see their faces turn red since he never specified which one of their moms he was referencing?

Yes. Yes it was. And it stayed satisfying right up until the sturdy wooden chair ended up getting acquainted with his head.

CRACK

'It's only been 15 minutes…' Naruto thought as his head started swimming after the first shot. Was this his first concussion?

CRACK

Well if it was then why half-ass it? Go all the way with it, "That chair's really sturdy… Maybe I should sit in it while your mom is-."

CRACK

Thanks Jiraiya.

XxX

(With Ino and Shikamaru)

"Password please?" Shikamaru asked lazily as he stood up, looking at the Suna genin they were intent on getting the information from.

"Fuck you!" He spat back. He was not tied up. He wasn't bound by anything at all… unless one takes Shikamaru's shadow into account. Also, he was holding a kunai in his hand. That's very important for the chain of events currently taking place.

"Your choice, but I wanted to avoid this part." Shikamaru said as he raised a hammer fist high above his head, forcing the prisoner to do the same, "Last chance." Despite the sweat beading the Suna genin's head in trepidation he didn't waver.

Shikamaru shrugged and brought his arm down as dead weight directly towards his own testicles, stopping short just an inch away… just enough distance for say the ring of a kunai to fill the space with.

"Gah!" Tears sprang to the Suna genin's eyes, "No! No more! Not again!" He said as he saw Shikamaru stretch his legs further apart forcing him to do the same, "No! Ahh!" And then Shikamaru did a deep squat… forcing him to do the same. Needless to say, after 15 minutes of this it was a testament to his endurance that he was still going.

"There you go." Shikamaru said in a bored voice, still holding the position to torment him more.

Ino sat in the chair provided to them tapping her foot impatiently and stood up angrily, stomping over to the Suna genin as she fished through her pouch, "Listen up asshole…" She pulled out a single senbon and placed it near his junk, "This is a powerful paralysis serum." She then proceeded to stab him in the groin area with it, "Enjoy."

"No permanent damage allowed!" The genin cried out as he could feel it taking place, "This is illegal!"

"Can't prove I did anything." Ino said with a smirk, "You still have everything, and for all anyone else knows you were always impotent." She stood back and crossed her arms, "But I _do _have the antidote. Because even if we fail you'll never get it up again."

With that, his eyes widened, "The password is Naruto!"

Ino and Shikamaru's faces both registered shock. So much so that Shikamaru dropped his jutsu, enabling the Suna genin to finally fully collapse to the floor in a twitching heap, "Bullshit." Shikamaru uttered, not believing that for a moment.

"It's true!" The Suna genin cried out, rocking back and forth from his side on the floor as he held his goods, "Now what about the antidote?" He asked hysterically.

"It'll wear off in a few hours, there is no antidote." Ino said snappishly as she walked outside, rather angry, "That's some kind of messed up joke! After all that, and all we had to do was say Goldie-kun's actual name to get him out? What the fuck?" She marched up to the proctor guarding the door, forcing him to back up at how angry she seemed, "Naruto." She said simply.

"You pass." The chunin proctor said in response as he turned to unlock and open the door up, "Whoa…" He said once he opened the door.

Ino looked inside and had to blink at what she saw, "Wow… hi Goldie-kun."

"Hey Ino." Naruto said, sitting on the chair that had just been used to bash his skull. He had a band-aid over his eye and on his adjacent cheek, places where he had suffered wounds while two of his clones were angrily getting their licks in as they kicked at the downed Suna genin that had been tormenting him.

"Um…" Ino walked inside and looked around, "How did you get yourself free?"

"It's a funny story." He said with a laugh before stopping abruptly, "And by funny I mean painful."

_(Flashback – Five Minutes Prior)_

_CRACK_

'_Fuck this…' Naruto thought. Enough of having his brains scrambled by these two Neanderthals, he needed his brain for thinking good, and speaking of thinking good, "The password scroll is in my windbreaker! Just stop already!" He yelled, blood streaming down his face. _

_The genin holding the chair smirked and tossed it aside to search, pulling out a scroll just like Naruto said, "Jackpot. Sorry kid. Twenty minutes is a long time to take an assbeating though." With that he opened the scroll and smoke engulfed the room, obstructing everyone's view as the sounds of a beating could be heard._

_When the smoke cleared, Naruto was being cut loose from his bonds by a Kage Bunshin while another clone was beating the two Suna genin with the chair… while they were unconscious already._

_Naruto ignored that clone in favor of the one that freed him, "Suckers… Jiraiya-sensei knows his stuff when he said I could seal jutsu. I didn't think it would work on you guys though. Don't you guys need to breathe?" He asked, getting a shrug from the clone as it set him down carefully against the wall, eliciting a groan from Naruto, "So what was it like inside of that sealing scroll anyway?"_

_The clone's eyes glazed over as it spoke in a monotone manner, "We saw everything… We know everything… And we still know nothing." And with that it began to fix Naruto's injuries like a zombie.  
_

_Naruto just stared at his clone. One clearly had developed manic claustrophobia issues due to the aggressive beating it was still doling out to his captors while the other went insane inside of the sealing scroll he used to seal them in due to whatever the experience was like, 'I wonder if I'm going to get the backlash for _that_ when I dispel them?' He thought to himself._

(End Flashback)

Ino and Shikamaru walked with Naruto down the corridor toward the two main proctors as Shikamaru tried to get Naruto's story straight, "You had a scroll already booby trapped with clones in it? How'd you know this would happen?" He asked.

"I didn't." Naruto replied, "It wasn't supposed to be a booby trap. If we got into a fight I was going to give the scroll to one of you so that you could at least have a clone or two to help out. But I didn't know how many I could seal, and it keeps my chakra split up, plus I didn't know how long they would last in there… I still don't. And I think sealing them messes with my clones' heads so I'm not sure about doing that again."

Ibiki saw the Konoha Team 10 walk up to him, "You're all here? You pass." He then yelled down the hall to the proctors, "The genin of Room 39 are disqualified! Get them out of there!" He jerked his thumb behind him, "Go and wait in the next room until the next phase begins." He looked over at Naruto, "You're going to need the rest kid."

"You'd think so…" Naruto muttered under his breath since Ibiki kind of freaked him out. He then said something that made Ibiki smirk, "I just got beaten up for 20 minutes… how much harder could this exam get?"

Ibiki chuckled quietly to himself as Team 10 left towards the waiting room, "Oh you poor bastard you have no idea. *laughs* No idea…"

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

So easy… yet so hard

So despite the clearly master-level tips and tricks I will be giving you to teach you how to do this, fuuinjutsu is pretty much a self-taught process. Everyone has their own way of getting things down, so you'll eventually find your own way. Hey, eventually you'll get good enough to use the art in the middle of battle, and you'll see why that is so great later. Trust me, it's fantastic.

First of all if you suck at hand-seals you're going to want to bone up on that little practice because a lot of the bigger stuff you'll use will have more than a few so get those fingers loose, you're going to need those digits ready for action (Man that sounded so wrong… or so right. You know what I mean?).

With our art you can make barriers, you can seal off chakra, but the toughest stuff will have you working with souls. SOULS! Actual living souls!

For now however, you're just going to learn how to seal simple objects like clothing or weapons. You've got to learn how to walk before you can run.

And in this case you have to learn how to crawl before you walk. You will be getting the gist of just what it means to seal an object.

Scrolls are the easiest thing to seal things into due to the amount of space allowed to work and the fact that if you mess it up you really won't have any negative consequences for your actions. You should putter around with basic item sealing for a while until you feel confident enough to move on. Practice inscribing the seal array below this passage (Which is just a bunch of kanji so you should really recognize how beginner this step is to learn). When you get it right you can seal and unseal items from the scroll at will. Practice making your own scrolls. Sell them to your friends for a reduced price from what they can get in stores. You could run your own bootleg sealing scroll business and make some pocket change for yourself.

DO NOT put this seal on anything else hotshot. That's beyond yours scope of ability unless you would like a kunai bonded with your heart or other vital organs. Think I'm joking? Go ahead and try it. Sealing things on your person is an advanced technique so take things step-by-step until you get that far. Sealing things in your own body should only be done by experts or as a last resort.

Seal your clothes or extra supplies that you think you'll want to bring. As a matter of fact seal the stuff that you want to take with you on missions but can't carry in your pack because it wastes space. You could literally bring your entire life with you on the road, no more Spartan living for you!

Now get to practicing, and experiment with certain sealings. The Generic Sealing Technique can be very tricky and effective in the field. Use your imagination. One you get this down and start using it more and more you'll catch my drift, and then you'll really start to see what fuuinjutsu can do… because if sealing a kunai or two is all you're thinking of when you decide to use this jutsu then you need to expand your mind and think a little harder.

* * *

**Well that was test one. Pretty straightforward… nothing too over the top, and next chapter you can see how a few other teams wound up passing that round of tests as well, you'll also be getting some other goodness. We're just getting started peeps. I hope you enjoy what will be going down, I'm certain that the next up will be better and more original... of course that could just be the ego talking.**

**But the ego is never wrong… except for the time it told me I could jump Snake River Canyon on that motorcycle… I swore I almost cleared that though. Oh wait that wasn't me, I was dreaming that I was Evel Knievel. Thank God, because that fall SUCKED!**

**Until the next time everyone, Kenchi out.**


	18. Steel Sharpens Steel

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Every time I write this in a disclaimer I kill a terrorist. Now do you see why I write so much? I'm a damn patriot.

**Chapter 18: Steel Sharpens Steel**

* * *

In a waiting room set aside for those that had passed the first exam, Ino peeled off the band-aid on Naruto's brow, expecting to have to change it due to it being soaked with blood. What she saw was a severely reduced injury compared to how it had looked on the surface of the band-aid. The cut wasn't even bleeding anymore and it had already begun to quickly heal. It looked like it almost _was_ fully healed.

"That's so weird." Ino muttered as she finished her task of changing Naruto's band-aids to actual bandages on his face. He was mostly fine, he had his bell rang a few times but other than that he was okay, "You're so lucky you heal so fast Naruto." Twenty minutes… for anyone that took longer to finish it would have to be terrible being the odd man out that wound up being the hostage, especially since pretty much no one else had Naruto's healing.

Time was almost expired for the first test and it looked as if the room had as many advancing teams as it was going to get, the first test making the others truly realize that it was them against everyone else. The Konoha genin that they knew personally were pretty much unscathed even though a lot of other teams had at least one member that looked as if they had taken a bit of a beating. Some looked as if their prisoner had gotten free and had attempted to fight their way free. As Ino looked across the room she wondered how a few of the others that had passed, the entire nine Konoha rookies being among them, had gotten through.

_(Team 7 Interrogation Test)_

_Sasuke stood over a beaten up Kusa shinobi, cracking his knuckles. He had a few bruises on his face and blood streaming down his lip, but his injuries were mostly cosmetic. Luckily, these people obviously weren't good at capturing shinobi… or at fighting in general due to how easy it was to get __Nawanuke no Jutsu (Rope Escape Jutsu)__ and subsequently defeat them. One of the two that had him captured didn't even fight. _

"_Next time you tie someone up you should make sure they can't make hand-seals." He said informatively to the unconscious boy on the ground, not that he could hear him. He turned towards a girl that was sitting against a nearby wall._

_She wore glasses and had red hair that looked a little unkempt on one side and straight on the other. The girl looked at Sasuke, seemingly frozen with a blush on her face. Sasuke merely raised his eyebrow, giving her a small smile before he walked out of the door, fully freeing himself from captivity._

"_Wow…" The girl said quietly after Sasuke left, "What a guy…"_

_(Team 8 Interrogation Test)_

_Kiba sat tied to a chair with a dry, uncaring look on his face, "So you guys obviously want my password huh?" He asked sarcastically. Duh, what else would they want?_

"_That's right." A genin from Amegakure said as he held what looked like an umbrella in his hands like a club, "You should tell us exactly what it is right now kid. It would be better for you."_

"_I've got a better idea." Kiba said as something started rustling inside of his coat around the back of his large hood, "How about I just get up and leave?" And with that, from the collar of his jacket sprang Akamaru, who landed on the face of the attacking genin and began to maul them, his small stature not being indicative of his fighting prowess. Kiba smirked until he saw bugs begin to crawl off of his person as well and go over to the downed genin, leeching on their chakra, "That was so nasty Shino… I told you I had this under control…" Kiba said to himself as Akamaru began quickly chewing his ropes loose._

_Once he was loose he simply strolled right out of the door past the proctor who began to mark something on his clipboard and went across the hall to knock on the door directly across from his, being greeted with Hinata in the door way. Kiba grinned and looked at the proctor at that door, "So did we pass?"_

"_Kiba-kun you're free!" Hinata said, happy that he didn't have any significant damage on his person, "Shino-kun and I just got the password as well. What a coincidence._

_The proctor at their door nodded and marked something on his clipboard as well before addressing Kiba's question, "You sure do. Move on to the next stage of the exams."_

_(Sand Siblings Interrogation Test)_

_A pair of Iwa genin, both a boy and a girl, stood just staring at their 'hostage', not knowing what to do with him. First of all they weren't even able to tie him up, they had to have him tie himself up. This was a problem for another reason as well. They couldn't tie him up because no one could touch him. No one could. They had to get him to tie himself up… and that was only the first problem. They couldn't touch him… and since neither of them knew any genjutsu or any mental techniques to get information out of him that way there wasn't anything they could do._

_Every time they tried to work him over by hitting him they would be blocked by sand… and the same sand managed to grind the rope that he had put on his own hands off._

"_I'm bored with you both…" Gaara said as his sand grabbed the pair of genin intended to 'interrogate' him. As his sand surrounded them both and slowly constricted them, Gaara narrowed his eyes, "I want to kill you both… but I believe the 'no permanent damage' rule works both ways." He scoffed and lifted his hand, "Weak-minded rules for weak prey of ninja." He said before his sand threw them both with enough force to slam them through the door, throwing it off of the hinges and sending them hard into the door across the hall._

_That particular door opened up to reveal Temari, who was glaring until she saw that Gaara was the one that had done that, "Gaara." She said with trepidation._

"_It's time to go." Gaara said in his normal tone of voice, turning towards the proctor nearby, "Or do we fail?"_

_The chunin, who was coincidentally from Suna started stepping back away from Gaara, "N-No, no you pass! P-Please proceed to the next phase!" He cowered, 'Oh Kami of all the odds of one of us having to directly proctor Gaara's team why me?' He held his breath as Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro walked past him and left. Once they were out of sight he looked at the still captured genin conscious in the Suna team's room and the two unconscious on the floor, "You all have no idea how lucky you are."_

As they looked around the room as teams were still filing in, "There are still so many teams left." Ino said absently.

Shikamaru was inclined to agree, "The guy said that there were 158 teams to start with. Even if we lose more than half that would still leave us with less than 79 remaining. That's still a lot of people left." And the competition was only going to get stiffer. How many people were allowed to become chunin? How many tests were there left? Why didn't Asuma tell them any of this crap would happen? Why did he even bother coming all the way to Tetsu no Kuni for this exam anyway? He didn't even want to be there. Ino and Naruto were the ones that wanted to go.

"It doesn't really matter does it?" Naruto finally chimed in, resisting the urge to peel the bandages from his face lest Ino scold him. He thought that they made him look weak or like a little kid, "We can still beat just about anyone in this thing. It's simple, if we have to go up against anyone else directly then we'll just beat them the way we did in the first test."

Ino's lips quirked into a smile, "You mean by blocking wooden chairs and fists with your face? I don't think that would work for us Naruto, and concussions are bad for you. Don't kill your brain cells like you kill your lungs."

"Ha ha." Naruto said sarcastically before pulling out a sealing scroll and staring at it, "If I can do what I did earlier and have it work then could I seal myself in this thing?" His eyes then took a glassed look as he remembered what he had gotten from his clones dispelling, confusing and scaring his teammates, "I saw everything… and I still know nothing."

Shikamaru snapped his fingers and waved his hands in front of the trace-like Naruto's face, "Naruto… Naruto!" He got nothing from him except for the random muttering of 'everything' and 'nothing', thus forcing a sigh out of the genius boy until he had an idea of how to get his attention, "Hey, they're serving free ramen as a treat to everyone advancing to the next round."

Naruto's eyes went back to normal as he whipped his head around rapidly, trying to locate said free ramen, "Where?" He then gave a deadpan look at Shikamaru, "There's no ramen is there?" Shikamaru shook his head no, "I should hit you, you know that don't you?"

Cutting in to diffuse a possible righteous ramen beatdown from Naruto, Ino spoke up, "I wonder what the next test is going to be… and how good everyone else here is." She had managed to pick out a few people that she wouldn't want to tangle with, even in the controlled environment that they just got through dealing with. She even managed to spot the team of Kusa genin that they had run across in their first C-rank mission.

A few teams had gotten themselves here even faster than they had and they had made it there after only twenty minutes, enough time for Naruto to heal and for Shikamaru to get his expended chakra back. Now Naruto still looked like he had gotten mugged outside of the meeting building, but that was mostly because of the bandages covering his face, not because he was still bleeding or anything.

Shikamaru had long since picked out who he didn't want to fight, which had been far more than Ino's number because he didn't want to fight anyone that would make him have to work, "It doesn't really matter what the next test is, it's going to be troublesome for sure." He commented, "I doubt that the tests are going to get any easier."

Looking around the room, Naruto wound up looking over eventually at Tenten's team only to wind up locking eyes with Neji who scoffed at the sight of the blonde genin, turning away from him as if the sight was unappealing. Naruto just kept staring at him, sick of Neji's attitude having only met him a handful of times, "I just want it to start already." He had something to prove to a lot of people and this was the time to do it.

At this time a sudden banner suddenly flew into the room and in a burst of fireworks and smoke found itself set up to read as a blur jumped in front of it and spoke loudly, "Alright you stupid brats, it's time to meet your sexy proctor for the second exam! Introducing Mitarashi Anko!" The young woman speaking had purple hair clipped back in a short spiky ponytail and had brown pupil-less eyes with a Konoha headband on her forehead. She wore an open tan overcoat, a mesh bodysuit underneath, and an orange miniskirt to go with shin guards over her sandals.

After her introduction another man walked into the room shaking his head, "This is what Konoha sent to help proctor the second exam?" He said to himself. The man looked middle-aged and had blue hair that almost looked like a fin. He had an eyepatch over his right eye and had a Kiri headband on his head and talisman earrings in each ear. He wore a dark striped shirt and pants with a green robe over them. Naruto noted that he looked kind of like Haku in his manner of dress, "Back in my day-."

"Blah, blah, blah." Anko said derisively, cutting him off, "Where's the other old guy so we can get this little show on the road?" She looked for a third proctor, ignoring the horndog male genin leering at her, "I might have to bleed a few of these small-fry dry if they don't find something else more interesting to look at." She then looked herself over and smirked with a pose, "Oh who am I kidding? There's nothing more interesting to look at around here than me."

"I'm here you crazy Konoha lady." A tall and brawny Iwa shinobi said as he walked into the room behind the Kiri ninja. He had a large bulbous nose, a strong jaw and beard, and a standard Iwa shinobi uniform, "And it's not 'old guy'… it's Kitsuchi." He noted with some annoyance in his voice at how Anko referred to him before his appearance.

"My bad." Anko said with an apologetic grin on her face, "Let's just forget about that and get to the explaining the test part." She turned to the genin and gave them a predatory look, "I want to see the lot of them squirm."

Over with Team 10, Ino couldn't help but give Anko a distasteful look for how she was representing Konoha as a proctor. Even creepy Ibiki seemed to do a better job, he was a scary guy and made them look intimidating. Anko just unnerved her, "Someone should report her."

"I'll report her." Naruto replied before speaking under his breath, "'Report' her 'till she can't walk straight." Ino and Shikamaru both heard him and looked at him in surprise. Even Naruto couldn't believe he said that out loud, "I swear, that week hanging out with Jiraiya-sensei messed me up bad."

"That's your excuse?" Ino said, giving Naruto a dry look.

A sharp whistle attracted their attention back to Anko who was able to pick them out of the entire room of remaining genin left in the exam, "Welcome back, are you ready to rejoin the group conversation now?" She asked with a smile on her face that didn't bode well for an incorrect answer, thus all of Team 10 nodded slowly, "Good. Maybe now we can explain this. Now listen up because I will not be repeating myself."

"What did you say?" Kiba asked, over with his Team 8, a grin on his face as he did so.

"I said I will not be repeating myself brat!" Anko snapped at him before blinking in realization. She gave Kiba a deadpan look and pulled out a kunai before Ao stopped her from potentially maiming the Inuzuka boy, she still glared at him as she licked the flat of the blade, "You're so lucky kid…" That didn't intimidate Kiba so much as turn him on, and at that moment he had to ask himself just what was wrong with him to be thinking that way.

Ao muttered and let out a sigh before releasing Anko's wrist and beginning his explanation, "This test is fairly simple and straightforward. All you have to do is get to the location of the next stage of the exam. That's it." And he left it at that, a smirk slowly growing on his face as he didn't speak again and the chattering began among the genin.

Shikamaru groaned as he spoke aloud, "I'm getting the feeling that there was supposed to be a 'but' in there somewhere."

Another competing genin spoke up loudly in protest, "Well? Aren't you going to tell us where the place we're supposed to go is? Or do you just expect us to find it ourselves?"

Kitsuchi grinned widely, almost in the manner that Anko did earlier, "Actually punk that's exactly what we expect you to do." He informed the group of potential chunin, "You're going to be asked to locate hidden strongholds for your village, whether to scout it out or to infiltrate it, or to destroy it altogether. We're actually making it easy for you, all you have to do is just find where the next test is supposed to be and get there."

"Yep. That's all." Anko chimed in, enjoying the frazzled nerves of the lot of the genin, "It's just that you don't know where it is… and we're not going to tell you… as a matter of fact no one's going to just tell you, you have to find it yourself within three days." She then chuckled in a sinister manner, "Oh and before I forget to mention only twelve teams can pass."

"What!"

Anko stuck her tongue out after the universal shout from all of the genin, "Yeah, out of the 51 teams left in the exam only 12 of you can go any further, so sorry about your damn luck."

With Team 7, Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the overall information he was getting over what the exam was to be about, "So you're basically telling us that this is pretty much a race to the place where we'll be told about the next test?" He said with a scoff.

Normally a test like this would be an advantage to one village's teams in general over another's seeing as how it would be taking place in an area that was one village's home turf, but here there was no such advantage.

Knowledge of the terrain and area was at best limited by what one could read in a book on the country. No ninja had in-depth knowledge of Tetsu no Kuni due to the complete lack of interaction that shinobi and samurai had. Tetsu no Kuni was a no-no, untouchable by other shinobi villages for decades. They were all equally in the dark at this point.

"So how are we supposed to find the damn place?" Karui shouted over where she was with her team from Kumogakure.

Ao frowned over at the young genin, "That's not our problem. There's no restriction on what you can do to find out where to go. Treat it as if you're trying to find the stronghold of bandits that are sacking villages in an area and disappearing. No one knows where to look but you have a general area of search. The destination you're all searching for could be anywhere around the Three Wolves Mountains. There will be certain clues in tons of areas, but there will be no solid answers as to where to go."

Kitsuchi spoke up once more with a warning, "Remember though; the samurai will have a no-tolerance policy when it comes to fighting or any violence at all within the village. They _will_ step in to stop you or detain you in whatever way they see necessary if you are caught doing such. You will not have the protection of your village or your sensei, we were warned about causing trouble in the village upon arrival, all of us."

"If you still want to do this…" Anko said as she made her way to a table where a few chunin were standing near stacks of paper, "Then you'll need to sign a waver saying that we are not responsible for you walking off the face of the cliff at the edge of town or something else that ends up with you maggots losing your nubile little lives."

Ao held up three fingers, "Starting at noon you have exactly 72 hours, three days. You have three days to find out where to go in the vicinity of Three Wolves Mountain… and you have to get there before all of the others by any means necessary. Only 12 teams can make it there at a maximum, and the teams must have all three members at the time of their arrival or they will not be granted advancement to the next round. Good luck."

Anko leered at the genin as they started to line up and take their places to get their wavers to sign, "You brats are going to need all the luck you can get… This mountain is no joke if you haven't realized it yet. There isn't going to be anyone coming to keep you kiddies safe and warm if you're really serious about this."

XxX

(Minutes Before the Start of the 2nd Exam)

Ino was pacing around in the little area of the waiting room that her team had taken up occupation of, "How the hell are we going to pull this one off? None of us know anything about this village let alone the mountain the village is on!"

All teams were forced to go straight to their hotels upon their arrival in the host village and were told that leaving was not an option. They thought it was so that no fighting between teams and villages would break out, now they knew it was so no one would have the faintest idea of what was to happen during this exam, no one would be able to set up a rapport with any locals in the time it would take from their arrival for the testing to begin, everyone would be in the dark.

So they were all going in cold trying to get their own information on how to find a place that none of them knew anything about. A place that could be anywhere. And to ask around to the already suspicious local citizenry would only result in others doing the same. Hundreds of ninja running around your village asking for information on a single place in your home area… yeah nobody would be getting anything done working like that.

They really weren't messing around with this test.

"Calm down Ino…" Naruto said to her, grabbing her by the hand to stop her pacing before he pointed at Shikamaru who was sitting down with his hands locked in his thinking pose, "We can do this, don't worry about it. You're going to get all tired just freaking out about it."

"Three days Naruto!" Ino exclaimed, "We're going to be out in the cold for three days looking for a place that could be anywhere! Do you know how cold it could get out there at night?" She turned her blue eyes into full puppy-dog mode, "Blonde teddy? Please Goldie-kun?" If her lip had started to quiver he probably would have fallen to pieces on the spot.

Averting his gaze as quickly as he could as when it really came down to it he couldn't and wouldn't say no, Naruto scratched the back of his head as he tried to come up with something, "Well… they never said that we couldn't go back to the hotel to rest if we needed to." That was the best way out of the awkward situation he was in that he had, and an actual fact.

They never said that they couldn't do a couple of things, they just gave them a bunch of warnings. They definitely wouldn't be trying to capture and slow down any other competitors… at least not in the village, because none of them really wanted to see what those samurai were made of. There were way more samurai than ninja here and no one would be helping them if they got on the bad side of the local warriors.

Shikamaru looked up at Naruto, finished with his thinking, "That's not really a good idea Naruto. Coming back would just set us back. We're going to find something on where to go before nightfall and this is a race. We can't go back to the starting line just because we're uncomfortable."

Ino got off of her kick of teasing Naruto to look at Shikamaru, "Wow, I didn't think I'd hear that out of you. I thought you would be all for coming back and crashing in a bed the second night fell."

"Normally yeah, I probably would." Shikamaru admitted freely to his teammates, "But the guy just said that all three of us need to be there and it would be too troublesome for you two to gripe and complain when I do it. Besides, the faster we finish the faster I _can_ sleep in an actual bed without having to worry about getting my head kicked in."

"Alright everyone outside!" Anko ordered loudly once the time had come for the test to begin, "It's time to light this firecracker!"

XxX

"Remember the rules!" Kitsuchi's voice boomed once everyone competing in the next round of tests were outside and ready to begin, "You have three days. In three days at noon the test will end, twelve teams or not." Everyone paid rapt attention to the man, all dressed in their winter equipment, mostly cloaks for the bulk of them, "And don't do anything stupid!" He looked around and noticed the looks of total seriousness on all of their faces, "Get out of my sight!"

With that, the teams all immediately set out with the exception of one, Team 10, mostly because of Shikamaru holding onto Ino and Naruto just as all of the others took off to begin. Instead of beginning their search, Shikamaru simply walked up to Kitsuchi, Anko, and Ao, dragging Naruto and Ino with him until he stood before them, "So… is this the place we have to get to for the next exam?"

Anko started laughing and even Ao had to smile in amusement as Kitsuchi answered, "No, good try though. That would have been too easy. Now go, you just wasted about a minute. Tick-tock kid." He shooed Shikamaru away as Naruto and Ino followed and glared at him.

Shikamaru and the rest of Team 10 then finally took off to begin their search for the hidden location, although he had to deal with the silent glowering of the two blondes for the start of it, "It was worth a shot…" That did nothing to lighten up the harsh looks, "What? It was just a minute or two. In the grand scheme does it really matter? We have 72 hours."

Ino scoffed, it was a race, every second counted as far as she was concerned, "So any other bright ideas about how we're going to do this?" She looked over at Naruto only for him to shake his head, he didn't know.

'Even when you're looking for something like this there's always a way to find it… even with no information we know that it exists somewhere… other people know that it exists somewhere… and to be sent on a mission to find something, someone had to call it in for us to take it in the first place.' Shikamaru pondered as they moved along the rooftops of the village seeing other teams darting around here and there doing the same, all giving the others dirty looks.

'No street fighting…' Naruto had to admit, the no fighting in the village rule was pretty cumbersome for what was supposed to be an anything goes race, but have 150+ shinobi, even genin, going all out just to keep others from reaching the goal first would turn the whole place into a warzone… not good at all, 'Good rule.'

He could see the heavily armed samurai out and watching the streets like hawks, eyes on every ninja moving about to make sure everything stayed as peaceful as it could be, it was still a powder keg though.

"I've got it." Shikamaru said finally, getting Ino's and Naruto's attention as he diverted their path in another direction, "Where's the first place that you go when you have any kind of question about anything that you're doing? Who should have an answer or a clue about what to do most of the time when you don't?"

Naruto gave him a squinting look as if it were a trick question, "Um, your superior?" His eyes then shot open as he realized that Shikamaru was heading towards the hotels where the Konoha and Suna teams were staying, "Do you think so?"

Shikamaru shrugged in response, "If I'm wrong about this one too then we'll only have wasted thirty minutes… we have three days."

Ino looked over at Shikamaru with a dry look on her face, "I'm going to get really sick of you saying that by the end of the day."

XxX

(Hotel)

Asuma walked to his hotel door at the behest of frantic knocking and opened the door to find all three of his genin waiting there, "Thank Kami you were smart enough to get here in the first two hours… Kakashi and Kurenai owe me money." He ushered them into his room and shut the door behind them.

"You bet on us to get here in two hours?" Ino asked Asuma incredulously as she took a seat on Asuma's bed while Naruto and Shikamaru just stood, "Way to set an upstanding example Asuma-sensei."

Asuma gave her a look of annoyance, "It is boring as hell, and we have to wait for you brats to show up to ask us what we know about your test before we can even leave the hotel to go and do anything else for fun. I'd love to see how you'd occupy your time only being able to go down the hall to talk to other jounin."

Hearing Asuma say that they were supposed to come to him for some kind of assistance set his mind at ease but raised another question, "If we were supposed to come to you to ask you for help then why didn't you just give us the clue before this and save us the time?"

"I didn't know I had to tell you anything until we were all told that we did barely even two hours ago after we got wind of our students passing the first exam." Asuma said with a pointed look at the lazy genius boy, "Now do you want the clue or do you want to sleep and get behind in the race?"

"Is that a trick question?" Shikamaru responded before ducking two swings at his head from Naruto and Ino.

Naruto looked towards the bearded jounin and quickly answered for Shikamaru, "Come on and tell us Asuma-sensei. We're ready to get out of here already."

"This is all the help I can give you so listen up. Whatever happens from here on out you're on your own because I can't do anything without getting you disqualified, it's not like I have any more information on the subject than you even if I'll figure it out myself before you." Asuma explained before realizing that they were all giving him their full attention, ready to take down whatever he had to say to them.

Naruto gave a confident smile, "Just go ahead and tell us sensei. We'll make it work, whatever you say."

If that was what the kid wanted then that was what he would get as far as Asuma was concerned, "Okay, the only clue I have to give you is this: To find the target area you'll definitely have to leave the village to get there. Three Wolves mountains will be your playground, your battlefield, and your sanctuary. You will never be able to simply see it, no matter how high your viewpoint, no matter how far you look. You will need to traverse the veins of the countryside to win this little rat race."

The three kids just sat there listening and staring at Asuma until it was clear that he was finished. Ino was the first to speak up, "That's it? That's the big clue we were supposed to come here and get? That didn't explain a damn thing."

"There is one more thing that they told me to tell you to make sure you remembered no matter what." Asuma added at Ino's behest.

Shikamaru was still trying to work out just what Asuma had meant by his first statement, maybe what he had to say next would help, "And that would be?"

"Remember to take the river as far as it goes." Asuma said before scratching his head, "I've got no idea what that means... but hey, it isn't my problem, it's yours. This is your test not mine."

Naruto just stared at the man before grabbing his hair in exasperation, "Gah! That didn't explain anything? What the hell does either of that have to do with anything? None of that sounds like a damn clue or directions for anything!" Shikamaru grunted in agreement. He was no stranger to puzzles, but that one was going to kill him until he figured it out.

Jumping up in agreement to the start of Naruto's rant, Ino nodded her head fervently, "Yeah, there's no river anywhere around this village or on this mountain at all!"

Asuma shrugged his shoulders, "This is the best you've got." He then grabbed Ino's arm and shooed her out of the room along with the others, "Now go and don't lose, because every jounin with teams still in this thing started a pool with a 10000 ryo buy in. If you get all the way to the end of the exam and last longer than the others then winner takes all. Win me some money kids." With that, he shut them out of his room and left them back in the hallway.

With a collective sigh, Team 10 set out to make some sense out of what they were told and possibly find their destination. Naruto looked back at Asuma's door and shook his head, "Both of my teachers are bad influences."

XxX

(Several Hours Later)

By now the sun had set on the day and small snow flurries were falling as Team 10 trudged through the snow a few miles outside of the village. A search for more clues or anything else turned up fruitless and a waste of time. Trying to ask the samurai running patrol was like asking a brick wall; they got no answer from any of them. The end of the first day was coming and the only thing they seemed to get out of searching for hours for a hint were repeated cold shoulders from the populace and being watched like criminals by the samurai… so there was no espionage going on with that scenario.

Naruto formed the ram seal and let out another pulse of his sonar jutsu to see if anyone was tailing them, why anyone would be he didn't know, but they weren't in the village anymore, it was a free-for-all out there, "How are you guys holding up?" He asked Ino and Shikamaru as he had his goggles down to protect his eyes and his bandanna up over his mouth and nose to cover them from the cold.

"Ready to go home…" Shikamaru replied tiredly. They had stopped running since they had no idea where they were going. They could have been getting farther and farther away from their intended goal for all they knew. Asuma's riddle still had them drawing blanks.

Ino let out a groan, "Well we can't just stop out here. Naruto you said you felt other teams going back to the village, why don't we just do that too so we can sleep in the hotel? We don't have anything that would make staying out here an advantage."

Naruto didn't like that idea one bit. Doing that was akin to quitting as far as he was concerned, "We can't just do that. Then when we wake up we'll just have this to do all over again. Come on you guys it isn't even that late yet, we can keep going for a bit longer." He wasn't going to fall behind. He hadn't seen Team 7, Team 8, or Tenten and Lee's team. Who knew where they were? They might have finished already, and there were only 12 spots to take.

"We're missing something." Shikamaru said to himself, trying to occupy his time with thinking about where they were supposed to go. If they were supposed to look all around the mountains for this place then who knew how long that could take. The mountains were huge, even the one 'wolf' that they were on was still more than ten miles around. It would take way longer than three days to comb the entire thing just to narrow down places where it _might_ be. That's not to even begin to register the weather that went from harshly cold to sub-zero.

Ino blocked a sniffle and spoke glibly, "Yeah… like warmth, shelter, light, a chance in hell of pulling this off. Stop me if I get the one that you meant we were missing."

This place was morale-draining. There were no sights to take in, all that you could see was dark and snow. There was barely any moonlight out either from behind the clouds. They were pretty much operating and moving forward based off of Naruto's periodical bursts of his scouting jutsu. Another wave of it from Naruto led to him stopping the others in their tracks, "Wait, stop. We're getting close to the edge of the mountain."

With that, they all walked over to the edge that Naruto had informed them they were near before something dangerous could happen. It was dangerously dark outside, there was a possibility that they could have walked over the edge, thank goodness Naruto was walking sonar. Once they got to the end of the cliff they were able to see the massive landscape of Tetsu no Kuni, "Ugh…" Ino frowned heavily as she scanned the area, "Looking at all of this doesn't make me very confident here. What are we going to do?" She then let out a shriek before her mouth was covered as she and Shikamaru were grabbed and taken over the edge of the cliff.

Ino's shriek was cut short as a minor noise in the quiet night that was followed by nothing. A shadowed set of figures then swiftly made their way to the edge of the cliff where Team 10 had just been, "Come on, where are those stupid kids? We were following their footsteps through the snow, they stop here." The shadows turned out to be the team of Iwa ninja with the member that had targeted Team 10 before the first exam.

"Yeah, they stop here." Another one of the shinobi said with a laugh, "They must have fallen off the cliff. I can barely see my own nose in front of my face. Look at the sliding marks by the edge, the kiddies probably never stayed out this late before. Looks like you aren't going to get to mess with that blonde kid eh Hisashi?"

The last one there with the shaved head simply didn't speak at all, staring down over the edge with a hard look in his eyes before finally turning and leaving, "Come on. We've got to finish this test. We can't worry about some Yellow Flash runt walking off a cliff." He said spitefully.

The other two glowered at their teammate before following after him, "You were the one that wanted to head out here after the kid… we just wanted to get to the next stage. Man you've got a real issue with him don't you?" One of the others quipped smarmily. It wasn't their idea to take a detour just to go after some kid.

"Shut up. You don't know anything about it."

With that, the speech between the teammates faded out of earshot until they left the area altogether. Once the coast seemed clear a female sigh could be heard, "That was pretty close… you could have said something before you threw us over the edge though Goldie-kun."

"There wasn't any time." Naruto explained as the entire team stood upside down underneath the thick cliff separating them from the topside. They had bypassed the jagged stalactites that formed the jagged jaws of the Three Wolves Mountains and were standing on flat, safe positioning, "I didn't know what I was sensing until they were right on top of us. Sorry."

"Better scared than dead or in a useless fight." Shikamaru added in place of Ino's fright at being dragged over the side. Naruto had held onto them and stuck himself to the wall until they realized why he did what he did, "That was a quick move Naruto. Are they gone?"

Naruto formed the ram seal and let out another concentrated burst of his jutsu… he really was turning into an early warning radar device for this team, "I can't sense anything up there, the cliff is in the way I can't see-." Naruto suddenly stopped talking about what he could and couldn't sense from where he was and started looking around.

Ino noticed his shift in attitude and addressed it, "What's the matter? Is there something else coming?"

A shake of the head from her fellow blonde gave her the answer, "No, I told you I can't sense things through or around walls." Naruto explained, "But there's something not right about the cliff face under us." He was gesturing to the cliff wall that sat deeper within the maw of one of the 'Three Wolves', around the back of its throat area.

Ino squinted as hard as she could in the indicated direction but other than the rocky outcroppings of the mountain that were near her she couldn't see that far back into the mountain, it was far too dark. She doubted she could see back there if it had even been daytime, "I wish Sasuke-kun was here. He'd be able to light the way back there with a fireball."

Naruto rolled his eyes, "What? A fireball? I can actually look back there, I just need to focus more on what I feel when I do. Give me a second to focus." Naruto wasn't sure if he had actually felt something or if all of the standing upside down was making the blood rush to his head a little too quickly, nevertheless he unleashed another pulse of sonar and waited.

PING.

"I definitely felt something back there that isn't like the rest of this place…" Naruto informed them before he started running upside down on the wall towards the location, wordlessly being followed by Ino and Shikamaru.

Shikamaru, not one to run without a damn good reason to do so, questioned Naruto on just what he was doing and where he was taking them, "What did you feel? Just saying that something isn't like the rest of this place doesn't tell us anything."

Eventually Naruto came to a stop and pointed directly down into the dark below them. Shikamaru and Ino looked where he was guiding their eyes, but couldn't see in the dark, "Down there. There's something iron, I felt it when I used my jutsu."

"You can do that?" Ino asked him in shock. She knew that he could more or less see in bursts but to be able to tell what he was actually feeling when he used the jutsu, that was something else altogether.

Naruto nodded as his eyes didn't pan away from the area directly below them, "Yeah down there. It's pretty far but it's definitely there." To mark the general area he was talking about in case they didn't get exactly where he was pointing, Naruto pulled out a kunai and dropped it to the ground.

They couldn't even see down there. If they climbed down there then they wouldn't be able to get back up so easily, even with wall-walking. They would have to stay the night down there and then possibly fall further behind. Ino didn't particularly like that idea, "We have to stay on the mountain, if we leave then we'll never find where we're supposed to go."

"They said the vicinity of the mountain. They never said we had to stay on the mountain… they just implied that we did." Shikamaru said, thinking deeply about the pros and cons of attempting to go down there and see what Naruto was sensing, "We went all over the place today. If Naruto couldn't sense anything up top but he feels something down there then we should try it out." He let off a sigh, "Climbing down there is going to be troublesome though…"

"We could just let go and fall." Naruto suggested half-jokingly before getting a glare from Ino, "Fine, we'll climb down. You're no fun Ino."

Ino blocked a loud yell from herself as she felt like pulling her hair, "That fall is hundreds of feet you blockhead!"

"Blah, blah blah." Naruto dismissed her as he started to take the long walk over to the inside of the maw so that he could start the climb to the bottom. He noticed that while Shikamaru was for the most part game Ino still didn't like the idea of getting off of the mountain, "Trust me. I know what I felt. I think it's what we're looking for." Ino just looked at him until she accepted that she had to trust him… either that or she was sick of standing upside down because she followed soon thereafter.

XxX

(After Midnight)

Naruto navigated a field of dark stalagmites sticking up from the ground from what would be seen as the bottom of the mouth of the mountain. It was like a forest of stone, something that was pretty amazing actually, but there was no time to marvel over natural formations when there was a search to be done, "Just a little bit further you guys." Naruto knew that Ino and Shikamaru were exhausted from the climb down.

"What did we come all the way down here for?" Ino asked Naruto tiredly. They had made the trip down there, making it back up was out of the question after all of the chakra two of the three had expended getting down there. They were there for the night either way.

Naruto growled to himself as he couldn't see what he had been able to locate with his jutsu from the air, "Where's that stupid kunai?"

Shikamaru came around the corner of one of the rock formations holding said weapon, "I think I found something near where I got this." He motioned for the two blonde genin to follow him through the rock forest until he stopped in front of one particular stalagmite, "That's the one."

Ino and Naruto both looked at it strangely. In the dark they couldn't really tell the difference between that rock and all of the others. If they saw one dark rock then they had seen them all. Remembering how he had located the point of interest that he figured was important, Naruto formed a ram seal, "Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!" Naruto's eyes widened as the reverberation from the technique bounced back immediately, "That's the thing. That's what I felt from up there."

"It's a rock…" Ino said in a calm voice, though her eye was twitching, "We came all the way down here to look at a big sharp pointy rock." She turned to Naruto with her hands in a strangling motion, "If I kill you here would anyone find your body?"

In order to keep Ino from attempting to strangle Naruto, Shikamaru rapped on the 'rock' three times to get a small clanging noise, "It's not a rock." The 'rock' started to spin around, making soft sliding noise before revealing a small door that led to a ladder down a tunnel that was pitch black. Naruto turned to Ino and gestured to the passage, "Well… do you still want to kill me?"

"No…" Ino replied as they walked into the chamber that closed behind them. As a low light kicked on in the small compartment she simply stared down the hole, "We still need you to pass the exam…" She tried to joke, but was still in awe over actually finding this thing. Ino nudged Naruto with her elbow, "Can you sense anything down there?"

Naruto was about to attempt it when Shikamaru stopped him from doing so, "People can feel when you do that outside if they pay enough attention." Shikamaru started to explain, "I don't want to tip anything off if there's someone or something down there." With that, Shikamaru took a breath and descended the ladder, "Of course if we're lucky then this is the end and we win…"

Naruto and Ino could hear Shikamaru climbing down every rung of the ladder in the dark tunnel before finally there was silence and they waited for some kind of indication from Shikamaru of what he found. In the end however, they heard an echoing groan from down below, "What? What happened Shikamaru? What's down there?" Naruto asked frantically.

"It's not over yet…" Shikamaru's voice said back up to the two, sounding extremely dejected about that fact.

XxX

Down in the tunnel with Shikamaru he found himself in a lowly lit cavern set up in a dome-like pattern. All around him were tons of different passages that led to who knew where, 'Ugh… so these are the veins of the countryside… stupid riddle. How was anyone supposed to know about this place?' From what he could see, the tunnels all had light to see through them and whatnot, and he couldn't tell how deep they ran due to an echo running through them all. They looked to be just as sturdy as the best building above ground in the village. The tunnels looked constructed to take a heavy-duty beating which didn't necessarily bode very well for them all things considered.

He looked up at the ladder in the center of the room that he had just dropped down from and talked back up it, "We're not even close to being done yet…" He called up one last time to his teammates, "Get down here already."

Next time he figured that just doing something like the chunin exams seemed like the lesser of two evils compared to staying home and taking a brow beating from his mom and teammates he would have to think about this entire chain of events.

And they weren't alone down there.

"Did you hear a voice somewhere?" Shikamaru heard an unfamiliar voice say down one of the tunnels, "Should we check it out? They might be ahead of us. We ran into two dead ends already since we found the way down here."

And it was a maze too. Beautiful.

"I hate my job…" Shikamaru muttered to himself as he saw Naruto and Ino climbing their way down to join him, "Who's idea was it for me to be a ninja again? And why is there a place like this here at all?"

"Aah snake!" Ino exclaimed, dropping to the ground suddenly and looking up onto the ladder before it fell to the ground headless due to Naruto.

"Good." Naruto said, dropping to the ground himself and sheathing his machete that he had used to kill the snake, "I was hungry anyway."

One day down, two days to go.

"I see them!" At that point a team of genin from Amegakure came forward from a tunnel all wearing ponchos, two of them wearing rain hats, all of them carrying oxygen tanks and umbrellas on their backs, each varying in height. The lead one was the tallest and had a multitude of scars on his face, one of which seemed to result in him being blinded in one eye, "Would you look at that? The Konoha babies found their way down here. So why don't you all just hand over your directions?"

Naruto and Ino looked at each other before the female Yamanaka spoke up, "What directions?" And from the look on the Ame genin's faces that was apparently the wrong thing to say.

Shikamaru let out another sigh.

This was going to be a long two days… if they even lasted that long.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

And boom goes the dynamite…

Alright now that you have straight enough handwriting to fill out a sealing scroll let's get to the part that you destructive pyromaniac little runts probably started learning fuuinjutsu to learn how to do in the first place. That's right you're going to learn how to make your own exploding tags.

Are you done grinning and hyperventilating yet? Good. Now make sure you pay attention because if you blow your fingers off it's not my fault.

Now use of exploding tags can become a fighting style all its own if you become adept enough with them. You can learn how to do that on your own time though because I couldn't care any less about that. I'm just here to teach you how to make them, I don't care if you use them to say… blow down the walls surrounding the women's side of the hot springs (hint hint), that's your own business.

First step is easy. Get special strips of paper tags that are made of the same material that sealing scrolls are made of. Regular paper won't work since it can't channel chakra and it wouldn't work in wet environments, and you can't actually use a sealing scroll just in case you dumbasses out there are feeling smart, it has to be the special paper tags… otherwise you'll be filling out the whole scroll with your sealing array if you want more than a little firecracker's amount of an explosion to go off in the center of the scroll.

Of course if you have the skill, knowledge, and the time to prepare an entire scroll with the array needed to actually make the whole damn thing explode… I think I will skip that so that I don't accidentally create the next terrorist bomber criminal.

You need to write the kanji for explode dead center as you know you should place kanji in sealing arrays that require them.

From there you can write the array out to tweak it in whatever way suits your need. Do you need a confined explosion? You can do that. Do you need it to detonate remotely with a single hand-seal or to detonate on a custom timer? You can do that too.

You twisted demolition experts out there should take notice of this. For those of you that know how to blow things up in particular ways you're going to want your space arrays committed to memory for that perfect little signature explosion you're looking for.

Of course if you're just some punk kid looking to make something go boom then on the next page you'll find the array for a basic exploding tag… you small imagination having runts. If you want to prove you're ready for advanced seal work you'd better at least practice with making special exploding tags, because this is the second easiest thing you're going to learn how to do.

Hell, learn how to make your explosions in the form of a smiley or a hand giving the middle finger. That's a fun way to let your enemies know that they're dead.

* * *

**Apparently someone mentioned that I might have gotten the first test from Chunin Exam Day… how disheartening.  
**

**I was not aware of that because I can't remember everything I read in that story off the top of my head, but it would make sense for about a dozen reasons being that the first test was played over about 150 different times in that story so I'll have to give props even if I do not recall such just in case. I don't want to be accused of plagiarism or even risk it if I did.**

** And here I thought I was being fresh and inspiring. Kenchi's sad now… *sigh***

…

**Okay, Kenchi swiftly built a bridge and got over it.**

**Chapter done. More will be explained on just where Team 10 and the other genin are supposed to be, what it's meant for, how they figure things out, stuff like that. If you don't think that fireworks won't set off in a situation like this then you are insane yeah?**

**Until next time catch you later.**

**Kenchi out.**

**(Man I referred to myself in the third person three times in this author's note alone. Maybe my touch of narcissism is coming back?)**


	19. Under the Radar

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Maybe if I did more drugs I would find myself inspired to come up with my own original idea for a series that could gross as much money. Several sober attempts through the years have yielded no true positive results. Maybe because I lose interest and quit a tenth of the way through designing characters and plot?

Maybe it's because I'm mediocre at drawing and didn't seem to get any better in my personal opinion after about ten years of cutting my teeth on original works?

Who knows? I don't. Who cares? None of you… or me either for that matter.

Okay, on with the chapter.

**Chapter 19: Under the Radar**

* * *

Wandering around in a blizzard off of vague directions in a land they knew nothing about? Yeah, Shikamaru probably would have taken that option over the one they were currently saddled with. Now they were stuck in a series of underground corridors of all kinds of shapes and sizes leading to who knew where. In addition to that they were now facing off with a foreign team of older genin that seemed several years their elders.

And they didn't necessarily seem to be the helpful type.

"I had hoped we would be able to get through this without having to fight anyone…" Shikamaru said to his teammates so that the team of Ame genin didn't hear him. This was just great. They were dragging in the awareness department due to the pace they had been cutting across the landscape, and now that they had found where to go they still weren't getting a moment of reprieve.

Ino was only slightly more ready for a fight than Shikamaru was, "Come on Shikamaru, the chance of us actually dodging two teams just isn't our luck." She said, not taking her eyes off of their potential opponents, "Maybe a fight will wake us back up?"

"I'm already awake." Naruto commented, holding his machete at the ready, "And what are you guys talking about? What directions?" He asked the other team.

One of the Ame genin laughed at Naruto's question and pointed at him, "It looks like the babies didn't pay attention to everything that their sensei said." He looked towards the member of their team missing an eye with scars on his face, "Shigure let's just squash these runts and move on. Less competition right?"

The lead genin with the battle scars, Shigure let out a scoff, "If they don't know anything about where to go from here then they're just in the way. They can't make any sense of the vague little directions that they got either so who needs them? Get rid of them. Baui, put them down, you've got the most chakra right now." He said to the shortest of the team.

Hearing that caused Naruto and Ino to bristle in anger, "You jerk!" Ino snapped at them, "You think one of your teammates can beat all three of us?"

"Feisty. You're too young for me though." The small one, Baui, commented on Ino's attitude, "But in this case he's kind of right, with our jutsu only one of us really need to attack to beat you. You three little kids are about to see how the big ninja play." He pulled his umbrella from his back and threw it into the air, forming a tiger seal as he did so, "Jouro Senbon (Senbon Shower)!"

The umbrella hovered in the air between the two teams and spun rapidly as it began spitting a rain of needles in all directions.

Team Ten were immediately in full retreat mode, ducking behind the rocky outcroppings that were placed all throughout the corridor of the tunnel that they were in as they barely took cover before the needles implanted themselves in the cave rocks, in a seemingly never-ending spray.

From their place ducking behind the rocks, Ino had to make a comment, "I wonder if they buy some special cartridges of needles to fill those with or if they have to hand-load them?" There was no need to ask. It was probably some Amegakure secret that she wouldn't be privy to anyway. She was kind of jealous though. Well at least her aim was better and she didn't waste nearly as many.

Shikamaru, while disenfranchised over having to fight, already had his mind working on what to do, "Naruto get some clones to knock that thing out of the sky."

"On it." Naruto said, forming the hand-seal for his signature jutsu and creating five Kage Bunshin, one of which threw their machete at the umbrella from behind cover to knock it down and stop the spray of needles. Naruto heard a bark of laughter from one of the Ame ninja about how he apparently threw away his lead weapon.

One of Naruto's clones, namely the one that had thrown its machete, didn't take too kindly to being made fun of for just following the plan lain out by its 'commander', and it reflected this by throwing its entire stock of shuriken from behind cover, getting a satisfying shriek of surprise and pain from the enemy. It then dispelled due to its lack of weaponry taking its actual use away.

With the Ame genin, most of them had avoided Naruto's clone's little angry attack. The one that had been laughing, the one that was taller than Baui but shorter than Shigure wound up taking five shuriken to different parts of his body; two to the chest, three to the thigh.

Baui looked at his wounded teammate in concern, "Midare you're hurt." He commented.

"That's it…" Shigure said, all humor gone from his tone now that his own partner was injured. If those punks wanted to play ninja he'd show them just how real things could get, "Slaughter those rats! Let's see them dodge this!" He threw three umbrellas in the air, "Jouro Senbon (Senbon Shower)!" This time all three of his umbrellas spat needles at a far faster rate, with the umbrellas themselves drifting directly over the cover that the Konoha genin had taken refuge behind.

Midare pulled the shuriken out of his body and let out a mean-spirited laugh, "Serves those punks right…" He said, dropping the last metal star to the ground with a clatter. They all walked over to confirm that Team Ten were firmly out of commission, but when they turned the corner to look behind where they had been taking cover they found nothing.

Shigure growled, "What? Where did they go?" He turned his back to begin looking around and saw a shadow speeding across the floor at him and his team, "Move!" He shouted in warning as he jumped away.

The warning came too late for one however, as the wounded Midare wasn't fast enough to avoid being caught. He wound up frozen in place as the shadow touched his own, "What the hell is this? Someone get me out of this!" He more or less begged his squadmates as he had no idea what would happen to him next. Whatever it was obviously wouldn't be good.

Baui turned when he saw a blur in his peripheral vision and wound up blocking a senbon with his extended umbrella, pushing it down to see that Ino had been the one to try and get him, "Nice try, but we're not that easy to beat." He ran at her and took two swipes at her with his umbrella, missing both strikes as Ino seemingly danced out of his line of attack, "Hold still!"

"Fuck you. How about that?" Ino replied freely, in an unconcerned voice. This guy was so slow. He should have just stuck to trying to pull off that little senbon trick of his, but they obviously only had one salvo available per umbrella, and this guy only had one of them unlike his teammate who had three. Even that idiot had used all three of his umbrellas at once.

From the relentless senbon attack from before, and from the way that Baui was attempting to flail at her in an untrained looking way with his umbrella this was a team of one-hit one-kill genin, and they had more or less just blown their wad early on in the fight, just because they thought that as a young team Ino and the others wouldn't be able to handle it. The only one of them with a fully loaded umbrella had already been caught by Shikamaru and he wasn't going anywhere. His other teammate wouldn't get to Shikamaru to free him, Naruto would make sure of that, which meant that this guy was all hers.

She could deal with that.

But every time she backed off enough to grab some of her senbon and throw them at him he always had that stupid umbrella to block her attacks. He was 100% mobile so her clan jutsu was a total no-no in this instance. That weapon of his looked too sturdy for her to risk taking a shot just to get in and try to disarm him, even if she had been used to fighting the bull that was Naruto, she was nowhere near as physically strong as he was and her taijutsu was rather poor. Maybe _he_ could take a lick or two from an umbrella just to grab it and beat the goon with it, but she couldn't.

'I so didn't want to waste one of these for this, but it's a fight...' Ino thought to herself as she reached into her pouch and threw a small orb that exploded in a blue cloud on contact with Baui's umbrella, 'Breathe deep little man.' She thought victoriously as his body was fully engulfed in the gas, 'Goodnight.' However when Baui stepped from the cloud there was an oxygen mask on his face connected to the tank on his back, "Oh come on! Go down already!" She exclaimed while throwing a fit.

"Sorry." Baui said sarcastically, "But this is pretty much standard issue for all Ame ninja. Don't you Konoha ninja have anything useful like this for all of your recruits?" He asked mockingly with a laugh, "Your little poison gas isn't going to fly with me."

"That's not all I've got you bastard!" Ino snapped back. This was still her fight to lose as far as she was concerned. So what her sleeping smoke bomb didn't work? She had other ways to get to him. She threw more senbon at him with one hand, and predictably he lifted his umbrella to block them, but that left him with a vulnerable area that was wide open… though she would have to aim well to hit it.

"Ow!" Baui yelled as he found a needle buried right between his toes that were sticking out of his sandals, "Oh damn it!" He shouted at Ino. He didn't figure she'd go for such a diminutive, more or less worthless target, "What is this going to do? You'd better have so damn lethal poison for that to put me down!"

A smile came to Ino's lips, "No, it's not lethal… those are harder to make and I'm not going to waste one on your foot when it won't flat out kill you if I hit you there. But that one _is_ a powerful hallucinogen, and it doesn't matter where I hit you because it activates at the same speed no matter what, so have fun with that." She said, too cheerful for it to be healthy.

Baui felt fine though, "Ha! Well it didn't work!" He taunted until he saw Ino count down on her fingers from five to zero. Once zero hit he felt his vision start to swim. He attempted to lunge at Ino to take her out before whatever happened was about to happen, but he hit what he felt to be a ghost, an afterimage of what he had seen as Ino.

He started looking all over the now multicolored cave and started swinging at bats that started to surround him and gnaw at him. He started shrieking desperately and rolling about on the ground to get the bats off of him.

Meanwhile Ino was sitting on a nearby rock, kicking her feet as she watched the Ame ninja's breakdown, "Hmm… when I did it to myself I didn't freak out like that. I think I actually enjoyed it. Maybe my hallucination was just better than his?" She wondered as she drew another senbon and threw it, hitting Baui in a far more vital place and forcing him to pass out after a few seconds.

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Shigure)

"Where are those little bastards?" The scarred Ame genin shouted to himself as he looked around the cavern. He turned once he saw his teammate Baui engaging Ino and moved to assist but quickly drew one of his umbrellas to try to block an attack he felt coming up behind him.

The hard wooden umbrella was cut into three segments by two clones of Naruto and their wind enhanced machetes, 'Damn! That should have at least stopped a blade, but he cut through it like it was butter! And why are there two of this kid?' How did this brat know how to make solid clones?

He was pondering this right up until he felt a pair of arms wrap themselves around his waist in a vice-like grip that he couldn't shake free, "Genshi Kujo (Atomic Extermination)!" As the technique began to be initiated with the sharp popping of Naruto's hips that lifted Shigure off of the ground, He managed to stab the sharp end of his broken umbrella into the side of his neck before he could bridge back and slam him to break his own neck. This Naruto burst into smoke however, proving to be a clone.

Getting rid of the urgent threat, he kept backstepping and avoided another close call from Narutos slashing at him. This time however, it was even close than what had cut through his umbrella, as this one actually the connection to his oxygen tank that had been stretched across his chest. In desperation he reached for another of the umbrellas on his back to defend himself, but once again it was rendered to pieces by the two Narutos and their weaponry.

His attention diverted by the imminent bladed threat in front of him, he never saw the sliding tackle kick at his legs from behind that knocked him off of his feet. Shigure however did see the two clones in front of him leap into the air at him the moment his feet left the ground, 'Who are these kids?' He thought right before everything went black for him.

XxX

Not too long after, Midare was the only conscious member of the Ame squad left and found himself disarmed and tied up along with his teammates… upside down to a stalactite on the ceiling, "You can't just leave us here!"

Shikamaru looked up at him lazily. Good thing Naruto and Ino beat their opponents so fast, he didn't feel like wasting chakra holding that guy in his jutsu and banging the guy's head against something until he was rendered unconscious was just too much of a hassle for him, "Yeah we can. Watch. It's really easy. You'll be fine until the test is over."

"Wait!" Midare shouted as he had just seen his teammates get dismantled by this team of runts while he was kept at bay effortlessly by the shadow of another one, "Get me down!" He could already feel the blood rushing to his head. There was no way he could stay like that for two more days, "I'll tell you guys what part of your sensei's explanation you missed!"

"Nah." Shikamaru said, "That little fight got the blood pumping through my brain… I think it froze while we were outside." He remarked offhandedly before getting back on topic, "We can handle this ourselves, so later." He said as he and the rest of his team started walking away.

Ino waved up at Midare and pointed at Baui, "The hallucinogen doesn't wear off for about eighteen hours without the antidote and he'll wake up before then… so have fun with that."

"Hey!" Midare shouted, not taking their answer as the way things were going to be, "Get me down! Come on, please! We can't stay here for two days!"

Ignoring him now that the encounter was for all intents and purposes over, Naruto looked over at Shikamaru, "So you said you knew something about the stuff that Asuma-sensei told us Shikamaru?"

"Yeah." He said, trying to speak over Midare's yelling, "Ugh, Ino please. If that guy doesn't shut up he's going to get everyone else in this stinking place breathing right down our necks." He asked the female team member nicely, getting her to throw another sleeping bomb up at Midare to knock him out, "Thanks."

"I only have three left now…" Ino muttered as she checked her supplies, but accepting Shikamaru's thanks anyway.

Naruto frowned at being left out of the conversation, "Hey, what about the directions or whatever those guys were babbling about."

"About that…" Shikamaru continued where he had left off from, "Remember what Asuma said? It was a really stupid clue telling us we needed to look all over the place find a way down to these tunnels… but how we were supposed to know where to go to get to the tunnels when no one knows anything about the country… I guess that was just another part of the test. But there wasn't a damn river up there to follow… so I guess the rest of what he said goes for down here."

Naruto had a squinted eyed look of concentration on his face as he tried to dredge up what Asuma meant by his talk of a river, though Ino beat him to it, "Wait. I didn't see any body of water for miles around this mountain. So you're saying that the clue is talking about some underwater river that we're supposed to follow."

"I was going to say that…" Naruto mumbled, trailing his foot in the dirt under him, "…I want to sound smart sometimes too…" He then snapped out of his funk and formed his cross hand-seal, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Naruto then formed one clone for each tunnel that he could see leading from the place they were in and sent them off to find something, "I'll have this handled in no time you guys!"

Shikamaru smirked at the sight of all of the Narutos making things easy for them, "So I guess we can take a break for a bit while Naruto's clones scope things out." He said as he went to sit and lean against a rock out of sight in case anyone else came stumbling through the area, "Good, because I need a nap." He finished with a yawn as he shut his eyes.

Ino walked up to him with her hands on her hips, "Really? You're going to sleep here?" She asked incredulously before realizing that the lazy bum was already out of it, "Unbelievable… he's not going to be up until morning."

"It's okay." Naruto said, sitting on the highest rock in the cavern overlooking the whole place. Ino didn't even see him or feel him move across the place to get up there, "Shikamaru can sleep. You can sleep too Ino. I can stay awake and keep watch while you guys do." He grinned down at her and pointed up and over at the Ame team, "Maybe I'll tie a gag in those guys mouths so we don't have to hear them yell and all of that crap when they wake back up."

Ino pouted over at him from where she was standing, "You can't just stay awake all night Naruto, you need to get some rest too. We've been going since early this morning and tomorrow's going to be a long day, I can already tell."

Shaking his head at her, Naruto pleaded his own case, "I have to stay awake anyway just in case my clones find something. I won't pick it up if I'm asleep when they dispel. Besides, I'm still not very tired yet." That was a blatant lie, but him working on a quarter of a tank was still better than Shikamaru or Ino working on near empty for certain. The trek outside in that harsh winter weather was a strength drainer.

"Fine…" Ino eventually conceded, using the cloak she had been wearing outside to defend from the inclement weather to rest her head on the ground near where Shikamaru was sleeping against a rock, "But when you get tired wake me or the bum up to take over for you… no amount of info from your clones will do us any good if you're too weak and tired to go on any further to use it."

"Get some sleep Ino." Naruto told her with a grin, "I'll be alright."

Ino stared at him with one blue eye cracked open for a few moments before letting it shut as she moved around trying to get comfortable, "…Alright… goodnight Goldie-kun." A small mischievous smile came to her lips, "Don't go and play with me in my sleep now… if you're going to, wait until I'm awake so I can enjoy it." She didn't even need to open her eyes to see the look her probably had on his face. It was as clear as day in her mind.

Naruto just stared down at her with a red face and a twitching eye as he ground his teeth together, 'I really wish she'd stop doing that…' He thought to himself. It's a good thing he wasn't going to sleep that night or else he'd probably be thinking of that exact scenario… Damn Ino.

Sakura was supposed to be the only one he thought of like that.

Wait, that didn't sound right either.

Damn Jiraiya.

XxX

(Back in the Village – Hotel – VIP Lounge)

Kurenai didn't know what she was still doing up especially since there was really nothing to do. All she was even doing at the moment was just watching some of the other jounin in attendance at the exams as they sat around drinking. This was the first real chance she had gotten to hang around this many other jounin at one time and she expected to be regaled with stories of missions from the past that made them who they were, hell at least maybe some personal perspective on what to do with her team.

She should have expected that all they would be doing would be getting drunk.

In their defense however, there wasn't much else to do.

"So this is all you guys have got as far as the entertainment goes?" Kurenai asked with a dull expression on her face as she sat around a coffee table with Kakashi, Asuma, Gai, and a few other Konoha jounin.

"Come on Kurenai…" Asuma attempted to defend, pointing down at the table between all of them, "This is kind of impressive, you've got to admit." Gai was stabbing the space between his fingers with a kunai at a jackhammer pace, "…Especially since he isn't even looking at what he's doing."

"And don't forget that he's been drinking since ten-thirty." The female jounin added as she found her attention drawn to Gai looking like he was doing his best to accidentally sever his pinky finger, "Still this is a waste of time."

"Ha!" Gai exclaimed as he still kept from looking down at his hand as he continued to stab away, "It's never a waste of time to attempt to best my eternal rival Kakashi in a challenge! He could never duplicate such a feat, he couldn't possibly outlast me in this challenge!"

Kurenai palmed her face while Asuma blocked his own laughter, "Kakashi isn't even doing anything! He's just reading! He only stabbed the space between his fingers once and then he started reading and drinking again!" She yelled at Gai before gesturing to the masked man who was doing just that.

"Yes." Kakashi said nonchalantly, "But then no one ever said that I had to keep Gai's pace when doing his challenge. I just had to keep from stabbing my fingers." He put up one hand and waved his fingers in the air showingly, "No cuts here, see?"

Asuma shook his head and looked over at Gai, "You know, you can stop anytime you want Gai. Kakashi's not going to pick his kunai back up." He then took notice of the holes Gai had been making in the table, "Someone's going to be pissed off later when they see this, I know that for sure."

A fire filled Gai's eyes, "No! I will not accept another draw in our epic series of challenges! It doesn't matter, I'll show that hard work can overcome anything! I need to set an example for my precious students, especially Rock Lee!" At that moment, all of the other jounin sitting and listening took a shot.

"Your kids aren't even anywhere around here." Another of the jounin in attendance remarked humorously, "Where are they anyway?" He let out a sigh of depression, "My team had to come back after the first exam… I don't even know what the second one is all about."

Asuma shrugged from his place on his couch next to Kurenai, "I already figured it out… I just had to get some kind of basic knowledge on the land. I asked a few samurai about my guess when night fell." He looked at the other jounin that he knew still had students in the exam, "You know those hints you gave your students when they eventually showed up to see you? Apparently the mountains of the Three Wolves keep a system of tunnels under the village and the whole trio of mountains in general."

"Oh yeah." Kakashi spoke up in realization, "It used to be a supply system for frontline defenders in wartime, but they sealed up all of the entrances that would be around the actual village due to the danger of keeping them open. Now they just use it as a place for their samurai stationed nearby to train. The walls are supposed to be just short of the density of iron so that cave-ins weren't caused by some of the samurai's more destructive techniques."

Kurenai nodded, understanding just where her team had been sent off to, "So what's it like down there?"

"Spacious." Asuma stated, "Most places have space so that there's room to move about when fighting, but it's a total ant hill down there. There are all sorts of tunnels to nowhere… some that go deeper or will take you right back outside somewhere else. Multiple passages, stuff like that."

Gai stood up passionately with one fist in the air, "My students will triumph in that labyrinth! I believe in all three of them, they're the best of the field this time around! My Lee will show all of them just how splendid a ninja he is." Once again, similar to before, every jounin took a shot, but this time Gai noticed, "Tell me, why are all of my youthful comrades drinking every time I finish a statement?"

Kakashi, whom no one had even seen move to drink, answered him, "Well that's because we all agreed that every time you said anything about that Rock Lee kid of yours without being asked about it we would all take a shot. We've all been here for two hours…"

Asuma finished his statement for him, "…And I think we've taken a dozen shots each." He scratched his head, "I don't know if I'm right. I had to leave to head to the bathroom for a second. And then there was the time I had to get up to get more drinks."

"It's at seventeen." Kurenai said, seemingly not affected by her alcoholic intake, something that got her an odd look from Asuma, "I don't think I'll be walking back upstairs tonight by the way…" She informed them before letting out a hiccup and going half-lidded.

"There's your cue Asuma." Kakashi chimed in, trying to be a smartass, before catching a kunai that was thrown at him between his fingers, "Hey, don't play with weapons when you're drunk. If you can't take a flight of stairs don't handle a deadly tool." He chided gently, "…That last part is some advice for Kurenai for later." He said before replacing himself with a pillow on his couch that found itself impaled by multiple metal objects, "Defensive…"

"Yes!" Gai shouted loudly, pointing at Kakashi's finger, blood trailing down from where he managed to catch the weakly thrown kunai, "I knew that I could win Kakashi! That's puts me at 51 wins, 50 losses, and 123 draws!" Luckily, the vast majority of the jounin in the room were inebriated and thus Gai's following rant didn't unnerve them nearly as much as it otherwise would have.

XxX

(The Next Morning – Caves Underneath Tetsu no Kuni)

Crappy ration bar equals breakfast… at least as far as Team Ten went in a situation like this. Mostly because actually starting a fire to cook anything like the snake Naruto had killed the previous night would have possibly alerted someone that they were there. At least it was enough to get them up and going.

So after Ino and Shikamaru had awakened and partaken in something to eat, Naruto told them what he had been getting from his clones all night long, "This place is huge and deep." He said, "My clones had to make clones sometimes because trails branched off. Some tunnels led to the surface, some had to dispel before running into other people… and then there was the one that fell off that cliff around the corner into that pit." He said, remembering the memory he got of that particular clone's demise.

"Do you have a way out?" Shikamaru asked him.

"A way out? Yeah." Naruto said with a dry look on his face, "So far I found like twenty of them… that lead back to the surface." He shook his head, "There isn't anything at any of the exits. The clones checked."

"So none of these places led to a river?" Shikamaru questioned, pondering things once more. He got a shake of the head from Naruto, "I guess that means that we really are looking for one underground. Did they find one of those?"

Naruto nodded and then looked away sheepishly, "Yeah… about that… are you sure that's where we're supposed to go?"

Ino and Shikamaru looked at each other before Ino spoke up, "What's with the second-guessing? Yeah, we're sure. What other possible clue would we have? Did you find one or not?"

"I did, but…" Naruto tried to explain why he wasn't so keen on the idea before eventually giving up, "Whatever, if you guys are sure then let's go." He said with a gesture, prompting them to follow him, "It's a long way though…" He said before yawning.

Ino put a hand on his shoulder, "Do you need a nap?"

Naruto kept walking forward, "No, I just need to get moving again and I'll be fine." Another lie as he broke into a run that his teammates followed. His clones had been going nonstop all night, circulating the fatigue back onto him when they dispelled, and he had already been tired in the first place when he made them. But it was a race, and they needed to find the finish immediately. If they thought he was tired they would stay for even longer to let him get sleep. And he didn't need sleep.

As far as Naruto was concerned, admitting that one needed sleep was for people that weren't awesome, and he was definitely awesome.

"This is great." Ino said as she and Shikamaru ran through the caves behind Naruto, "We've got the one-man scouting party to look through the place for us."

Naruto let out a groan, "This place is seriously huge though… I only think my clones have gone through the tunnels in only one of the mountains..." It was a wonder how anyone else was finding their way around down there, some people would have to get creative with how they searched.

XxX

(With Team Seven)

Sakura had a torch in hand that she had requested Sasuke to light for her shortly after they had entered the tunnels for more reasons than just illumination. The chamber that they were in had multiple passages leading to and away from it. She walked in front of each way, holding up the torch carefully.

As she moved between the openings to different paths, Sasuke had his eyes firmly in her as she did so. To be honest, the attention was a little flustering, even if Sakura knew that he wasn't really looking at her so intently, more like the torch… but hey, she'd take what she could get in this instance. After going back and forth three times, Sakura turned towards him and Chouji, "So how about it Sasuke-kun, which one?"

Sasuke had his Sharingan on the entire time as he had been staring at the torch so that he could tell which tunnels influenced the flames of it to the slightest motion, "The first two are dead ends, the one after the third is probably a lead back to the surface. I would take the sixth tunnel, but we should mark our place because the fifth tunnel would be my second guess. The fourth and the seventh are connected to each other."

Hearing him say that, Chouji took out a notepad and handed it to Sakura, taking the torch from her as she sketched out the entire mapout she had done thus far of the tunnels, along with their estimated trajectory, "Sakura how are you doing that?" He asked her. She barely had a base to start from, yet the map she had made of where they had been looked extremely effective, "That's way too detailed."

A shrug came from the pink-haired girl, "I don't know. It's not that hard." She stowed the notebook away on her person as Sasuke started leading them down the sixth tunnel to see where it led, "…I like puzzles." She finished lamely, getting a laugh out of Chouji.

XxX

(With Team Eight)

Kiba shook his hands out as he glared over at Shino, a beaten up Konoha team laying behind them, "Great directions Shino." He commented as Akamaru took his place back on Kiba's head, "I told you this way wasn't the right one. I told you there were people down here. Trust the nose man."

"Am I aware of the power of your senses Kiba? Yes, of course I am." Shino said, hands in his pockets as he responded calmly, "I merely figured we could take the two to three minutes to dispose of some of the competition in the race. Who knows how long they've been down here or how close to the end we are? I am clearly going to rely on your senses and Hinata's Byakugan in this test, they are faster to search with than my kikaichu. Now let us continue." He said, walking back down the path they came from.

A growl came from Kiba as he shook his fist at him, "Creepy know-it-all, thinks he's so cool all of the time… since when does he think he's the leader?" He asked no one in particular, getting a small laugh out of Hinata as they followed Shino.

XxX

(With Team Gai)

Tenten paced about as Neji simply sat in front of two different passages, his Byakugan active, "Tenten be calm. We will get moving again in just a moment, you need to rest after being on guard last night."

"We're taking too long!" The weapon-wielding kunoichi responded irritably, "They said only 12 teams get to advance. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Not really." Neji said calmly, "Because I know that we are guaranteed to be one of the teams left standing after this." He then stood up and dusted himself off, "Lee's almost here." He said informatively just as light footsteps came rolling down one of the paths, bringing Lee to them before he came to a stop, "Well Lee?"

"Do not worry Neji." Lee said with a thumbs up, "I ran into another team in that direction, but they will not be causing us any issues if we go that way." He got a nod from the stoic pale-eyed Konoha genin in response.

"You fought them?" Tenten said with a raised eyebrow and her hands on her hips, fully ready to scold her jumpsuit-clad partner, "What if you'd lost or gotten hurt?"

Neji spoke up, "I would have checked with my Byakugan eventually." He said in a manner meant to exonerate Lee, "Besides, there are only a few teams in this competition that I would say Lee had a good chance at being in trouble against. This is why I say that we are guaranteed to advance. With my eyes we'll find exactly where we need to go and with the rest of our skills no one can defeat us."

Tenten rolled her eyes. Yeah she knew they were good, still there had to be some kind of trepidation towards fighting. Three-on-one was not a good affair to find oneself in no matter how good of a genin one was, and knowing Lee he didn't necessarily get the drop on them either, "Well let's get going then 'Mr. Skills', because these caves are massive even if you do know where we're going."

XxX

(A Few Hours Later – With Team Ten)

The sound of running water sounded like music to Ino and Shikamaru's ears as Naruto began to lead them closer to the sound. Still, as they got closer they realized just how loud it must have been because it took five minutes after first hearing crashing water to get to where they needed to be. Also, Naruto kept sending clones up on the walls in places where the path got dark. His explanation for such being, "This place is booby trapped… but whoever did it must think that everyone sucks because they're so blatant." He had been sending his clones to deactivate explosive tags.

Eventually they came across quickly moving stream of water, but it went back the way they came, and directly into a wall, "_This_ is what we're supposed to follow?" Ino said almost angrily, "Follow it to where? And how?"

Naruto took that moment to step in and speak, "That's what I didn't know how to just come out and say. I figured you two knew something I didn't and I just brought you to the closest one. I found like sixteen other branches in other places too. There's no way to see which one is the right one to follow, and even then how are we supposed to follow any of them when they end at a wall? I can't see through walls."

"Well there is always one way to follow any river." Shikamaru said as he walked closer to it and placed his hand in the water only for it to get dragged by the current roughly until he pulled it out, "It's going to suck, but…" Before he could finish, Naruto caught on to what he wanted and a series of clone jumped in the water to be dragged away by the current, "Well there's always that way too…"

Ino gave Naruto a grin and leaned against him, "You are really the best scout ever. There's just no getting around that."

Naruto just laughed to himself and basked in the credit being given to him, "Yeah, I'm pretty great huh? If my Kage Bunshin don't get beaten up or drown while they're down there then we'll know where that river takes us in just a bit."

BOOM

"What was that?" Shikamaru asked after an explosion went off nearby that rocked the entire area.

Naruto grimaced at the memory he had just received, "One of my clones messed up trying to diffuse an explosive tag in the dark… idiot." Ino and Shikamaru refrained from commenting that he was basically talking about himself, "Damn I hope no one comes looking for us because of that one." He still had others out from deactivating other traps set that remained out to watch over the path they had taken. Hopefully this area was rather vacant of anyone looking for the path to the goal, one would have to be deaf to not be able to hear the last explosion.

Ino looked into the rushing water nearby, not even able to see her own reflection through the rushing white waves, "Your clones have been down there for a while. Do you think they made it to the end of this thing or what?" She asked.

At that moment before he could answer, Naruto's eyes widened and he bared his teeth in threat, "Take a deep breath and get in the water!" He ordered with a low hiss, but the signs of alarm were evident for someone like Shikamaru who knew how to read Naruto's expressions by now. If Naruto decided to beg off from something it was obviously something to be wary of.

"Did your clones reach the end yet?" Ino asked. She hadn't turned around so she didn't see the look on her fellow blonde teammate's face, and as close as she was to the water she didn't hear the way he had been speaking to know that they might be in trouble.

Shikamaru did however, and knew to trust Naruto's gut. Come to think of it, it wasn't Naruto's gut he was trusting, it was the multitude of clones that he had left behind as they had been travelling, especially since Naruto was looking down the way that they had just come from, "Ino just take the deepest breath you can and get in the water now!" Both Shikamaru and Naruto got near the edge and prepared to jump in, and the looks on their faces let her know that this was deadly serious.

"What's the matter?" Ino hadn't remembered seeing both of them so serious at the same time in quite some while.

"We're being tracked down." Naruto told her, "And it's really not someone that I think we should try to fight. Not here, not when we don't have to." His eyes kept darting towards the tunnel all of his clones were down, "Can we go now? We don't have a lot of time."

'Is he scared?' The thought was almost absurd. Naruto wasn't afraid of anything as far as Ino had seen. This was the guy that wanted to go face down a missing-ninja that gave even a pair of hardened Konoha jounin second thoughts just to talk to him. As they all jumped into the river, the thought ran through her head again and again, 'What on earth could actually scare him?'

After a minute or two, down the path that Naruto had been looking, Kankuro and Temari emerged, looking back at the same way they had just come with some trepidation, "Man it's a good thing Gaara saw all of those copies of the blonde kid in these tunnels… if he hadn't then he might have turned on us out of boredom." Kankuro said.

Temari wasn't convinced however, "You didn't see any blood come from those clones did you? That's not going to satisfy him at all. We still need to find the way to the end quickly. I think the only reason he's let us live for this long is because he needs us to keep going. He hasn't really gotten to kill anyone since we came down here. A few dozen clones, even if they are solid, they aren't going to calm him down."

BOOM

Both Kankuro and Temari swiftly leapt away as a massive amount of smoke and debris flew from where they had left Gaara to deal with all of Naruto's clones. They had to admit that the sheer amount that were there were rather dangerous. Temari just cut through a swatch of them and left the rest to Gaara. That was the way he would have wanted it anyway. But the explosion that had just rang out wasn't small by any measure, not nearly as weak as the explosion that had set them off in this direction. It was five times as intense.

"Gaara!" Temari shouted into the tunnel in worry, "Gaara are you alright?"

"Stop shouting Temari." Gaara's monotone voice responded calmly as he walked his way out of the debris with not a scratch on him, "Let's continue."

Kankuro looked at where the dust was still settling, "What happened back there Gaara?" He felt the need to ask. The temperature seemed to drop to let him know that it wasn't the right question to ask at the moment.

Gaara seemed to stare a hole through the black-clad Suna genin as he answered, "Eventually whatever was left of that little attack squad realized I would just kill the rest of them too. They attempted to blow themselves up with explosive tags to kill me when it became desperate… fools." 'Just like _him_. If I come face-to-face with the one that created those annoyances I'll kill him.' The red-haired boy thought to himself, "And Temari. Don't yell as if I could be defeated by something so rudimentary again."

"I was just worried Gaara." Temari tried to assure him without upsetting him, "I'm your big sister."

Gaara just walked past them without sparing them a glance, "You say that as if it means something to me."

XxX

(With Team Ten)

"Shit!" Naruto yelled as he was the first to be spat out of the tunnel of water that he and his team had been stuck in. He flew as if he had been rocketed out of a water slide before yelling prior to landing on the ground after a ten to twenty foot drop, "Ow…" He muttered to himself as he stared up at the ceiling of the cave.

Turning his head to the side from his painful place on the ground, he saw Shikamaru get spit out next, only he managed to fall into the pool of water at the bottom of the rather short waterfall that stood at the end of their little watery route. Oh of course, when he got spit out of the waterfall he flew across the nice watery landing and hit the solid ground but Shikamaru hit the water where he could just swim to land. With Naruto's luck next out would obviously be Ino and she'd-

"Oof!"

-Land right on top of his stomach.

"Ow…" Ino said in a mirror of how Naruto had just moments prior, only he probably had more of a reason to do so at this point in time than she did. She finally noticed exactly what had broken her fall and looked down owlishly at who she was more or less straddling, "Goldie-kun?" Naruto gave a pained grunt to let her know he was listening, "Sorry."

"It's alright Ino." Naruto replied trying to give a reassuring grin but letting out a cough due to getting his ribs compressed by the girl, "Could you get off though?"

Noticing the position they were in, Ino just couldn't help herself and had to get a jab in, "Hmm, now this is really forward of you. I don't think this is the time to show your Ino-chan how much you love her though. Not like this anyway." She laughed when Naruto pushed her aside off of himself and stood up grumbling with a red face, "You should have taken your chance last night!"

"Alright you troublesome blonde idiots…" Shikamaru said, probably keeping a long incensed rant from Naruto from breaking out as he pulled himself out of the water, "Where the hell are we now?" He looked over at Naruto for some kind of confirmation of their location.

A shrug came from the orange wearing Uzumaki, "I don't know. My clones all fell out of the waterfall the same way I did. _They_ didn't make it through the landing though." They also didn't have a very wet Yamanaka Ino land on them either. Naruto was still in debate over whether that was a good or bad thing all things considered.

The trio looked around the room they were in. It looked like an antechamber as the waterfall they all fell out of spat water that trailed around the dome-like area, a little peninsula of land being the only thing that there was of solid ground that led to a door at the other end of the space.

Ino wrung the water from her clothes with a frown, "What did we jump in so fast for before Goldie-kun's clones told him what was down here?"

Naruto fought back a shiver, "My clones up top, the ones I had disarming traps and watching our backs… they got massacred. Every single one of them. By one guy. They never touched him even once. They never got close."

His clones never got close enough to use Naruto's new jutsu on the weird Suna ninja. They managed to make some impact on the sand they had attacking them, but causing internal damage on a wave of sand was a moot point. Cutting through sand was also a moot point as their machetes were all but useless in the frontal attack they were forced into. A last ditch effort from his clones using the traps they had been disarming didn't give Naruto any confidence in his demise either. He hadn't even seen the other two fight, and at the moment he didn't care about the other two at all.

"Then let's get the hell out of here and end this troublesome mess." Shikamaru said as he walked forward towards the door. It had to be something worthwhile. This had been the only door that they had seen period since getting down in the tunnels. Almost two days of miserable, squalid searching and playing cat-and-mouse with bullseyes on their backs. He was done with it.

Not needing to be told twice as Ino wanted a shower and real food, and Naruto wanted to get as far away from that Suna genin as he possibly could, they followed Shikamaru as he pushed the massive doors open and stepped inside, the doors closing behind them and leaving them in the dark.

Lights in the room then flickered on to reveal a well-lit path that they walked along until they found a pair of fully armored samurai guarding the door. Shikamaru stepped up and spoke, "So go ahead and tell me how late we are."

"You are the seventh team to arrive." One of the samurai said, "You are all safe and free to proceed. Congratulations on passing your second exam." All three of Team Ten sighed in relief and walked past the guards through the door. One of them noticed Naruto freeze in his tracks and lag behind his teammates, "Yes? What is the matter?"

Naruto turned around and grinned disarmingly with a sheepish laugh, "There's no fighting allowed past this point, right?"

The two samurai looked at each other before one of them answered Naruto, "That is correct. All of your fighting should have been done outside of this point. Why?"

"No reason. Thanks." Naruto said, satisfaction evident in his face. No creepy Suna ninja would be coming for him looking for a payback shot in here… maybe. With his curiosity sated, he followed after and caught up to his other teammates, not looking back at all.

XxX

(Hours Later)

The waiting area for all passing teams turned out to be a very tranquil underground bamboo grove. For Shikamaru it was the perfect place to catch some more rest. For Naruto it was the perfect place to finally sit back and fix himself some ramen… and maybe get some much needed sleep after he was done eating.

They had been beaten there by a few other people.

A team from Kirigakure. One of them wore a very thick specially made brown bodysuit that went over their head and covered their face, with only his red eyes and the metal plate stitched into the chest of the suit visible. On their back they had a tank that looked similar to the oxygen tank that the Ame ninja from before wore, only it was twice the size and there was no apparatus going around towards any kind of breathing mask. Who knew what it was for?

Another member of this team was a rather tall, lanky older teen, with half black and half silver hair pulled into a ponytail to go with the goatee on his chin and his headband on his forehead. He wore black pants, a long-sleeved kimono top, and thick metal braces wrapped around the length of his forearms and around his waist. The last member of the team was a young woman with short dark hair and eye shadow wearing a blood red battle dress and mesh stockings. Her hands were wrapped up and she had a large round shield on her back almost her entire size with an odd erratic pattern on it in the colors of blue, yellow, and brown. It was weird.

The same Iwa team that had been after Naruto and Team Ten earlier were down there as well. With the one that had the shaved head, Hisashi, glaring a hole into Naruto while his teammates relaxed and talked. Naruto didn't notice and couldn't care less, which for some reason really ground his gears.

From Takigakure there was also a team there. There was a girl with spiky, neck length hair with an orange clip in it, orange eyes, and a tanned appearance. She wore a white sleeveless shirt that left much of her torso bare as well as fishnet shorts underneath a white mini-skirt. She had her village headband tied around her right bicep and on her back she had a cylindrical object wrapped in a red material. She also had quite the scowl on her face as her teammates gave her a decent berth

Speaking of her teammates, one of them was quite average looking one. He had brown hair in something of a puffy small afro and his headband around his forehead. He wore an open black jacket with his collar turned up and a grey shirt underneath to go with his brown pants. Her other teammate was a level-headed looking shinobi with spiky black hair and strange eyes that had green irises and red sclera. He wore a long black cloak that left his entire body concealed from sight.

Also there was the team from Otogakure with the guy that looked like a mummy leading the pack, a team of genin from Amegakure wearing white cloths over their faces with eye-holes, air-mask mouthpieces, and straitjacket looking outfits, and a team from Kumogakure that seemed rare as it had two girls and one boy on the team, something that Naruto wasn't necessarily used to. One of the girls seemed pretty calm with blonde hair and a steel blue-eyed stare while the other one with dark skin and red hair seemed to be a hot-head… usually taking it out on the dark skinned boy with white hair that was their teammate.

As he focused on eating his ramen once more instead of trying to size up his possible competition, he felt a tap on his shoulder and looked over and up to see Lee standing there with his smile that seemed to gleam. Maybe Naruto was hungrier than he thought if he was seeing that? "Naruto-san, it is good to see a fellow Konoha team make it here as well as us! Tell me how you found the test to be."

Naruto let out a sigh as he looked down at his bowl of steaming ramen, "Let's just say I don't feel like doing this again." He said to the bushy eyebrowed Konoha genin, "What about you guys? You and Tenten probably breezed right through this thing… Neji too I guess." He begrudgingly admitted. Never having seen the guy fight or even operate as a ninja, he couldn't just assume that he could stop Neji. First of all that wasn't fair to Neji, and second of all what was he going to do if that attitude got him beaten if they just so happened to fight?

"Thank you for the compliment Naruto-san." Lee said in a very thankful manner, "My teammates and myself had a very youthful experience in Tetsu no Kuni's wilderness around the mountains! Why, on the first day of the test we-."

Lee had launched into a long story in an attempt to regale Naruto of his and his team's experiences on the mountain and in the caverns, but Naruto wasn't listening. The reason for that being that the team of genin from Sunagakure that he had come across by way of his clones had just walked in. And here he was hoping they wouldn't manage to make it by tomorrow at noon. Apparently around twenty hours was too much of a time span to be praying for a team with a guy like that to miss.

And the very redhead with the marks around his eyes that had cut through his clones with sand, using it in ways that Naruto didn't even know sand could be used to hurt people with, looked over at him as the world seemed to stop for just a moment. Just as quickly as the moment came it passed and he looked away and went about his own business, letting Naruto sigh in relief.

So why did he just feel like he had been marked or something?

"-And even Tenten would have to admit that-."

At that time he realized that the entire time he had been worrying about the Suna kid, Lee had been steadily talking away. By now he had missed so much of the conversation there was probably no way that he could wing it if he were to be asked a question. That wasn't fair to Lee. Other than cold-cocking him with a kick the day that they had met he hadn't really seemed like a bad guy. Anyone that would protect a teammate like that had to be kind of alright in his book.

He had to fess up and just come clean with it, "Ugh… I'm sorry Lee, were you saying something?" Naruto said in a sincere and apologetic way. And somehow he felt like that had been the wrong thing to say for entirely foreign reasons.

Lee just stopped in his tracks and stared at Naruto, his eyes wide in shock or whatever emotion it was that he was feeling before he began to shake and his eyes filled with a fire, "Such a hip attitude Naruto-san! I will show you, from this day forward you are my eternal rival!"

Naruto just tilted his head to the side in confusion, "What?" Even Shikamaru and Ino were paying attention at this point and were wondering how Naruto knew such a strange guy in the first place.

Thankfully someone came along well-versed enough to actually know how to handle Lee's brand of insanity, having had to deal with it for well over a year at this point. Tenten walked over and tried to get things in order, "Lee I thought Neji was your 'eternal rival'. How are you supposed to have two of them?"

"I can balance them both!" Lee exclaimed with determination, "As long as I can routinely defeat both of them then it is no problem at all!"

"Maybe you should work on defeating just one of them first." Tenten suggested with a dry look on her face before pointing over to where Neji was sitting, seemingly meditating in an attempt to block out any connection he had to his strange teammate, "You've already been working on Neji for so long, you shouldn't let off of him in case you reach a breakthrough."

Lee took on a pondering look before pounding his fist into his other hand, "You are correct Tenten. I cannot afford to divert my attention away from defeating my original eternal rival now that I am so close to doing so." He turned to Naruto, "I am sorry Naruto-san, but perhaps when I have already proven myself victorious over another we can truly be eternal rivals."

Not knowing really what to do, or how to handle the situation, the blonde Kyuubi container just nodded and gave a weak thumbs up, getting Lee to smile and then take off back over towards Neji. With Lee more or less gone, Naruto turned to Tenten who was smirking down at him quite triumphantly, "What just happened and why do I feel like I just got shoved out of the line of fire?"

"Because you more or less just did." Tenten informed him, pointing back at Lee sitting on the ground directly in front of Neji in an attempt to find any weakness whatsoever in him that he could. If Neji's eyes weren't closed he might have found the complete lack of blinking from Lee rather unnerving, "Unless you wanted to have _that_ in your life regularly."

Naruto could say that he most certainly did not. So far he had enough problems to work out that he hadn't even begun to address to have to deal with any eternal rivals yet… except Sasuke… because he just had to kick that guy's ass…

…Man he hoped Sasuke made it so he could beat him up close and personal.

"I don't think I want that in my life at all." Naruto admitted to Tenten… who was probably a second rival of his since he never got to prove that he could beat her. She was just way nicer than his original rival, "I would thank you, but I'll save my thank yous for after I beat you."

Tenten shook her head with her arms crossed over her chest, "You're still on that are you? Oh well, at least you aren't as bad as Lee is with it. I can deal with smacking you around once every blue moon just to keep showing you who's boss." Her eyes then panned over to Naruto's two teammates who were looking at her with some suspicion, "So are you going to introduce me to your team or are you going to keep me as the weird girl that just started talking to you out of the blue as far as they're concerned?"

"Yeah, whatever." Naruto said, rolling his eyes before pointing at her, "Guys this is Tenten, a friend of mine that I met right after I graduated… and I am going to beat her up one of these days." He got a flick on his ear for his trouble, "What? It's true, I am going to beat you up one of these days."

Hearing that Naruto had met her right after graduating put Shikamaru slightly at ease. She wasn't just over here to scope them out or pry any kind of secret away from them, and hearing that Naruto wanted to defeat her also made him realize that Naruto himself wouldn't tell her anything unnecessary, thus he went back to not caring too much about the people or things around him while he could, "Nara Shikamaru." He said, giving out his name before then tuning everything else out.

"I'm Yamanaka Ino." Ino said, seeming to size Tenten up, at least momentarily before smirking, "I see you're a friend of my Goldie-kun's."

"Your what?" Tenten asked with a raised eyebrow.

Ino sidled up to Naruto and threw one arm around him, getting him to growl at her for the embarrassing situation and for almost spilling the ramen he had in his lap, "Oh Goldie-kun's madly in love with me, but I love another. Still, he holds quite the flame for me; isn't that right?" She asked Naruto, pulling on his cheek.

Naruto to his credit was keeping his cool… on the outside, "I hope you're enjoying this now because when the exam is over and I get the first chance, you're so getting it." He said in a steady, even-toned voice that belied the true danger that she was in. She had obviously forgotten who she was dealing with. It was his fault for not terrorizing the general populace with horrible pranks to remind her of just how dangerous he was.

"Actually when he puts it that way…" Tenten chose to interject, grinning down at the busting of chops proceeding to take place, "…Yeah! I can totally see it! I mean, he said that you were 'getting it' the first chance he got. What else could he mean by that other than, you know?"

Okay, exam or not those two weren't getting away with this. And why wasn't Shikamaru helping him out? A lot of use he was when they weren't in mortal danger for some reason. Oh well, when in doubt curse loudly and vehemently to show your displeasure with a situation, which was just what was about to happen before an adult voice chimed in.

"Hello team." A group of jounin were led into the bamboo grove, one of whom were Asuma, "Good to see that you didn't turn into brat-sicles out in that blizzard the other day. Way to go."

The moment of her favorite pastime over, Ino hopped up from her place on the ground to leave Naruto alone to pay attention to the team's sensei, "Asuma-sensei what are you doing here?"

Asuma gave him female student a smile, "Well we're not going to leave you all in this place for another day when after the test is over we have to go back to town anyway, so when you passed we were informed and came down here to get you and take you back just to get it out of the way. I'm sure you don't want to be here any longer either."

"Hell no!" Was the immediate answer from Ino before she felt some embarrassment at her sudden outburst.

Hearing that they were about to leave, Naruto finished off his ramen and walked over to Shikamaru, dragging him up to his feet, "Get up Shika, it's time to go. You can sleep when we get back to town."

Shikamaru let out a groan and opened his eyes lazily, "More walking? Count me out. I'll go back after I wake up." He said, shutting his eyes as he tried to sleep on his feet. Everyone that knew him was more than certain that he could actually pull that off.

"You're already awake." Ino told him, "And it's just walking. No looking over your shoulder for someone trying to kill you or trying to navigate a maze of tunnels. It's easy now." When he didn't open his eyes, Ino began impatiently tapping her foot on the ground, eventually ending with him opening his eyes. His mother did that all the time when she was about to get troublesome, he didn't need to see Ino do it too.

Resigned to his fate of more terrible walking, the bane of his existence, Shikamaru looked up at Asuma, "This isn't everyone so what about the other teams? What happens when they pass too?"

Asuma and his team began to leave with the others who had been picked up by their jounin instructors through the back tunnel, "If the rest of the twelve teams show up before noon tomorrow then they'll be led back to the village just like you. At four o'clock you'll be given directions on what to do next along with them at the original meeting place for the exams."

"We're not done yet?" Shikamaru asked in a disgruntled manner, getting a shake of the head from Asuma, "I'm never doing this crap again…" He said under his breath as he shoved his hands in his pockets and followed along, hoping that whatever was set for tomorrow would be easy in contrast to the rest of the chunin exams.

He could always hope, couldn't he?

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

The ultimate cheap shot

So picture this. You're gearing up for a prolonged struggle of epic proportions against your greatest enemy. You both face off and then suddenly leap into action. You both move at a fast and furious pace, unable to keep tabs on each other due to the speed that you're both moving at. Suddenly he appears in your blindspot. As he throws a punch you lash out with a kick and strike him far more solidly than he does you. Yeah, you take the contact, but you might as well not have for the comparison of damage that you both have.

You think that things might just go your way, and as your enemy is sent tumbling head over heels from your kick you decide to end things quickly with a ninjutsu, only it's taking you way too long to build any chakra. And then you see a gigantic sealing array on your chest.

You have just had your chakra suppressed by your enemy because you didn't see him make hand-seals in preparation. That punch he landed, yeah that was just to finish putting the seal on you. Congratulations, you are now in dire straits unless you know how to and are given the time to take it off or you have taijutsu skills of an insane aptitude for the fact that now even the least chakra-costly jutsu you have will feel like you've just finished fighting a marathon battle.

This is the type of scenario that you can do to other people if you get good enough at fuuinjutsu to do so. Many seals are subtle, and unless you're up against a top of the heap ninja they might not know what you're attempting due to their own unfamiliarity with the art. Sealing chakra is just one of the things that the most talented practitioners of fuuinjutsu can accomplish.

A good user of seals can trap an opponent in a narrow stretch of battlefield; leaving them unable to move past designated points… a fuuinjutsu specialist can turn the tide of an entire full-scale battle towards their side with good enough placement and use of their techniques.

Once you learn more battle-ready or specialized fuuinjutsu techniques later on you should practice with how to set them; different scenarios in which they can be used, the scope of their full effects, things like that.

If you know how to use fuuinjutsu then who says that you need to fight fair? To hell with that. You sat there and learned all of this crap so that you _didn't_ have to learn how to fight just like everyone else. Why dodge when you can flat out negate an attack altogether? Why bother attacking when you've already got your enemy captured? Why fight an army when you can keep them from getting close to you in the first place?

Sometimes it's as simple as what you _want_ to have happen instead of preparing for what _should_ be happening.

* * *

**Chapter complete. Fresh from the keyboard. Alright, now it's time to go get the day started. I'm going to be somebody ladies and gentlemen! I'm going to be a superstar! Minimum-wage superstar!**

**For those of you that are fans of Jiraiya and are sick of just reading parts from his instructional book, fear not, there will be more of him coming sooner than you would think. For those of you that don't care in the slightest then ignore what I just wrote because it's wasting your time. If you haven't guessed, next chapter will be the setup for the final stage of the exams and the beginning of everyone's preparation for it. Hope you enjoyed reading the chapter.**

**Now get out there and be somebody! I want my regular readers to succeed… so that if I ever do something that they hear of and can give money to, they'll remember my attempts at entertaining them for the free and will reimburse me financially.**

**Kenchi out. My work beckons me.**


	20. Who Booked This Crap?

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Don't worry, I hate myself too for this fact. Why can't I be successful and creative? TELL ME WHY!

**Chapter 20: Who Booked This Crap?**

* * *

The next day resulted in Team 10 and Asuma reporting to the main meeting building that the exams begun at. Four o'clock in the afternoon and through the doors in the back of the meeting room that had initially opened before the first test of the exams the three proctors Anko, Kitsuchi, and Ao walked with the remaining passing teams in tow to join the ones that had passed the previous day. These teams were considerably more banged up and some looked as if they had even received medical treatment before coming here.

So now the party was all queued up and ready to go. They had twelve teams, no more no less. But that was still 36 genin, quite a few. Joining Team 10, Team Gai, the team from Oto with the mummy-looking guy, the team from Kumo with the two girls and the one boy, the older Kiri team, the Suna team with Gaara, the Iwa team with the guy that periodically tried to mad-dog Naruto, and the team from Taki they now had from Konoha Team 7, Team 8, and Kabuto's team.

Kabuto's team in addition to Kabuto of course, had two more older genin. Both wore veils over their faces and dressed similar to Kabuto, one wore smaller eyeglasses than Kabuto wore and the other wore sunglasses. Both wore their headbands bandanna style on their heads.

As well as them, there was a team from Amegakure, all of whom wore white outfits that looked similar to straightjackets if they could be described. They all each wore breathing masks from their mouths and had cloths over their eyes. One of them had two eye holes cut in the cloth so that he could see, another had only one eye hole cut, and the last one had no eye holes cut in his cloth at all. The one with two eye holes had spiky hair, the one with one eye hole wore his headband like a bandanna, and the one with no eye holes had bushy hair as well.

That rounded out the field. But the question was, what was going to happen now? The second test was complete, so was that it? Were they all chunin now, or did they have to do something else to reach that goal?

As the teams all stood in line in front of the three proctors with their respective jounin leader standing behind them, Ao spoke to them, "I'd like to officially congratulate each and every one of you for succeeding where all of the other teams failed. You have all passed the second exam, now you can rest easy for the time being. We're not jumping directly into another test just yet."

That got more than a few sighs of relief from some of the remaining genin that put a smirk on the faces of Anko and Kitsuchi and even got a few laughs out of some of the more laidback jounin in attendance.

Kitsuchi walked forward and cleared his throat to begin speaking, "There is one more test that you can all choose to partake in. That being said your performance thus far has all been taken into account. Still, this test will not take place for five more weeks giving you the time to recover if need be and train to improve."

Kiba was still rather tired and after hearing that the next test wouldn't be for five weeks wanted Kitsuchi to cut to the chase so that he could leave and get some rest, "Train and improve for what? What's the next test already?"

"Before that we need to get your names and team grouping." Anko cut in standing by a group of proctors ready to take down whatever information they were going to write, "Will the jounin all state this information at this time?"

Kakashi spoke up first, "Hatake Kakashi's team from Konohagakure no Sato; Uchiha Sasuke, Akimichi Chouji, and Haruno Sakura."

Next was Asuma, "From Konohagakure no Sato, Sarutobi Asuma's team; Nara Shikamaru, Uzumaki Naruto, and Yamanaka Ino."

"Jounin Baki's genin squad representing Sunagakure no Sato…" The man with Gaara's team said. He wore a turban and a veil over one half of his face, "…Sabaku no Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro."

A man with an oxygen mask over his mouth like the other Ame genin there at the moment was next. He had no cloth over his eyes and wore a flak jacket over the exact same suit his genin wore, "Amegakure no Sato's last genin team from jounin sensei Ugatsu; Oboro, Mubi, and Kagari."

Gai was up next with a huge smile on his face, "Maito Gai's splendid genin team from Konohagakure no Sato; Rock Lee, Hyuuga Neji, and Tenten." With that, his teeth let off a shimmer.

"From Kirigakure no Sato and jounin Shiyounin Tousui…" A black spiky haired man wearing a Kiri flak vest with a long sleeved shirt underneath, sleeves long enough to reach three inches past his hands said, "Hojo Arata, Obata Momoko, and Gekido Jin." The tall older genin with the black and silver hair, the girl with the short dark hair and the large shield on her back, and the genin wearing the thick suit that basically covered his whole body all nodded respectively.

Next the jounin from Taki came forward, "My team from Takigakure no Sato; Fuu, Houki, and Dorobou." He said, speaking of the girl with the light green hair and orange eyes, the normal looking brown-haired kid, and the boy with spiky black hair that had the strange green and red eyes.

"Representing Konohagakure no Sato…" Kurenai said in a straightforward manner, "Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, and Hyuuga Hinata." She did not fail to notice the gaze of Neji on her team from where he was, even if it was only for a moment.

An Oto jounin with a smirk on his face and a long black ponytail spoke next, "From Otogakure no Sato; Kinuta Dosu, Abumi Zaki, and Tsuchi Kin."

A normal looking Konoha jounin with puffy light brown hair and glasses was subsequently, "From Konohagakure no Sato; Yakushi Kabuto, Tsurugi Misumi, and Akadou Yoroi."

The Kumo team did not have a jounin present for them, much to the confusion of many, thus the blonde girl with the intimidating calm expression and the chest that should not have been that abundant for a 14 year old took up introduction duties for her team, "In place of the jounin meant to be here for this team I will introduce my squad. My name is Samui."

Anko stopped her and asked a question, "And where's your jounin? We sent word to everyone that this thing was at four. You can't tell me that they still blew it off."

Samui shook her head, "Our jounin was never here in the first place. He isn't allowed to leave Kumo for certain reasons… so we came here under the command of another jounin whose actual team had already been eliminated. "

The boy in her team shook his head as he placed a sucker in his mouth, "Oh man, this sucks. Is it going to be sensei's fault that we get disqualified? Maybe they'll kill us off thinking we're suspicious terrorists or something?" Everyone in the room looked at him with a deadpan expression.

"Just… shut up Omoi…" The red-haired girl next to him said, holding her head as if she had a headache.

Ao took that moment to give his input, "There are times when a team has to proceed with a mission without a proper squad leader so in this case it is allowed, if only this once. Please continue to introduce your team."

Samui nodded and continued, "My teammates are Omoi and Karui. As I've already said, my name is Samui. We represent Kumogakure no Sato." With herself and her team introduced she stepped back into formation with her fellow Kumo genin.

"Kyouin Wakai from Iwagakure no Sato introducing his genin team." A rather plain looking Iwa ninja announced, "Hisashi, Misaru, and Jun."

After a second the proctors took everything they had written down into the back room and Anko turned back towards all of the teams with a huge grin on her face, "And now that the formalities are out of the way, let's get to the fun part of the explanation! Tell the kiddies what's next old man!"

Ao took offense to the old man crack, but other than a gnashing of teeth and a mumbling of 'back in his day' he didn't let it show, "All 36 of you will be entered in a 12 team tournament meant to be held in a public place of meeting in five weeks time. You will all be observed by each of your respective villages, the daimyos of multiple countries, and potential clientele. Performing to the best of your abilities and showing your true merit as shinobi will be paramount."

"But don't just think that winning matches will get your promoted…" Kitsuchi said cryptically. The brawny Iwa shinobi seemed to like making the brains of the genin overheat as he left his statement at that.

Ao nodded and followed up on his colleague's words, "Simply winning your way through the tournament doesn't matter. You need to show the judges why you should be promoted. Running through the competition like a battle-ax is nice and all, but that doesn't show very much leadership or tactical skill."

Anko's grin dropped and a serious expression found its way to her face, "We don't need some kind of mindless juggernaut out in the field with the power to give orders. Many good shinobi would be killed that way." She barely noticed the flinch from two of the competitors from different countries, "If you win, you get to show more reasons as to why you should be promoted, but you can go the entire tournament without meriting a promotion." The grin then came back to her face, "On the other hand, your team could lose in the very first round and one of you or all of you could be considered for promotion."

"Exactly." Kitsuchi said with a chuckle, "Each round will be set up as such. Both teams will pick a side of a coin. The winner of the resulting coin toss will be able to choose how the teams will compete for that round; either in one-on-one matches or three-on-three team battles. One-on-one matches will be selected at random, with a drawing of the fighters going up at the conclusion of each bout until all three members of one team are unable to compete. Team battles will go until all of one side cannot continue or surrender. Proctors set around the battlefield will deem whether or not a shinobi can continue in the battle and will escort the defeated away. It _is_ possible to die during this tournament… just so you know." He was rather pleased when no one seemed to be scared away by that prospect, "Very good."

At that time, a screen dropped down from the ceiling as Ao spoke again, "We're now going to show you the random drawing for your first round matches in this tournament so pay attention."

XxX

Bracket 1

Match 1: Rock Lee, Hyuuga Neji, Tenten vs. Samui, Karui, Omoi

Match 2: Nara Shikamaru, Uzumaki Naruto, Yamanaka Ino vs. Hisashi, Misaru, Jun

Match 7: Winner of Match 1 vs. Winner of Match 2 (Winner heads to semifinals)

Bracket 2

Match 3: Fuu, Houki, Dorobou vs. Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Hyuuga Hinata

Match 4: Uchiha Sasuke, Akimichi Chouji, Haruno Sakura vs. Kinuta Dosu, Abumi Zaku, Tsuchi Kin

Match 8: Winner of Match 3 vs. Winner of Match 4 (Winner heads to semifinals)

Bracket 3

Match 5: Sabaku no Gaara, Temari, Kankuro vs. Oboro, Mubi, Kagari

Match 6: Yakushi Kabuto, Tsurugi Misumi, Akadou Yoroi vs. Hojo Arata, Obata Momoko, Gekido Jin

Match 9: Winner of Match 5 vs. Winner of Match 6 (Winner advances directly to final round)

Semifinals

Match 10: Winner of Match 7 vs. Winner of Match 8 (Winner of Bracket 1 vs. Winner of Bracket 2. Winner heads to final round)

The Winner of Match 9 will advance to the final round (Winner of Bracket 3 will receive a bye out of the semifinals directly to the final round)

Finals

Match 11: Winner of Match 10 vs. Winner of Match 9

XxX

"Troublesome…" Shikamaru muttered right off the bat as he looked at the tournament setup, "So now we're entertainment… great." While that was what he said out loud his brain was already working hard in thought, 'So if we wanted to go all the way through the tournament we'd have to fight an extra fight. I knew this chunin exam stuff would be more trouble than it was worth…' What he wouldn't give for a nice mellow D-rank mission right now.

Naruto on the other hand was paying attention to another part of the setup, 'So that Gaara guy is all the way on the other side of the brackets… good.' Naruto's clones had told him more than he needed to know about Gaara, he was going to stay as far away from him as he could if he could help it. He most certainly did not want to tangle with him any time soon, but even so he still had his confidence about him, 'So what if we have to fight him? It's just sand… there's a way to beat it. There has to be, and if we end up going against him I'll know how to beat it by then.'

With his thoughts so firmly on who would be fighting on who on the board he never noticed the Iwa genin with the shaved head Hisashi staring at him and grinning.

Ino did however, and gave Hisashi her best warning look to stop with the evil eyes or else. He just looked at her in amusement and mouthed the words 'just wait' to her, chuckling to himself before looking away again. With that issue over with and done, Ino decided to get a little psychological advantage… or to mess with someone, "Well it looks like I won't be seeing Forehead until the semifinals… if she even makes it that far." She said to no one in particular.

"What was that Ino-pig?" Sakura replied harshly. It was easy to hear since it wasn't like Ino was trying to keep that statement to herself, "Your slacker team probably won't even make it onto the field to begin with!" She shot back challengingly.

"Hey." Ino said with her hands on her hips, "Don't think that just because you have Sasuke-kun on your team you can beat us when the time comes, they can't protect you. He and Chouji will probably be tired from carrying your butt through the first few rounds, and we've got the human hummingbird on our team." She finished, poking a non-attentive Naruto in the head as he was still looking up at the tournament brackets, "He'll never run out of steam."

"Huh?" Ino's poke at his head brought Naruto back down from his own muddling thoughts, "Was someone talking about me?" He asked, turning towards Ino and getting an innocent whistle from her before he noticed Sakura staring at Ino with a twitching brow, "Hey Sakura-chan. Good luck in the tournament huh?"

Sakura stopped glaring at Ino to look up at Naruto and blink at his good-natured offer of luck. She wasn't so annoyed the way that she was in the Academy. Maybe because she didn't have him hanging off of her like a lost puppy every day, "Oh, thanks Naruto." Naruto in small doses wasn't really bad at all, and from their time in Wave she knew for sure that he wasn't a terrible ninja. He _did_ have a pretty even fight with Sasuke.

He still couldn't win now though. Sasuke was even better than he was back then. That was what she thought, still what was she going to do, hit him for saying hi and wishing her luck? That would be completely absurd. Who would do something like that?

"That's my Goldie-kun." Ino remarked with a smirk, "He's such a nice boy, trying to keep the spirit of the riffraff up." Getting another growl out of Sakura, Ino was thoroughly satisfied with the thought that she had gotten into Sakura's head, at least for now.

'I'm never going to be able to stop it am I?' Naruto thought to himself as he saw Ino and Sakura break into another argument. That simply wasn't going to end until one of them ended up with Sasuke, if that ever happened at all. It probably wouldn't even end then.

The proctors could hear the chattering amongst the genin break out and that it was beginning to steer away from focused conversation to just all out talking. Therefore there was no reason to keep them there any longer, "Alright!" Kitsuchi said, his voice booming through the echoing room and getting the attention of all, "You are all aware of what will take place in five weeks! Return home and prepare, make sure that your next effort is your best one because it's your last chance to make an impact! You're all dismissed!"

"Yeah." Anko said with a nod, "We've actually all got to leave. The samurai pretty much said that we don't have to go home… but we've all got to get the hell out of here… at least until a week before the final exam." She gave the genin a wave with her sweet yet threatening smile, "I'm looking forward to watching you all kick the crap out of each other. Hope you brats all make it back here in one piece!"

XxX

After the explanation of the final exam that was to take place in five weeks, the jounin of the Konoha teams that had made it that far to begin with took their teams to a buffet-style restaurant at Kakashi's behest, mostly for the sake of the man's wallet since he had to treat his team which included Chouji to something like this at least once… he was more or less obligated to as Team 7's sensei.

As everyone currently had a plate and the younger ninja especially took to the meal with vigor due to having not had anything remotely similar in at least two days, Naruto seemed to just be more or less picking at his own food. Most had assumed that since if you stabbed Naruto he would bleed broth instead of blood his mood was plainly because of the distinct lack of ramen as an option at this restaurant.

As loathe as he was to do so, Shikamaru, who was sitting on one side of Naruto between him and Chouji, knew that this wasn't about the food since no one was forcing Naruto to eat any vegetables or anything of the like, therefore he felt the need to speak on the matter, "Naruto what's the matter? Shouldn't you be all fired up about the next part of the exam?" Said boy turned towards him with a questioning look, "Hey, I'm not excited about it at all since I doubt you or Ino are just going to quit. So I have to fight too so you guys don't get killed in a three-on-two."

Then was where Naruto got to actually thinking about something. Team 10 didn't have to win the whole tournament, they just had to do well enough to get promoted. That meant that they didn't have to fight Gaara and his team in the final round if both were to make it that far. No matter how good he thought he was, there was just something barbaric about Gaara that he was missing. The way he slaughtered so many clones without blinking, even when staring an explosion in the face was unnerving. And Naruto's clones hadn't even scratched him.

"Hey." Shikamaru finally said with a bit of assertion in his voice, "What are you frying your brain thinking about over there? It's weird when you're not jumping off the walls about showing everyone how good you are or whatever it is you're usually babbling about."

At that moment, Kiba spoke up, "He's just thinking about all of the ways that Akamaru and me are going to kick his ass if you guys even get that far." As he grinned in appreciation of his own jibe Akamaru barked from beside Kiba, sitting on the same cushion at the low-raised table.

Hearing that brought Naruto back into the moment, "I know your fleas are bothering you Kiba, but keep all of that barking of yours down. I already told you whoever has to fight me is going to be going home sooner than they think. Don't make me muzzle you."

Naruto's response made Kiba turn towards Shikamaru and let out a chuckle, "There, you're welcome. Now he's back to normal." He said before he returned to eating.

Naruto turned towards Shikamaru who was looking at him with a scrutinizing gaze before he started speaking under his breath, "I know you're kind of put off by that Suna kid you told us about." Naruto's eyes widened and he was about to dispute his claim before Shikamaru cut him off, "Save it alright. I was near the kid when we were resting after the second test, remember? The entire time he was just staring at me until I got away from him. I could see his muscles fighting to keep from moving like he was holding himself back from trying to kill me, the bloodlust was smothering."

Blue eyes locked onto Shikamaru's and couldn't understand why he was so calm if he understood, "You don't get it Shikamaru. I threw 50 clones at him. None of them ever even touched him. They never got close. It must have been like a beehive in there, but he killed them all by himself and he didn't move an inch until they were all gone."

"Stop worrying about it." Shikamaru finally said, leaving no more room for argument, "If you're that worried then we'll come up with something by the time we have to fight the Suna team, but remember that there's always one thing we can do if we've still got nothing by then, so don't worry about it." He pointed down the table where Sasuke was more or less sandwiched between Ino and Sakura, doing his best to just eat his food and ignore them, "They sure aren't worrying yet."

Naruto observed what Shikamaru had been pointing at and tilted his head at how Sasuke seemed to be indifferently letting Ino and Sakura bicker between him. He had to wonder how he could take it. It must have been a practiced sort of focus; to ignore the things around you.

Maybe Naruto had to try and practice some of that right now and block it out. There was nothing he could do but prepare, and Shikamaru would make sure he had his things in order as well. They had a month, he would worry then.

Who knew? Maybe by then there wouldn't even be anything to worry about.

XxX

(Three Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato – Naruto's Apartment)

The trip back to Konoha for all of the genin who had gone out for the exam was pretty quiet. Those that were eliminated earlier on in the testing pretty much headed back before the end of the testing period on their own to avoid any mortification and to wallow in their own disappointment. Those that stayed treated it like time for a small break before being subjected to the 'walk of shame'.

'Walk of shame' because the ones from Konoha that had made it to the finals were mostly kids. 9 rookies, three single year genin, and a team with a genin that had failed several times in the past had made it.

It was admittedly quite a good feeling when one of them looked over at one of the ninja that had failed and found them unable to straightforward meet their gaze. The same ones that were harping on them for being young at the start were now sitting back unable to even watch from the sidelines.

Naruto was more or less grinning all the way through the gate and then some.

Tomorrow matters of how the next month of training with Team 10 would be set up, but for now it was time to rest and take some pride in the fact that they had thoroughly kicked some ass. According to Shikamaru, even if he didn't get promoted in the end, going so far on his first attempt to do so would keep his mother off of his back for quite some time. At least until the next exams rolled around.

Walking into the door of his apartment, Naruto most certainly didn't expect to find Jiraiya sitting on his couch eating his food and going over his attempts to better his handwriting for his own fuuinjutsu studies. That was what he bore witness to once he entered his home however, "What the hell are you doing here Ero-sensei?"

Hearing Naruto's voice, the tall white-haired man turned to him before registering the new title he had just been labeled with, "What the hell? What happened to Jiraiya-sensei?"

Naruto pointed directly at him with a look of intent in his eyes, "The random stuff in that book of yours… all of that crap from the week before we left to go to Tetsu no Kuni… you totally corrupted me." And saying that put a grin on Jiraiya's face, "Why are you happy about that?"

"No reason." Jiraiya stated cryptically before seeming to vanish and reappear behind Naruto to pick him up in a big hug, "Oh kid I'm so happy! If you say I'm influencing you before I even really spent that much time with you then you really are the ideal pupil! I mean if I can influence you with a book before you even got to know me then who knows what I can pass down to you?" He was ignoring the fact that Naruto was an impressionable 12 year old boy that lacked distinct male role models until a few months ago, as well as the fact that such a dynamic personality of his own would rub off, "Now to really get the ball rolling I need to teach you the wonders of the female form."

"I will set you on fire." Naruto said in a growl as Jiraiya had yet to put him down, "Why are you in my house anyway? Aren't you rich?" It wouldn't have surprised Naruto if Jiraiya had in fact stayed there in his apartment the entire time he had been gone. For some reason he just came off as that sort of guy.

Jiraiya let Naruto down at pointed at himself in a grandiose fashion, "Kid I'm a sage. Despite my all of my monetary riches and abundant assets I am more suited to live off the fat of the land."

"Good." Naruto said as he walked to his front door and opened it up to escort Jiraiya out, "Then go do that, because I'm busy. I've got to figure out what to do next to get ready for the finals of the chunin exams."

A pleasantly surprised look came over Jiraiya's face at hearing that, "You made it that far on your first try and you're just a rookie to boot? Way to go gaki. That's damned impressive." It honestly was. He couldn't recall the last time any Konoha genin had accomplished that feat as a rookie, even when the exams were village exclusive, "So what are you going to do now?"

Naruto looked at the man who seemed legitimately interested in how he had done. He figured that he would pretty much just get that week of having Jiraiya assist him with his fuuinjutsu studies after he broke the news about the Kyuubi and that would more or less be that. A big part of him was glad that wasn't the case, "Well… I don't know yet. I'm supposed to be meeting up with Asuma-sensei tomorrow so we can figure that out."

A nod came from Jiraiya. That was reasonable enough to him, "When you figure it out come find me. If you can pass one test that I give to those I see as having potential to be my disciples then I'll assist you with a little bit of your training, and not just the fuuinjutsu."

"Really?" Naruto looked skeptical. All they did on the times they had spent together previously was Jiraiya would instruct him on how to get down making the basic seals perfectly, not a flaw allowed in them, and they would peek on girls near some waterfall-… err, _Jiraiya_ would peek on girls near some waterfall. Not Naruto. And no, clones didn't count as _him_ peeking, "You'll help me out? But what can you teach me besides fuuinjutsu?"

Jiraiya gave Naruto a shocked look before palming his face, "What are they teaching you runts in the Academy these days. I thought I was supposed to be a big deal…" He slid his hand down his face and deadpanned at Naruto, "Look, fuuinjutsu is cool and everything when you get good at it, but if you really think that all I'm good for is sealing then I'm even more insulted than I was when you first walked into the house."

"Why?" Naruto asked with a tilt of his head.

"Because I'm the best damn ninja in the entire world brat!" Jiraiya exclaimed in a grandiose and splendiferous manner before coughing and settling down, "…In my own honest and humble opinion…"

"Then why aren't you Hokage?" Naruto replied without missing a beat, deadpan look in full effect on his whisker-marked face, "Why is the old man still running things if you're supposed to be the best ninja in the village?"

Jiraiya had to fight the urge to facepalm once again mumbling about how this kid apparently wanted to be Hokage, "Look, just being the strongest ninja doesn't make you qualified to be the leader of the village. For all of the ass I can kick I really don't feel comfortable leading a large group to save my own life. I kind of hated being a jounin when I had to lead teams on my own just because of that. I'm more of a bulldozer, I've never really been much for tactics… but I don't really suck at them."

Naruto then thought about how the proctors introducing the last test of the chunin exam said that simply being stronger than all of the other competitors wouldn't automatically register a promotion, even if they won the tournament. And it had to only get stricter the further up the ladder one attempted to climb, 'So I guess Shiho-chan really was right after all when we first met. Being as strong as a Hokage is fine, but if I don't know what to do with it being strong won't matter.'

"Sarutobi-sensei is the man though. That's why he's still Hokage." Jiraiya said, shaking his head as if even dredging up memories of the Sandaime Hokage in action took him aback to this day, "I can talk about myself all I want to, but _that's_ the ninja you should try to be like. If you don't believe me then go ahead and ask him to spare some of his personal training time to fight you." He let out a chuckle, "And make sure I'm there to see the fight because I need a good laugh these days."

"No thanks." Naruto said, only imagining what kind of horrible things the current reigning Hokage could do to him if he was stupid enough to pick a fight with him, even just for shits and giggles.

Jiraiya patted Naruto on the head, "Good boy. You know you remind me a lot of me back when I was a genin."

Naruto raised an eyebrow as Jiraiya kept a hand on his head, "Really? How?"

"Hardheaded kid…" Jiraiya started to explain matter-of-factly, "A straightforward kind of guy… oh, and let's not forget the fact that you also have a smoking hot blonde girl on your team that's only going to obtain bombshell status by the time you're 18… just like the one on my team did."

Naruto shrugged Jiraiya's hand off of his head as he glared at him, "You mean Ino."

At that a grin crossed Jiraiya's face, "So you're admitting that she's good looking. That's a start." He ignored Naruto's twitching eye and took note that Naruto did not vehemently dispute the fact that he thought Ino was pretty, "Now she'll wind up being a total knockout if my early-warning radar is still in full effect, but she probably won't ever get the miracle chest that Tsunade has… and if you're lucky she won't have Tsunade's temper or absurdly abusive strength."

"What does that have to do with any fucking thing we're talking about?" Naruto asked loudly, waving his arms indignantly as he was sick of the current conversation… mostly because he didn't want to talk about a 12 year old girl he was going to see tomorrow with a 50 year old man that he knew to be and had accepted as a raging pervert, "I don't even think I know who you're talking about anyway. And stop talking about Ino's chest you pervert!"

Jiraiya smirked and tapped his head like he was mentally one step ahead, "I don't need to make you talk about it, I made you see it the day we met remember?" He then saw Naruto's face turn beet red, either out of anger or embarrassment, it didn't matter, both were good as far as Jiraiya was concerned, "…You're welcome." Jiraiya was certain that Naruto would thank him later, eventually.

"That's it damn it! Oiroke no Jutsu (Sexy Jutsu)!" In a puff of smoke Naruto transformed into the rather infamous nude female form that gave his jutsu its namesake, expecting Jiraiya to be flat on his back looking up at the ceiling. Sadly he was somewhat off on his estimation of what effect the jutsu would have on Jiraiya.

All that occurred was the widening of Jiraiya's eyes in shock as he observed the jutsu before a grin slowly crossed his face and a slow nosebleed began to drip from his nose. He leisurely pulled out a notepad and a pen and began writing, "Is it wrong of me to say that I think we'd be way closer if this was actually the real you?" As Jiraiya realized how what he just said could have been taken, Naruto then turned back to normal in another puff of smoke, an un-amused expression on his face, "Yeah, that sounds kind of creepy doesn't it?"

Naruto let out a defeated sigh and once again opened his front door, "Please get out of my house Ero-sensei… I need to go take a shower now. I don't feel clean."

Jiraiya blinked and nodded slowly, "I wouldn't worry too much right now. This is just one of those moments that we're both going to suppress and forget for years until something traumatic dredges the memory up by accident." He waved weakly as he stepped outside of the door, "By tomorrow you'll forget this happened."

Naruto just blinked once with his hand on the door, "Forget what happened?" He said, feigning ignorance about the recent episode before shutting the door.

"Good boy." Jiraiya said behind the closed door.

XxX

(The Next Day – Team 10 Training Ground)

The high of making it to the final part of the chunin exams had faded, at least for Naruto and Ino it had, it was never entirely sure at all that Shikamaru was even ecstatic in the first place for achieving such a feat due to his self-professed long-term goals of mediocrity.

Thus by the time they sat in front of Asuma they had significantly sobered from the swagger they had been travelling down the roads with the other day. That was fantastic for him since he would get a more objective outlook from them on what needed to be done to succeed in their coming matches against the Iwa team in the first round, "Alright the most important thing about the three of you is that you more or less cover each other's weaknesses." Shikamaru was the first one he pointed at, "You're lazy and unmotivated." He bluntly stated.

Shikamaru merely shrugged. It wasn't like he was being told something that he didn't already know about himself. He was a slacker and damnably proud of it… at least he would be if being proud of himself wasn't so troublesome, "Yeah I know."

"I've met your father." Asuma stated before sticking a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it up, "…I'm afraid there's not much that's ever going to change that except for immediate life or death circumstances. You don't ever seem to have any sort of sense of urgency and that's a double-edged sword to be honest. But then where you lack enthusiasm and purpose behind the things you do Naruto and Ino make up for that. You're the most intelligent one on the team, your teammates allow for that to be of actual use by staying far more active, allowing you to think clearer. When in the heat of a pitched battle you always look for some way to get your shadow into play. The one thing you're not lazy with is your work on the Nara clan jutsu for certain. And you have a plethora of cheap tricks that you use very well." He laughed at the frown that appeared on Shikamaru's face, "There's nothing wrong with a cheap trick. The more of them you have the less actual trump cards you have to reveal in order to win."

While he wasn't as stagnant on the battlefield as he once had been, Shikamaru was still basically the slower member of the team who preferred staying inactive even while in combat.

Pointing at Ino next, Asuma continued, "Ino you've worked hard to do more to supplement what you can do with your family techniques. You've come up with ways to threaten your opponents completely and keep them from thinking about you jutsu at all even if they know you're a Yamanaka in the first place with your poisons. No matter what you have the ability to switch up your battle approach from a ranged poison attack to a mid-range attempt to use your clan technique. Either or has the potential to end a battle in a hurry." Ino smiled at the complement. Learning how to make all of those poisons and the tools she used them with was hard, "If I had to point out a weakness it would be that once things get close you're somewhat lost in a fight, but a month isn't time to fix that. You also lack termed focus. Most of the time if there isn't something that you can handle or solve relatively quickly you'll leave Naruto or Shikamaru to do it. You need to fix that because a chunin has to be a problem-solver. Lives will be in your hands."

Naruto was inwardly dreading his own turn. Back in the Academy he always hated getting the rundown in a public forum about what his strengths were and where he could improve. Part of him still believed that he was about to take a tongue-lashing due to his having never really been complemented on his skill set due to its lack of actual existence while in school.

"Naruto." Asuma said as he looked at the boy in question who actually flinched due to being caught up in his own thoughts about what might be said, "You cover this team's most central weaknesses. You're the close-range specialist the way I figured you'd be from the beginning and you've only improved since then. Even without your machete if you're disarmed I don't see very many genin finding ways to handle you up close. You cater to your own strength of having tons of chakra with the way you use your Kage Bunshin, and you're learning something new altogether with fuuinjutsu in your own private study."

That was a better compliment than Naruto thought he'd receive, but Asuma wasn't done, "The thing is though, you don't really have anything that's effective once you get outside of five feet to use against an opponent. If you can't reach them or your clones can't reach them then you have to rely on Shikamaru or Ino to either use a trick to flush them towards your direction or attack them altogether to give you an opening to get back inside. I also see that you have a little bit of a knack for unorthodox maneuvers but you don't seem to try and dig that deep into yourself until you're in some kind of trouble. If I were you I'd try to cultivate that a little bit more, start planning ahead a bit. Flying by the seat of your pants is only good when falling is the alternative. If you really want it you have the drive to do way better."

Well that wasn't exactly the dressing down that Naruto had been expecting when it came to his turn to be scrutinized. All he could really do in return was nod, indicating that he understood.

Having said his bit on each of his genin, Asuma switched gears, "Now about your more technical weaknesses; Shikamaru and the more physical aspects of the job as well as the drive, Ino with the close fighting, and Naruto with anything having to do with range… there's not much I can do about that." All three genin had to keep themselves from face-faulting, "But this isn't about that. A month is enough time for a patchjob that will get you through the rest of the exams on that part of your skills. No, now it's time to accentuate the positives and hide your negatives."

Ino and Naruto both looked at him in a confused manner while Shikamaru breathed a sigh of relief as he seemed like he understood Asuma's point.

Asuma decided to explain to make sure everyone was following along, "If the problem is that you can't hit your opponent outside of your range of attack or you would get your ass kicked once you get within arm's length of an enemy… why go there? Hide it! Highlight your positive points. Show the judges that you know damn well what you're not good at, and show them that you can avoid being put in a situation where it would even matter. This is a showcase and you're going to want to make yourselves look good. Damn good. No half-assing it."

"So what exactly should we do?" Naruto asked with a squinted look of hard concentration on his face.

Asuma let out a chuckle, "You all have shown that if it comes down to it you can come up with some very nasty combinations of your skills. I want more of that come tournament time. In the case of a team battle I don't want it to even be an issue of who would win it. You all cover the others asses with what you can do. Now how are you going to handle your schedule for the month?" He asked before noticing that they were just staring at him, "I'm not helping you with this part. I'm _asking you_ how _you're_ going to handle it."

The three moved together with Shikamaru starting off with a sigh, "Okay, we have a month to get this together. I'd say the first half of the week we work on our own personal training and the second half we get together… and on the seventh day we do whatever we want with the time." Like sleep or do nothing at all. This was still Shikamaru after all.

"Oh." Naruto said after taking in the idea of the schedule, "So the seventh day is so we don't get all burned out on training and start to slack during our actual sessions? Or so we can look into something different than what we're probably going to work on normally…"

"Yeah sure, let's go with that." Shikamaru answered abruptly before looking between Naruto and Ino, "So is that good with you both or what?"

Ino shrugged her shoulders, "That's just fine with me. I'm going to try to kick daddy's ass into gear and see if he'll help me train. Maybe he can teach me a new jutsu." She wasn't holding her breath on that however. Her dad was very stingy with the idea of giving her another jutsu from the family collection. He wanted her to perfect Shintenshin no Jutsu by barely having to use much time to take aim in order to make sure she wouldn't miss and leave her body vulnerable, as well as making sure she could release the jutsu quickly to prevent damage from occurring while she was in the body she was possessing.

Hearing Ino talk about a new jutsu made Naruto think about the 'jutsu' he had come up with and had yet to test on an actual person. But he had other things that he needed to deal with before going to play with a concept attack.

"I like it." Naruto said in reference to the schedule of the workouts, "That way if anyone comes up with something new they can do they have time to get it down well enough to use." They could probably even work it into one of their formations or battle strategies if someone could master a new jutsu over the course of the month.

Asuma watched them work out their training schedule and it worked great for him. Unless someone asked him specifically for some one-on-one time he would show up three days out of the week to help them all as a team. The rest of the week he could come up with his own ways to help them and do his own thing. Maybe get in some training of his own? Ever since he started training this team he really didn't have his own time to train himself. He could help Team 10, keep himself in shape for the month, and teach his team to be self-sufficient at the same time; it was an all-around win.

He stepped in and commented on the plan of action for the month, "You all seem to have your own ideas of what you want to do. Just remember that even on your personal days of off days you can always come find me if you think you need the help. You have all the resources you need to succeed so there's no reason you three can't all come out of this thing as chunin." He then thought of something else as an afterthought, "…Especially since I still have money on all three of you to outdo the other Konoha teams. No pressure though."

All three of the Team 10 genin spoke up simultaneously, "Don't worry, there isn't any." They said in dry tones of voice after hearing that Asuma still had a bet on them. Why would they care about money they were never going to see?

XxX

(Later That Day)

Since today was technically a personal training day, Naruto was not willing to waste a second of it. After the short team meeting dismissed and they all split up, Naruto went looking for Jiraiya. Due to the fact that Naruto could now pin chakra signatures to certain people with his scouting jutsu due to his jump in skill with it he could locate Jiraiya. It also didn't hurt that he knew the places where the man might be.

Either the hotspring or that waterfall with the hot women that Naruto worked with Jiraiya at the week before they left to go to Tetsu no Kuni. It was still summer, even though in Hi no Kuni the weather was always pretty pleasant, thus he figured that the women would keep going back to that waterfall, hence Jiraiya would be there.

And lo and behold Naruto found him in the same field they had used previously, crouched and staring through the bushes with a scope as he giggled to his heart's content at the scantily clad women frolicking in the river behind it, "Ooh, that's right bring your friends ladies. The more the merrier I always say. Gahahahaha! That's it. Go ahead and give her a tight hug in the water. You haven't seen her in a while huh?"

Naruto just walked up on the man quietly before he got right behind him and cocked his foot back, prepared to deliver a powerful kick to the man's rear end. The moment he let his foot fly, massive grin on his face… well Naruto didn't quite know what happened. All he knew was that one second he was about to kick Jiraiya, the next he was on his back ten meters away looking up at the sky, 'Huh… Shikamaru is on to something with the whole cloud watching thing. I kind of want to go to sleep.' That was possibly the potential concussion he had just suffered talking though.

Naruto slowly sat up to see Jiraiya still looking through the bushes, only with his fist outstretched from delivering the punch that sent Naruto flying back. That was fast, he never even saw or felt the man shift his body to do it.

"Don't sneak up on me when I'm doing my research gaki." Jiraiya said as he kept peeking through the bushes, "I take my occupation as a writer of adult literature quite seriously. This is my work."

Naruto stood back up, dusting himself off, "Whatever you say Ero-sensei. Get some more stuff for your porn books later. You told me to find you after I was done with Asuma-sensei and my team."

"I said it was adult literature!" Jiraiya turned and shouted at Naruto, staying quiet enough to not turn on the girls in the distance to the fact that he had been peeping on them, "And about the training, could you come back later? This is some prime viewing time."

A firm shake of the head from Naruto was the answer, "I can't do that Ero-sensei. I won't be an enabler to your filthy addiction."

"You weren't saying that last week…" Jiraiya muttered, getting Naruto's cheeks to turn red momentarily as it was quite clear then that he could see what Jiraiya saw in spying on the women, "Alright if time is money then let's hurry up and have you impress me so I can finish teaching you that seal of yours."

A seal? Jiraiya was going to teach him a seal? But he thought he was supposed to come up with his own eventually out of personal study, "You're going to teach me a seal? Wait, you've _been_ teaching me a seal? When?"

Jiraiya smirked, "Back the week before you left. Why do you think I was making you write practice arrays while throwing rocks at you?"

"Because it was funny?" Naruto replied questioningly. It had been a miserable week for certain, but he had come back every day with the assurance that the next day Jiraiya would teach him something. Apparently he had been the entire time.

"Yes." Jiraiya said with a grin on his face, "Yes, it was fun. But it served a purpose, to teach you how to draw your seals and focus at the same time. What if the course of an entire battle was counting on you finishing a seal? Would you allow the explosions and the fighting that would probably be going on around you to stop you from finishing it or to mess it up? That was the most basic lesson I could give you, and it's important to the actual technique you're going to learn now. First though…"

Naruto didn't like the way he said that last part, "First what?"

Jiraiya began to laugh slowly, "First you have to show me something important before we really begin."

Something important? Naruto just stared at Jiraiya with a twitch in his eye, "I'm not going to show you Oiroke no Jutsu again so just forget it you perv."

"Not that." Jiraiya said as he crossed his arms before pulling out some special ink and a few prepared scrolls, dropping them on the ground directly in front of himself before making a trio of hand-seals, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Technique)."

A clone of Jiraiya appeared and picked up the supplies on the ground. The clone set up the scrolls in a circle twenty feet in circumference around itself and sat down in the middle.

Naruto was curious, but Jiraiya was quick to explain, "You're going to protect my clone from me. I am going to attack that clone which is going to represent you or a clone of you attempting the jutsu I'm going to teach you." His voice was now gravely serious, "When you get good with this jutsu you'll be able to pull it off in less than two minutes. Until then you won't be able to perform it without at least that long in preparation time."

"I have to fight you?" Naruto said, somewhat dismayed at the thought of fighting Jiraiya. Not because he figured he would hurt the man, it was actually vice versa in that case, "I can't beat you."

"You're not supposed to." Jiraiya said seriously, "You're only supposed to keep me away from the circle the clone is sitting in. If I pass that circle then that means I can attack my dummy clone and the jutsu will never be finished. It is important that you hold me off for at least three minutes since that would be the minimum amount of time you yourself would need to prepare the seal I want to teach you at best." He pulled out a stopwatch and held it up.

Naruto looked at the clone in the circle and then at Jiraiya before nodding. Taking that as Naruto's acceptance of the test, Jiraiya began to walk forty yards away from Naruto before turning around and giving him a few moments to get ready, "Do whatever you think you have to in order to keep me away from that circle." He instructed, and was pleased to see Naruto immediately make fifty Kage Bunshin in order to block him, "Good, but when you yourself use the seal or have a clone use it you're going to need most of your chakra that you're splitting through all of these ones you have out."

"You didn't say I couldn't use any though." Naruto said as he and all of his clones slowly drew their machetes and held them at the ready, "Start!" He demanded, wanting to get this test over with.

Jiraiya immediately ran towards the circle that was being blocked by Naruto's clones and scoffed when he saw a direct charge from around ten of them coming his way. Deciding to not flat out blitz Naruto since he could have ended the test almost immediately if he had really been motivated to get to the circle, Jiraiya decided to hold back enough to give Naruto a fighting chance on his first try.

'It's not like Asuma-sensei's since I can't really stretch the blade like him, but it's better than nothing.' Naruto thought to himself as his clones started to generate wind chakra to the blades of their weapons. One day he'd have to ask Asuma how to stretch the chakra extension of the blade and hope that it was easy enough to get down quickly. Until then he was supposed to go at Jiraiya all out, and his clones got that message loud and clear.

Jiraiya noticed all of Naruto's clones about to attempt to cut him down with their machetes and remembered that this kid was training with Asuma, 'Crap, I forgot that this kid uses wind chakra. He can channel chakra through that blade of his like Asuma can.' Even if he used his defensive jutsu there was a chance that Naruto could still get through it, 'Twenty seconds.' He thought to himself.

Jiraiya bit his finger and made a few hand-seals, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!" In a puff of smoke, Jiraiya was replaced by a large toad, bigger than the man himself had been. It wore thick samurai armor around its torso and on its arms as it blocked the strikes from Naruto's clones. Jiraiya however, was nowhere in sight, something the clones took note of, and this allowed the toad to destroy them with a sweeping strike of its tongue.

"A toad?" Naruto said to himself in amazement before realizing that the test was still going on, "So where's Ero-sensei?" He asked himself as his remaining clones all surrounded the sealing circle that marked the objective of the test. The armored toad rushed towards them and drew away several Narutos in an attempt to keep it from just bullrushing the circle and ending the test, stretching out the defensive perimeter even further.

Jiraiya reappeared in a danger-close zone near the clones and the circle and immediately initiated his next move, "Hari Jigoku (Hell Needles)!" From his hardened hair, singular follicles shot at the clones like needles. They could either take the hits or move and allow them to damage Jiraiya's clone which was the goal to protect.

Naruto's clones tried to block the needles, but they were too numerous, too fast, and he didn't have the reaction time to do something like that against something so small. A dozen more clones were shot down by that jutsu, leaving a major hole in the defense that the very close Jiraiya jumped right through before stopping in a pose as he breached the circle, "Time!" He looked at the stopwatch he had placed around his neck for safekeeping, "56 seconds. Not bad, you're almost a third of the way there." Too bad every second mattered.

"Goddamn it!" Naruto exclaimed in defeat as he dispelled his clones and pulled at his hair. He pointed over at Gama who was still standing at attention before croaking to Jiraiya and disappearing in another puff of smoke, "And what the hell was that?"

"I didn't say I would never summon anything." Jiraiya said as he stepped out of the unharmed circle, "That was just Gama. I'm not going to throw the major toads at you kid."

Naruto looked between Jiraiya and where the toad had been and he felt a spark fry his brain, "I didn't even know you could do that! Can you teach me how to do that?" As far as Naruto was concerned that toad was badass.

On the other hand Jiraiya was pleased that Naruto liked the toads, "Maybe later. For now we're working on you earning this sealing jutsu. It's really high level. First you need to hold me off for three minutes."

"What does this jutsu even do?" Naruto asked, having not cared previously but after getting his ass thoroughly humiliated in under a minute he wanted to know what he was working for in the first place, "If it's going to take me at least three minutes to load it up then it's got to be something cool, right?"

"It's the ultimate equalizer gaki." Jiraiya said with a knowing grin, "That's all I'm going to say for now. Once you finish this test I'll tell you everything you want to know, now back to work. Let's try this again."

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Patience is a virtue, speed is a blessing

Now even with a practiced speed, making simple seals will still take time. Making your own sealing scrolls and explosive tags will still take between thirty seconds and a full minute for even the best practitioners of fuuinjutsu. It is not a necessarily quick art. The power of certain techniques are worth the time however.

This is why sealing specialists are hot commodities in advance attack teams. While the other ninja are struggling in battle a seal master can shift the situation towards their squad's side if allowed the time to do so. It will actually be easier to use fuuinjutsu when in a large battle. You have more people available to back you up and protect you while you prepare your eventual jutsu instead of having to risk going about it on your own with no cover.

The best seals all take time. Seal masters spend months and years attempting to shave time off of their best techniques but in the end you're never fast enough for your own liking. Every second matters in the grand scheme of things, but do not panic. You knew the risks of the jutsu before you sat down to attempt it. Don't cop out halfway through because it's taking too long; that would make the time you took to initiate the sealing jutsu in the first place and all of the sacrifices made by you and your comrades to get that far along in the first place meaningless.

It will work when it is supposed to work. There is no forcing a seal. There is no speedy shortcut. When someone yells at you, "Hurry up! You're taking too long!" You tell them to shut their fucking mouth because there's a reason you're the one using the jutsu and not them.

Our art is precise. You cannot just bulldog your way through and bully it into activation.

* * *

**Nothing to say. Need to go to work. Later people. I hope you enjoyed and will enjoy the next chapter. I think there will be two chapters of preparation for the finals but I'm not sure. I may be able to condense it into one, but I don't want to skip anything I think it would be beneficial to write. Oh well, I'll find out in a few days time.**

**Well... I guess that was something to say after all.  
**

**P.S. C.M. Punk rules since the year 2004 as far as I'm concerned. It just needed to be said for those that understand, and if you don't it doesn't matter.**

**That is all. Kenchi out.**


	21. No Whammies

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. For the ownership of Naruto I hereby challenge Kishimoto to the prison knife game. You know, the one where you take a knife, put one hand flat and spread out on the table and stab the space between your fingers as fast as you can. My record is 153 stabs straight in under a minute without hitting a finger. BEAT THAT MOTHERFUCKER!

**Chapter 21: No Whammies**

* * *

It was now the second week of training and the last day of personal training for that week. This meant that Naruto was still trying to keep Jiraiya off of the sealing position for three minutes. By now he had impressively reached one minute and forty-five seconds. But each second further was harder and harder to obtain, it seemed like half a second better was a major accomplishment when he would get it.

He'd scratch and claw as best he could, use as many clones as he could muster, throw the best attacks he had at Jiraiya to keep him away, but it would always inevitably end up with Jiraiya triumphantly breaching the sealing area.

The process was maddening.

And Jiraiya said that when he actually used the real seal it would require more chakra than he could give if he were to make so many clones at once. Naruto had an easy way to solve that problem though; he would simply make one clone and make it activate the seal, _then_ if he needed to he had the rest of his own chakra to use to split amongst his clones that he would use to actively fight and protect the single seal clone that had half of the original Naruto's initial chakra supply. It would be a simple case of splitting his chakra in half and then spamming his own remainder to fight.

Right now though, the two were taking a break so that Naruto could learn the process needed to make the seal in the first place. In their usual field that had become their meeting place for training and whatnot, Naruto sat across from Jiraiya studying all of the patterns and arrays written a scroll, the same scroll that marked the circle he was trying to protect during their actual physical training, "Make sure you know how to write this array perfectly." Jiraiya said, "Depending on how wide you want the range of this jutsu to reach, you're going to need more than one scroll."

"So this jutsu doesn't have a set range?" Naruto asked as he attempted to commit the seal to memory while making his own master copy to use to prepare his own scrolls, "Cool."

"Not as cool as you'd think." Jiraiya said, looking over Naruto's work. His handwriting was very good. He was expecting mistakes, but not here. He could thank Naruto's routine abuse of the Kage Bunshin training method for that. Naruto could probably forge perfect signatures if he had to sometime down the line. Something to think about at a later point.

"It's not cool?" Naruto said with a puzzled look on his face.

Jiraiya then launched into an explanation, "Okay, in order for this to work you need at least three scroll. If you have three scrolls then that will take up a 50 yard circumference and a ton of chakra for a normal person… but we both know you're not exactly normal, which is good for you in this case. You could probably use more than 12 scrolls and have enough chakra to keep going, but chakra probably isn't going to be a concern after you finish that jutsu."

Naruto tilted his head curiously, "Why? I thought chakra was important. Don't we die without chakra?"

"Chakra isn't important after you activate this jutsu for a very good reason." Jiraiya said with a stern look on his face, "Once you activate this seal then no one can use any chakra within the range of your seal, at all." At that time, Jiraiya set up three scrolls in a circular pattern much like the position Naruto was meant to guard in their physical training, "One hand-seal for each of the five chakra natures. Remember them…" He said as he went through the five seals, "Tora, Mi, Inu, Saru, Ushi." Naruto went through the hand-seals slowly along with Jiraiya, trying to remember the pattern just as Jiraiya called out the name of the jutsu, "Chakura Mukou Fuuin (Chakra Disabling Seal)!"

Naruto cringed at Jiraiya, not expecting him to just activate the jutsu. A massive array spread out from the ground where the three scrolls were placed, the distance and range that Jiraiya claimed that it would, and in a flash appeared on both Naruto and Jiraiya's bodies before disappearing.

After it had done so, Naruto didn't feel any different, "That's it?"

A nod from Jiraiya was his answer, "That's it." His lips quirked upwards in amusement, "What? Did you expect an explosion or something?"

"Kinda." Naruto replied lamely, looking at his hands and around at the entire area, "Did it work?"

"You tell me." Jiraiya said, sitting down on the ground with his cheek in one hand as he waited for Naruto to try something, "Go ahead and make your dumbass clones so I can get back to kicking your ass again."

Now Naruto was very defensive of his signature jutsu. His clones were most certainly not dumb, "Fine! Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" He said, his hands up in the necessary hand-seal for the jutsu to take form. Nothing happened however, causing Naruto to blink blankly, "Wow… really?"

Jiraiya chuckled at Naruto's reaction, "Yep. Until you choose to undo the technique it lasts for as long as you're conscious, or for as long an opponent is in range, and whoever you're fighting won't be able to leave the battlefield." A frown then came over his face, "It does the same thing to you though. It evens the playing field. The only thing someone can use after this is normal weaponry and taijutsu, but if you find it reasonable to use this move then your opponent probably outclasses you when using chakra."

'No chakra at all…' Naruto couldn't help but consider that more of a hindrance than a help. Maybe he was looking at it wrong, "Anything caught in the range of the seal when I activate it can't use chakra until I release it… me included."

"Another reason why I'm making you fight me so hard." Jiraiya said, "You're not going to face off against any genin like me. Ever. You already have fantastic fighting skills without any chakra. This is teaching you how to keep a stronger opponent at bay. If you can hold me off for three minutes then who knows how long you can hold off a lesser opponent that's still stronger than you."

The way Jiraiya described him, Naruto found it hard to believe he was really any good. Jiraiya repeatedly wore him out, as he had yet to land a single blow on Jiraiya whatsoever. On the other hand though, it was hard to believe that anyone could say something like that about their own strength and not make it seem like empty boasting, "Are you really that strong Ero-sensei?"

"Absolutely." Jiraiya said as he made a half-tiger seal, "Fuuin kai (Seal Release)." Once again, the sealing array appeared over the entire area before disappearing into the air, "Now I want to see you get to work on making the rest of the scrolls to use the jutsu so you can give it a try once or twice. Then we'll try to get you back to outlasting the time limit." Naruto let out a grumble at having to get back to work on something like that, "Well bitching about it won't make anything happen any faster so chop-chop brat."

XxX

(Two Days Later – Team 10 Training Ground – Four Weeks Until Chunin Exams Final Round)

"How the hell are we supposed to use that?" Ino asked Naruto abruptly. Now was the brainstorming portion of their team meetings, finding out what the others had to add to the team equation and hashing out ways to use it. At the moment, the trio of genin were sitting under their usual tree to keep out of the sun as Asuma supervised from right nearby, and Ino was none too pleased with Naruto's current progress with Jiraiya, "Your sensei for the month sucks if that's what he's got up his sleeve for you Goldie-kun."

Blunt as always it seems.

"Hey… it's not like I'm just wasting my time here." Naruto defended weakly before getting some more conviction in his voice, "And I'll totally find a way to make this seal work for me when I master it Ino, dattebayo." Like hell he'd take all of that time to learn the seal and not have a way to make the effort needed to activate it work out heavily in his advantage. All the beatings from Jiraiya he had been taking in an effort to keep the seal safe before its activation were also paying dividends. It was better than fighting clones, and trying to get Shikamaru into gear to fight him directly never really ended very well.

Shikamaru on the other hand was thinking to himself about what Naruto had just told them, 'If Naruto can control the entire amount of chakra in a given area like that then he controls the battlefield. But without chakra at all Ino and I aren't much. Still, he's right. There's a way to use that jutsu in a situation like the exams… and if he doesn't figure it out then I'll do it myself.'

Ino let out a groan of exasperation, "We can't lose to Forehead-girl, even if Sasuke-kun is on her team! If she beats us I'll never hear the end of it!" She held up both of her hands as if they were both scales, "Sasuke-kun is probably off learning some amazing jutsu that only a genius could pull off, and Chouji's probably getting one-on-one time with his dad to learn things from his clan… and on the other hand we've got the bum who hasn't told us anything about learning anything new and we've got Goldie-kun and his miracle ability to turn off everyone's chakra including ours. But oh, wait! It takes three minutes for him to even load _that_ up!"

From the more irritable than usual reaction that Ino gave it was clear that she was feeling the stress of it all, and it had only been a week into the training period. She was projecting her own lack of progress with whatever she was trying to learn over this course of time onto them. Naruto had actually learned the seal that they were talking about and had prepared a dozen or so scrolls, but Jiraiya insisted that they continue the physical training for the multiple beneficial reasons of doing so.

"Alright, enough." Shikamaru said, getting both Naruto and Ino's attention to focus on him, "Yesterday we worked the kinks out of our usual formations. Now we need to figure out what we know about some of the people we're going to fight. So let's start with who we're going to fight first. Those Iwa kids."

"We don't know anything about them." Ino said with a shrug. What could they do about that but head into battle and hope for the best?

"Fine…" Shikamaru muttered. He knew that they had nothing on the Iwa genin team as well, but then again all they had on them was the basic knowledge of what two of the members of the team _might_ be able to do due to their clans, "So let's skip right to the next team in case we advance. How about those Kumo genin?"

Naruto raised a hand as if he were in school and spoke up, "Um, they use those swords. The girl with the red hair and the boy on the team both have the same kind of sword. They both have katana, and the girl Samui carries a tanto. They might all be close-range specialist kinds of fighters."

Shikamaru nodded and asked another question more important, "If it came down to you against them one-on-one could you beat them with your machete?"

"It depends on how good they are." Naruto answered. He knew how to use his machete in a way that was effective for himself, but he was no bladed weapon specialist by any stretch of the imagination. He still knew that as he was, if he were to fight someone like Zabuza or Asuma then no amount of clones wielding deadly close-range weaponry in the world would be enough. Now he didn't think any one of the Kumo genin would be that good, but they would definitely be better with those swords than he was with his machete.

"We can talk about that later." Shikamaru said with finality on that particular topic, "Now for the other half of that fight, what do we know about that other team they're fighting? The one from Konoha with the Hyuuga, the guy in green, and the girl with buns in her hair."

"Tenten's team?" Naruto spoke up again and squinted hard in thought, "Well Tenten uses tons of weapons to fight. She's really good at throwing pretty much anything, and I'm sure she can fight up close with a weapon too. The guy in green, Rock Lee, he's… fast. He's the fastest guy our age I've ever seen." Naruto didn't think he'd see anyone that fast anytime soon, and then he fought Haku, "But he's not just fast, he's strong too." Naruto could still remember the kick to the face he took. Quite a rude awakening to becoming a genin.

"As strong as you?" Ino queried to her fellow blonde. Naruto could effortlessly throw her or Shikamaru around like rag dolls. His taijutsu required him to be stronger than his opponents to be used to full effectiveness.

Naruto gave her a sheepish smile, "Let's put it this way Ino-chan; it's not whether he's stronger than me, it's whether _I'm_ stronger than _him_."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, not really believing that, "There's a genin, and we're not even talking about Chouji here, that's stronger than you? Troublesome… I'm not even going to get into the first thing you said about the guy either." Dealing with a wickedly fast person that was physically stronger than Naruto wasn't exactly very reassuring of their chances when going up against them, "And the last guy is a Hyuuga that we're damn sure not going to let you in close to fight against Naruto."

"Why?"

At this point Asuma cut in, taking his spot as overall supervisor to the three, "Because against a Hyuuga, Naruto's style would be useless." He walked over and grabbed Naruto by the wrist, "Your style requires you to stick to an opponent with your chakra. The Hyuuga's style of taijutsu forces chakra out from their hands and other parts of their body too, just in a different way from yours. They can disrupt your grip. Then they can close off your chakra flow altogether so that you can't even get the chakra through to your hands to grab and stick to them in the first place." He then let out a deep sigh, "And from there if they hit you, their taijutsu can rupture organs. There's no real defense against it. You can't build up your organs or your tenketsu, and with the use of their kekkei genkai Byakugan they can see it all."

A deep frown crossed Naruto's face, "So going in close against Neji or Hinata might get me slaughtered…" He could see maybe Neji pulling it off. Jerks like that usually had the skill to back up their arrogance or else it would have been beaten out of them a long time ago, but Hinata on the other hand… he just couldn't see her shutting down his organs in a fight. But if Asuma said so then it meant that it could always happen, and these matches that were forthcoming didn't really have any rules.

Who knew what any of them would be capable of if push really came to shove?

"Now we need an anti-Hyuuga strategy?" Shikamaru said before sighing and rubbing his temple, "I am never taking another chunin exam again if we fail this one. Ever." He needed to start writing this crap down at home to help keep up with everything that they needed to do.

Asuma had been watching them since day one of team training. He had only been watching as they worked team drills like a well-oiled machine. He only added small comments from time to time when he saw a necessity to do so, and prompted them to make slight adjustments but they seemed to have a deep grasp on what they were doing. It had only been five months, not even half a year since they had even become genin.

He was proud. He was unashamed to say that he was excited to see what they could do next, 'You guys are going to do just fine come finals time.' Asuma thought to himself, 'I just know it. I wonder if I can up my wager with the others?'

XxX

(One Day Later – Shiho's House)

Deciding to make use of his day off, Naruto went over to the house of someone he hadn't seen since before leaving to take the chunin exams since it was her day off as well. He hadn't told Shiho about how he had done upon entering the exams due to everything that had been thrust upon him immediately after returning home. Needless to say, when he finally made the time to go and see her about it she was rather ecstatic.

"I'm so proud of you Uzumaki-kun." Shiho said happily as she set down a tray of tea on the table she and Naruto had been sitting at, "You're one step away from getting promoted, congratulations!" There was no ill will towards him being promoted before her because she wasn't a ninja in the active force. Besides, she quite liked her job.

It was nice to have someone so enthusiastic for him though, Naruto had to say. Having people be happy for something you did was a fantastic feeling, "Thanks a lot Shiho-chan." Naruto said as he took a sip of the tea to be gracious. He wasn't particularly one for tea but hey, it was free, "I've got to really pull one over during the final tournament though or I'm not going to get anything out of the exams."

He had already told her who he was more than likely going to face off against in the competition. Her advice was rather simple for each of the clan kids from Konoha. Against an Inuzuka (Kiba) if he could separate the ninja from the dog and beat them separately that would be far easier than taking them on at once. Against an Akimichi (Chouji) speed would be his greatest weapon, and attacking from off angles would eventually topple the large shinobi. With Naruto's fighting style he would have been advised to stay far away from an Aburame (Shino) or else his chakra would be sucked by the bugs… albeit at a ridiculously lessened pace than any other ninja, but it would still happen if he were to be swarmed so any attempt to get close would have to be very tentative. A Hyuuga would be a vaunting challenge in close, but thriving in near-quarters was still very possible… just not very advisable because even if he won in the end, the latent danger of the attempt was not really worth the risk.

And her advice for fighting an Uchiha that had time to get used to their Sharingan (Sasuke)… well, Naruto was _not_ going to be able to move fast enough that he would catch Sasuke off guard with anything he did, and Sasuke was just as fast as him, so he couldn't rely on his body not being able to keep up with his eyes. Shiho's best advice was just to avoid making eye contact and cut a grinding pace in battle to wear him down, something that Naruto was rather certain he could do.

Shiho pressed her hands together in thought before grabbing her cup and taking a sip of her own tea, "Well, you have the raw talent, you apparently have the pedigree even if you didn't know it until recently… and you have Shikamaru-kun if you don't know how to approach a fight." Thinking of the lazy yet very intelligent Shikamaru got her flustered for a moment before she regained her composure, "So what's your big issue Uzumaki-kun? Normally you're all, 'Dattebayo, I'm gonna kick everyone's ass!'" She said in a manner of mimicking Naruto before letting out a giggle, "Or something like that. Come on, tell me what's wrong."

Well Shiho wasn't a competitor in the exam, nor was she a teammate whose morale he felt the need to keep up by keeping his uneasy feeling from her knowledge. But she was a trusted friend, and she was right, who would she tell that it would get back to anyone that it mattered to? He had listed this grievance to Shikamaru, but he had enough on his plate to worry about this as well. Even though this meant nothing to her, he wanted to talk to someone about it, even if it was just him being paranoid.

"Okay…" Naruto said reluctantly, still weighing the benefits to the cons of telling her anything of this sort, "In the exams, there's this guy. Gaara's his name, and he's the freakiest guy I've ever met in my entire life. Just being around the guy made me feel like he wanted me to die." And he did, but that much he didn't need to tell her, "And I'm never going to get close to the guy in a fight either…" He wouldn't be so shaken if he knew that he had a chance at hitting Gaara, but if dozens of clones couldn't get him to flinch then he had to sit down and brainstorm.

Hearing Naruto flat out say that someone intimidated him was a new thing, but Shiho would help him anyway she could, even if all she could do in the end was lend emotional support, "What kind of jutsu does he use?"

"Sand." Naruto's blunt and to the point answer left her with a confused look on the bespectacled blonde girl's face, forcing Naruto to elaborate, "Gaara uses sand from this gourd he keeps on his back to smash into stuff like waves on a beach, or he grabs people up and just crushes or suffocates them to death." Shiho cringed at the explanation, "And it makes some kind of shield around him that I can't get past to get to him directly."

Shiho adjusted her glasses on her face and raised an eyebrow curiously, "So this person controls sand?"

Naruto could hear the skepticism in her voice as to why that would be such a big deal and wracked his own brain trying to think of a way to explain why this was so threatening, "Okay, when I say sand I'm talking enough sand to cover the floor in each room in your house, up to the top of our toes… and whenever anything gets close to him, no matter what it is, the sand comes up to block for him. The sand can take an explosion from six explosive tags going off at the same time. And he can send the sand out at you from anywhere he can see you." He then thought about Gaara's sand defense, "I swear, a few times he didn't even know my clones were creeping up on him and they still got stopped by Gaara's sand."

"That's a lot of sand… and to be able to use it like that?" Shiho could now see it in her mind's eye. At first she thought it was just like sand being blown all about like in the wind, but now she could see waves and waves of sand pounding all about. And suddenly the idea of being caught in sand like that didn't seem like such a minor thing.

Naruto nodded before speaking up, "I have one move that _might_ work, but I've never used it in an actual fight before." The jutsu he had come up with by accident before the exams began. He could do it again, he had already done it and made sure that it wasn't a one-time thing, but he'd actually have to touch the sand. He'd have to put his hands on the sand and pull away, and his experience from clones told him that he wouldn't have much of a chance at that.

Hearing that Naruto might have something to use, Shiho looked at him with an inquisitive look, "Why haven't you tried it in a fight before?" She sure wasn't going to spar with him to test it out. She wasn't a fighter at all.

"Because if I hit someone with it I'd probably kill them." Naruto stated plainly, "It's not something I can really use on friends, and I can't just keep knocking down trees since I already know how to do it… I like nature." At least a dozen poor trees fell victim to his technique when he was first trying to discover whether or not it could be used as an actual attack.

Taking on a look of pondering, Shiho let out a grunt of focus, "Well… I'm not sure what to tell you here Uzumaki-kun." She said earnestly, "This guy with the sand… it's beyond me. And you don't think you can punch through it or get around it?" She got a shake of the head from Naruto in response, "I'll try to come up with some way to help you, but I don't necessarily know what I'll be able to find in the end."

Naruto abruptly stood up and grabbed her hands to comfort her, "Hey don't worry about it so much." It was his problem, not hers. All she had been doing since day one had been helping him, and what had he done for her? Not a single thing. Having her worry her little head over something that might have been inconsequential just because he was a little paranoid wasn't fair at all, "I'll just keep training. If I'm strong enough then it won't really matter in the end, right? I'm going to have some tricks of my own when the time comes."

The confident grin he gave her to assuage any concerns over the matter she may have had didn't really do much once she really began thinking about Gaara's abilities if they were really as Naruto had reported them to be. It was like Gaara was his antithesis on the battlefield. Hopefully he was right and it wouldn't be an issue.

XxX

Standing in a clearing surrounded by around 20 straw dummies, Tenten suddenly drew two handfuls of shuriken and quickly threw all of them at the dummies in front of her and in her peripheral vision before swiftly drawing more and doing the same to the remaining dummies behind her.

She repeated this process nonstop until she was stopped by the voice of her sensei, "Tenten what are you doing? Is this what you're intending to train on today?" Gai asked. He didn't really have a problem with it, he just wanted to know.

Tenten stopped working and turned to Gai, "Hey, where's Lee?" She asked upon noticing that the Gai-lookalike was not following along behind the jounin.

Gai gave her a smile that gleamed in the sunlight, "Lee is doing a few pushups to stay warm for the next bit of training he's about to receive. I came to get you because personal training time was over. I need you to help the boys learn how to deal with opponents wielding swords."

"Oh." Tenten said before sighing and wiping her brow with a small smile on her face, "Well let's go then."

"That's the spirit Tenten!" Gai exclaimed, "Never be satisfied with your current set of skills, always strive to improve! I still would like to know what you were doing though. You won't be facing that many opponents at once during the exams. At the most it would be three."

Letting out a sheepishly laugh, Tenten fell into step with Gai as they walked to the location that Lee and Neji were left at, "I can already fight against any weapons user we'd see in the tournament, but in the next round we might be fighting someone that can make solid clones… lots of them, more than the dummies that I set up. And I don't think he'll be easy to beat a second time. He's the only one I know about so he's the only one I can prepare for."

Gai nodded before frowning, "Err, who exactly would you all be facing once you advance out of the first round?" He asked, the ordering of the brackets having slipped his mind.

"Well it would either be a team from Iwagakure or one of Konoha's rookie teams. The one with the Nara, the Yamanaka girl and Uzumaki Naruto." Tenten explained to Gai, "You know Naruto, you met him for a few seconds when we were heading to the exams in the first place."

Of course Gai knew who Naruto was even without Tenten's prompted explanation. Everyone of any sort of decent rank in Konoha's forces knew who Naruto was, "Yes, the youthful young man that is Asuma's student. He can make that many solid clones?" Well it made sense seeing as how he had the Kyuubi within him. He had to be a chakra juggernaut.

"He could when we first met, the day after he graduated." And that was months ago in Tenten's calendar count. If he was in the final round now then there was no doubt that he had greatly improved, either that or he had two ringers as teammates, but she was betting on the former, "If I mess up and let his clones get anywhere near me then I won't be able to do anything. He'll beat me to a pulp."

"How wonderful!" Gai said, picking Tenten up in a proud hug, "My young female student can even point out her own flaws and limitations in combat! And now we have information on possible opponents to share with Neji and Lee! Preparation is victory! Come Tenten, let's train!"

"I don't have a choice Gai-sensei!" Tenten yelled at him as the man took off in a sprint to find Lee and Neji once again, "Put me down!"

XxX

Sasuke was currently rethinking everyone's stance on him as a genius as he took on a Kage Bunshin of his sensei Hatake Kakashi. From his experience in his fight against Naruto, one hit would dispel the clone. At first he was put off and rather insulted when Kakashi told him to fight his clone and once he managed to defeat it they would move onto something different. To spite the man for underestimating him, Sasuke planned on blowing through the clone and walking right up to Kakashi with a 'what's next' attitude.

Then he actually started fighting the clone… the clone with half of Kakashi's chakra… the clone that wasn't even using Sharingan.

It had been a week of training and he hadn't hit Kakashi's clone yet. He was getting closer, but he still hadn't hit the clone. Why Kakashi was making him do this when he was actually working hands-on with Sakura the man wouldn't say, but it was thoroughly pissing the young Uchiha off.

"You're getting faster Sasuke." The dodging Kakashi-clone said as it avoided Sasuke's furious taijutsu assault, "It's pretty impressive."

"I'll call it impressive when I turn you into smoke!" Sasuke growled out, not taking the clone's patronizing compliments at face value, 'I've got to be faster. This clone is one step ahead of me all the time and it isn't even using Kakashi's Sharingan.' He said as his own Sharingan was locked intently on Kakashi's Kage Bunshin, trying to take advantage of being able to see its steps in advance.

Meanwhile, during Sasuke's prolonged engagement against Kakashi's doppelganger, the original was working with Sakura, "Sasuke is preoccupied and Chouji's father is taking him for the month so that he can gain better control over his clan techniques. That means that for right now you have me all to yourself." He said, giving her what was perceived to be a smile behind his mask, "Lucky you."

Sakura returned the man's smile and looked over at Sasuke struggling with Kakashi's clone. Noticing how Sasuke was doing far better than he had been doing at first made her think about her own growth or lack thereof. She hadn't added to her skill set since she finished learning how to water walk in Nami no Kuni, "But what are you going to teach me Kakashi-sensei?"

Kakashi's face turned serious as he started to explain, "I remember you getting tree walking down on your first try and then learning how to walk on water in less than a day. Your chakra control is impeccable so I believe it's high time I teach you a way to use it. Welcome to an introduction into genjutsu."

Hearing that Kakashi was going to teach her something about genjutsu got Sakura's eyes to widen as she raptly paid attention to everything he would possibly say on the subject.

"It's admittedly not my forte…" Kakashi admitted sheepishly, "But I know more than enough about it to get you started on the right track." He held out his hand and gestured for Sakura to grab a hold of it, which she did, "Genjutsu basically works by extending your chakra flow through your enemy's cerebral nervous system to control the chakra in their mind. This is how the illusion is cast. So go ahead and try to channel your chakra into me for practice. It's easy this way just to give you an example of sorts."

Sakura nodded and gathered chakra to her hands that were grabbing onto Kakashi's and used the connection between them to place her own chakra into his body. She felt her flow of active chakra end at her hands so she knew that she wasn't just circulating chakra, she was expelling it.

"Good." Kakashi complimented as he could feel the foreign chakra enter his system, "But when you begin using genjutsu it's most effective when you use the optimum amount of chakra necessary. Enough chakra to initiate your jutsu, yet not so much that your opponent can feel something wrong. The amount you're using now could tip anyone off that you were trying to influence them somehow. You'll work on that though. It will take practice." He said confidently, getting a firm nod from Sakura in agreement. So she was fired up to learn about this? That was very good indeed.

"Is there anything else I need to know about using genjutsu?" She asked. It couldn't be just that simple or they would have learned more about it in the Academy.

"There's quite a bit more to learn actually." Kakashi confirmed, "The better you get further down the line the easier a genjutsu will be to cast, but you're a relative novice so to help you along you will want to try to use some kind of medium to initiate the more effective techniques. Something visual, or something that affects another sense of some sort to distract your enemy to direct even a small portion of their attention for a moment. Long enough for you to begin your jutsu." He was struggling to come up with some way to explain what he was talking about.

Fortunately, Sakura was more than sharp enough to connect the dots and come up with her own example for Kakashi's lecture, "You mean like a flash of light or a specific sound. Something like that?"

Kakashi once again gave the girl a smile, his single visible eye crinkling in a cheerful manner, "Exactly like that. I think you'll be a natural at this if you put your mind to it. It's a devastating focus of the ninja arts to specialize in."

Sakura beamed at the praise before asking another question, "Before we really get started is there anything else about genjutsu that you think I should know?"

Kakashi punched the palm of his hand as if he had neglected to mention something, "Oh yes. Genjutsu is specifically effective on people that naturally have larger than normal amounts of chakra. If it's someone that develops a massive amount of chakra over time it won't count since it will have slowly been grown into. It has to be someone that has always had copious amounts of chakra. So much chakra that they never get used to using tiny amounts of chakra and have to work extra hard for control. This makes it so that the miniscule amount of chakra that most genjutsu techniques take to activate aren't felt by those with the large chakra reserves. It's like a drop of water in a filled bucket."

Sakura nodded as she absorbed the information. However she put two and two together about something one would have at first deemed completely irrelevant as her mind raced a mile a minute, "Wait, that sounds really familiar. So you're pretty much saying that people that are suckers for genjutsu techniques are people like-."

XxX

Naruto let out a yawn before choking slightly, prior to letting out a sneeze as he sat on the couch in his living room. Being that now was his downtime he was not wearing his goggles over his forehead or his headband in a bandanna style around his neck, nor was he wearing his dark blue arm warmers or his orange windbreaker top, foregoing it just for the dark blue shirt that was usually underneath. Sitting next to him, laying across the longer portion of the sofa was Ino, eyes shut and seemingly a heartbeat away from napping.

"Bless you Goldie-kun." Ino said without missing a beat, eyes still closed.

Naruto on the other hand rolled his eyes at his blonde teammate and nudged her legs with his elbow, "Why are you over here? It's my day off and I was going to take a nap." Right after he got through getting himself some more sealing strips and making himself some more explosive tags, but he could have gotten some clones to do the second thing.

"Ooh, a nap sounds like a great idea." Ino said brightly, poking at Naruto with her bare foot with a smile on her face, "But I came over here because it's my day off too, and I'll be damned if I'm going to sit behind a counter all day selling flowers. I'm tired." She said, finishing with a pout.

"So you'd rather stay over here and bother me for a few hours?" Naruto replied cheekily. He didn't really mind the company at all to be quite honest. It was better than hanging out alone for the rest of the day after his earlier visit with Shiho, "What makes you think I'm not tired too?"

Ino smirked at him before answering his query, "Because you're _never_ tired love." She commented, batting her eyelashes sweetly, "That should really come in handy a few years from now for more than just your ninjutsu."

Having hung around Jiraiya for much of the last two weeks, not even bothering to mention the time he had done so beforehand, Naruto of course knew what was being implied and then some. But by now he had conditioned himself to take a certain amount of teasing to keep from being driven insane by his secondary sensei and his rather attractive teammate. Jiraiya's book was also full of rather blue language and comments on the female form… even though that had nothing to do with fuuinjutsu whatsoever.

Naruto let out a sigh and sank back into the cushion of the couch, "You know if Sasuke-teme ever hears you say this stuff then he might not think you like him as much as you say you do Ino-chan." In response, Ino stretched out her legs, placing them on Naruto's lap. This forced a sigh out of Naruto because Ino was being far too affectionate, which meant only one thing as far as he was concerned, "What do you want from me?" He asked.

Ino feigned a hurt look, "Why I'm hurt! Goldie-kun, what makes you think that I want something?" She then started laughing as Naruto started to tickle her feet. She couldn't pull them away either because of the Nebaiken-style grip he had on her, "Okay! Okay! I'll talk!"

Naruto then ceased in his tickling assault on Ino to hear what she had to say, "I'm listening." He ignored the rather hard punch Ino gave him in the arm once the tickling stopped.

Taking a moment to regain her composure, Ino explained what she required, "I want you to teach me how to make Kage Bunshin."

Naruto's answer was direct and precise, "No."

"Come on!" Ino cried indignantly, "Why not? I've never said it before, but it's such a cool jutsu. One of me is fantastic, I could only imagine what having two real me's around would be like! Or what about twelve? Twelve Inos Naruto! That's eleven more of me to love!" Ino's argument broke down into uncontrollable laughter when Naruto devilishly started tickling her again to get her to be quiet.

"It's a kinjutsu." Naruto defended with a frown as he tickled Ino's feet, "Part of the agreement of me learning that jutsu to graduate was that I promised Hokage-jiji that I wouldn't just teach anyone that jutsu because it's dangerous. My sensor jutsu is starting to evolve again. When I'm close to people I can feel their chakra compared to mine. You don't have enough for it."

After telling her that, Naruto stopped tickling Ino and let go of her, letting her catch her breath, "How would you know I don't have enough chakra for it?"

Naruto gave her a deadpan look, "You don't even have enough chakra for _one_ clone. One would exhaust you. And if you messed up the way you're going to when you practice with the jutsu then you're going to make more than one by mistake until you get control over it, and more than two Kage Bunshin might kill you Ino-chan. You and Shikamaru can't do it."

Naruto had seen that Shikamaru and Ino's specialized clan ninjutsu didn't take nearly as much chakra as his own Kage Bunshin did, maybe because their bodies were conditioned for the techniques through lineage. Still, that meant that they didn't use as much chakra as he did regularly, and they didn't have nearly as much. Both of them combined against Naruto chakra-wise wasn't even a contest and everyone on Team 10 knew it and accepted this as fact.

Ino crossed her arms and grumbled, "Well what in the nine levels of hell gave you so much damn chakra to use? That just can't be natural you know?"

A large grin that belied Naruto's actual thoughts came over his face once Ino said that, "Yeah Ino-chan, I know. It's just the way I am, heh." He said with a sheepish laugh, and it was true. It was the way he was without any choice of his own and it often led to malice heaped upon him as a child and now he knew why, but honestly how could one spite him for it? All the while he was thinking something different from what he said, 'If it's just the way I am then why am I being such a coward about telling you and Shikamaru about it?'

Fuck it. The reasoning hadn't come up yet, and most of the things he had due to the Kyuubi had already been more or less explained away by his own teammates as possible traits of a clan, more specifically his clan. Procrastination was that top trait of the next generation and he was damn sure going to procrastinate on telling Ino and Shikamaru about his demonic little secret for as long as humanly possible. If he didn't need to know until three weeks ago then they didn't need to know about it now.

Ino got the conversation off of that track and back onto herself immediately anyway, pulling Naruto's thoughts from something that hadn't really been addressed since he and Jiraiya spoke last about it, "Oh well… I'm not going to sit here and beg for a jutsu when I'm already learning one myself." She let out a small laugh, "I was just trying to sidetrack myself from finishing up what I need to do to learn my jutsu… it's really hard." She whined, waving her legs aimlessly in Naruto's lap.

Being snapped back to normal by Ino's immature outburst, Naruto laughed, "You'll get it Ino-chan, you still have plenty of time."

Ino crossed her arms over her chest and gave Naruto a brilliant smile, "Why are you so confident all the time? Even back when you sucked at everything… no offense." Naruto waved it off, "But even back then you were always thumping your chest and proclaiming that you were the man."

"Doubt fucks with everything." Naruto said, making a muscle and grabbing his bicep with his other hand in a showy manner, "Take a foundation, no matter how strong, sprinkle generously with doubt, and watch it crumble." He pointed to himself, "Me? I'm unfuckwithable. Not this exam, not bad weather, not even the many men that wish bad intentions on me can stop me. I rise up, not like a phoenix, but like the zombie corpse of the Yondaime Hokage." He kissed his own fist and pointed up at the sky before gesturing around the room, "These seals are for you, dattebayo!"

Ino just stared at him for a moment before leaning forward and grabbing one of Naruto's whisker-marked cheeks, "That was actually fairly articulate. Someone's got a better vocabulary these days." She teased, "No child left behind. Reading is fundamental."

Naruto gave her a deadpan look as she continued to stretch his cheek out, "You're very, very cute Ino-chan… but you're going to be missing a few fingers if you don't let go in a few seconds."

XxX

(The Next Day – Field Near Waterfall – Three Weeks Until Chunin Exams Final Round)

The usual occurrence of Naruto squaring off against Jiraiya in pitched combat came and went for hours and Naruto managed to get his time up to two minutes and seventeen seconds, an impressive jump from the last marked time. The day of rest really did him some good after all.

"Someone's full of piss and vinegar today." Jiraiya remarked good-naturedly as the two stopped for lunch, heading back into town through the forest, "What's got you all fired up? Care to share gaki?"

Naruto simply shrugged his shoulders, "Well, everyone's working so hard to get better in time for the finals. I don't want to slack off and have us fail out because of me." He looked up at the taller man in a rather determined manner, "It's like, this is my chance to prove that I really am a good ninja. I can't just get shot down now after all of that mouthing off I've been doing since the Academy. And it doesn't matter that I made it this far in the first place, because this is the part that everyone's going to see and hear about."

Jiraiya just peered down at the boy momentarily as they kept walking back to town, "Okay first of all you need to take all of that weight of the world… and take it off of your shoulders. It's not that big of a deal." He poked the top of Naruto's head, "Get this through your skull so that maybe you can calm it down a bit. It's your first chunin exam. If you fail it's not the end of the world unless you get killed."

Dying was most certainly the end of the world so to speak… at least for Naruto.

"So if it looks like you're about to, you know, get killed…" Jiraiya said lazily, "I'd advise you to quit. Because while quitting _might not_ get you promoted, you sure as hell won't be promoted if your lifeblood makes a fine sheen coating the floor of the arena. Do you hear what I'm saying kid?"

Naruto shook his head, "There's always a way to win Ero-sensei. If I quit then during the exams then I'll quit when the chips are down in a mission. No surrender. Whatever happens in the tournament happens. I'm not giving up unless Ino-chan or Shikamaru are in danger. I've got something to prove." To hell with Gaara, to hell with anyone he had to fight. It was time to prove he was just as good as he had been saying he was for years. Thinking about the worst case scenario ripped a low growl from his throat.

Hearing that got Jiraiya to sigh before he stopped Naruto and looked around. Once it was clear that there was no one on the forest path along with them he spoke up, "Alright I know it's been a long time coming since we even talked about this, but it's sort of like the elephant in the room kid. You said you've accessed the Kyuubi's chakra before, but you don't know how to consciously do it?"

Naruto shook his head with a frown on his face, "It just happened when I was upset in Nami no Kuni. I didn't even know that was what I did until you told me about the Kyuubi a few weeks ago."

'That's dangerous.' Jiraiya thought to himself, 'So he subconsciously taps into the demon chakra when he's angry or hopelessly desperate.' And he didn't know how to do it on his own either. There was no doubt that his control in such a state was shoddy at best. So all they had to go on was that in times of desperation Naruto could tap into the Kyuubi's chakra. Well it was his responsibility to help Naruto gain some semblance of control, and now was as good a time as any to begin. Naruto could use the seal that had been taught to him and holding him off for over two minutes was nothing to turn one's nose at.

The thing was, there was no recorded evidence of how to actually utilize the Kyuubi's chakra, but Minato wouldn't have made it an option for Naruto to do were it not intended for him to do so. So now that his structural teaching was out of the way he had three weeks to find a way to get Naruto to learn how to use the Kyuubi's chakra.

That would be easy enough… right?

* * *

Jutsu List

Chakura Mukou Fuuin (Chakra Disabling Seal). B-rank fuuinjutsu, ninjutsu, supplementary. When activated, this jutsu will seal the chakra of anyone or anything caught within its range inside of their body, user included. 3 prepared scrolls are the minimum medium needed to use the jutsu, multiples of three are needed to extend the range which would be at a minimum a 50 yard circumference as long as the user can pay the hefty chakra toll to activate the seal in the first place. This seal is capable of changing the scope of a battle field given a user with enough chakra to far-reach across the entire area, but of course it is a double-edged sword as it does not distinguish friend from foe or even spares the user.

In the older times where war was rampant this jutsu was originally created and prominently used on the battlefield. It was used to trigger stalemates between two opposing forces, allowing one side to retreat more safely with the other side more hesitant to pursue sans chakra. It was also used as a trap by one single ninja to initiate an ambush from his allies nearby to slaughter the helpless forces caught in the sealing range. This inadvertently led to the popularity of trained sensor ninja to prevent such ambushes from taking place in battle.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Level up

To realize where you stack up to those that also practice fuuinjutsu there lies a ranking system that is used for one to discover this. Now this ranking system isn't widespread enough that you can get yourself free drinks at the bar or get yourself laid by telling people how high you rank in this system (Unfortunately fuuinjutsu isn't really deemed the sexiest of specialties), but it looks good on a resume even if you aren't that high.

Level 1-3: You know enough about fuuinjutsu to make the easy stuff like explosive tags in your spare time to practice your array making. However, in larger techniques the only reason that you would be around would be to play the part of glorified chakra battery. You know next to nothing, so this is the time where you would shut your lips, open your ears and eyes, and learn how to work with more complicated things.

Level 4-6: You are now adept enough at fuuinjutsu to begin your own personal study in earnest. You know enough to keep from blowing yourself up or making dud explosive notes and sealing scrolls. At this point you have a few techniques but they are usually cumbersome and rather unwieldy for combat. You can design seal tags for more advanced and powerful sealing techniques.

Level 7-9: You are skilled at many different techniques that range from larger ritualistic methods to even the smaller scale techniques that have more of a working place in active battles. At this point others will look to you for advice and other things when it comes to fuuinjutsu. The only thing keeping your from complete mastery of your art is the fact that you have not innovated your own jutsu involving seals yet. Depending on your skill, to venture past this point you must invent at least one fuuinjutsu to achieve master level.

Level 10 and beyond: This is true master level. Any number past level ten that you reach is just ceremonial, indicating that you have given something back to the art of fuuinjutsu by way of creating more and more practical techniques to increase the scope of sealing. You may now officially flaunt your rank in an attempt to woo the ladies, because anyone past level 10 is dangerous enough to fight a battle with nothing more than their seals and physical abilities and can win against most normal level ninja.

Uzushiogakure instituted this system a _long_ time ago, and it is used today in Konoha despite the lack of real sealing specialists in the village. A nifty little thing we have in Konoha is that you can have your sealing level recorded for posterity… you can even get your ninja identification updated with your level of sealing expertise on it, so those of you with large egos may want to get a piece of that.

* * *

**Hello all. And the training period has commenced. I have very few things to say at this time, and even less of them have a thing to do with the story thus you do not care and I will refrain from addressing such things at this moment.**

**As always I hope you have and will continue to enjoy. Until the next time around where I update something of mine that you actually read, later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	22. Best Foot Forward

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I think I'm going to steal the plot from 30 Minutes or Less and use it on Kishimoto to get the rights. That seems like a fantastic idea if I can pull it off.

Of course I'm also insane... so there's that to be considered as well.

**Chapter 22: Best Foot Forward**

* * *

It was still around a week and a half before the chunin exams final round and for Team 10's first training day of the week they switched venues, mostly due to the fact that Asuma had to take a personal day on that day. Ino kept insisting however that he was just taking that day to do something for Kurenai's birthday. That prompted Naruto and Shikamaru to wonder why she knew when Kurenai's birthday was.

However, due to that, instead of meeting at their training field they met at Shikamaru's home in his clan compound for a change of scenery to keep things from getting stale. It was definitely a change.

The Nara clan compound was set in the woods at the edge of Konoha and had houses built in spaces cleared with the tiniest amount of effort, you could look out of a window and see a row of trees five feet from the houses sometimes depending on whose it was. The compound had the narrowest roads leading through it, and the wall that separated it from the rest of the village didn't even have their clan crest emblazoned on it anywhere like the other clans in the village did.

Lazy… the whole lot of them. It did help with the deer that they raised all throughout the area, so that could have always been the reason for it. It was doubtful though.

At the moment they were in the woods near Shikamaru's home running walkthroughs with their formations using a trio of Naruto's clones as dummies to imitate the responses of their opponents in the instance of a team battle during the exam tournament. After a few hours of going through whatever possible looks that Shikamaru figured they'd see from potential opponents, the team filtered back to his house for a rest of sorts.

Despite the rather mundane practice, Naruto was beaming at the moment. He had been that way all day and no one had figured to ask why until then because he was usually pretty chipper most of the time, this was ridiculous though.

Being the 'host' of the team, once they took up spots sitting out in front of Shikamaru's house for a break he took it upon himself to bring up the topic, "So Naruto, why are you so happy today? It's not like I even came up with anything new today. We were just going over older stuff."

Naruto turned his attention to his teammate, still grinning widely, "Oh, it's not that, it's just that… well, remember that little problem with that seal of mine that I had? The time thing?" Both Ino and Shikamaru nodded, "I fixed it." He said, sounding quite pleased with himself.

"You fixed it?" Shikamaru said, raising an eyebrow, "You mean you can hold off an enemy for three minutes now to do it by yourself?"

Naruto blinked before rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, "No. But the three minutes isn't an issue. I just sped the whole thing up." To the others it sort of seemed like he was hesitant to talk about just what he had done.

Ino looked at him in a confused manner, "I thought you said fuuinjutsu was set in certain ways of performing things. How in the world did you speed it up? Didn't you say doing things the wrong way with fuuinjutsu could kill you or turn you inside out?"

"I did…" Naruto said, looking away from inquisitive eyes, "But I didn't change the way that the seal works. I just did something else." '…Like change the source that's actually powering the seal.' The seal was designed to be powered by using human chakra as a generator, but chakra was chakra and it would all work in this instance, 'It's a good thing Ero-sensei's been trying to train me to use _it_ for the last week or so.' He thought to himself rather bitterly… even if he wasn't necessarily thinking that way at the time at all.

_(Flashback – Three Days Earlier – Two Weeks Until Chunin Exams Final Round)_

_For the last few meetings Naruto had with Jiraiya, the man had been trying to stir some way for Naruto to draw upon the Kyuubi's chakra in an effort to teach him how to harness or at least tap into it before the finals. It was rougher going than either of them thought it would be._

_Jiraiya thought that with the way that most jinchuuriki in recorded history were, Naruto could already use the Kyuubi's chakra, he just couldn't control it well. Most jinchuuriki were constantly fighting a battle to keep their powers in check. Naruto seemed to be the opposite. He didn't know anything about what the Kyuubi's influence provided him with until he realized that he had been using its chakra against Haku in Nami no Kuni._

_The last resort for Jiraiya to think of a way to access the Kyuubi's chakra was based off of Naruto's description of how the battle with Haku went, and he forced Naruto to cut out all embellishments to make himself look good. He needed the truth out of the blonde if he was going to figure out what to do._

_According to Naruto he had taken quite a beating from Haku while he had been isolated from the rest of his team inside of her dome of ice, so he was worn down. In addition to that, Haku put his teammates into a state of false death, making Naruto believe that she had killed them and his emotions had been fuzzy for the entire battle with everything that had happened before it, so that pushed him into a rage._

_Strong negative emotions and being pushed to his physical limits brought out the beast so to speak. Yeah it was going to be easy to work with that._

_It didn't mean he was going to like what he was going to have to do though._

_And neither would Naruto in all actuality._

_For that day's session of physical work, Jiraiya had told Naruto that they were going to forego training him to hold him off in combat. Naruto would have to achieve an objective against him, and Jiraiya's method of motivating Naruto into deciding that a straight-up battle was a good idea was that if he could achieve the objective and defeat him then there wouldn't be anyone that Naruto couldn't defeat. The other sticking point was that Naruto was officially allowed to go all out in the battle, not only was he allowed to, he was expected to. Nothing less would do._

_The thing about Naruto going all out though, was that you didn't realize that you were out of your league until you actually took the chance and stepped up to play with the heavy hitters. He had been smacked around by Asuma, just like the rest of his team, but he had never really had his head kicked in by someone that was head, shoulders… hell, entire torso above him. Not until then anyway._

_So eventually Naruto did get rolling and he did start fighting as hard as he possibly could. It was too bad that his best just wasn't good enough._

_It wasn't even close._

_Naruto's body collided with the trunk of a tree, bouncing off and hitting the ground with a dead weight thud. He lay motionless for a moment before slowly stirring and getting back up to his feet. His face was a bruised, blood-stained mess and his clothes were completely wrecked. He thought his nose had been broken earlier, but another punch he had taken might have put it back into place later since he could breathe out of it again, despite the fact it was pouring blood like a faucet that wasn't turned all the way off._

"_You heard what I said gaki." Jiraiya said in a grim voice as he held up a bell attached to a string between his thumb and index finger, "You can't leave until you take this from me. So stop pussyfooting around and fight to win." He demanded._

_The immediate thing Naruto wanted to do was yell at him that he had been fighting to win the entire time. Jiraiya had taken his weapon nearly right from the start and had almost broken his hand in doing so. Since then no matter how many clones Naruto made, Jiraiya eradicated them all with extreme prejudice. He had turned half of their usual training field into a swamp and had submerged and drowned the clones, he had shot off a massive fireball bigger than anything Sasuke had ever conjured and had charred most of the other half of the field, and he had summoned a trio of large toads to completely demolish him in conjunction once he had apparently gotten tired of beating seven shades of shit out of Naruto with his fists and feet._

"_Well?" Jiraiya said expectantly as he walked out in front of his summoned trio of toads, all of them looking at Naruto with the same deadly serious expression as their summoner. Suddenly Jiraiya's face twisted into one of anger, "Are you just going to stand there and let me beat you to death or are you going to fight me? You're like a helpless infant right now! For Kami's sake do you think any real ninja would hold back on you just because you look so pitiful right now? Never giving up won't do you any goddamned good if you've got the power of a rodent to back it up with!"_

"_What the fuck do you want me to do about it you old bastard!" Naruto shouted back at him, glaring although one of his eyes were nearly swollen shut, "I've done everything! I'm out of weapons! I can't get close to you unless you run up to me and hit me yourself! Tell me what you want from me!" He shouted, losing his temper and running directly at Jiraiya in a desperate attempt to hit him somehow, to make him feel what he was feeling at the moment any way he could._

_Before he got close, a tongue wrapped itself around Naruto's waist and jerked him towards one of the larger toads prepared to give him a powerful shot once it reeled him in. Naruto grit his teeth in anger and fear, knowing that he didn't want his clock cleaned by that toad again. _

_As he was being pulled in, Naruto linked his hands by the bottom of his palms and tucked them back to prepare for a double-palm thrust as he gathered wind chakra in them, "__Giga Shinto-__!" Before he was pulled close enough to try his jutsu that would damn sure make that toad pay for trying to beat on him some more he was kicked in the side of the head and sent flying from the grip of the toad's tongue through the brush at the edge of the clearing, ending with him landing in the shallow water nearby that usually had women in it that Jiraiya peeked on. Naruto wasn't that lucky for there to be witnesses today._

_Jiraiya stared at Naruto after landing from his kick, watching the boy try to pick himself up face-first out of the water, "That jutsu of yours that you made by accident?" He said questioningly, remembering what Naruto was about to use on his toad, "That's more like it! Fight to end a life that's trying to take yours! No one's going to come to save you, so take it into your own hands!" He then proceeded to swallow the bell, "Remember what I said. Take this bell from me or you're not leaving, I'm a man of my word… and I don't feel like staying out here all night so I'll just have to make sure you can never leave again." The killing intent radiating off of Jiraiya was palpable._

"_You can't do that." Naruto said, trying to get up weakly once more, "You can't just kill me here no matter what."_

_Jiraiya just stared Naruto down, "I could kill you here and be gone from the entire village within five minutes. You don't meet with your team for the first meeting of the week until tomorrow so no one would find you until at least midday tomorrow. Do you know how difficult it would be for anyone to find me and actually make me pay for anything that I do? I won't let a loudmouth weakling be my student so prove that you're not dead weight or I'll literally turn you into dead weight. I have a reputation to keep that you're not going to stain."_

_Naruto grit his teeth as he tried to keep his legs from shaking. He could barely stand up despite his ability to heal quickly, and Jiraiya's killing intent was crushing. He had never felt it directed at him from someone so much stronger than himself before._

_Jiraiya made two hand-seals and leaves began to kick up around them, obscuring Jiraiya from Naruto's view until he vanished altogether from his sight. Naruto was about to take what he saw to be an opening and attempted to use Shunshin to obscure his own movements so that he could leave the area as fast as possible, but Jiraiya's voice stopped him and put him back on the defensive, "You still don't get it." Naruto turned around and found Jiraiya standing right there holding his own machete at the ready._

_Naruto attempted to move, but Jiriaya's arm came down before he could do so, leaving the blonde helpless to defend until a figure came between the both of them. Jiraiya's swing drew a large spray of blood from whoever had stepped in front of Naruto and the figure dropped backwards into the water._

_Looking down at the figure, Naruto's face twisted in horror as he saw Iruka laying at his feet, a deep wound across his throat where he intervened and took the damage for Naruto. His blood was draining out into the water turning it red as it rolled along with the flow of the stream. The man's eyes seemed to be straining in pain for a moment before they finally went dull and dead._

_All Naruto could do was look up at Jiraiya who was still holding the machete that was dripping with Iruka's blood. The man didn't seem to have any remorse whatsoever for his actions, "You see what barking gets you when you don't know the first thing about what we ninja do? Now you've made Iruka die before his time… but you'll be following him in a moment." He said as he lifted the machete again._

_Naruto's eyes were locked onto the man as tears started coming out of his eyes, and those very same eyes turned red in the process as his canines and fingernails enlarged and his whisker-marks deepened. Before Jiraiya's arm could lower, Naruto let out an earsplitting shout of anger and agony and knocked him away with the pure force of the red chakra radiating off of him threateningly. As Jiraiya was sent flying away from Naruto his body disappeared like a specter, as did the body of Iruka at Naruto's feet._

_XxX_

_Nearby in the trees, Jiraiya watched as the Kyuubi's chakra began radiating off of Naruto. Once it began to generate from his body, Jiraiya seemed to let out a sigh of relief, "__Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu (Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique)__. Sorry kid, at least you managed to break it." Whatever Naruto saw in that genjutsu pushed his exhausted body over the edge, and now Jiraiya had to solve it in case Naruto was berserk._

_He dropped down from his hiding place and the splash of his feet in the stream turned Naruto to him. Jiraiya seemed unintimidated at the sight of the power exuding off of Naruto, he seemed more apologetic than anything, especially once he saw the tears on Naruto's face. Jiraiya simply extended his arms in a wide gesture as if he were inviting Naruto to take a free shot at him, not caring what he did for revenge._

_Naruto just stared him down, his teeth bared as he seemed to strain visibly against charging over and beating Jiraiya to a pulp._

"_Well you did it kid. Remember what this feels like. This is the Kyuubi's chakra. Everything you're feeling right now, I want you to learn how to harness that." Jiraiya said with a weak smile on his face before letting the expression drop, "Aren't you going to come over here and rip me apart for that genjutsu? For beating the hell out of you the way I did?"_

_The look on Naruto's face showed that he was struggling with the decision until he finally shook his head in the negative, wiping his eyes at the same time. The inhuman chakra flowing from him faded away, leaving Naruto's normal physical features prominent once more, "I… I just want to go home." He said before turning around to walk away. He didn't know what to say. All he did know was that he just wanted that day to end._

"_Naruto wait." Jiraiya said, getting Naruto to stop before he was able to take a few steps away from him, getting him to stop and turn around with a tired look on his face. Jiraiya stuck his fingers down his throat and basically choked back up the bell he had swallowed minutes before. It floated down the stream towards Naruto, directing his attention towards it as he took the effort to bend down and pick it up, "I'm a man of my word."_

_Naruto nodded and put the bell in his pocket as a silence fell over the two of them, only the running water and the birds cawing in the sunset making any noise in the area._

_Jiraiya sighed, "I know you probably hate me right now, but I did one of the only things I could think of to get you to trigger the Kyuubi's chakra and keep you relatively safe at the same time. If you don't want me to train you anymore that's your choice, if you would like me to keep training you I'd be more than happy to, but for what it's worth you did great. There's nothing embarrassing about calling you my student at all. I'm not even sure the Yondaime could have taken what you did and kept from trying to kill me afterwards."_

"_Yeah… sure." Naruto said quietly before he stopped and looked at his hands without turning around to face Jiraiya, 'The only reason the Kyuubi even gave me the chakra was so that I'd have the power to make you pay for beating me up and for the genjutsu. If I had done that, if I had tried to beat you to death then I would have given in to it.' He dropped his hands and started walking again to look for the last place his machete had actually been, 'I'm never going to let the Kyuubi get any influence over me, I'm the one in control here.'_

_As he walked away he could hear faint dark chuckling in the back of his mind in response to his thoughts, __**"I'll help you for now boy, because you dying wouldn't be beneficial to me. One day you will be weak, too weak to put up any sort of pitiful defense against me. In the end you're still just a human, and just like any other human if you have enough hate or darkness in your heart you won't be able to keep yourself from holding me back."**__ It was only a matter of time._

(End Flashback)

The break had ended for Team 10, but they didn't venture too far from Shikamaru's house as the practice was beginning to wind down anyway. Naruto was in a circle surrounded by five clones that all took turns going through slower than full speed motions of sparring with the machete, just to get a feel of fighting multiple armed opponents at once. In case the team from Kumo made it out of the first round against Tenten's team he would need to be ready for that possibility since they all had blades of their own.

The bell he had been given by Jiraiya after the whole ordeal, _given_ because there was no way he could have possibly taken it from the man from where he had it, was tied at the end of his machete's hilt to a chain and a strong cable as a reminder of just what it took to access the Kyuubi's power.

Naruto had enough of working with his clones and jumped out of the circle, the clones dispelling in puffs of smoke as he did so. As this happened, Shikamaru looked up at the orange colored sky, "Alright I think we should call it a day for now." He said, getting Ino and Naruto's attention.

"We still have daylight." Naruto said, almost whining at having to stop for the evening, "Why are we stopping now?"

Shikamaru pointed up at the sky, "Don't you know? It's like 8 p.m. right now. Sunset is the best time to take a nap before you go to sleep at night." He said matter-of-factly.

Naruto opened his mouth to argue, but his stomach beat him to the punch with a rather loud grumble, "Heh, well I guess I am pretty hungry right now." He laughed rather sheepishly, "Fine, I'm going home then." Actually, he was going to go see if Iruka wanted to eat. After what had gone down with Jiraiya's genjutsu he wanted to hang out with his old teacher more in case something like that actually did happen in the future. He hadn't told anyone of what had occurred for multiple reasons, the Kyuubi being a subject of it being one, another reason being that he didn't believe Jiraiya had wanted to hurt him. Still though…

"There you go Goldie-kun." Ino chirped brightly as she socked him lightly on the arm, "No need to kill yourself to get in every extra scrap of training you can. Thirty minutes of you puttering around isn't going to change anything. Now walk me out of here, I'm tired!" She insisted.

"Walk you out of here?" Naruto muttered out of earshot, "You live less than a mile outside of the Nara compound, I live all the way on the other side of the village. What do I look like, a bodyguard?" As a ninja he technically could be called upon to be a bodyguard, but that was not the point. The point was that _at the moment_ he wasn't a bodyguard, let alone Ino's bodyguard.

Ino waved to Shikamaru as she and Naruto began to walk through the forest path leading away from his home, "Later Shikamaru, tell your mom I said hi whenever she gets back okay?"

Shikamaru just waved weakly at both of them before turning to head into the house, "Yeah, yeah… I'll see both of you troublesome blondes later."

XxX

After getting out of the forest that Shikamaru's clan populated, the rather well-to-do looking street that it turned into split into two paths. Ino stood frozen in place as Naruto began walking down one of the roads to go home, "Goldie-kun where exactly do you think you're going? You're supposed to be walking me home."

Naruto turned around to look at Ino and managed to peer down the other unused street side that he had chosen to not take. The walls lining the side of that particular road eventually began to be covered in a certain design on them, something that Naruto commented on since he had seen that design repeatedly, mostly at Ino's clan flower shop, "Ino-chan your clan compound is right there. It's literally 100 yards away."

Puffing her cheeks out, Ino disputed this as if she were informing Naruto on something obvious, "That's not the point, it's just what you do. As a gentleman you have to make sure that the lady gets home safely."

Naruto gave her a look with a raised eyebrow and pointed down the street, "It's _right there_. I could probably run to your house in the next thirty seconds if I knew where it was."

Refusing to budge on the matter, Ino put her foot down as she crossed her arms over her chest, "Well then that's another reason for you to walk me home, so that you actually know where my house is, you know, for future reference."

"What future reference!" Naruto asked/shouted while waving his arms indignantly, not particularly caring if any passersby thought he was insane. It probably wasn't that far removed from what they thought of him in the first place, "If I need to know where your house is and you're not there to tell me I'll ask Shikamaru." He was really hungry at the moment. Being hungry made Naruto cranky.

'Unbelievable Goldie-kun…' Ino thought to herself with a twitching eye, 'Was that too subtle for him? I thought it was obvious what I was hinting at.' She let out a sigh and shook her head before walking down her street towards her compound, "Someone needs a little more seasoning…" She said quietly in a sing-song manner.

"What was that?" Naruto said as he almost didn't hear her speak.

"Nothing." She replied, waving over her shoulder at him, "But I'm going to make you pay for that tomorrow during practice." Ino turned around and pointed at Naruto as if her finger was some sort of firearm while she took aim by grasping her forearm with her other hand, "You can't run from me forever, you know that." She finished with a firing motion and a wink before turning to go about her own way once more.

"Run from what? Are you talking about your new jutsu?" Naruto said questioningly before shrugging it off as Ino being Ino, "Ugh, whatever. I'll see you tomorrow Ino-chan." He said before making a ram seal and leaving the area concealed by a small puff of smoke, leaving behind a platinum blonde shaking her head in mild amusement.

XxX

(The Next Day – Team 10 Training Ground)

Ino was grinning at Asuma and pretty much had been all morning during downtime, "Okay Ino, what do you want?" The man asked in an exacerbated voice.

"Nothing Asuma-sensei." She replied, "I just wanted to know how yesterday went with Kurenai-sensei."

Hearing Kurenai's name unexpectedly due to not really listening to what was going on at the moment, Naruto who was about to light up a cigarette, dropped it from his mouth onto the ground as he whipped his head around rapidly in an attempt to locate the pretty red-eyed lady to save himself another lecture about smoking.

Shikamaru shook his head with a smirk on his face at Naruto's reaction, "Kurenai isn't here Naruto. Ino's just talking about her. You don't have to be scared of getting scolded again."

"I'm not afraid of Kurenai-sensei trying to bust me again for smoking." Naruto said confidently, "What's she going to do, make me smoke another carton? Good, I still have all of the ones from last time she made me do that since I don't even smoke that much." He then heard Asuma let out a groan, "What's the matter Asuma-sensei?"

"Since Ino asked…" Asuma said, directing a pointed look at an innocent looking Ino, "Yesterday with Kurenai was fine, then we started talking about the finals of the chunin exams and got into an argument over whose team was better. So we made a side bet… either you guys go further than Team 8 in the tournament, or more of you get promoted out of this than more of them."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, "So what's the bet?" He asked, wondering if it would even be worth his while to put forth the effort to bother winning it for Asuma.

"Don't worry about it." Asuma replied coolly without missing a beat, keeping it concealed. It was just like the way he handled most things with Kurenai, and the kids weren't dumb. They knew that it was more than a 'comrades' thing, more than a relationship as general colleagues. They just weren't sure how far it went, and the two boys on the team weren't really listening to Ino's prattling theories on a secret relationship, at least not until more facts were on the board, "It wouldn't be anything you'd be interested in anyway."

Naruto raised his hand and chimed in, "Well what about me?"

Asuma looked down at Naruto as if he were actually thinking about it, "Because of who's been giving you personal training over the last month or so I'd say that in a few years you'd appreciate it, but for now no." Naruto gave him a squinted-eyed look of confusion before Asuma's point finally hit him. He went wide-eyed before nodding dumbly, "Good boy." He ignored Shikamaru's mumbling of 'troublesome' and let the matter drop.

Deciding to change the subject, and speaking on his training with Jiraiya, Naruto spoke up again, "Uh Asuma-sensei, could you go ahead and show me the next step of controlling my wind element?" He asked, putting his hands together in a beseeching fashion.

Asuma scratched his head, not sure how he was going to explain this to the kid, "Damn Naruto, you've got a funny time of asking." There was a week left until they were to set out for the exams final round. He was aware of the fruits that Naruto's Kage Bunshin technique could breed in the instance of speeding up his training, but this was less than a week to work with, even if he could have fully focused each day on it he wouldn't finish in time, and even if he did, then what? All that would have done would have been to open the door for him to be able to control the higher-level techniques and to allow him to begin creating his own wind-based ninjutsu once he got the proper way to do so down. It simply wasn't practical at the moment.

"There's just no time Naruto." Asuma said to him, "And I know about what you can do with your clones. But even then there just isn't enough time for you to get it down. And even if you did it wouldn't help you in your actual matches." He saw the boy visibly deflate at that and put a hand on his shoulder, "I didn't say I wouldn't help you out at all, and I never said that you'd never learn how to do the last step, it's just that now isn't the time for it."

Naruto cocked his head to the side curiously, "So you _are_ going to help me out?" A grin spread back over his face, "How?"

"Freaking brat…" Asuma said as he ruffled Naruto's hair before asking another question, "But I thought you were learning a 'special technique' from Jiraiya-sama?" By special technique, he meant the Kyuubi's chakra. Naruto figured that someone that needed to be kept in the know of how he was trying to access the Kyuubi's chakra was Asuma, thus he told him.

"I learned it." Naruto said simply, leaving it at that. His eyes turned away from Asuma as he did so.

That was something he would have to look into later, but for now seeing the kid so out of character just didn't seem right, "Well I have a move for you that you might be able to use-."

"-Is it Hien (Flying Swallow)?" Naruto asked excitedly. He really couldn't extend his blade's reach the way Asuma could any further than the little inch that the coating of wind chakra provided his weapon because simply coating his blade in wind chakra wasn't the technique.

"Seriously, what is it with you and that jutsu?" Asuma said, shaking his head, "No it's not Hien. I've got something new for you altogether, a very old move of mine. I can't do it anymore with my equipment, but your machete should work just fine, especially with that new little customization you added on to it." He said, flicking the chain and the bell at the end of Naruto's machete.

Naruto looked down at the weapon curiously, "It's just a chain Asuma-sensei, it's not a big deal." He drew the machete out of his sheath and held it up to look at the chain he had attached to the hilt closely only for Asuma to more or less snatch it out of his hands, "Oi!"

"Shut up kid." Asuma said, dangling the sharp blade by the chain at the end, surprised that he actually used something sturdy instead of the cheap materials he expected, "Yeah this is perfect. Now let me show you how this jutsu works and you can get your clones cracking on trying to get it down."

XxX

(Two Days Later – One Week Until Chunin Exam Final Round)

Jiraiya sat by himself in the corner of a bar, drinking quietly with an air of contemplation around him. Despite his status as a living legend he wasn't approached by any of the shinobi in the bar for anything, he was just giving off that aura that he didn't feel like being bothered at the moment.

Which was why there was some surprise in the place when the chair across from him was filled by another person, "I didn't think you were one for drinking in the daytime Asuma." He commented dryly at the bearded jounin in front of him.

"You're one to talk Jiraiya-sama." Asuma replied in a joking manner to the man, "Aren't you supposed to be a role model that every shinobi should look up to?"

"Who said I wasn't? I'm a fine, upstanding ninja." Jiraiya said before deflating back to his previous state of more or less sulking.

Asuma sat with the man in silence before finally breaking it by speaking again, "So are you going to make me ask, or are you just going to come out with it and tell me?" He said expectantly, "Naruto's been all weird since after Wednesday. That was the last day he was with you, and from how he was talking to me the other day it sounds like he isn't training with you any longer. So what happened?"

"I got him to activate the Kyuubi's chakra. This time he was able to control it." Jiraiya said plainly before getting a proud inflection in his voice, "He did… great actually. Better than I expected." Since he had expected Naruto to try and turn him into a stain on the earth after the genjutsu had broken, the most he had hoped for was that Naruto would have pulled back from trying to kill him enough to get satisfaction out of beating him to a pulp and leaving it at that, otherwise he would have had to seal his demonic chakra away.

Asuma's eyes widened, "That's great." He was confused then when Jiraiya shook his head, "It's not great?"

"Not really once you hear about how I did it… I didn't even bother telling Sarutobi-sensei what I did since he probably saw it through that damn crystal ball anyway." Jiraiya muttered as he took another sip of his drink and shook his head again, "Minato did a fantastic job on the seal. Really top-notch stuff. Only the most extreme conditions can get the kid to pull out the demon's chakra. Exhaustion, fear, anger, despair, pain… things like that make it easier for him to draw upon the chakra."

Asuma remembered Naruto's episode in Nami no Kuni. That was the best point he had heard as to how Naruto drew upon the chakra by far. But he then knew where Jiraiya was going with his explanation.

"So in order to get him to draw upon the chakra again I pushed him to his physical limits… and I can tell you one thing at least. If anyone beats on the kid during the tournament the way I did the other day then I'll be one surprised son of a bitch because I kicked the hell out of him and kept him conscious." Jiraiya said, sounding revolted with himself as he took another swig, "Then I cast a genjutsu on him, Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu (Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Technique)." Asuma let out a low hiss, understanding the situation.

"Naruto _sucks_ at genjutsu." He said quietly so that only he and Jiraiya could hear. The white-haired man nodded, having picked up on that fact after witnessing the effectiveness of it on Naruto. Whatever he saw had to have been something that upset him, "I guess we'll have to get started on teaching him how to break that."

Jiraiya let out a laugh that didn't have any humor behind it, "I think that one will be all up to you Asuma. After it was all over I told the kid that I didn't expect him to forgive me for what happened then. He might have the capacity to forgive people that are close to him or people he thinks are friends, but tell me something. After he beat up that nuke-nin girl in Nami no Kuni and they made up, did he trust her again after that?"

Asuma shook his head, "He didn't untie her, he didn't even show her his back a single time until we parted ways." Come to think of it, even when they thoroughly disarmed her on the way out of Nami no Kuni, not only did Naruto never let Haku see his back, he didn't let her see _Asuma's_ back… just in case she would hold a grudge and attempt to take the man's life for killing Zabuza.

Wow, he didn't even notice that until right then. Naruto was a pretty trusting guy, but apparently if you broke that trust then you were on his shit list until further notice.

"Did he say anything to you?" Asuma asked Jiraiya, "Because he won't even say anything about it to me."

"He just said 'yeah, sure' and left." Jiraiya informed him, "He seemed pretty mixed up about the whole thing." Letting out a deep sigh, he continued to talk, "I'm not much for praying or anything, but if the kid actually wants me to help him again after the other day that would have to be something of a miracle."

Asuma just leaned back in his chair and placed a cigarette in his mouth, "Well, you might as well try to talk to him sooner or later. It's obvious you don't hate Naruto and he probably knows that. You can probably get back in his good graces. But if you'd wait that would help me out, I need his head clear for when we head back on up to Tetsu no Kuni for the finals."

Jiraiya watched Asuma light up his cigarette and take a breath and had a flashback to his work with Naruto over the last month, bringing deep laughs from the man that confused Asuma, "Oh, sorry. It's just that it's kind of obvious where he get it from now. There's nothing like seeing 40 Kage Bunshin all sitting cross-legged in the grass glaring down at practice seals with lit cigarettes in their mouths." He then had another thought and his grin turned lecherous, "Come to think of it, with that Kage Bunshin ability of his he might be able to conduct 'research' better than I ever did without the threat of any repercussions for it."

Both Jiraiya and Asuma sat there thinking about being able to use Kage Bunshin the way Naruto did for less than pure minded reasons before yet another thought hit Jiraiya like a bolt of lightning and he created one that immediately ran out of the bar faster than anyone could follow.

Asuma completely understood.

And was officially never so grateful that he knew how to properly make Kage Bunshin. At this point he only wished he could make massive amounts of them like his student.

Damn it, his old man would probably say no once he questioned him on why he would want to learn it and Naruto probably wouldn't do it either… at least without making Asuma cough up Hien first.

XxX

"Achoo!" Naruto sneezed and wiped his nose before frowning deeply and throwing the explosive tag he was preparing away to the side, "Goddamn it!" Naruto yelled once he realized that he had just wasted his last strip of sealing paper by messing up because of that sneeze.

On his day off, following some time spent at Shiho's house helping her re-catalogue her books and time spent hanging out with Shikamaru and Chouji doing a whole lot of nothing, he had taken to just getting his affairs in order for the next week since by Thursday his team would be setting out with the other finalists to Tetsu no Kuni. One of these affairs saw to it that he was merely hanging out in the woods to make an abundant supply of explosive tags because you could never have enough explosives, and in Naruto's own personal opinion enough explosives could fix any problem.

Deciding that he had spent enough time just sitting there and that he might as well take some time to go grocery shopping since he had some free time, Naruto let out a large burst of his chakra for his sonar jutsu to see how close he was to town. Once he did so however, he heard a shriek that set him off once he felt the signature behind the person that had let out the noise, "I see you motherfucker!" Naruto shouted before swiftly moving into action, "Nobody gets the drop on Uzumaki Naruto!" He yelled before he said something else as an afterthought, "…that much!"

XxX

What did her sister see in that weird blonde kid?

It had been a question she had been asking for an entire year to herself and her sister as well, even though she had never gotten an answer from her. All her sister would do whenever questioned on the matter was turn red and clam up. In some cases she would try to stammer out a denial of the fact that she was somewhat into the guy, but that just solidified that she indeed was if she was that embarrassed about it.

Her sister was so nice, timid but nice, and there seemed to be no particular reason that she would find anything attractive about the weird blond kid.

He wasn't that good looking… but then again it wasn't like he was ugly. The thing about him being kind of short wasn't that big of a deal breaker. Those whisker-marks on his face looked exotic and his blue eyes were brimming with emotion that she didn't much see when she looked in the eyes of those of her clan.

He didn't seem to be that smart from what she had seen upon running into him in the past with him wandering the forest in the Nara compound a few months back muttering about how he couldn't find his sensei. But then again he was working on fuuinjutsu as she watched him. From what she knew of her own clan's dabbling in the art it was very complicated to say the least, so he couldn't really be dumb right?

He didn't look like a very effective ninja either and she heard that he was a rookie from the buzz around town. On the other hand though, that same buzz was saying that he was one of the Konoha teams that were about to head out to Tetsu no Kuni to compete in the final rounds of the chunin exams along with her sister's team. That had to mean that either he was just as good or better, or he had one hell of a team to help him get that far. He also had very unusual chakra… and a _lot_ of it. Seriously, this guy had a lot of chakra, a whole lot of chakra.

Okay, so there was something about this guy after all.

And she had to admit he was rather entertaining though when he sneezed and yelled after screwing up an explosive tag. She almost started laughing once she saw that, almost, because if she had then she would have blown her cover, even from the range her kekkei genkai allowed her to spy on him from.

Hey, she hadn't been placed in the Academy yet. She had to take training into her own hands outside of what her father did somehow right? To do otherwise would be lazy. And maybe if she could find out what her sister liked so much about him she could come up with some way to help her get him. She deserved that much since even she had to admit their father had been rather cold to her a few months back after she graduated. She hoped he wouldn't be like that once she entered the Academy.

Wait a second she couldn't just let her mind wander, she had a mission (self-presented of course) to do.

And just as she thought that, from the boy she was watching a blinding ripple of chakra burst from his body. Her ability to see chakra itself came back to bite her because as her kekkei genkai witnessed it, she saw the equivalent of flashbomb going off in her eyes… again.

Him and that damn move of his managed to get her in the past.

"I see you motherfucker!"

Oh, and there was the fact that after he did that he was always able to know where she was at the time.

"Nobody gets the drop on Uzumaki Naruto!" This was not good, "…That much!" Kami her eyes hurt! Damn that bastard!

She deactivated her doujutsu and tried to run, but unlike the last few times she tried to spy on him he went too far into the forest for her to beat him back to town by just running away. She did her best, but he was so much faster than her. He wasn't a joke at all.

And thus she finally came face to face with Uzumaki Naruto and expected the worst.

"Huh?" That was not the first thing she had expected someone to say after catching the person that had been spying on them.

XxX

"Huh?" Naruto was nearly beaming while he had been chasing his would-be spy through the forest. He had a bone to pick with this person since after he felt them skulking around him back before he got his basic elemental training. It was a different feeling from the first person he had felt spying on him when he had first learned the jutsu, but it was similar enough that he just figured that the person had changed and had gotten better like he had.

This was not what he was expecting in the least.

He pointed lamely at the person he had managed to corner, "Why are you watching me train little girl?" He asked nicely, though in a curious tone of voice. She was around Konohamaru's height give or take an inch or so, and had long dark brown hair with bangs that went down to her back. She wore dark blue shorts, a sleeveless dark blue v-neck shirt, and a mesh shirt underneath the v-neck.

The little girl was currently rubbing her eyes as if they were irritated. He kind of wanted to make her stop so that she didn't hurt herself. She finally took her hands away and looked up at him with her white, pupil-less eyes. She had an owlish expression on her face as she stared up at him before realizing that she had been compromised and fell into a taijutsu stance, getting Naruto to tilt his head to the side in confusion, "Prepare yourself Uzumaki Naruto. I won't let myself get captured by my target so easily."

It took Naruto a second to realize that she was going to try to take him on, "What? I'm not going to fight you, you're miniature." He responded, gesturing with his hands to their size difference.

"Then move aside and leave me to my own devices." The little girl said placidly, but still holding up her stance.

Naruto just gave her a deadpan stare in return, "Not when your own devices include spying on me. Now if you don't mind, could you tell me what you're here for?"

"That's a secret I'll take to the grave." She said seriously, getting Naruto to palm his face before her eyes suddenly changed. Her pupils became slightly visible where before they were nonexistent, and the veins around her eyes on the temple area became bulged and visible, "Let's see how you like Hyuuga-style taijutsu. The feared Juuken (Gentle Fist)."

"Hyuuga?" Naruto said, taking note of her features and name, and then of the name of her clan technique just before she sprang into action and closed the distance on him.

"Hitosashibi Suiryoku (Index Finger Thrust)!" The little Hyuuga girl shot out her right hand at Naruto's chest with her index and middle fingers extended. Hearing an attack from the girl, Naruto stepped back out of her range but she kept coming forward with attacks, using her fingers for precise strikes that Naruto kept backstepping out of the way from.

Finally sick of evading the girl, Naruto stepped back with his foot on a tree and started scaling said tree backwards until he was firmly out of her reach, fifteen feet off of the ground, staring down at her, "Stop trying to attack me already! I'm a ninja in your village, I'm on your side you know!"

The little girl blushed in embarrassment, realizing that he was right. Not only could he not attack her since she was technically a civilian, not even an Academy Student yet, he was an active member of Konoha's shinobi force. Trying to attack him was akin to treason, hence she stopped her attack and bowed low for forgiveness, "I'm so sorry Uzumaki-san! Please don't report me to Hokage-sama, I don't want to go to prison!"

Naruto raised an eyebrow at the strange little girl and dropped to the ground where she was still bowing towards him, "Sarutobi-jiji wouldn't send a little girl to jail just for messing around with me." He said, patting her on the head as he felt rather weird at the moment. Nobody bowed to him, and there was something very wrong with the fact that this little girl was doing it, "So what's your name?"

"Hyuuga Hanabi." She responded rather elegantly. This girl kind of reminded him of someone. Hyuuga… Oh! She reminded him of that Neji kid without the aura of jerk radiating off of her. She was kind of quiet too… like Hinata! Only she didn't seem shy at all. She could at least speak to him as if he didn't intimidate her, "And you are Uzumaki Naruto. You're heading to the final portion of the chunin exam next week aren't you? My sister is as well."

Hearing that this little girl he had never met knew about his advancement so far in the chunin exams put a grin on Naruto's face until he processed the other thing she said, "Wait, your sister?" He only knew one female Hyuuga, and there was only one of them in the tournament, "You're Hinata's sister?" Hanabi nodded in confirmation and Naruto narrowed his eyes at her, "Have you been spying on me to try and help her with a strategy to try and beat me in case we face off in the tournament?" He asked accusingly.

Hanabi was about to more or less call him stupid in her own special way, but then she realized that the way he had discovered her and the past times where he had been aware of her presence could be construed as her spying on him, "No! That's not was I was doing Uzumaki-san, honest! I've never seen you train or any of your techniques! Well… other than your concentrated chakra pulse of course."

"My what?" Naruto asked her in confusion. He didn't have any technique like that.

"Your concentrated chakra pulse!" Hanabi urged him as if he had just let it slip his mind, "Of course I probably have the name of the jutsu all wrong, but it's really brilliant!" She insisted spiritedly. He didn't know that a Hyuuga could get so excited about things, but then again she couldn't have been any older than eight years old, "I was looking directly at you with my Byakugan and it was terrible! You released that wave of chakra from your body and I felt like my eyes were on fire!"

Hanabi's expression as she thought about his jutsu made Naruto just want to give her a hug. The effect of the little Hyuuga girl's white eyes nearly quivering with tears as she remembered his chakra pulse was in Naruto's opinion completely adorable… not that anyone would ever know that he felt that way.

Guys didn't think that things were adorable. That word was expressly forbidden from the male vocabulary except for _extreme_ circumstances.

Jiraiya's book had reinforced this sentiment in one of its many run-on allusions to things that had nothing to do with fuuinjutsu.

Once again, Naruto placed his hand on the girl's head once he realized what she was talking about, "Oh, you mean Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu). My jutsu hurts your eyes 'Little Firecracker'? Sorry about that." He said apologetically.

Hanabi puffed her cheeks out at the nickname and shook her head to get his hand off of her head. Eight years old or not she was still a Main Branch Hyuuga and she wasn't going to just take that, "It's fine." She insisted haughtily before going back to normal once she was sure Naruto wouldn't put his hand on her head for a third time, "But yes. Your jutsu hurts my eyes. It's like you poked me in them with chakra." She rubbed them again because she could still see stars from Naruto's jutsu.

He wanted to say that he was sorry, but it didn't seem like that was enough even though he couldn't tell what he had done wrong if someone had asked him why he felt guilty. There was only one thing he could do as far as he was concerned, "Do you want to get something to eat?" That seemed like a good way to apologize to him. Feed someone and that's a pretty good 'I'm sorry' gesture.

Hanabi stopped rubbing her eyes and looked at Naruto strangely before her stomach growled and she nodded slowly. Free food was free food.

XxX

(An Hour Later – Ichiraku Ramen)

"Alright yeah! We're starving to death, right Akamaru?" Kiba said rather boisterously as he pushed open the curtains of the stand to enter, small white dog in his coat riding along. Once he did so of course he saw someone pretty familiar sitting up at the counter, "Hey, it's Naruto! How's it going man?"

Naruto turned around on his stool and saw Kiba and Akamaru grinning at him, "Kiba? Akamaru? Hey, what are you guys doing here?"

Kiba shrugged and he grabbed a seat next to Naruto at the counter, "Well we're hungry. This is a really good little stand, so why not eat here eh?" Akamaru let out a yap of agreement from the front of Kiba's coat as he was panting rather excitedly, "So why are you here?"

"Same as you." Naruto said with a grin of his own on his face, "It's my day off and I just wanted to grab some lunch. Also it was the easiest place to go to take Hanabi for some lunch and she agreed since she hasn't been here before."

Kiba's eyes widened slightly, "Whoa, you're on a date?" Part of him had to applaud that even during the training period Naruto could find the time to take a girl out.

Naruto gave him a squinted-eyed look and shook his head slowly, "No… that's weird. Hanabi's seven years old." He said, gesturing to the little girl on the opposite side of him that wasn't even paying attention to what he was saying due to her eating that was reserved, yet still pretty rushed, "This is Hanabi. Say hi Little Firecracker."

Hearing Naruto's nickname for her put a tick on her head and she stopped eating long enough to turn towards him and let him have it over his choice of address, but when she did she got a look at Kiba and Akamaru, "You, you're my sister's teammate aren't you?"

"Hinata's sister?" Kiba said once he had gotten a good look at her. He had seen Hanabi before, he just hadn't met her. How she had managed a run-in with Naruto was beyond him, "How'd you end up hanging out with this bum?"

Hanabi shook her head with a frown on her face, "Naruto-oniisama isn't a bum. He's really cool actually." She said with a smile, "He's saying he's sorry for hurting me."

"You hurt Hinata's little sister?" Kiba asked Naruto, at this point kind of hoping that wasn't the case, at least not enough of a case for the little girl to take it to the rest of her clan because of who her father was, "You're going to get your ass-."

"-It was an accident." Naruto grumbled, "Look at her, she's fine. And I'm apologizing and being nice. You don't have any complaints about me do you Little Firecracker?" He asked Hanabi who had gone back to eating her ramen in a respectable manner.

She stopped when he asked her his question though, "…I wish you'd stop calling me by that name…"

Naruto shook his head firmly, "Not happening little lady." He said as Teuchi set a bowl of ramen in front of him, "Ah, thanks a lot Teuchi-ojisan."

The man chuckled and gave Naruto a nod at the boy's grateful response. He turned towards Kiba and spoke to him, "And what will you and your dog have young man?" He asked, understanding the Inuzuka bond with their ninken.

Kiba gave him a small smile and waved him off, "None for us yet. We're waiting for some people to arrive before we get anything to eat. Thanks anyway though."

"You've got people coming?" Naruto asked while simultaneously digging into his food with vigor.

A nod and a small laugh came from Kiba, "Yeah. My team's been working on our own all week and we decided to link back up today for a small meeting. I chose here to meet for lunch, so yeah." At that moment he sniffed the air and was able to distinguish a scent through the delicious smelling food, "Speaking of my team."

"I didn't think you'd go in before your teammates arrived Kiba."

"Hey Kurenai-sensei." Kiba said, turning around in his stool to face the pretty, red-eyed lady and wave to her while Akamaru let out an excited bark. Naruto on the other hand was frozen in his seat with his chopsticks and ramen stuck at his mouth. Hanabi noticed this and started poking at him trying to get him to react, "I was going to wait outside, but then I found this guy inside and decided to say hey."

Kurenai gave her most boisterous student a smile at the welcome and saw who was sitting next to him, "Oh, well hello there Naruto. How are you?" She greeted to the blonde jinchuuriki.

"I am _not_ smoking Kurenai-sensei ma'am!" Naruto suddenly exclaimed, almost startling Hanabi out of her seat at his loud proclamation.

Kurenai raised an eyebrow at the random outburst, "That's… good?" Okay, smoking was pretty distasteful, but if that's how he was reacting to her sudden presence then maybe she went overboard trying to break him of the habit? Especially since the attempt backfired anyway…

Hearing that Kurenai was not present to break his balls over smoking, Naruto let out a sigh of relief and went back to eating while Hanabi gave him a look of 'what the hell was that?' over what had just happened.

"Kiba-kun, Kurenai-sensei." A delicate voice filtered through everyone's ears as Hinata stepped inside of the ramen stand. She greeted her sensei and her first teammate with a smile until her eyes panned over to Naruto who was still eating, "N-Naruto-kun." At that point she noticed the little girl sitting next to him waving at her, "Hanabi-chan?"

"Hi Hinata-oneesama." Hanabi greeted her older sister with a sly smile before pointing at Naruto, "Look who I found."

Remembering what Hanabi had been asking her about from time to time and then seeing Naruto turn around in confusion after finishing his food only to smile and wave at her, Hinata turned bright red, getting Hanabi to roll her eyes as she had expected this much. At least she was still conscious at this point, but that was probably because there was a good four or five feet of distance between them.

In an effort to get herself under control, Hinata directed her attention to her little sister, "Hanabi-chan what are you doing outside of the clan compound without our father?"

"I was bored, and father wasn't around to train me, he was busy today. So I just… left." Hanabi answered lamely, "I found Naruto-oniisama walking around the village and followed him to the forest, and he caught me." She said, embarrassed at admitting such. She was supposed to be a powerful heiress of her clan with a Byakugan more powerful than her sister's, "Then he said he would buy me lunch so I said okay."

Naruto grinned at Hinata after Hanabi had recounted how she had run across him in the first place, "Yeah, I'm a giving man. All I do is give." Hinata's blush at being spoken to by Naruto went unnoticed by him as he turned to elbow Kiba jokingly in the side, "Just like the asskicking I'm going to give everybody during the finals."

Kiba turned to Naruto and got in his face at the challenge, "I've told you already damn it, you can't beat us! Me and Akamaru are going to put you down!" Kurenai shook her head and held back a smile at the banter as she was to be the responsible adult in the situation and was prepared to keep the clash between the two hotheads from escalating.

"This disguise is highly illogical. Why you ask? Because a rock is not a perfect square."

Hearing about a square rock made Naruto sigh as he paid for himself and Hanabi and went outside. Everyone's attention was then directed outside to where Shino was standing with his hands in his pockets staring down at a box painted like a rock with eyeholes in it, "Get out of here weird guy." The box hissed lowly, "You're going to blow my cover."

Shino raised an eyebrow at being called weird by a person in a box, "If this is your cover then I would consider it blown already my friend."

Naruto just stared at the rock with a dry look on his face before slowly pulling out his machete and speaking in a fake acting voice, "Oh look, a rock. I wonder if it's the kind that I can sharpen my weapon on. Let's find out by hitting it repeatedly with my razor-sharp machete."

Kiba caught on to what Naruto was doing and grinned, "Hey Akamaru, I don't think we trained enough this morning. How about we break one more rock for good measure? And look, there's a rock right there. Isn't that convenient?"

Naruto raised his machete over his head with an evil look in his eyes and Kiba cracked his knuckles with a similar look in his as well until the rock finally exploded in a large, colorful puff of smoke, "Why can't I ever get the gunpowder right?" The smoke cleared allowing Naruto to see Konohamaru on the ground before standing up and pointing at Naruto directly, "Boss! Fight me!" He demanded.

Everyone just stared between Naruto and the small boy pointing at Naruto and taking note of the similar goggles on both of their foreheads. Naruto just stood in place until he suddenly yelled, "Damn it Konohamaru go to school!" Everyone facepalmed due to it being Sunday, a day off for students.

"No way!" Konohamaru yelled back, "You're going to be a chunin! So if I can beat you then I don't need to go to school, they can make _me_ a chunin right now!" He pulled out a shuriken and held it at the ready, "Get ready Boss, because today's the day you lose!" He threw the shuriken at Naruto and it was actually on target.

Shino had been watching curiously as to why the Hokage's grandson wanted to fight Naruto, Kiba had been holding back his own laughter the entire time, Hinata had been looking between them nervously, Hanabi wondered how this had all even started, and when Konohamaru pulled out the shuriken Kurenai's latent instincts made her want to walk over to Konohamaru, slap the weapon out of his hand and scold him for playing with weapons. But then he threw it.

Naruto used his machete to deflect the shuriken and marched up to the now scared Konohamaru before grabbing him by the collar and rapping him on the top of the head with the handle of the weapon, "Don't throw deadly weapons in public damn it! Especially not at friends!" He said as he let the boy go.

"You blocked it anyway so what's the big deal?" Konohamaru grumbled before Kurenai held out her hand in front of Konohamaru's face and caught the falling shuriken that Naruto had redirected. He slowly turned towards the stern looking lady that he was sure was going to confiscate his shuriken now, "Oh… that's the big deal."

Kurenai spun the shuriken around by the circle in the middle, "Using ninja tools and jutsu is a frowned upon practice in village streets." Frowned upon, but not forbidden… "You should save things like this for the Academy."

Konohamaru pouted at being admonished, "School sucks…"

Hanabi frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, "Stop being a brat." She said to the slightly older boy. Hell, she wished she could go to the Academy instead of being stuck in a dojo with her father all day for her training.

This directed Konohamaru's attention towards the girl that was the closest to his age, "And who are you?" He said before pointing at Kurenai, "I know her because she's Uncle Asuma's-." He felt low killing intent from the jounin and switched up what he was saying, "-Comrade?" He tested, and once the killing intent dropped he knew he was safe, "Yeah… she's his comrade. But you? I don't know-."

His adolescent brain began to work and put things together to make sense in his own mind. Little girl his age… hanging out with Naruto in what seems to be his spare time… calls him Naruto-_oniisama_ and seems to value his opinion and point of view.

Konohamaru ran at Naruto flailing punches only to be stopped by Naruto's hand on his forehead, "Boss you jerk! You had me replaced? I just started going to the Academy, it's not like I just disappeared! How could you?"

Naruto kept holding the boy back from possibly trying to punch at his privates, "What are you babbling about? Are you upset about Little Firecracker?"

"Stop calling me that!" Hanabi snapped at Naruto before regaining her mostly stoic demeanor once eyes fell on her due to the outburst, "…Please."

"You gave her a nickname!" Konohamaru shouted as he stopped struggling and sank to his knees prior to having large streams of tears pouring from his eyes, "You didn't give me a nickname! What makes her better than me Boss? She's a girl!" He said, getting Hanabi to glare at him, "We're both dudes! We can both do dude stuff that you can't do with a girl!"

Naruto stared at him with a twitching eye, "Me and you definitely can't do 'dude stuff' because you're still too young to know what 'dude stuff' is supposed to mean." He then blinked in realization, "As a matter of fact I think I'm still too young to know what 'dude stuff' is supposed to mean. Damn it sensei… you and your book."

"I'm down for dude stuff." Kiba chimed informatively, raising his hand before Kurenai, Shino, and Hinata looked at him, putting him on the spot, "What? Dude stuff is great. Watch." He said before giving Shino several good-natured punches on the arm with a grin on his face, "Dude stuff!"

Shino just stared at Kiba expressionlessly, "Don't do that." He said plainly, in a way that sent shivers down the others' spines.

Konohamaru ignored this and pointed at Hanabi, "That's it! I'm not letting myself get replaced like some rusty kunai, I'll fight you for the spot as Boss's number two!"

Hanabi looked at the weird boy before her lips quirked in a momentary smile, "Why would he even want a number two that just wants to fight him and beat him up?"

"Shut up!" Konohamaru shouted, blushing in embarrassment, "You're going down for the count! There's no way you can beat me! My name is Sarutobi Konohamaru, and as the future Hokage I won't lose here!"

Hanabi just smirked and stood in her fighting stance, "Well my name is Hyuuga Hanabi, and you aren't going to have much of a choice in the matter in just a moment." She was actually excited to test her training on someone in an actual fight.

All of Team 8 was just staring at Naruto who shrugged at what was going on with the children standing between him, he didn't know what to say to them, "What can I say? I guess kids just love me for some reason."

"I'll beat you in one shot!" Konohamaru said as he formed the ram seal, "If you're really Boss's number two then you've got his special technique down by now!" Hearing 'special technique', Hanabi figured it was Naruto's echolocation jutsu and covered her eyes, prepared to try and fight blind and without her Byakugan if necessary.

'Oh shit, I don't like the sound of that.' Naruto thought to himself as there had been only one thing he had taught Konohamaru in the time they had spend together, "Konohamaru wait-." Too little, too late.

"Oiroke no Jutsu (Sexy Jutsu)!" In a puff of smoke, Konohamaru transformed into a very attractive nude brunette woman that winked seductively from a rather provocative pose, "How do you like this?"

Kiba's nose started gushing blood on top of Akamaru's head, "I like it a lot!" He said with a wolfish grin on his face. Shino stayed unchanging, but due to his high collar most people couldn't see the blood trickling from his own nose.

Hinata poked her fingers together rather tentatively, unable to even look at the mortified Naruto who couldn't believe Konohamaru's complete lack of situational judgment as he directly ignored the fact he had done the same jutsu in public in the past without hesitation, "N-Naruto-kun really taught you that jutsu?" There was no way her Naruto would ever come up with something so sleazy, right?

Konohamaru then suddenly transformed back when he noticed that Hanabi wasn't even looking at him, "Hey, open your eyes! How else is my awesome jutsu going to beat you if you aren't even looking at it?"

"If it would beat me then why would I look at it stupid?" Hanabi said in a teasing voice as she kept her eyes closed, prepared to try and use her other senses to fight. She was blissfully unaware of the chaos going on around her at the moment.

"Why can't I ever beat anyone with that jutsu?" Konohamaru asked before a shadow passed over him, getting him to look up at a rather furious looking Kurenai.

"Now Konohamaru." Kurenai said in a deceptively sweet tone even though the small boy saw the aura of a devil over her, "Tell me again who taught you a jutsu like that?" Konohamaru pointed a shaky finger at Naruto who was standing still nearby.

"I see." Kurenai said before turning towards Naruto with the same sugary tone of voice and pleasant look on her face, "Naruto I think you and I should have a talk about things that are appropriate and things that you should and shouldn't pass on to children."

Naruto took a step back and put up his only defense that he had been saving for over several years, "Um… I never had parents or guardians to teach me tact?" And when he saw Kurenai's red eyes soften momentarily in some sort of maternal empathy he almost fist pumped in victory. Almost because it still didn't work which left him with his other out, "I'll see you guys during the exams!" He hurriedly said as he made the ram seal and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Kurenai blinked at Naruto's sudden disappearance before snapping her fingers once she remembered, "Oh, I forgot he could do that." She said, deciding to let the matter end since chasing him all over the village wouldn't have looked good at all. With that she decided to escort her team inside

Hanabi stared at where Naruto had been now that Naruto was gone, "Wow, Naruto-oniisama is kind of fast."

"Yeah he is." Konohamaru said in agreement, "…I'm still his number two though."

"I don't really care." Hanabi said out loud in a dismissive manner, but on the inside she was sticking her tongue out at Konohamaru. She was the number two damn it. She was _way_ better than him.

* * *

Jutsu List

Hitosashibi Suiryoku (Index Finger Thrust). D-rank taijutsu, kekkei genkai. Offensive. This very basic attack consists of a practitioner of Juuken using their index and middle fingers to jab at their opponent, directly aiming for a vital spot on the enemy's body. A precise strike can equal death in one blow depending on where contact is made, but the point of impact is small and can be avoided from causing such fatal damage by good evasive movement. Like other techniques borne of the same style, it sends chakra into the target to cause internal damage.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Jinchuuriki: Power of Human Sacrifice

Let's take a minute to talk about a little something that you should hope to never come face-to-face with on the battlefield. Still though, you have to be aware of this just in case you ever do. Better to be safe than sorry.

A jinchuuriki is a human being, flesh and blood like you or me, only they have creatures of incredible power sealed within them, the biju. Nine demons of absurd strength differentiated by their amounts of tails and the powers they possess. The key word here however is _sealed_ boys and girls, but we'll have more on that later.

A jinchuuriki is gifted with incredible powers bestowed upon them by housing the demons within their bodies. Some can manipulate extra limbs akin to their particular tailed beast, some can breathe fire, some can even transform into the demons themselves among tons of other abilities that many others could never begin to attempt otherwise.

In return for their powers however, the jinchuuriki are generally lonely people. Feared for their powers and the demons that they contain within, most are hated and discriminated against. Many are constantly in a battle for control of their own wills against the demons they contain, as the creatures are willing to take any opening or doubt in the heart of the possessor to break free, this does not help matters whatsoever with their personal lives. Some are even driven insane with the combination of it all.

A jinchuuriki is made by having a biju sealed within a person as I wrote above, and each village has its own particular sealing style to contain the monsters. You're not getting any of them out of this book since they are all village secrets that are supposed to be passed down to those worthy, not just given out because you're curious about them.

Somehow removing a biju from a jinchuuriki will kill the container, and killing a jinchuuriki will result in the death of the biju within as well. When put in dire straits of life or death, a jinchuuriki could possibly go berserk due to the intervention of the biju trying to protect them and by proxy itself. In the case of handling this you had better either be a badass of the highest order (like myself) or you should put your head between your knees, grab your ankles, and kiss your ass goodbye… hypothetically of course because there is always a way out of any situation.

The best way to deal with a jinchuuriki is not in a straight up fire-fight because that is never a recommended course of action to take. Instead of that, try to render them ineffective by disrupting their flow of chakra, or if you're far enough along you can simply cut it off altogether. On the coming pages you will learn the arrays and kanji combinations for setting up basic seals for fuuinjutsu that revolves around chakra itself. This is a more precise process than you've previously dealt with so prepare to spend quite a bit of time getting this right.

* * *

**Chapter complete. I've not got anything to say today. Any questions you have that I can actually answer in case you're confused and I'll try to get to you after I get off of work later tonight or so. Until the next time around I hope you enjoyed reading and I guess I'll catch you later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	23. Time To Shine

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I challenge Kishimoto to a fan-judged slam dunk contest for the rights to Naruto; an even and fair competition in my personal opinion because we all know that athletic 20 year old black men and Japanese manga writers have equally mad hops of the highest caliber.

Hell, bring your little fancy car that all your riches brought you and I'll jump the hood of that bitch like Blake Griffin.

And then when I wake up from landing on my head after tripping over the car mid-jump I'll politely ask you to move it so that I can attempt a normal dunk… if the feeling ever comes back to the lower half of my body and my fingers stop twitching enough for me to ever hold a basketball again.

**Chapter 23: Time To Shine**

* * *

The final three days prior to heading out to the finals were just a touch up period for most, a time to make sure all of the tricks they had taken the month to learn were all set and ready for tournament time. It wasn't necessarily wise to go full-blast so close to the event and risk injury or coming in exhausted. Most adhered to this way of thinking with the exception of a few (one: Rock Lee for example).

Still, some competitors found it necessary to do so in order to master their more advanced techniques… right down to the last day before leaving.

XxX

(Uchiha Clan Compound)

Breathing heavily, Sasuke pulled his left arm out of a wooden target, not caring much for the singe marks and the splinters in his hand. Around the yard he had been training in, there were multiple targets of all sorts, human-shaped dummies, rocks, more wooded targets… all of them with similar holes punched in them presumably by Sasuke's left arm.

Sasuke held his left arm, keeping himself from wincing at the feeling of pins and needles stabbing every portion of the limb mercilessly, "So two shots a day is my limit… That's going to have to do during the exams…" Sasuke said to himself as he stood up to walk on home, 'Kakashi told me not to even use it unless Sakura or Chouji were in serious danger… to stick to the other moves I've learned. I've also got another advantage too.' Sasuke thought as his eyes flashed the Sharingan for a moment, 'There are three matches before our first round matchup. If anyone uses hand-seals I've got a chance to maybe pick up a new move to surprise the competition with.'

With the feeling that his extra training would most certainly come in handy, Sasuke decided to head home for the night. All of the Konoha competitors were supposed to leave early the next morning in order to make it in time to get the genin one more day of sufficient rest prior to the fights.

He did not see the figure that had been watching him, hiding his presence and taking notice of Sasuke's new skill. In the low light of the setting sun a small reflection came off of the person's glasses as he tilted them up on his face, "I know one very particular person that's going to be very interested in your development. I'm sure you'll impress."

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha)

Naruto had a look of satisfaction on his face as he sat against the trunk of a tree and sank his machete blade-first into the ground. He had been using the trees as test dummies for his combat techniques, a last run-through of his own personal skills before tomorrow came. He felt he had a good little list of tricks for his opponents to get a piece of, especially the delightful little jutsu that Asuma taught him for his machete. It sure wasn't Hien (Flying Swallow), but it was damnably versatile and it covered up a gap in Naruto's repertoire so to speak.

He had to chuckle to himself in a pleased manner as he picked his weapon of choice back up off of the ground and looked at it, a grin forming widely on his face, "Heh, thanks for the help Asuma-sensei." He then dropped his grin and a small smile took its place, "…And you too Ero-sensei, I guess…" Like it or not, perhaps using the Kyuubi's chakra wasn't a bad thing. He was still in control and he was still himself.

If it was a situation where he had to use it or die then it was better that he had access to it than not. Getting pushed to that extent shouldn't occur that often he thought. How many times would he face off with someone tough enough to push him like Jiraiya did or someone able to upset him like Haku did in making him think she had killed his team?

Never again if he had anything to say about it.

Shikamaru and Ino were ready for certain in Naruto's opinion. They had worked hard, all of them, and his teammates had picked up their share of nasty surprises just in case. There wasn't really much more to do at this point. He was getting rather excited at the thought of it and he still had a few days of travelling ahead of him before he could even think about fight time.

He had too much pent-up energy to just sit still and do nothing, he just had to get up and run, even if it was just on the way home. There wasn't anything to do but train though. Shikamaru and Ino were at a party with Chouji, thrown by their clans to celebrate the fact that they were in the finals… something that apparently was going on with all of the clans in Konoha that had representatives in the finals. It was a strictly Ino-Shika-Cho affair, but that was alright with Naruto. Their families were proud, and he wasn't really family so how would he be invited? Even if he had been it would have been because they probably pitied him, and he certainly didn't want that.

It really made him feel the squeeze of the fact that his clan didn't particularly exist anymore. The reality was certainly something that sucked, he could only imagine how Sasuke felt about his own clan because he actually knew them before their deaths.

He'd have to wait for the commencement festival that was apparently going to happen the night before and after the tournament if he wanted to spend some time with his team. For now he'd just chill out by himself at home and get ready for the road in the morning. Asuma was probably with Kurenai again, and the young blonde knew enough to recognize that it was certainly not his place to step in there… damn, even two months of hanging out with Jiraiya managed to stick something other than ways to fight in his brain.

And as he arrived at his apartment he found the man that he had just been thinking about standing outside of his apartment, "What, you didn't feel like breaking in and waiting for me this time?" Naruto asked dryly.

"You're telling me that you didn't booby trap the doors and windows after the last time?" Jiraiya replied much in the same manner with a small smile on his face.

Naruto just stared at him before moving past and unlocking his door, "You could take it. The only one that's trapped with explosives is the front door." Opening said front door, Naruto walked inside and gestured inwards to Jiraiya who still stood patiently outside, "Are you coming in or not?"

"Just waiting for the invitation gaki." Jiraiya said as he walked inside, "I think I've taken enough liberties with you recently. It'd be kind of messed up to break into your house after what I had to do the last time we spoke." He then let out a hard exhale and a cough as Naruto buried a fist in his stomach, "Ok… good hit." Jiraiya wheezed out as Naruto pulled his fist away.

"There… I feel better about it now." Naruto said, flexing his fist out after punching Jiraiya. Damn that old pervert was sturdy, that was like punching a life-sized brick of semi-hardened clay, "Maybe if I get pissed later I can hit you again?"

"It's a one day offer…" Jiraiya said with a deadpan stare before Naruto hit him again in the stomach, "…Brat." Another punch, "Gah! And the offer is off of the table! Kami, it's like getting hit with a sledgehammer!"

A smug grin came over Naruto's face at that comparison, "I got banned from trying to use the taijutsu posts at the Academy for practice because I finally broke one of them." Then Iruka yelled at him and chased him around the school for two hours… luckily he didn't have to pay for it.

After rubbing his stomach a few more times, Jiraiya gave a laugh, "Don't get cocky brat, you're not the strongest person that's ever hit me. Not even close. You're just good for your age. You could beat me like that all day and I'd be fine." He abruptly held up his hands defensively when he saw Naruto lift his fist again, "Damn it, don't do it! I come in peace!"

Seeing Jiraiya again made Naruto remember that while he might have had a pretty miserable experience with the man he did seem legitimately remorseful for whatever action he did to coax the Kyuubi's chakra out of him. And he did have a great time working with Jiraiya until then. He had definitely been picking things up from the man and the entire ride had admittedly been a blast right up until the final day.

'Damn, I'm a total pushover…' Naruto thought to himself with a sigh. He didn't want to hate Jiraiya. He had gotten tired of hate a long time ago. When he was younger he _wanted_ to hate the villagers that treated him like he didn't matter, he wanted to hate his position in life before becoming a genin, he wanted to hate how much he sucked at proving he could get himself out of the Academy with his three failures, he used to want to hate everything… but he just got sick of it.

"I know you come in peace Ero-sensei…" Naruto said as he plopped down bonelessly in the first chair his body could reach. Jiraiya raised an eyebrow at Naruto's reaction and shut the door behind him so that passersby couldn't hear Naruto gripe, "Why can't I just ever be mad at the people that do things to me? That would make things so much easier. Hell, I don't even want you to bribe me or anything to get me to forgive you."

Jiraiya crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Naruto curiously, "Are you sure? Because I was about to teach you a-."

"-Yeah, I'm sure…" Naruto said, not really leaving any room for argument. Weird. Most kids would be doing backflips at the prospect of learning a new jutsu, "…Actually, keep that one on hold for a bit. If I live through the exams we'll see." There, that was more like it, "It better be badass."

Jiraiya scoffed and turned his head away from Naruto, "Everything I do is badass." He then turned serious and leaned against the front door, "So do you think you're ready?"

At that line of questioning, Naruto frowned in deep thought.

_(Flashback – One Day Ago – Team 10 Training Ground)_

_Shikamaru picked at the bark that had just been freshly stripped from a tree, though not by a traditionally manual manner as one would have normally seen, especially since the tree also had some small gashes in it, "Okay Naruto… I think you've got it."_

_Naruto absently spun his machete around on the chain at the end of it with a huge grin on his face, "Yeah I know, I'm awesome. Not bad huh?" He then found that he had to stop spinning the weapon around for safety as Ino threw herself over his back, wrapping her arms around his neck, "Ino, I'm swinging a machete!"_

"_I'm so proud of my Goldie-kun!" Ino said brightly, rubbing her cheek against Naruto's whisker-marked one, eliciting a growl from her embarrassed genin teammate, "Such a quick study."_

_A smirk came upon Shikamaru's face as Naruto looked over at him with pleading eyes to get Ino off of him somehow, "Well having fifty to one-hundred clones working with the jutsu and giving the results back to you kind of does that for you." It made him wish he knew how to use Kage Bunshin like Naruto did. Hell, it had 'Kage' in the name of the jutsu to boot. Oh well, Naruto had to have his own special moves too, and if Shikamaru could make clones like Naruto then they would probably be just as lazy as he was, "And the fact that you have a new trick opens up a few doors for us come fight time. It should make things easier, at least I hope so."_

_Ino stopped rubbing her cheek against Naruto's to give Shikamaru a deadpan stare, "Nothing we ever do is easy… and I'm starting to think it's because you keep wishing out loud that things will be easy! You're jinxing us Shikamaru! With as much as you hope nothing ever goes wrong I'm surprised we haven't been jumped by a gang of S-ranked nuke-nin by now!" Ino then went deathly silent before palming her own face and dragging it downward, "Damn it… I just did it didn't I?"_

"_Uzumaki-kun! Yamanaka-san! Shikamaru-kun!"_

_Everyone's attention turned towards the edge of the field where Shiho was running towards them before coming to a stop in front of them with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily. All of Team 10 had the same thought seeing as how it was a weekday and Shiho had to work, 'Did she just run all the way here from the Konoha Archive Library at the top of the Hokage Monument?' It was quite obvious that she had… and that she was somewhat out of shape due to not being an active duty genin, so they gave her the time to catch her breath before asking her why she was here._

"_Shiho-chan." Naruto asked, all of Team 10 fighting the urge to facepalm when Shiho sank to her knees and rolled over to her back to lay down for a minute, "Uh, what are you doing here? Don't you have to work today?"_

"_Yes." Shiho said, still breathing rather heavily and laying on her back, "But I have information!" She said, abruptly sitting up and adjusting the glasses on her face in an attempt to look as presentable as possible, "This Gaara person that you said can control sand, his technique seems identical to reports from files on past encounters that Konoha forces had in the past, during the Second Shinobi World War. I was taking some time to go through some of the records that I had access to."_

_Ino took the break as an opportunity to sit down on the ground and listen up, "Okay… so do ours. Me and Shikamaru's clan techniques are old too. He controls sand. Oooh." She finished, making feigning fear gestures at the idea of sand._

"_Sand that he uses to crush things and suffocate people." Naruto said matter-of-factly, getting Ino to stop mocking sand in a hurry, "That's pretty important to remember Ino-chan."_

_Shikamaru knew that Naruto had apprehensive thoughts about the Suna genin Gaara and he trusted Naruto's judgment on dangerous enemies. There was always the possibility that they would somehow face off down the line, so knowledge would be power in this instance, "So if his sand control's been seen by others then there's a way to beat it, right?"_

_Shiho perked up once she heard Shikamaru speaking to her and blushed nervously as she responded, "Well there's something about the sand that you need to know first of all before you start looking for ways to beat it." Her nervousness dropped and she looked over to Naruto with a frown, though it was only for a split second, "Well… the man recorded in this book as having control of sand was a jinchuuriki gifted with the natural ability to do such." She finished quietly._

_Naruto's jaw dropped at the thought of Gaara being a jinchuuriki, since that was clearly what Shiho had been implying. On the other hand, Shikamaru and Ino didn't have the faintest idea of what a jinchuuriki was, nor were they looking at Naruto's face otherwise they would have known flat out that it was a big deal._

"…_So?" Ino finally said after waiting for a minute to let Shiho continue, "What's a jinchuuriki and why's it worth bringing up? I mean you ran all the way here and nearly killed yourself."_

_Shiho let out a sigh, inwardly proud of the look on Naruto's face, 'Uzumaki-kun knows what a jinchuuriki is without someone telling him. He must really be taking that learning thing to heart.' Of course she also didn't know that Naruto was aware of his own status as a jinchuuriki, but that was something else altogether, "Jinchuuriki; power of human sacrifice. Humans with the powerful biju monsters sealed inside of them. You do know what those are don't you?"_

_Ino just gave her a blank stare before blinking her blue eyes, "Um, refresh my memory."_

_Shiho returned her stare with a deadpan look, "The Kyuubi that attacked twelve years ago… that was one of them."_

_Ino's eyes then did a great impersonation of the way Naruto's had looked moments before at that revelation, "So you're saying that this Gaara kid has a demon stuck inside of him like the Kyuubi? How the hell would people even do that?" She turned towards Naruto, "Can you do that?"_

"_Fuuinjutsu is really powerful and dangerous." Naruto said, speaking up for the first time since the topic came up. If anyone out of the lot of them could even come close to calling themselves an expert on the matter it was him for more than one reason, "It can do all kinds of things… and no I can't. I don't think I want to learn how either." He replied honestly squinting his eyes and crossing his arms with conviction. He didn't want the power to make someone like him, his life was bad enough just because of what was stuck inside of him. He would be sick to his stomach if he ever had to do that to someone else._

_Shiho held up one finger in a lecturing manner, "Ichibi no Shukaku. That's the best guess as to what's sealed inside of Gaara since the Shukaku is traditionally acknowledged as Sunagakure's. He's supposed to be their secret weapon; with powerful abilities and a touch of instability."_

'_A touch?' Naruto thought with a raised eyebrow. Clearly either the jinchuuriki in the records had enough wits about him to fake being sane in front of the man that had logged it in, or Gaara was just plain homicidal for the sake of being homicidal._

"_Then how do we fight him? He's supposed to have all of that power. What's he doing in the exams?" Shikamaru asked rhetorically, not really expecting an answer. However he received one from his teammate._

"_He's a human being just like anyone else." Naruto said tersely, "He's just got more power than a normal person would." Naruto himself was a jinchuuriki and he wasn't all-powerful. He had been shown by Jiraiya that having the Kyuubi in him didn't make him unbeatable, and that meant that Gaara wasn't unbeatable, "Treat it like another opponent that we can beat. At least we know his jutsu. That's more than he's got on us. All he knows about me is that I can make clones… that's not enough to find a way to beat me. It's not enough to beat _us_… dattebayo."_

_Shikamaru gave Naruto a long, hard look and saw something in his friend's eyes. At the end of the last stage of the exams Naruto seemed petrified at the prospect of fighting Gaara. What had changed over the last month to put that much swagger back in his step?_

_Still, it was either solve the problem or get squashed. Besides, what were the chances of both teams meeting in the final tournament battle anyway? And with odds like that it was clearly more than certain that they would in fact be meeting Gaara and his team in the finals which meant that he needed to get cracking and come up with a solution, "I told you I'd find a way to help in case we had to fight that guy Naruto. I'm not going back on my word. As troublesome as it may be…"_

_Shiho smiled at the lazy genin, 'Shikamaru-kun is so cool.'_

(End Flashback)

Flashes of his clones and their complete decimation by Gaara flew through his head, but then Naruto thought of Ino and Shikamaru and what he knew they had been doing all month to get ready. In addition to that, Shikamaru had promised him that a solution would be found to Gaara's sand defense. He believed in his team and he believed in himself, "We're ready Ero-sensei… for sure."

Besides, he still had to get out of the first round before he could rightly begin worrying about any of that. Even though he didn't know anything about Team 10's first round opponents he didn't want to be accused of overlooking them and wind up beaten.

"Oh, then you'll definitely win for sure." Jiraiya said with a smirk on his face. Naruto thought he was being facetious at first, but the man quickly squashed that thought with his next words, "Look here gaki, you've got the heart and the soul, all you needed was the guts to go forward."

"What about the talent?"

"Meh, talent's overrated." Jiraiya said, waving him off.

Naruto almost fell out of his chair at the very blunt near backhanded statement, 'Does that mean that I don't need talent to win this or that I don't have any talent in the first place? Oh who am I kidding, both of those options suck!'

Jiraiya ignored the look on Naruto's face and continued, "Listen, you're going to bleed, you're probably going to take a beating, and by the end of this tournament you're going to wish with all of your heart that you never have to do anything like it again. But you'll gut that out and do it anyway. If you really think you deserve it, and if you believe that winning the whole thing is your mission then you'll endure all of that to do so. Take the things that you want and don't let anyone say you can't or let them stop you without doing everything you can, and then a little bit more after that, to get there."

He then opened the front door and stepped outside, finishing his point on a lighter note, "No student of mine is going to get beaten in the first round either… you're representing me here, so make them all see how good you are. That will make them all see how amazing Jiraiya-sama is for sure! The student reflects the skill of the teacher!"

As Jiraiya's loud, guffawing laughter rang out while he walked away from Naruto's apartment, Naruto himself was left with a strange peaceful feeling in his stomach. No jitters, no actual doubts, none of that. He honestly felt ready with not a thought in his mind to the contrary, "Ero-sensei if your perv books didn't make you so much money I'd say you need to start touring for inspirational speeches."

XxX

(Two Days Later – Tetsu no Kuni)

Even in the snowy environment of the samurai-dwelling country it was clear that a festival was carrying on. The streets of the host village were filled with vendors of all sorts from countries all over the world. Each nation invited to view the final rounds of the exam had some form of representation; either through stands set up for cuisine, peddling wares, or buying and selling commodities that would be far harder to obtain in their countries normally.

It was like a massive, grandiose, international swap meet for merchants with the means to travel freely to the normally locked down country. They could either sell their own in-demand goods to foreigners for higher prices than they could get at home, or get their hands on rarer things that they could sell back in their own villages for huge profit.

Fortunately the samurai of Tetsu no Kuni were out in full force in their capital to ensure nothing got started by any of the visitors. No attempts at trying to rob any of the merchants and no fighting among the shinobi there only to view the tournament that was the centerpiece of the whole thing, otherwise stiff penalties would be paid in full, monetarily or physically.

Still, any underlying tension between the major villages there to visit seemed to be set on the backburner. Anything that any of the more bitter spectator shinobi felt had to be settled up between them and the other villages was to be done vicariously through the genin in the tournament. That was the unwritten understanding of the chunin exams; it was more or less anything goes as long as it was in the structure of the competition.

"I've already gotten an audience with another team that was supposed to be fighting one of the Konoha team… so now I've come to you all." Gato said with a nasty grin on his face as he sat in a rather upscale looking restaurant, his table surrounded by a fully armed guard. He had no desire to associate with the rabble outside in the festival. He had business to attend to, "You see a pair of these bratty Konoha teams that are littering the event managed to turn a rather lucrative business arrangement of mine sour a few months back. And I figured, what better time to collect scalps than now when I can get away with it?" He chuckled darkly towards his guests, "So here's the deal. You're to fight some no-name brat named Uzumaki's team in the first round."

Yes, Naruto was a no-name as far as Gato was concerned… despite the fact that there was a newly built, mammoth bridge with his name slapped right on top of it sitting between the mainland and Nami no Kuni.

"And you want us to bury those runts, right?" Sitting across from the shipping magnate was the Iwagakure team. The shaved head de facto leader of the squad, Hisashi smirked as he asked Gato his question, "You'll pay up for each one we can kill right?"

"One million for each of you for every one of them you take down." Gato said informatively, "Just so you have the option of taking out one or two of them and make it seem like an accident, a little plausible deniability even in something like this is never a bad thing. Besides, I award ambition in case you decided to get all three of them. Just don't tell your jounin or any of your village reps, I don't think they'd be too ecstatic to hear that you're more or less freelancing."

Hisashi looked at his two teammates and got unanimous nods from both of them as the fauxhawk sporting member of the team Masaru spoke up, "We're in. How many times will a group of genin ever going to get the chance to get rich?" The third teammate Jun nodded in agreement with a rather hard look on his face.

"Besides…" Hisashi said again, cracking his knuckles at the thought, "I was already going to kill that blonde kid with the stupid look on his face. I might as well get something out of it."

'Well that's one less thing to worry about.' Gato thought to himself as he sat back in his chair, satisfied at the moment. He might not be able to get a shot at the two Konoha jounin that had ruined things for him, (Kakashi and Asuma already had significant bounties on their heads and adding more money to it at this point wouldn't inspire anyone else to go out of their way to hunt them) but the kids were still more than weak enough to pick off and these exams were the perfect opportunity for it.

He was petty enough to more or less put out a hit on them to the tune of 3 million a head. His pride was worth that pittance any day after what they had started.

'And those genin that work for my new business partner better get the job done as well against those brats with the Uchiha kid on the team.' Gato thought as the Iwa genin got up and left his presence, 'But from the work I've had done over the last few months I have to say that Otogakure shinobi certainly know how to get the jobs I need done. He certainly seemed receptive enough to take my mission though when I said I needed his genin team to put down that Uchiha's team. I wonder why?'

XxX

There were video screens of various size set up all over the place, flashing through the tournament competitors and the odds of either team winning their particular bout in the first round. Further odds would be set up in between fights after the first round ended, so the entire tournament was a major gambling event, and the bookies came from far and wide to make their own bones off of those looking to bet on the genin in person. The multiple dignitaries, elite shinobi, nobles, and high-profile visitors there for the event had more dispensable income than they would find back in their own towns and villages… well most of them should have at least.

"All right, time to make a fortune." A fair skinned blonde woman with a quite sizeable bust and long blonde hair tied into two loose ponytails going down her back walked through the streets of the host village for the exams. She had on pick lipstick, a grey sleeveless kimono-looking blouse with a dark blue obi keeping it tied closed quite low to show her cleavage, dark blue pants, black open-toed heeled sandals, a necklace with a beautiful green jewel on it, and an open green robe with the kanji for 'gamble' on the back, "The Uchiha advancing is a sure thing so I'll put a safety bid on him. I'll put a good amount up on all of the Konoha teams to make it out of round one, and for the kicker the Suna team to walk off with the whole thing." She seemed rather excited at the thought of the bets she planned on making.

Following behind her was a woman with shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes. She wore a long black kimono with a white obi and sandals similar to blonde lady and had a worried look on her face as a small pig wearing a pearl collar and a red jacket trailed along with her, "Tsunade-sama what could you possibly be gambling with? Didn't we have to run from Cha no Kuni because you got us into debt again?"

"I paid that off in the end Shizune." Tsunade said, waving off the dark-haired woman's concerns, "And we're about to make back what we lost before right here during this tournament. It's a sure thing! Who could possibly judge odds in a competition of shinobi better than someone like me?" She said in a boasting manner.

Shizune simply followed behind with a deadpan look on her face, 'Maybe someone that has enough luck to back up their 'amazing judging skills' for one?' She let out a sigh and looked down at the pig walking with her, "We're going to be on the run again for debt after this aren't we Tonton?" An oink in the affirmative was the response from the small animal, "Why does she like doing something that she's so bad at?"

She was so absorbed with fretting over her master's splurging of their already rather questionable funds she managed to bump into a smaller figure that had been walking her way, "Ow… damn it Shikamaru this still doesn't count as you being right."

"Oh, I'm so sorry." Shizune said as she looked down and saw a young blonde child sitting on the ground with a fallen massive stuffed toad and a multitude of other stuffed animals on the paved street. As she looked at him she noticed his headband and blinked at it being a Konoha leaf plate.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – With Team 10)

Shikamaru shook his head as he and Ino followed along behind Naruto. They weren't rightly sure where they were headed in the festival as they had gotten separated from Asuma earlier for what he called 'bonding with his comrades'. Said comrade that came to fetch him for said bonding was Kurenai though, so none of them were holding their breath on seeing Asuma again for at least several hours, leaving them to their own devices.

Said devices involved Naruto dragging them to every winnable game that there was, or at least it seemed that way. He would either lose and curse repeatedly before trying again until he won, or he would win and move along to the next one. Needless to say by this point he was toting around a lot of prizes; stuffed toys, candy and other treats, porcelain masks like the kind ANBU wear, straw hats, and other things.

"Do you think you won enough stuff Naruto?" Shikamaru said, amused as Naruto tried to navigate his way down the street, his vision hampered by the mountainous multitude of his 'spoils of war'. Both he and Ino were wearing their weather-blocking cloaks while Naruto was back wearing his winter clothes; his normal sleeveless orange windbreaker with a padded long-sleeved blue shirt to cover his arms as well as a pair of thick orange pants.

"You weren't saying that when you wound up getting some of the stuff that I won." Naruto said, turning his head for a moment to glare at Shikamaru, "You were too lazy to win that thing that you said you wanted so I had to do it for you. How are they by the way?"

Shikamaru didn't vocally answer Naruto's question, he simply gave a thumbs up and held up a small black package and opened his mouth to show a mouthful of small gravel-looking candies that were fizzling audibly, loud enough to clearly be heard even in the midst of the crowd.

"That's what I thought." Naruto said, satisfied with Shikamaru's lack of a response… or maybe he just felt like letting his candy answer for him? Lazy bastard…

"I'm sure you thought this was funny or cute or something." Ino said as she walked with her teammates, carrying something that Naruto had given her very quickly after winning it. He had won her a pig shaped wallet and had immediately handed it over to her with a huge grin on his face. And she had been wondering why he had been trying so hard to guess one winner right on that weird rat race game. Now she knew.

Naruto shrugged as he went back to his job of trying to navigate through the throng with only the use of his repeated chakra pulses. Who needed eyes? Not him, "Funny? No. I did think it was cute though Ino-buta-chan." He replied cheekily.

Ino just started staring a hole in the back of Naruto's head at the nickname that had been given, "Just so we're clear; I _will_ stab you, you know that right? I have no problems with that. Especially since I know you'll heal by tomorrow." She then decided to bring something else up, "Why don't you just seal all of that stuff in a scroll or something?"

"I left all of my scrolls in the room with our stuff." Naruto explained, "It's not like I came out here expecting to win so much useless crap." He then noticed quite a few kids running around, laughing and actually taking notice of how many toys he had with him. Eh, what the hell? He had to get rid of most of that stuff anyway. And with that thought in mind he started handing out some of his winnings to the kids that he passed, "Guess I'll share my good fortune." He said jokingly as he did so.

While Ino and Shikamaru figured it to just be a good gesture from a good-natured guy it was kind of something else too. Something similar had happened for him back during a chunin exam festival that had been held in Konoha years ago. A person had been giving out prizes that he had won, probably to impress a girlfriend or something, and had actually given something to a little Naruto; his frog wallet Gama-chan. Even when the man had actually spotted Naruto he had not taken the smile off of his face, nor had he retracted his gift much like how a lot of other adults would have.

"_Here you go kid. Have a good time and cheer up would you? You'd probably feel a lot better if you smiled instead of frowning so much."_

The man had been a Konoha shinobi, and while Naruto didn't remember seeing him again after that he took that advice to heart and kept the wallet, even now. That man was part of the reason he wanted to be a ninja in the first place; maybe he could be some kid's random hero one day? Which was also the reason he was handing out prizes. Maybe he'd wind up giving a gift to some random down on his luck kid much like he himself had been? If he did then the child would definitely appreciate the gesture, he most certainly did.

After giving away a dozen toys to the rather energetic kids, getting more than his share of approving looks from the people around them, Team 10 continued on their way, "That was a really nice thing you did Naruto." Shikamaru said. He wished he could say he would have done the same, but that would have involved winning the toys in the first place and the effort of doing that and then fairly dispersing presents… too much work for him.

"It's not a big deal." Naruto said bashfully as he continued forward down the street, "I don't need all of this stuff anyway. What would I possibly do with all of it? I do want to keep the gigantic frog though. That's my trophy."

Ino smiled at the amicable atmosphere they were in. It was very calming especially considering that they would be fighting tooth and nail in deathmatches the next day, "I think that's a toad Goldie-kun."

Really? Well maybe he'd been hit in the head one too many times to notice the difference when he had been fighting with Jiraiya's summons, "There's a difference?" Naruto said questioningly as he looked back at Ino. While doing so he bumped into someone in front of him and fell backwards onto the ground, spilling his festival prizes all over the street.

"I told you that was too much stuff." Shikamaru commented before emptying more of his pack of candy into his mouth.

There was nothing wrong with overachieving and the sooner Shikamaru realized that, the better, "Ow… damn it Shikamaru this still doesn't count as you being right." Naruto said from his place on the ground.

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

Naruto looked up at a pretty dark-haired lady that had an apologetic look on her face… and a pet pig nearby. Okay, he could roll with that. It wasn't the weirdest thing he had seen by a long shot, "It's alright." Naruto said, not really bothered at all from his place on the ground as he adjusted his goggles on his forehead, "Hey, do you want a stuffed animal or something? Take your pick." He then added something as an afterthought with a stern look, "Not the giant frog though, that one's mine."

"Giant _toad_ Goldie-kun."

"Fine, '_toad'_ Ino-buta-chan." Naruto said as a correction before a snowball hit him in the back of the head, "You know I'm going to get you for that, right?" He did not see Ino stick her tongue out at him and pull down her eyelid as a rebuttal.

As Naruto picked himself up off of the ground and shook the remnants of the snowball out of his hair, the lady he had bumped into was busy collecting up his fallen stuff, "I'm sorry again, I was just preoccupied with something else. My name is Shizune and this is Tonton." She said, referencing the small pig that oinked happily at being introduced.

"Nice to meet you lady." Naruto said as he picked up the rest of his things and took what Shizune had collected from the ground back into his possession, "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and these are my teammates Shikamaru and Ino." Both teammates waved at Shizune, "And we're going to win the whole damn tournament tomorrow and get promoted!"

"You can do it!" A mustached street vendor on the side of the road yelled encouragingly with a strange accent.

"Thanks random guy!" Naruto shouted back with a grin on his face. It looked like he had an underground fan base in Tetsu no Kuni. He wondered if anyone would make a sign and hold it up during the competition to get his attention. That would be cool.

"So you're the long-shot team."

Team 10 and Shizune's attention found its way directed towards a rather well endowed blonde woman walking towards them with her hands on her hips, "I was talking to myself for about three minutes before I realized you weren't behind me Shizune. And here I find you here held up by one of the fighting Konoha teams. The long-shots to boot."

Shizune had the humility to look sheepish at being left behind by her master, "Tsunade-sama… oh, well I bumped into this young man and knocked him and his things down, I just stopped for a second to help him."

'Tsunade huh?' Naruto thought to himself, finding her name really familiar, 'Why do I think I'm supposed to know that name? I don't think she's dangerous… or at least I don't think she's dangerous to me.'

Ino decided to attempt to placate the rather confident and powerful looking woman. She looked like a kunoichi, "She was just helping us out for a bit… but what did you mean when you called us the long-shot team?"

Tsunade raised an eyebrow at Ino and decided to answer her, "Well even though you were apparently highly touted after your graduation from the Academy and you're a Yamanaka your teammate wasn't so highly looked upon. But he's a Nara and that's just the way they are even when they're outstanding… every one of them I've met anyway." Her eyes then drifted to Naruto, "But then there's the talk about your third teammate."

Naruto perked up as he anticipated Tsunade to begin talking about him. She knew about him? What did she know?

Apparently it was what everyone else knew that shaped their thoughts about him at first.

There was some great news…

"They say he failed his graduation exam three times before passing in some cop-out fashion later." Tsunade started in a very blunt manner before continuing, "With six months under his belt it has to be luck that he managed to get this far even with that nasty business in Nami no Kuni that people talked about, but there's no luck here and unfortunately for you and your Nara teammate sweetie I don't really see you making it further than advancing out of the first round. You two would be so beaten up by the end of it that even if you won there'd be no way you could win in the next round." She sounded rather confident in that pick.

Naruto of course took offense to this, "You say that like I'm not even going to fight in the first round."

Tsunade turned her brown eyes to Naruto and gave him a once over glance, "I'm not saying you won't fight, I'm just saying that it probably won't matter too much in the end."

Having worked with Naruto for around six months and gotten an opportunity to get to know him quite personally, Ino was the first to verbally jump to Naruto's defense, "How could you say that if you haven't even seen him fight before? That information is all old. No one that knows anything could possibly tell you what Naruto can really do. Who do you think you are to say something like that lady?"

Hearing that Ino had a little fire in her put a smirk on Tsunade's face. So the cute little rookie genin girl had a backbone. A rather sturdy one too, "I think I'm pretty much one of the most qualified people in the world to say so. You really haven't heard of my name before? I guess people don't talk about me and my team anymore after what my bastard teammate did."

Putting Tsunade's name together with some of the things she learned in the Academy, mostly the fact that Tsunade was the measuring stick by which every kunoichi in the world was compared to, got Ino's blue eyes to widen once she realized who they were talking to, "Y-You're-."

Shikamaru shook his head and inadvertently cut Ino off, "I don't really care one way or the other about who you are, but you aren't going to just talk down to our friend like that and expect us to just sit here and smile about it."

"It's okay guys." Naruto said, putting on a brave face by grinning as he set his things down on the ground once more, "She's just the kind of person that wants me to give up. I've dealt with things like this before my whole life remember? Even you guys said stuff like that to me before all the time."

While it was true, Ino didn't particularly want to be reminded about that. It was funny back when everyone thought he was talentless, but he had long since dispelled that way of thinking. Now if everyone else would just realize it too, "That still shouldn't matter. She doesn't even know you."

"She'll know me after we win this tournament and get promoted. And then she'll know me when I make it all the way to Hokage!" Naruto said brightly and full of confidence.

Tsunade was taken aback momentarily by Naruto's spirited declaration and his appearance, 'Nawaki? No, he's not… he's just some stupid kid.' "So you want to be Hokage. That explains everything then. Wake up and face reality brat; all that would create for you would be a life full of sacrifice that would kill you in the end." She turned away from Team 10 and began walking away, "Only a fool with his head in the clouds would want to be Hokage."

'There's no reason to go so far Tsunade-sama…' Shizune thought rather bitterly as she could see Naruto physically shaking to hold himself back from doing anything rash. Even Ino moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder, 'He's just a kid. There's no reason for him to not have a dream.'

"Well I personally don't really see anything wrong with a person having their head in the clouds." Shikamaru said calmly, getting Tsunade to stop walking away once she heard how easygoing he sounded even after how she had intentionally tried to chop Naruto down, "I mean, clouds are cool. Have you ever stopped and looked at one? They just calm you down and mellow you out. They make you feel, I don't know, good." He tried to explain, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly as he didn't think he was wording it right, "I guess I suck at this whole speech thing, but my point is kind of simple. Having your head in the clouds makes sure that you have something to look forward to even when everything sucks… otherwise life would just make you all bitter and crabby." He smirked to himself, "…Kind of like you I'd imagine."

Tsunade narrowed her eyes at Shikamaru, "Why you little-…"

"-Besides… _someone_ on this team has to have some kind of ambition." Shikamaru said, gesturing his head towards Naruto, "We've got a system worked out between us. I'm the pessimistic realist that lets us know when we're in over our heads, keeps our feet grounded, and thinks of a way out no matter how troublesome it is. Ino's the bossy one that can make us do anything and keeps our heads on straight, she's the happy medium here. Naruto's the mettle of the team, the one that thinks we can always come out on top and never lets us quit or say we can't. He's the dreamer, our grit. Without him we wouldn't have any edge behind us at all. So he might be a bit of a fool? Who cares? That's Uzumaki Naruto; a hardheaded-."

"Stubborn as an ox-." Ino said, following up without even being prompted to without a beat.

"Brash-."

"Loudmouthed-."

"Bright eyed-."

"Grinning, cherub-faced-."

"Optimistic-."

"-Tenacious son of a bitch."

"And that's why he's more or less the soul of the team." Shikamaru finished with a careless shrug.

"-But fortunately not the brain." Ino said with a firm nod, proud of her reasoning on Naruto's character, "If he was then he'd run us off of a cliff like a pack of lemmings… as a matter of fact he actually has before. That's our Goldie-kun though."

Naruto had been hit with so many heartfelt, yet backhanded complements over the last several seconds he didn't know whether to feel flattered or to be pissed off so he just settled for a combination of both, "Wow you guys that was great. I just want to hug you both… and stab you at the same time. I really appreciate it. Oh… also, for the record, I hate you both _so_ much right now." He turned his attention to Tsunade though, "But we'll see who's really a fool once we win the whole tournament. If you don't think we can then sit back and watch."

A sharp tongue-lashing didn't break the kid down or make him lose his cool, probably because his teammates had his back. And now he seemed more determined than ever to go out and prove something. That damned grin of his made her think of Nawaki though… she couldn't even bear looking at it any longer, "I'll see you tomorrow when your opponent wipes the floor with your face." Tsunade said as she turned and started walking away.

Naruto gathered up his things and let out a scoff before walking off on his own way with Ino and Shikamaru, "Whatever… I'll be sure to look for you in the crowd after I kick some major ass you old hag."

"What was that?" Tsunade snapped angrily as she turned around abruptly, ready to teach the little runt some manners, samurai be damned today. Once she did so however, a small slug plushie immediately bounced off of her forehead and landed in her hands as she deftly caught it. She noticed that Shizune also had a little stuffed mallard duck in her grasp as well, probably from Naruto's stash of prizes.

Naruto didn't turn back around as he held on to all of his stuff and kept walking, "It suits you for some reason…" He said as an excuse for giving it to her, "Uzumaki Naruto; future Hokage, and Team 10 of Konohagakure no Sato; all future chunin exam champions and soon to be promoted chunin. Don't forget that, alright?"

Eventually Team 10 disappeared within the crowd of people still enjoying the festival despite the perennial overcast sitting over the skies of mountaintop host village in Tetsu no Kuni. Tsunade looked in the direction they disappeared even when it went long past the point of seeing them anymore before looking at the slug plushie in her hand and tossing it up and down a few times, "What a noisy little punk." She said absently, though she didn't instantly dispose of the little trinket. She kept a hold of it as she headed back on her way to where she was planning to go before the little run-in, "Come on Shizune, we've still got places to go and things to do today."

"Right away Tsunade-sama." Shizune said, taking a few steps before sparing one more glance behind her, "What a strange boy…" She commented, moving to catch up to Tsunade as Tonton let out an agreeing oink.

XxX

(The Next Day – Chunin Exams Final Round Location)

The next day the jounin sensei of all of the competing genin led their teams to the predetermined locale for the tournament. It was a rather mammoth building with enough seating to hold 20,000 people max and a very high ceiling. Others unfortunate enough to not find a way to procure a spot, either due to not being a sensei, or not being important enough to garner a ticket on demand found themselves out of luck once the place filled up, as there was no wiggle room for stragglers begging for a standing-room only spot.

Needless to say, scalpers that had been able to get tickets made a killing off of the negligent average citizens that wished to see the show in person.

Those unable to get inside the arena were not out of luck though. For a nominal fee they were allowed to watch the event on a series of large screen in the middle of the village, likewise a signal was sent out from the highest point of the village to Sunagakure, Konohagakure, Iwagakure, Kumogakure, and Kirigakure so that the citizens of those villages could view the tournament in one place as well. For example, in Konoha a large screen was set up in the coliseum that would have hosted the final round had Konoha hosted the exams that year. It was similar to that in the other villages as well, tickets were sold due to it being a live event and a copy of the event was meant to be made for posterity to be kept in the Konoha Archive Library.

The battle arena itself was set up in a rather diverse manner. It was massive. A pit-like setup surrounded by high walls on all sides to keep the spectators from getting too close to the action. In the circular center of the arena there was a rather tranquil Zen-garden looking setup; series of aesthetic high rocks set up looking like meditation surfaces, well spread out sand on the ground, and a stream running all through the center of the arena with a slight bend to it, thirty feet in width across, a tough stone bridge sitting over it.

From there on one dominant side of the stream there were rows of evergreen trees and shrubbery, a forest-looking portion. Though it wasn't too tough to see through all of the plant-life there were quite a number of uses for that portion of the field. On the other side of the field it was rockier, very uneven, and much rougher than any other part of the field, almost like the beginning part of a mountain range.

In both opposite portions of the field there was one small pond each. If one were to view the field from directly above it would akin to a yin-yang; one side barren and lifeless, the other with nature life. The only thing keeping it from being a completely traditional looking yin-yang was the circular center that made up the garden, meant to be the neutral starting zone for fights to begin.

This was where the teams were all gathered to wait for the event to begin.

"Yesterday during the festival it was so romantic." Sakura more or less gushed to Ino, "Sasuke-kun and I got to see so much of everything they had to offer. All of the food, the shops, everything!"

Ino rolled her eyes, "It doesn't count as a date." She said as if it were obvious, "You're talking like Chouji wasn't there too."

Sakura stopped her wonderful thoughts of yesterday with Sasuke once she realized that Chouji had in fact been there as well. As a matter of fact every place they went had been a place that Chouji had wanted to go to. Sasuke just followed him… and not that Sakura knew it the onyx-haired Uchiha had a twitch in his eye most of the day that wished that Sakura would stop talking to him.

"That… shouldn't matter, right?" She said rather desperately.

Ino let out a chuckle as she shook her head, "That's like saying that I went on a date with Goldie-kun yesterday, only Shikamaru was there tagging along. It doesn't count Forehead. Too bad, but apparently Sasuke-kun knows what he wants and it doesn't seem to be you."

"Take that back!" Sakura said pumping her fists with punches rather angrily, "It's not that… I just need to show Sasuke-kun that I'm more than just a pretty face and brains." She ignored the '…And Forehead' remark from Ino to keep speaking, albeit with a tick mark on her head, "That's why this is perfect! If I can help us get promoted then that'll prove it, especially if I can walk all over you in the process…"

"You'd better hope you get to show off enough before we fight." Ino said with a confident air, "Because then we'll see who walks all over who. If you haven't secured a promotion by then you won't be getting it over me."

Sakura merely smirked at her not-so-subtle challenge before thinking of something else, "Say… 'Goldie-kun' is Naruto, right?" She ventured a guess, getting a nod from Ino as they both looked over at Naruto who was looking pretty awed at the look of the arena and at all of the people filing in, "You know a second ago when you were talking about him and what makes a date you sounded like you could deal with dating him."

Ino's eyes widened momentarily before narrowing perceptively, "Don't go there Sakura."

Sakura on the other hand found a separate chink in Ino's armor to pick at instead of bashing her head against the brick wall that was declaring that Sasuke would be hers to Ino's face, "What? I didn't say anything. And to be honest once you get past the goofy part he's got good points. Not Sasuke-kun's good points though."

"Naruto and Sasuke are two totally different people." Ino insisted, trying to end the trail of the conversation, "What makes Naruto cool aren't the same things that makes Sasuke-kun cool. It's totally not fair to compare them."

Sakura stared at Ino for a second before sighing and running a hand through her pink locks, "I guess you're right. But if you're saying that Naruto is cool, then sorry I just don't see it."

"You will." Ino said as if it were already assured, "I'm pretty sure of that."

Meanwhile, elsewhere Naruto was trying to get his nerves back down. He was fine until he saw all of the people that started entering the stands, that put a little shellshock into his heart if only for a moment.

"So… that rematch that you were crying about six months ago." He turned around to see Tenten standing there with a smile on her face as she spun a kunai lazily on her finger, "I think you'll only have to wait one more round for it. Oh, and your team will have to win your first fight too."

Hearing about his possible rematch made Naruto's ears burn, "I'm not the same guy I was back then. You'd better make sure you drag Lee and that angry jerk Neji through the first round kicking and screaming. You'll see."

"Looking forward to it _Naruto-chan_." Tenten said, walking away towards her team and waving over her shoulder, "I hope you last longer than 5 minutes this time!"

Naruto growled at her successful attempt to chide him and his failure to think of a response suitable for the situation when the voice of his teammate Shikamaru snapped him out of it, "I really hope you aren't dumb enough to pick a fight with a woman Naruto." Said young Nara genin stood behind Naruto with his hands sunken into his pockets, "That's just nothing but trouble, I'm warning you."

"Don't worry about me." Naruto said turning towards Shikamaru as his eyes caught another team over in the distance, "Let's worry about them right now." He said, gesturing towards the Iwa team that seemed to be ignoring them to the extent where it was clear to be a blatant mind game attempt, "We've got this one right?"

"Meh… depends."

"On what?"

"On whether it's a team battle or a series of random one-on-ones." Shikamaru said, "If we win the toss we're going for the team battle. I don't really see a matchup in our bracket where one-on-ones would really work out for us… at least not yet. Give me some time to think if I'm still conscious or alive after round one." Naruto nodded, figuring there wasn't much strategizing he could do on people that they didn't know anything about.

At that moment, a trio of shinobi walked out onto the field from the entrance tunnel at the edge. One was a bald, dark-skinned Kumo ninja wearing a white-clothed headband, sunglasses, and the normal Kumo ninja uniform. Another was a male Konoha shinobi with brown hair that reached his neck and a senbon in his mouth like a toothpick, wearing the headband in a bandanna style on the top of his head and the normal Konoha shinobi outfit. The last one out was a man wearing a turban with the Suna symbol on it. Over a brown body outfit he had a white, sterile-looking cloth set over his shoulders.

"Alright." The Konoha ninja said as he walked up to the mass of genin, "Fall into line, it's time to begin." And on command each of the genin got together with their teams and stood in a straight line in front of the three older shinobi, "I am Shiranui Genma, the Kumo ninja is Jei, the Suna ninja is Sekka. Jei and myself will be your proctors and referees for matches. Sekka is a proctor and a fight doctor. There will be no fighting outside of scheduled matches, understood?"

Jei spoke up next, "I will now give you the rules of the tournament that you should have already received and taken to heart. This is a tournament-style combat exam meant to be carried out over the course of today and tomorrow. Before each round the competing teams will toss a coin, the winner of the toss will get the chance to pick whether the matches will be contested under team elimination rules or one-on-one matches. For the team elimination battles all members of both competing teams will be on the battlefield at once and will fight until all three members of one team are unable to fight any longer. If a member of a team is deemed unable to continue then they will be immediately evacuated from the field, no attacking an opponent already deemed eliminated and any attempts by a team member to get back into the battle will be strictly forbidden."

Genma spoke again, "One-on-one matches will be between two representatives from their respective teams, not to be known who will fight who until both move towards the center of the field. No assistance from teammates allowed or else the fight will end in a disqualification of both the fighting competitor that the interference came from and the competitor that interfered on their behalf. Again these series will continue until all three members of one team are defeated. After one person wins a fight then and only then can they choose to switch out with a partner or remain in to continue fighting. You have two minutes to select which during a conference session between teams. There are no sanctioned pauses or any substitutions whatsoever allowed mid-match."

Sekka cleared his throat and addressed the genin, "You will obey our commands. If a proctor moves to call a competitor out of the bout then that's that. Our word is final. We retain the right to stop any fight that we find it necessary to do so to keep the safety of the competitors intact." He looked around at all of the teams and nodded, having said what he needed to say, "Good luck to all of you and make your villages proud with your performances."

"This is your show." Genma said as his voice seemingly projected all over the arena, "Look at these people. Everything that's happened here is centered around you. You're the ones that everyone came to see today. So make these people proud, show them that you were given this platform for a reason." As he said that, the filled stands broke into applause and cheering.

Jei smiled at some of the more bashful genin not knowing how to receive the attention before his face turned business-like once more, "Now we will show you the tournament setup in case you've forgotten."

XxX

**Day One**

Bracket 1

Match 1: Rock Lee, Hyuuga Neji, Tenten vs. Samui, Karui, Omoi

Match 2: Nara Shikamaru, Uzumaki Naruto, Yamanaka Ino vs. Hisashi, Misaru, Jun

Match 7: Winner of Match 1 vs. Winner of Match 2 (Winner heads to semifinals)

Bracket 2

Match 3: Fuu, Houki, Dorobou vs. Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, Hyuuga Hinata

Match 4: Uchiha Sasuke, Akimichi Chouji, Haruno Sakura vs. Kinuta Dosu, Abumi Zaku, Tsuchi Kin

Match 8: Winner of Match 3 vs. Winner of Match 4 (Winner heads to semifinals)

Bracket 3

Match 5: Sabaku no Gaara, Temari, Kankuro vs. Oboro, Mubi, Kagari

Match 6: Yakushi Kabuto, Tsurugi Misumi, Akadou Yoroi vs. Hojo Arata, Obata Momoko, Gekido Jin

Match 9: Winner of Match 5 vs. Winner of Match 6 (Winner advances directly to final round)

**Day Two**

Semifinals

Match 10: Winner of Match 7 vs. Winner of Match 8 (Winner of Bracket 1 vs. Winner of Bracket 2. Winner heads to final round)

*The Winner of Match 9 will advance to the final round (Winner of Bracket 3 will receive a bye out of the semifinals directly to the final round)*

Finals

Match 11: Winner of Match 10 vs. Winner of Match 9

XxX

"Damn it." Shikamaru said to himself under his breath, "We've really got the 'block from hell' in this stupid thing. Even if we get to the finals whoever we have to fight then is going to be way fresher than we are. We'll already have to fight once that day and they'll have all of the rest of today and tomorrow until the last fight to rest up."

"Life ain't fair kid." Jei said as he managed to hear Shikamaru's low griping, "It's how you deal with it that matters today. Now will everyone other than the teams scheduled for the first fight exit the tunnel to the observation balcony. We need Rock Lee, Hyuuga Neji, and Tenten of Konoha to come forward to face Samui, Karui, and Omoi of Kumo."

An almost unnoticeable twitch came to Neji's eye and a slight tightening of his fists as he and his team did as instructed along with Team Samui.

Genma held up a coin to show both teams that it was fair and that he would be flipping it, "Team Samui choose; heads or tails."

"Heads." Omoi said as he popped a sucker into his mouth, "But what if we lose this coin toss? Then we'll lose the tournament… stuff like this carries over you know."

"Shut up Omoi…" Karui said, holding her hand over her face in exasperation, "Now really isn't the time for your overanalyzing bullshit okay? Just be ready to fight."

Genma shrugged and flipped the coin high into the air as everyone on the field watched it. After a moment it landed flat on the sandy ground in the Zen-garden and he moved in to observe it, "Tails." He ignored Omoi's cry of 'damn it' and looked to Team Gai, "Okay you guys, which one do you want?"

Lee, Neji, and Tenten looked at each other before Neji spoke up, "Proctor we'll take the series of one-on-one matches for the first round."

Jei nodded and turned to Team Samui, "You heard him, both teams move away and pick your first rep. The rest of you are to stay up in the balcony until the fight is over at which time you will then be allowed to speak with your teammate on the field if he or she wins their battle."

Understanding the rules, Samui nodded as she and her team went off to select who would be fighting first against one of Team Gai, "Cool." She said simply and evenly.

"Not for long I would imagine." Neji replied, intentionally loud enough for her and everyone to hear. Though none of Team Samui turned back around or even said anything to show they cared. Karui did start grinding her teeth at the pretty-boy Hyuuga kid with the chip on his shoulder at that point though.

They didn't know that he was more or less doing the same at the moment.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Save yourself, I'll hold them back (This isn't a movie though so…)

Now let's take a break from filling your head with arrays, and making you repeatedly practice making that pesky seal that makes your fingers cramp up. I don't want to be responsible for ending your career because of carpal tunnel after all.

The stronger you get you will either develop one of two personality traits. You will either become a bitter manipulator that will have legions of pawns at your disposal and will repeatedly avoid trouble by moving them and using them purely for your own gain and nothing more, or you will become a respected and revered figure that will place the lives of the many above your own… we like to call this a hero complex.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. If you become the first then you'll have a veritable wall of human meat shields at the ready to cover your ass after you piss off the wrong guy. They will also either believe in you to a fanatical level or they'll fear you enough to walk into certain death since what you'll do once they fail will be _way_ worse than just dying. However you won't exactly be attracting those with admirable personality traits if you go down this route, and surrounding yourself with people like this will mean that your back will always be turned to at least one of them which is a bad move… because the one you don't have an eye on may think that the world will be better without you and will sink a knife into your spine.

For the hero complex you'll have people that will be loyal to you due to your actions in the past that probably helped them or kept them safe… if you live that long. Those with the vaunted hero complex tend to die young because they would rather solve their own perilous problems and the problems of others instead of letting things slide. They tend to put themselves in danger's way to keep others safe even though they know that they wouldn't be better off than the other person would have been. The bad thing though, is that this breeds the dreaded 'reliable' tag that makes people think you can handle anything, eventually everyone will expect you to be the first to stick your balls in the salad shooter whenever anything especially nasty goes down, and if you don't step up and solve the problem then people tend to turn on you.

Because of this, eventually you'll bite off more than you can chew and that will be that. Now by proxy most village leaders have a touch of the hero complex. Why? Because people trusted them enough with their lives to make them the damn village leader in the first place. It's the only way to really get control of a village without staging a hostile takeover (If you do that then you're probably a manipulator like a previous paragraph states). It is also the reason why most kage-level ninja die in battle. Don't believe me? Okay, Go through the entire list of kage from every village and tell me that over 65% of the list didn't die in battle instead of peaceful retirement somewhere.

And I don't want to hear your bullshit that there's no such thing as retirement for a ninja. I'll be damned if I'm still doing this shit when I'm 75. I've got a career as an author to fall back on… right after I launch my new book idea. It's sure to be gold.

But anyway, that's that. You don't really have a third option, those are the only two ways I've ever seen it work for a powerful shinobi. No one just flies under the radar if you're famous for being good at your damn job (Except maybe Hatake Kakashi. I don't know. The kid is still too young at the time of me writing this to give a better opinion).

Look to strike a happy medium like myself. I'm a generally good guy, but then again I can be something of a douche, and I generally don't care particularly what my enemies think of me since I'm either about to beat them up or kill them.

But if you tend to lean more towards the dark side, then make sure a lot of your underlings are women, because I've noticed that bad guy kunoichi tend to show more skin than their good guy counterparts. At the very least you'll always have something good to look at while you're scheming and conniving, and I bet it'll attract a lot more male dumb muscle to be human meat shields to die aimlessly for you and your diabolical cause, and isn't that the most important thing about having a legion of evil?

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5) **Revamped**

Team Gai

Hyuuga Neji

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 21**

Rock Lee

**Ninjutsu: 0.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 0.5  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 17**

Tenten

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 16.5**

Team Samui

Samui

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 18**

Karui

**Ninjutsu: 1.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 16.5**

Omoi

**Ninjutsu: 1.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 17**

* * *

**Hello those who have taken the time out of their day to read my random mental ramblings that have no real consequence on the world or society at large. I hope you are all having a wonderful day.**

**Okay, so just to say this and get it out of the way before I catch some kind of heat for this; TVs do exist in the Naruto world. They've got video cameras, TVs, VCRs, satellite dishes… all that stuff. They just don't really use it for leisurely things the way we do. No casual viewing of TV, though I'd think that a chunin exam from a neutral location would warrant a special one-time satellite hookup to let the villages see their own genin compete since all five major villages had finalists.**

**Anyway, I think that this should take… roughly four to six chapters to hash out so bear with me and I hope you all enjoy.**

**Either way, I'll catch you all later at some point I'd imagine.**

**Kenchi out.**


	24. Eyes of the World

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto… so you know… suck it world?

**Chapter 24: Eyes of the World**

* * *

In a special box set aside for the visiting kage and their guards, four of the five powerful village leaders sat up top watching attentively along with Mifune, "The teams in the final round are comparably young this year. Other than Kirigakure's representatives, Amegakure's, and Iwagakure's of course." The calm, even tempered samurai general commented.

The Raikage, a large, burly dark-skinned man with slicked back white hair and a mustache and goatee let out a barking laugh in his ceremonial robes, "If you don't get promoted young and get over that hump early it's hard to go far in our line of work. Two of those kids down there were trained by my younger brother and Samui herself should have gotten promoted last year. She was too heavily injured to continue into the combat test after the survival portion of the test."

"How unfortunate." The Kazekage said. Under his hat he had spiky auburn hair and a stern look on his face as he looked down at all of the genin walking away from the field to head up to their viewing area, "But Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara are the absolute best in Suna without question. I even considered sending them and only them to make a point, that the quality of our shinobi can overwhelm any odds."

A bit his tongue at mentioning that those overwhelming odds ended with them in the easiest bracket of the tournament as Hiruzen spoke up instead, "Raikage-dono where is the sensei of your team in the upcoming match?"

"Killer B has his own responsibilities in addition to teaching Omoi and Karui." A explained, "He's Kumo's guardian by my decree. He can't really leave."

At that, the Tsuchikage let out a scoff, "What a waste of such a powerful shinobi." The Tsuchikage was a very short old man with a rather bulbous nose and a smirk on his face, "You two were very infamous as the A-B Duo. Weren't you two supposed to be unbeatable when fighting together? I guess that's as good a use for a jinchuuriki as any I've thought of though."

A clicked his teeth loudly in irritation. That was his brother the Tsuchikage was talking about, "You should watch how you talk about people Onoki." He said evenly, "I believe we should pay attention to the fights now."

XxX

Down on the field the proctors decided to referee the one-on-one fights one at a time, with Jei being the first to do so from a neutral starting point in the Zen-garden. Over on Team Gai's side of the field, it seemed like Neji was going to walk over first, but before he could do so Lee raced out ahead of him and came to a stop right in front of Jei, much to Neji's chagrin apparently as Tenten palmed her face at Lee's exuberance, "Okay… I'm guessing you're first up for your team."

"Yes proctor-san. Rock Lee at your service and ready for combat!" He said, giving a thumbs up and a smile, complete with glistening white teeth.

"Show everyone the power of your youth Lee!" A very distinctly 'youthful' voice shouted over the low rumbling of the crowd anticipating the first match.

"Hey sit down and stop yelling weird guy! That jumpsuit of yours is disturbingly tight!" A spectator nearby the first shout said.

Jei scratched his bald head awkwardly at Lee's rather eccentric demeanor. He turned his head to see Karui walking towards him rolling her shoulders out as a rudimentary way to get her arms loose and limber, "Looks like it's time to get this show on the road. The first round match, fight one: Rock Lee of Konoha vs Karui of Kumo! Are both competitors ready?" He asked, looking at Lee who had slipped in his special stance and Karui who had gotten into her own ready position, getting nods from both, "Begin!" He yelled before jumping away.

Before the last syllable left Jei's mouth, Karui's hand was on the hilt of her katana and drawn in a quick slash directed at Lee, "Kumo-Ryuu Omotegiri (Cloud-Style Front Beheading)!"

Lee immediately leapt backwards out of the range of Karui's strike before getting back into his stance, "You have a very quick draw of your weapon Karui-san. With that blade you have extra reach on me." He said with a smile on his face.

Karui held up her sword defensively, prepared for Lee to attempt to use a jutsu as a ranged attack. What she most certainly didn't expect was for Lee to run right for her faster than she had anticipated, 'What the hell?' She thought to herself as Lee launched a high kick at her, 'Idiot.' She lifted her sword, prepared to cleave his leg off if he was really stupid enough to attack her like that, 'Who attacks a person with a sword using just taijut-?'

"Konoha Senpuu (Leaf Whirlwind)!"

Instead of the high kick she had been anticipating it had been a feint, which allowed Lee a clear shot at her body with a kick that drove deep into her ribs and snatched the wind right out of her lungs. Karui was sent backwards, sliding across the sandy ground before coming to a stop against one of the meditation rocks. She hopped back up to her feet but moved too fast for her own body's good and hurt her ribs even more with an overextended movement, 'Wow that kick was heavy!' "I could have cut your leg off just now! For Kami's sake why didn't you use a jutsu you lunatic?"

Lee let out a laugh, "I wish that I could, but I am completely unskilled in the use ninjutsu or genjutsu, thus I am forced to rely solely on taijutsu. If you haven't noticed this before you would have by the time I defeated you."

"Yeah right." Karui said as she held her sword up with one hand while gingerly holding her ribs, 'Damn it, I need Omoi! He was fast enough before he messed my ribs up, and now I'm even slower.'

"Please surrender." Lee asked her, "I would rather not hurt a maiden such as yourself for no reason, even in the chunin exams."

"You talk too much." Karui said in return, trying to mask the fact that Lee kicked like a horse and she was injured, 'One damn hit!'

Lee frowned but if nothing else respected her decision to continue the fight as he once again closed the distance against Karui. Karui put her back against the rock she had hit earlier to cut off an avenue for the faster Lee to get a better striking angle on her. Taijutsu skill or not she still had a sword, and if anything came near her in the form of an attack she would slice it clean off. As an example, Lee attempted to come in from the side opposite the hand she was holding her katana with, her wounded side. Once he got close enough to reach she let loose a horizontal slash with both hands that almost birfucated Lee.

Lee jumped back with a frown, having suffered a rip in the front of his jumpsuit and a shallow cut on his torso. Karui stood at the ready, at this point beginning to get down Lee's timing and moving tactics. With a hard look on his face, Lee reached down the neck of his jumpsuit for an object, getting a feeling of alarm from Karui, 'Duh! Of course he's armed!' She thought as she made to rush him before he could brandish whatever wicked weapon he had to supplement his taijutsu, 'There's no way someone that can only use taijutsu would _only_ try to fight like that against a swordsman.'

She however stopped mid-stride and faceplanted in the dirt once she saw that Lee had not picked up a weapon, he had grabbed a notepad from inside his suit and was steadily flipping through it, "Now what did Tenten's advice say on beating sword-users or any kind of specialized weapon?"

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Karui shouted, sitting up on her knees from her faceplant, "Who does things like this?"

Tenten banged her head hard on the metal railing in the competitor's observation area. Luckily she was wearing her headband and the metal plate on the cloth kept her from hurting herself before she even got to fight, "Goddamn it Lee, you're in the middle of a fight! Put the notebook up and disarm her okay!" She yelled at the top of her lungs, getting Neji and many of the other nearby Konoha genin to cringe at the volume of the perturbed girl's voice, "Now hurry up already!"

"Ossu!" Lee dropped his notepad back into his jumpsuit and snapped to an involuntary salute and before Karui could hop back to her feet from her knees Lee was already on her.

She let off a vertical rising slash as a defensive measure, but Lee spun to her injured side and sent out a hard kick that she had to relinquish the grip on her weapon to block. Even then she had to bite back a groan of pain as it still hurt. A shine came to Lee's eye as with a stiff backfist right to the sensitive inside of the wrist that was still holding onto the sword forced Karui's grip to slacken and she dropped the sword. With another wide-sweep of the taijutsu-specialist's leg he sent the sword sprawling off into the nearby stream cutting through the very middle of the field.

Satisfied that he had broken the back of her offensive capabilities, Lee looked down at her and spoke, "There, I have disarmed you Karui-san. Please surrender and get yourself some medical treatme-."

Unfortunately for Lee his chivalry was seen by Karui as him thinking she was weak. Thus surrender was currently the furthest thing away from her mind at the moment as she quickly sprang to her feet in front of Lee with a look of anger in her eyes as she already had her right arm held straight out and drawn far back, "Rariatto (Lariat)!"

She stepped forward hard and hit Lee with the mass of her entire arm right across his collar area, dropping him to the ground head over heels with enough rotation for him to land face-first. After making contact, Karui collapsed to the ground holding the arm used in the attack and her entire right side in pain, "Son of a bitch that just made everything so much worse!" She managed to stop writhing in pain to get back to her knees to look at Lee, "At least I knocked that bastard ou-… How the hell are you still standing after that?" She snapped once Lee was standing back up looking no worse for wear other than the dirt and sand covering his face and clothes, and the slight stumble when he got to his feet.

"That was… that was…" Lee said to himself lowly before suddenly grinning, "Such a powerful physical attack!" Lee said happily, "I can only imagine what it could have done if you weren't injured!"

Karui looked utterly stunned but grit her teeth and stood back up, ready to fight again until a hand set itself on her shoulder and stopped her, "Wha-? S-Samui-chan what is it?"

Samui gave her usual casual look to her fellow Kumo kunoichi and shook her head frowning, "It's not worth it Karui. You can't defeat him with just taijutsu without your sword. Don't get injured anymore than you already are. That last attack was your best move without your sword and look at him." Lee was simply standing there, staring curiously at the hold-up, "I know how to defeat him so I'll fight him and Omoi and I will help advance. You just rest and get medical treatment."

Karui looked saddened at being forced to quit, but Samui had a point and as loathe as she was to admit it she had a damn good one. With one good half of her body to use she wouldn't be dealing any damage to Lee, she'd just get hurt worse and ruin their chances next round if they were to even advance.

"Due to teammate stoppage Karui is eliminated!" Jei said before pointing to Lee, "Rock Lee wins match one!" The crowd cheered for Lee who began to run around and wave to the people, "Two minutes until the second battle begins!"

Lee looked over at the stands where his teammates were and pointed down, indicating a question of staying out there. Tenten nodded and looked at Neji who had a scowl on his face. She frowned and nudged him with her elbow, getting a nod out of Neji as well.

Meanwhile Samui was helping to escort Karui over to a medic-nin team to get her off of the field. After doing so, Samui took her time in walking back towards the neutral area where Lee was standing and waiting patiently.

XxX

In the booth with his peers, A sighed to himself, 'Karui… too hotheaded. You knew you were hurt. You could have used your left arm and left side to deliver the move instead of your injured dominant side but you lost your cool. Bad judgment girl…' He had some positivity though, "Samui won't lose the next fight though. She's intelligent enough to have gotten more than enough information to win than she needed."

XxX

"Oh Lee you made me so proud!" Gai shouted, much to the chagrin of the other spectators, "Burn on Lee! Your Springtime of Youth is just beginning!"

Kurenai, Asuma, and Kakashi were nearby and were all trying to make it seem as if they weren't with him… and failing though due to the fact that they all had on Konoha headbands signifying that they most certainly did.

XxX

Jei had switched out with Sekka to ref the next match, "Fight two: Rock Lee of Konoha vs. Samui of Kumo! Begin!" He then leapt away to allow them room to begin.

Samui didn't directly engage Lee with her tanto. She didn't even attack him. She already knew that he would be faster than her, not even taking into account her sizeable for her age bust, and she didn't feel like seeing if they could double as cushions to absorb a taijutsu beatdown.

Lee was immediately in hot pursuit especially once he saw that Samui wasn't as fast as Karui was. Before he got close enough to begin attacking, Samui tossed a set of shuriken at Lee that he managed to dance around in avoidance.

Stopping on her back foot while Lee was weaving through her metal stars, Samui spun around to deliver a high spinning back kick once she had estimated where Lee would be in front of her once he finished dodging shuriken. A wide-eyed Lee managed to get an arm up to block and even managed to react accordingly when Samui spun forward to react with another kick. Another block resulted in Lee looking up to make eye-contact with Samui and to his surprise she had been making hand-seals, 'She uses her legs to keep attention in taijutsu combat so that she has her hands free for forming seals!'

"Boukun no Seishinbyou (Tyrant's Psychosis)." Samui said before jumping back and getting her distance from Lee to make sure her stratagem would work, "Let's see you even touch me now."

Lee more or less started shadow-boxing/kicking/fighting with nothing but air, seemingly enjoying himself. Samui calmly watched him before speaking up, "Please call the fight proctor." She asked, "Do I need to prove that I could kill him or is this enough?"

As Sekka took her words to heart he looked at Lee who looked more serious now, and every now and again his body would jerk as if he were taking damage. Eventually his body jerking violently was all that occurred. He fell to the ground as if he were knocked there and Samui drew a fistful of smaller than average kunai, holding them at the ready, "He won't be able to defend himself from this if I throw these."

XxX

Up in the competitor's box, Neji stared at Samui with a hard look in his eyes, "Get Lee out of there, he's done." He could feel Tenten turn to him questioningly, "She caught him in a genjutsu and neither of us are down there to help him out of it. Tenten nodded and drew a kunai that she threw, landing at Lee's feet as he had gotten back up to continue taking his fake-beating.

XxX

Sekka took that as teammate intervention for Lee's safety and called the fight, "By way of teammate stoppage the winner of the fight is Samui!" In response to his call of her as the winner, Samui made the ram seal and muttered 'genjutsu kai' to release the technique, leaving an exhausted looking Lee to drop to the ground in a heap.

Samui just sighed and stood with one hand on her hip as she waited for her next opponent, "He was just as bad at genjutsu as he said he was, though I don't know why he openly admitted such. No talent indeed I guess."

XxX

Neji shook his head as he walked down from his position in the viewing balcony, "Lee cannot break effectively used genjutsu due to his lack of natural talent in chakra manipulation. It was simply his fate to run into an opponent that could take advantage of this. Just like it's my fate right now to face the only team of Kumo ninja to make it to the finals."

Tenten stared at Neji's form as he disappeared down the stairs to head to the tunnel and let out a sigh. He didn't even discuss which one of them were to go next, "…Come on Neji, don't lose your head here. It's a test. Don't let your gripe with Kumo mess this up."

"His _fate_?" Tenten turned her head to Naruto who was standing with Team 10. He was leaning on the railing and looking down at the arena as Lee stood up on his own power and shrugged off medical attention to come up to the viewing area, "I'm so sick of him talking about that crap. It's the only thing I've ever heard him say out loud since we met. Lee was just unlucky… and you guys just wound up drawing these guys in the first round." He said, gesturing his head to Omoi who was just out of earshot, watching the field intently in preparation for his turn just in case.

"It's… complicated." Tenten said lamely, "It's a long story and it isn't my business to tell it. It's personal to Neji."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

The massive screen set up for long-range viewing of the event had the camera fixed firmly on Neji as he entered the arena through the tunnel. Hanabi had more or less been sitting on her hands watching the fights until Neji's face popped up signifying that he was next up, "Why does he look so mad?" Hanabi asked no one in particular. Though it would be hard to tell if a Hyuuga was angry unless they were extremely upset, even a Hyuuga as young as Hanabi could tell if one of their ilk was mad by the subtle nuances in their gait or face.

"This could be bad." Hanabi looked up at her father Hiashi who was seated right next to her, "He still hasn't let go of his anger and hate after all of these years. This could be an issue for him today."

Hanabi blinked at Hiashi, "Why? I thought Neji was supposed to be the strongest of our generation." That was what she had constantly been told when he was training her, it was also what she had seen when Neji took to sparring with other Branch House members.

"He is." Hiashi admitted to his daughter as the camera showed Neji facing off against Samui, "His bloodline runs stronger than your sister's, even yours. He could surpass all of the other members of the clan one day myself included at the rate his skill improves. But his hatred of the Main House will stunt his growth, as will his fatalistic belief in fate."

Hanabi was rather surprised by that. She didn't know Neji hated them, she had never really had a conversation with him though because he was so much older. Wasn't he her cousin? Why would he hate her or the Main House? Maybe the clan's juinjutsu? But all she knew was that it was meant to protect the bloodline and was placed on Branch House members of the clan.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

Genma stood between Samui and Neji as the young Hyuuga seemed to be staring a hole through Samui who just looked back impassively, "Are you both ready?" He got a pair of nods as his response, "Fight three: Neji Hyuuga of Konoha vs. Samui of Kumo! Begin!" He then jumped out of the way, even though neither of them immediately moved to fight.

Samui's even gaze gave way to a shifting of her lips before she spoke, "You seem to have a problem with me despite the fact we've never met before. It's not just because I'm an opponent either."

"I would like to say that the matter isn't personal… but I'd be lying to you if I did." Neji said smoothly as he moved into his family taijutsu stance, "Since the ones truly responsible for your village's crimes are out of my reach I'm afraid that you and your remaining teammate will have to do."

Samui rolled her eyes at Neji's declaration, "An aimless revenge kick. That's really not cool you know. What did I ever do to you? You know, besides getting ready to defeat you and everything?"

"Like I said…" Neji said as his Byakugan activated, "I can't reach the ones I truly have issue with from your village for one reason or another, so I'll make the best with you. I hope you don't believe that you'll defeat me as easily as Lee. Your genjutsu won't work on these eyes."

"I know." Samui said, drawing her tanto and holding it forward and at the ready.

"I'm sure you do." Neji said, a spiteful tone hidden somewhere in the sentence as his eyes narrowed on Samui.

Attacking a Hyuuga head-on was suicide and anyone with any world knowledge would say the same, thus even with the tanto, Samui was rather hesitant to attack, instead choosing to drop back and get her distance from Neji who was in hot pursuit from the start. Samui ran towards the stone bridge spanning the stream and dodged an attempted palm strike from Neji by jumping onto the stone ledge railing, forcing him to jump up there as well to give chase.

Samui then jumped off of the bridge towards the stream below and threw a handful of shuriken at Neji as she anticipated him trying to follow her. The Neji that had attempted to jump down after her proved to be a regular Bunshin as the weapons passed right through him. The real one jumped down moments later and both Neji and Samui landed on the surface of the water, staying above the surface by way of water-walking.

"No place to run." Neji said as he moved towards her to attack.

"At least not yet." Samui said quickly, more to herself than to him as Neji closed in on her. Just as he got within range to begin hitting her with strikes Samui lashed out with her tanto to keep him back. It was short enough to make some people believe it would be easier to get close and directly engage her, however it was long enough to make them realize what a fatal mistake that really was… usually too late for anyone to learn from though.

Neji backed away after Samui's surprisingly swift swipe at his head with her tanto, "I'm surprised. I figured you would have had a supplementary mission from your kage to harvest my eyes while I'm still alive in this battle. Or maybe you're hoping for a match against my cousin in the hopes of more leeway in chances to do so? I would assume your leaders have learned from their last mistake to assure that they have the actual Hyuuga they're looking for the next time around."

"Harvest your eyes?" Samui said, managing to sound rather disgusted with the thought of having to take eyes from a body, either living or dead, "That's just very uncool. You're a strange person. You certainly like to talk about what you think my superiors think about your clan."

Neji gave her a bitter smile in response, "It's not very hard when your father's life and body is handed over to them on a silver platter to appease them. There was simply no need for it. Your Raikage's attempt at treachery and subterfuge failed and he simply couldn't take it. His ego would have had him risk war simply to assure he got one over on Konoha… and to make sure he truly obtained the secrets of the Byakugan. Too bad he failed in that respect as well. I suppose that makes my father some kind of hero or martyr." He then looked down in anger, "…But a fate like that for him… all it makes him is destiny's victim. How easily it could have been his older brother who was truly the target sought after by your village instead."

XxX

In the area set aside for the visiting kage, A ground his teeth at the reminder of the incident nine years past and the failed attempt to bolster Kumo's power. Hiruzen simply stared down into the arena at Neji unflinching, though he couldn't help but feel something for the boy, 'Hizashi's son… this is what you've been lead to believe after all of these years. One so young shouldn't ever feel hatred like this, it can twist you into something ugly.' He honestly couldn't expect him to let it go either though. How could he have? He had no closure whatsoever.

XxX

"It seems you have your reasons for hating Kumo." Samui said after lending an ear to Neji's short explanation, "I won't sit here and tell you not to, but I'm not exactly going to let you vent on me either."

"I wouldn't expect you to." Neji admitted freely, "However, one can fight their fate all they like… it still won't change a thing in the end!" Neji moved forward to attack Samui again as she did so as well.

Samui attempted to outright stab Neji, but he simply guided her weapon and her arm past him without being touched. Samui let out a quiet growl at being parried so smoothly and halted herself to deliver a back sweep to Neji's legs, a sweep he cleanly jumped over before spinning in the air and delivering a kick that sent her sliding across the surface of the water before submerging.

She didn't immediately resurface, hence Neji simply stood patiently and waited her out, "You won't be able to hide from my eyes down there." He said as if she could actually hear him. And he was right. He could see her… he could clearly see her making hand-seals, and he didn't particularly want to find out what they were for, thus he quickly got himself out of the moat-like stream. It was a good thing he did too, because a moment later the entire surface of the water crackled with electricity, "I should have known a Kumo ninja would have a technique like that."

Samui emerged from the stream and back on solid land, dripping wet from having been underwater, yet she didn't even make to wipe the water from her face, "That was very fast reaction time to escape Raiton: Yokuatsu no Houden (Lightning Release: Oppressive Discharge). But then I guess you could see my hands and didn't feel like leaving it to chance."

'She almost trapped me.' Neji thought to himself, 'I was too overzealous and followed her down into the stream area without thinking through the possibility of an elemental attack.' He almost let out a sigh, 'Well this round is a bust for me as far as I'm concerned. I played directly into her hands.' "I've been going about this the wrong way. This is an exam, not an opportunity to project my anger at your village's older brood onto you." Neji said, surprising Samui and Genma with his admittance to such, "The best way to get your village back at the moment for their crimes would be to just crush your team and eliminate you from contention."

That was more like it.

Anticipating a charge, Samui threw a set of shuriken at Neji to try to manipulate his movement pattern, but Neji dodged in an unexpected manner. Neji jumped between the shuriken and twisted his body in a way that the rotation kept him from being hit. When he landed, he was free and clear to approach her from any angle he wished, which he immediately did without delay. There was no wasted motion in his evasion, unlike her throw which was over-extended.

A downward slash of reaction from Samui saw Neji seemingly poke her in the wrist with two fingers, stopping the swing in its tracks, 'He finally got through my guard!' She thought in a near panic. From the look on his face he wasn't intending to let her escape it again. Before she could even respond she violently coughed up blood without warning, splattering some on Neji's unflinching face.

Looking down, Samui saw that in addition to using one hand to stop her attack, Neji had used his other hand to jab two fingers directly into her stomach. With his abilities, the internal damage inflicted was palpable. Looking back up at her arm and wondering why she could no longer feel it, Samui looked up and saw a straight trail of small red dots trailing the back of her arm all the way to her wrist where Neji had apparently stopped the attack.

"You lose." Neji whispered to her before jabbing his fingers deeper into her stomach, attacking further with his Juuken and causing more internal damage than previously. Samui dropped to the ground, her weapon dropping from her hand before she fell. Neji turned and walked away before Genma even called the fight as the medics were already rushing in beforehand.

"The winner of match three: Neji Hyuuga!"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Arena)

Neji stayed out for the next bout with Omoi, and even with the boy's longer weapon reach to use to keep Neji at a distance it didn't do much good. It was fast, and the only solace a Kumo supporter could take from it was that at least Neji left Omoi in better condition than he did Samui.

As the fight was called and a cheer went up through the arena in Konoha at seeing one of their teams advance first, Hiashi frowned deeply at the smirk on Neji's face that the camera captured as he momentarily took in the cheers in the exam stadium before heading back to the observation area, "So much talent… and yet all of that potential may never truly be achieved."

Hanabi could only look between her father and the screen that was depicting Neji's victory. He had all of that anger towards the Main House and Kumo for his father's death… but she was still missing something. Wasn't it the Branch Family's inherent duty to protect the secrets of the clan?

Before she could get too much further into thought on the matter the screen showed a graphic of who would be fighting next according to the tournament brackets and her face lit up, "Yes! It's onii-sama's turn!" Once her father turned to look at her strangely due to the outburst she shrank back demurely as if it never happened.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

Neji had made his way back up to the viewing area without a word and stood calmly next to Tenten and Lee, but not before sparing a glance at the other competitors. His eyes made it to Team 8 and stopped on Hinata. He seemed to be staring a hole into her, managing to intimidate the timorous girl before Kiba and Shino stepped in front of her, the former growling warningly at Neji.

Instead of further exacerbating the situation, Neji's eyes simply turned back down to the field.

Kiba still kept a glare on Neji before turning around to Hinata, "It's alright. Don't worry about that prick. Let him try and do anything to you, he'll be in for a nasty surprise." Akamaru barked from the front of Kiba's jacket supportively. Hinata nodded, albeit reluctantly.

Kiba frowned before turning to look at Shino. There was an unspoken agreement between them; that there wasn't any way in hell that Neji was going to get to Hinata over his stupid grudge as long as they were around.

XxX

(On the Field)

Team 10 and the Iwa team had already gone down onto the field for their match. They had the rest of the round to worry about Team Gai, for now they had their own opponents to deal with. For the faceoff prior to the coin flip the mal intent from the Iwa side of things was obvious enough that all three of the proctors stood present to ensure no premature fireworks, "Heads or tails." Jei asked the Iwa team.

"Tails." Hisashi said, not dropping his killing intent that clearly wasn't working on Team 10. If anything it just made them all look more determined than before.

Jei flipped the coin and looked down once it hit the ground, "Heads." He pointed at Team 10, "Pick the matchup. One-on-one or team battle?"

"Team battle." Shikamaru said without hesitation or a moment needed to even think about it.

All three proctors nodded, knowing that all three of them would be needed on the field to keep track of what was going on and to keep some semblance of order here. Jei projected his voice over the arena so that he could clearly be heard, "First round match, one team battle only! Nara Shikamaru, Yamanaka Ino, and Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha vs. Hisashi, Misaru, and Jun of Iwa!"

"Any last words runt?" Hisashi asked cruelly, though he didn't specify who it was directed at he was clearly speaking to Naruto.

"I'll say them when I actually fight someone I think can kill me." Naruto said, getting annoyed with this guy's attitude, "What's your problem?"

"It's my business…" Hisashi said lowly, "Maybe I just don't like your face? Maybe just looking at you pisses me off and reminds me of someone that knocked my clan from grace? Did you ever think of that?"

XxX

Hisashi's sensei had reported to the Tsuchikage that during the month of training Hisashi had kicked himself and his entire team into gear, forcing them to train harder than they had in quite some time. They had been entered due to their ages and tenure as genin, not due to their inherent talent. They were more or less expected to underachieve, and Onoki was actually quite pleased when word came that they had advanced to the finals; it meant that Iwagakure hadn't washed out of the exams and they had representatives for the finals. It also gave him an excuse for a vacation of sorts.

The 'underachiever' tag apparently died with a vengeance though once they came back to prepare for the tournament. Hisashi seemed driven, and wasn't going to let himself hold back any chance at victory. Neither his sensei, nor the Tsuchikage could understand why he seemed to be this way. He didn't like Konoha at all, but that was common, especially since Hisashi had been old enough to get some of the backlash from the end of the last war being seventeen years old.

But then Onoki saw Team 10 walk out onto the field and got a look at Naruto when the large screen hanging from the ceiling showed a close-up shot of Naruto's face… and he then proceeded to turn robotically towards Hiruzen… because he understood why Hisashi had been so focused.

"And you were going to hide the fact that he had a son for how long Sarutobi?" Onoki said, amused, "Ah it won't matter though. While the lot of us have a bone to pick with him of sorts, Hisashi's got the biggest one out of all of us."

Hiruzen knew that Onoki was referring to Naruto's parentage, but was keeping it quiet for whatever reason. The Kazekage and Raikage didn't seem to notice the gist of the conversation, or care about the bantering between the old fossils of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. Either way, it didn't matter, "How so Onoki?"

"Hisashi's clan, they were slated as Iwagakure's protectors." Onoki explained, "The Mamori Clan… they ensured that Iwagakure stayed pristine and unconquered throughout all of the wars and conflicts our village endured since its inception. Until your predecessor/successor made up that little jutsu that gave him his epithet… and he made a mockery of the Mamori. Kekkai (Barrier) ninjutsu can't do much good when one can teleport in and out of the village at will as long as one of his little knives or formula tags were hidden somewhere."

Hiruzen nodded in understanding. He knew of this clan. Of course he did, he was 'The Professor' for Kami's sake, "Then why does he not go by his given surname?"

"They were vilified after the end of the war by the villagers and even their own comrades. The entire defense of the village was centered around their unique skills. Most of them saw a drop in their practical skills… some went into depression, became alcoholics… the fallout was terrible for them." Onoki said with a deep frown on his face, "Even so… Hisashi was treated horribly by the children in the Academy, usually by the direction of their parents. So much so that the moment he was able to he dropped his clan name. He would rather have no name than a bad one." He turned towards Hiruzen and shook his head, "Your little yellow clone down there could be in some major trouble… even if he inherited a smidge of his father's skill he doesn't possess his techniques."

XxX

In another private area elsewhere, Gato held a glass filled with wine up to his lips as he grinned evilly prior to taking a sip, "Goodbye Konoha brats… and good riddance."

XxX

Naruto growled angrily at the older genin, "What does any of that have to do with me?"

Hisashi snarled in return, "The same thing it has to do with me!" He turned to Jei, "Start the fight so I can kill this kid already!"

Jei frowned at Hisashi's attitude and looked between the two teams, the jawing now done, "Are you both ready?" Team 10 and the Iwa team both nodded, looking ready to move, "Begin!"

As soon as the words left Jei's mouth, all three proctors vacated the area around the teams. Shikamaru and Ino took a position slightly behind Naruto while Jun and Misaru moved to both sides of them in an attempt to pincer them in. Hisashi threw a handful of shuriken at the team, but Naruto blocked them with the flat of his quickly drawn machete. From the sides while Naruto had been busy neutralizing the projectiles, Shikamaru returned fire in a manner of speaking as he threw a kunai at Jun. The attack of Jun stopped so that he could make sure he dodged the attack from Shikamaru, thus the pincer attack collapsed and Team 10 slipped out the backdoor to get their distance back.

"Damn it, they're moving for the wooded area!" Jun yelled once he saw them backing off towards the forested side of the field, "Hisashi stop 'em!"

"I've got it stupid!" Hisashi yelled as he had been moving towards that side of the field since the fight had started and he had used his shuriken to get their attention. At that rate he would beat them to that section, but Hisashi's desire was not to give the field advantage to Team 10, especially by himself without his own team there to back him up.

Lifting his arms up, Hisashi took aim with them straight out, as underneath his brown poncho that covered his whole body the shaved-head genin revealed a device attached to his arms that seemed to fire a pair of long, hollow rods across the entire field, sticking high into the walls at the very ends. After firing the rods he quickly rolled through hand-seals before lifting his hand to fire one more rod directly at Team 10, "Catch _this_ brats!"

Shikamaru turned his head and saw Hisashi fire the rod directly at them, 'That's too fast to block or catch!' "Scatter!" He yelled, getting Ino and Naruto to do just that to force the shot to miss them, stopping them short of reaching the forest. Ino attempted to return the favor with a handful of senbon, but Hisashi dodged them.

After avoiding Ino's attack, Hisashi made his real move, "Kekkai: Fushigikabe (Barrier: Wonderwall)!" Hisashi pressed his hands together and the rods that had stuck themselves in certain places let out a momentary glow before from the ground rose a massive wall the length of the field and the height of the walls surrounding the edge of the arena.

"What the hell?" Ino said as the wall blocked them off.

'Okay, we can still work with this.' Shikamaru thought, 'As long as we stay off of the rocky side then _they_ don't have the field advantage even if we don't either.'

"Too slow you bunch of babies!" Jun shouted as he stood by the wall and made three hand-seals before delivering a punch to it, "Doton: Iwayado Kuzushi (Earth Release: Rock Lodging Destruction)!" From the top of the wall, large pieces began to crumble off and fall down towards Team 10.

All three of them quickly moved away from the wall and tried to move back towards the stream, intent on crossing it back towards the Zen-garden to get their backs off of the wall and to avoid the falling rocks. Once they tried to do so however, the third member of the Iwa team Misaru got in their way, holding a pair of curved kunai.

Naruto took the lead with his machete and clashed blades with him before stepping through and overpowering him with a hard front kick that sent him flying backwards, 'Gah! How does a kid five years younger than me and at least six inches shorter hit like that?' Misaru thought as he went sailing.

As they ran across the bridge, Shikamaru tapped Naruto on his shoulder and made a hand gesture that Naruto nodded in understanding to, a grin on his face. Naruto dropped back and slapped explosive tags directly over their path, armed to go off once something else came into their proximity. The team then disappeared around the corner pillar of the bridge and ran into the Zen-garden, taking cover behind the large rocks strewn through it.

Jun was the first of the team to reach the bridge and saw the explosive tags lining it, "Hah, do you really think we need a bridge to cross?" He said tauntingly before running along the side of the stream in order to jump it.

Hisashi and Misaru arrived to the stream in time to see Jun begin to jump over the stream, "No you idiot! Stop running ahead!" Hisashi shouted, but Jun had already taken off into the air.

Jun heard his teammate yell but it was too late to turn back then. He just had to stay put until they got over there too. That was easy enough. And then he looked down at his landing spot and saw a very long shadow stretching out from the side of the bridge pillar, "What the-?" As he touched the ground he found himself unable to move because of the shadow that was attached to his. Before he could even say anything about it, two needles hit him in the side of the neck, making him incredibly drowsy, "-Fuck…" He then fell directly backwards into the stream as he floated on the surface of the water.

"Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu) complete. Good shot Ino." Shikamaru said from his and Ino's position hiding behind the pillar at the corner of the bridge. Naruto had instantly created two clones and Henged them into Shikamaru and Ino as decoys while the real ones hid just out of sight but able to launch an ambush on anyone trying to cross the stream, "You got him before anyone even realized that I caught him. Did you kill him?"

"Nope, he's just asleep." Ino said, holding more senbon in her hands at the ready, "I hit him in the neck though, that's why it worked so fast. Anywhere else and he could have fought it."

"Jun is unable to continue, he is eliminated!" Sekki said as he jumped down into the stream to check him over.

Misaru palmed his face at the proclamation of the announcement and the roar of the crowd, "You dumbass…" He muttered as he and Hisashi stopped at the edge of the stream to stare across it. Ino and Shikamaru were still hidden, and Naruto was still in the Zen-garden somewhere, "So now what? I don't think they're dumb enough to let you set up another barrier jutsu anywhere near them."

From Hisashi's arm attachments two more rods emerged into his hands that he twirled in a testing manner before throwing one across the bridge. Once it landed, Ino and Shikamaru moved as far away from it into the Zen-garden as they could, knowing what the first rods had done. On the other side, Hisashi struck the ground with his second remaining rod as a small rippling trail of chakra began to cross the bridge. The ripple of chakra triggered the explosive tags, forcing them to explode without harming any of the remaining Iwa genin.

The bridge now clear and with Ino and Shikamaru in full retreat mode, Hisashi and Misaru ran across the bridge to follow up. When they did so however, by the time they made it to the middle of the bridge dozens of Naruto clones jumped up from the sides of the bridge from beneath the water prepared to attack.

"Holy shit!" Misaru said as the clones got closer. He had a kunai at the ready to fight off as many as he could, but Hisashi was faster and more prepared for this situation. The evidence came when Hisashi stabbed his rod into the ground and grabbed two more to surround himself and Misaru in a triangle formation, "Raiton: Gyaku Kaminari Shibari (Lightning Release: Reverse Thunder Binding)!"

A triangle of translucent blue energy formed between the rods just as Naruto's clones crashed into the see-through wall instead of converging on the remaining Iwa ninja. As the first wave of clones hit the barrier they were dispelled in a ripple of electricity that ran through the lot of them by way of conducting contact.

As the smoke from the clones dissipated into the air, Hisashi let out a laugh, "You don't have _his_ skill after all! You don't fight anything like people say that bastard did! You can't get through any of my kekkai to get to me!" At the end of the bridge he saw Naruto, Ino, and Shikamaru all standing together.

Naruto brandished his machete once more and prepared to charge the barrier to try and hack his way through it before Shikamaru grabbed Naruto and held him back, "What do you think you're about to do?" Shikamaru whispered.

A befuddled look came over Naruto, "I'm going to cut through the barrier. It can't be that tough could it? It's lightning-based, I'll just flow wind chakra through the machete and cut it."

"You won't get close." Shikamaru said quietly, "Your clones couldn't even touch the barrier without getting shocked. You'd have to use your new jutsu if you want your wind to break through that thing without shocking yourself, and I don't want to use out new moves until we have to." He looked at Hisashi and Misaru and they didn't look like they were willing to come out anytime soon, "Good thing we don't have a time limit."

Ino started impatiently tapping her foot on the ground, "Well what are we going to do, sit here? Come on, the longer they're in there the more time they have to think of something that can actually work." Naruto thought for a moment before blinking and moving to whisper an idea to Ino and Shikamaru. Ino looked at him strangely, "Are you sure? Do you really think you can aim it that well?" Naruto whispered to her again, "Okay… if you're that sure it won't matter."

Shikamaru had also heard the intended course of action from their jinchuuriki teammate, "Don't you think that'll put you at a disadvantage once it drops, three-on-two or not?" Naruto gave him a deadpan stare in response, "Fine, do it. We'll be ready."

Naruto grinned and then looked at Hisashi's barrier. Ino and Shikamaru cleared the way on the bridge for Naruto to have the space needed for whatever he was about to try. Naruto started out at the furthest end of the bridge and started running towards Hisashi and Misaru at a faster and faster pace.

Misaru held back a laugh, "What's he going to do, run his rock-filled head into the barrier?" Even Hisashi let out a laugh at that, "He can't touch the barrier himself or he'll fry."

XxX

In the stands, Asuma's eyes widened and he let out a chuckle as he saw Naruto run towards the barrier, "He's really going to try that bullshit attack?" That got the attention of Kakashi, Kurenai, and Gai as he continued to laugh louder, "I guess if there was ever a time for it, now would be it."

"What's he going to do?" Kurenai asked, "He has to know he won't even get close to touching it. The barrier isn't a person that he can flank or catch off-guard."

"Well his element is wind, and he can use chakra flow on his machete to increase its cutting power." Asuma said with a grin.

Kakashi nodded, "So he's got the type advantage over the barrier, but he still can't get close enough to hack through it."

That got another chuckle out of Asuma, "I didn't say he was going to hack through it, but let's just say those walls aren't going to stop this."

XxX

"What the hell is that idiot doing?" Sasuke asked as he saw Naruto charging towards the barrier with his weapon drawn. He thought Naruto was smarter than that. He had actually shown Sasuke some talent last time they had it out for a bit. There was no way this was that same Naruto, charging an electrified barrier.

Chouji had a bag of chips in his possession as he ate while watching the fights, "Shikamaru wouldn't let Naruto do this if there wasn't a reason for it." Shikamaru would never have let them do anything out of desperation like that.

Sakura frowned as she watched as well, "I guess so…"

XxX

Naruto let out a yell as he got close enough to make his move. Expecting a direct rush, Hisashi and Misaru were utterly surprised when Naruto quickly made a full 360 degree turn before hurling his machete at the barrier, spinning like a buzzsaw from the velocity it had been thrown with, "Straight from Konoha motherfucker, dattebayo!"

"Oh no way." Hisashi said just before the wind-coated machete sliced right through the barrier. The space inside, while sturdy and protective, was confined. Even when trying to move to the corners of the barrier, both Misaru and Hisashi were cut deeply by the attack that destroyed the barrier with the force of Naruto's throw and his element cutting through the defense.

Blood flew all over from the cuts as Misaru dropped to the ground screaming, his right arm barely attached as it had been cut all the way to the bone. Hisashi stumbled and held his body up against the side of the bridge, a deep wound in his left shoulder making it useless and unable to move. Blood fell freely onto the bridge as his fingers twitched uncontrollably from the nerve damage that he had clearly suffered.

"Damn it…" Hisashi said in a strained voice as he glared hatefully at Naruto, "…Damn it!" He shouted, using his good arm to obtain another rod that he used to charge Naruto, prepared to try and club him to death, "It's not fair!" Naruto was set to defend himself and end the fight when Shikamaru's shadow stopped Hisashi in his tracks and five senbon hit him in the chest in rapid succession, 'It's not fair… His pupils dilated and Shikamaru released him from his shadow, letting him drop to the ground in a heap.

A sigh came from Shikamaru as he stood up from his crouch and released his rat seal, "Will someone call this thing already before they both bleed to death out here?"

"The winners of the match and advancing to the next round: Nara Shikamaru, Yamanaka Ino, and Uzumaki Naruto!"

Naruto looked at the damage that had just been done and walked over to where his machete landed. A team of earth manipulation specialists got to work on bringing down the massive wall cutting off a section of the field while Ino waved to the crowd and Shikamaru tried dragging her by her arm back to the tunnel to head up to the viewing area so that they could rest and plan.

Picking up the weapon from the ground and wiping the blood on it off in the dirt, Naruto looked up into the stands to make good on a promise and found Tsunade as she stuck out in particular with Shizune and Tonton. Eventually it was clear that Naruto was making exact eye contact with the two ladies and he grinned widely as if to say, 'You were saying?' Directed at Tsunade and Tsunade particularly.

XxX

Up in the crowd, Shizune looked towards her master slowly to ensure that no sudden movements would end with Tsunade's temper being lost at having her judgment getting shown up by some kid.

Tsunade merely looked down at Naruto from her seat with an even look on her face before she held up the stub that marked one of the bets she had made, "Hm, well at least I was right about them getting out of round one like I said they would." She said before shrugging, "They won't next round though, so it's fine."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

"Yes, Naruto-oniisama won!" Hanabi shouted excitedly before once again realizing where she was, who she was supposed to be, and who exactly she was with once Hiashi looked at her as if she had grown another head. She once again went back to being quiet and trying to pretend that she didn't have a random, at least as far as her father was concerned, outburst. She did however have a victorious smile on her face, 'Hah, Kono-baka thinks he's onii-sama's number two. Well wouldn't a good number two have been here to see him win his fight?'

Too bad the Academy was holding class that day. Konohamaru would later curse the ammunition given to Hanabi once the war over who was Naruto's rightful 'apprentice' heated up. If he had been there that day he might have been able to nip the argument in the bud soon thereafter.

It was not to be however.

But next round Naruto's team was to fight Neji's team. That thought gave Hanabi pause. Neji was her cousin and clan member… she'd first met Naruto all of six days ago, and while he was infinitely cooler than Neji due to the fact that they had actually interacted in a positive manner, family was family… but then why did her family appear to grievously dislike the rest of them then?

Higher up in the stadium, also viewing the feed from Tetsu no Kuni on the screen, nother person was having thoughts of the spiky-haired blonde waving to the crowd, a crowd that seemed to openly be cheering for him (that must have been weird for him).

Jiraiya stood against the wall of the VIP box as two of Konoha's elders, his sensei's old teammates sat there watching the tournament in quiet contemplation, 'That was decent litmus test kid.' Jiraiya thought to himself about the first round win, 'Next round it's time to really see what you've got.'

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena – Competitor's Box)

"He threw his own weapon?" Temari said to herself, shaking her head with a scowl on her face as Team 10 walked back into the box, talking amongst themselves, "What an idiot. He disarmed himself on a random gambit that wouldn't have worked if that guy had been smart enough to deactivate his barrier." In her mind if he had tried that on her she would have cut him to pieces. She would never relinquish her fan for such an absurd purpose.

Kankuro let out a laugh at how his sister seemed to be offended by Naruto's use of his weapon, especially since he used her own element in a flagrantly questionable way, "If it's stupid and it works then it's not stupid Temari. Blame the other team for it if you have to." He then noticed Gaara staring at Naruto intently, "Uh… Gaara? Is something the matter?"

Gaara didn't blink or take his eyes off of Naruto as he remembered the run-in with Naruto's clones in the tunnels of the mountains one month ago, "He got away." Gaara said coldly, "He pissed me off… and I didn't kill him."

Both Temari and Kankuro looked at each other with a nervous hint in their eyes. Gaara was either going to blow their chances of getting promoted by going out of his way to kill Naruto outside of the field or he wasn't going to get to vent his aggression on the boy that had brazenly attacked him with his army of clones, and this would mean that it would build up until Gaara killed a sufficient amount of others (hopefully not them) to calm himself because there was no way that particular team would make it to the finals. All they seemed really good at was running away.

And they didn't know just how many lives it would take to calm Gaara if it was to come to that… because Gaara had never fought anyone that he didn't flat out kill before. No one got away from Gaara.

It didn't look like Uzumaki Naruto would either. Whether it happened on the battlefield or elsewhere Gaara would get what he apparently wanted, Naruto's life.

XxX

(On the Field)

The time for the next match had come as Team 8 had already gone down to stand at the ready. Shino had been as stoic as ever while Hinata seemed a little fidgety in front of the audience. She did however smile and wave to the people all the while Kiba was soaking the whole thing up as if he had already won the round.

The team from Taki on the other hand entered in a completely different manner. The girl with the mint green hair and the orange eyes that wore white, Fuu, seemed to have a permanent scowl on her face as she looked around at the crowd on her walk out.

Dorobou, the young man with spiky black hair, the battered black cloak, and the strange green and red eyes seemed to lead the way, directing the girl and keeping her from stopping to scowl. Bringing up the rear of the team was the young man with the puffy brown hair and the black jacket, Mr. Average himself; Houki, and he seemed perked up just to be there.

As the Taki team made it out to face off with Team 8, before Genma could even open his mouth to address either team Dorobou opened his mouth and spoke succinctly, "Heads."

Genma paused for a moment, he was indeed about to ask them which side of the coin they wanted, but the cheeky punk could have waited three seconds for him to ask couldn't he have? Regardless of that, he flipped the coin and it landed heads, "Pick your poison then."

"Team battle. So we can get this over with in a hurry." Dorobou said again before turning to his teammates, "Unless you all have a problem with that?"

Houki shook his head rapidly in the negative with a fearful look on his face while Fuu just gave Dorobou a harsh look, "I couldn't care less. Maybe in a team battle I'll get lucky and you and the albatross here will die so I don't have to do this anymore." She said dismissively.

"Even if Houki goes and gets himself killed you'll still be stuck with me my love. And we'll still be going through with this tournament. You aren't going to duck the chance to raise your and my ranks this time like the last five times by letting a teammate die." Dorobou said tauntingly, managing to get a gulp of fear from Houki at the thought of being allowed to die just so Fuu didn't have to compete any longer, "I'm your soulmate remember? The one tasked with guiding you ever since we were in the Academy."

"You mean my handler…" Fuu said lowly with quite a bit of spite in her voice, 'But I guess he's right. Since we didn't run into anyone to kill the bastard during the survival test this time it's too late to duck out, especially since Taki can see what I'm doing in this arena.'

"All a matter of perspective my dear." Dorobou said evenly.

On the other side, Kiba paid attention to every word being said and loved what he was hearing, 'So they aren't even a really experienced team? That girl and that guy had teammates die on them five times so that they never made it this far before. Their teamwork is going to be so shoddy!' He grinned wolfishly and turned to Genma, "What's say we get this show on the road already?"

Dorobou raised an eyebrow and smirked, "Someone's excited aren't they?" He then decided to ask a quick question, "You wouldn't mind telling me of your natural elemental affinities would you? It's a bit of a hobby of mine to compare them to others."

"I'm afraid we can't do that." Shino said, taking his hands out of his pockets and setting himself in a ready stance, "Why? Because it would bear no advantage to us, nor does it particularly matter at the moment."

"Fair enough." Dorobou said before turning to Fuu, "Shall we take care of this together my beloved?"

Fuu turned away and walked from Dorobou and Houki, "Do whatever you want. Just because I have to be here doesn't mean I have to do anything."

The jaw of Houki dropped as he saw Fuu walk away from the Zen-garden starting point into the barren portion of the field to simply stand away, not concerned at all with the battle, "W-What? Fuu where are you going?"

She didn't answer, flipping him off before merely standing in a position of observation and scrutiny of the fight. Genma turned to her and when she didn't come back over she turned to Dorobou, "So she isn't going to fight?" There weren't really any rules saying that battles had to start in a single area, it was just unspoken that they would begin in the Zen-garden. But Fuu didn't look like she was planning on participating at all.

"Oh she's just fussy." Dorobou said, shaking his head with a fond looking smile on his face, "It's sort of difficult to motivate her to fight, but it should still be fine. We're ready." Houki seemed petrified at starting three-on-two but didn't voice this out loud once a glare silenced him.

"Whatever…" Genma said before projecting his voice, "First round match, one team battle only: Fuu, Houki, and Dorobou vs. Aburame Shino, Inuzuka Kiba, and Hyuuga Hinata! Begin!"

Akamaru immediately jumped out of Kiba's coat, ready to attack as Kiba made a ram seal prior to setting down on the ground on all fours, "Shikyaku no Jutsu (Four Legs Jutsu)!" Kiba's appearance became more feral as his canines and fingernails grew.

Small bugs began to leak out of the openings of Shino's clothes. Hinata activated her Byakugan and set herself in her stance.

Kiba tossed a pill to Akamaru who caught and ate it, his fur turning red before he jumped onto Kiba's back, "Juujin Bunshin (Beast Human Clone)!" Akamaru then turned into a perfect body double of Kiba, standing on his back.

"That's interesting." Dorobou said with feigned enthusiasm, "Let me respond to that with this." He formed a hand-seal, "Iwa Bunshin no Jutsu (Rock Clone Jutsu)!" Three wads of earth flew from his mouth and shaped into copies of Dorobou. All four Dorobou's looked at Houki and spoke simultaneously, "Don't just sit there, fight!"

Houki suddenly snapped into action and took aim at Hinata, thinking she would be his best chance at defeating one of Team 8. While he did this, the rock clones sprang into action and attacked Shino and Kiba, "Alright, here we go." He said to himself as he drew a kunai and ran towards Hinata, "Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Jutsu)!" Five copies of Houki charged at Hinata prepared to attack, yelling a war cry as he did so.

Hinata gasped audibly once she saw him coming but merely set herself in her ready stance, prepared for the advance, "Shoutei (Palm Bottom)!" She cried as she shot out one palm thrust at the charging Houki, hitting the real one effortlessly right in the chest while the others merely faded from view, "I'm sorry." She said as Houki's face was twisted in shock at getting hit so easily, "But I could see you the whole time."

His body completely paralyzed, Houki could barely squeak out his next words, "Oh… Hyuuga… duh." He said before falling forward as stiff as a board and laying motionless on the ground.

"Houki is unable to continue! He is eliminated!"

Well after so easily seeing through Houki's approach Hinata thought that it had to be a trick or some sort. She didn't honestly expect him to fall so easily. She expected a counter of some sort, or a dodge, hell at least a last second Kawarimi. One hit though?

Oh well, she wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth. At least she managed to defeat someone to help her team. With that thought in mind she looked around the battlefield to look at the remaining two Taki ninja and let out a gasp at what she saw. Their bodies were so strange.

XxX

In the stands, Kurenai almost let out a loud yelling cheer when Hinata put her enemy down. All of her hard work paid off. She didn't do so though because she was usually the one that kept her composure and if she cheered like a schoolgirl then Asuma and possibly Kakashi would call her on it and pick with her or Gai would claim her flames of youth were burning bright for her student.

Still she could see the apprehension on Hinata's face after the boy was evacuated from the field. Shouldn't have getting a win made her confidence rise? It seemed like it decreased once she took notice of the advantage they now had. But why?

XxX

The opportunity was simply too great to not take advantage of. When Dorobou began taking on both Kiba and Shino he neglected to take notice that there had been a third wheel there at first. So after helping Kiba destroy one of the rock clones with their tandem technique, Akamaru immediately took Kiba's place as his body double while the original skulked across the field to get a good vantage point on the last Taki ninja who hadn't thrown a punch yet. They would have to defeat her eventually, and she didn't surrender, she just left the vicinity of the main battle. For all he knew she was waiting for her teammate to wear them down before stepping in.

It took a while, and the transformed Akamaru, along with Shino, had been unable to corner Dorobou to double-team him despite Shino sucking the chakra out of the remaining clones with his kikaichuu. The Taki ninja seemed to be more about bantering and dodging attacks than trying to find a useful counter.

Still, Fuu was vulnerable. She didn't even try to register Kiba's presence, and that meant that it was showtime. Kiba broke out into a run on the barren grounds before launching himself at her in a jump, "Tsuuga (Passing Fang)!" He began spinning at a frightening speed, looking more akin to a drill than a human being, and he was aimed right at Fuu.

Fuu heard him call out the name of the jutsu and turned towards Kiba with a gasp before crossing her arms in front of her face and body and shutting her eyes in desperation.

Kiba slammed into Fuu with his drill-like attack, however instead of overwhelming her with the oppressive taijutsu assault he was held in place as Fuu merely slid back across the ground, grunting with effort to hold him back with nothing more than her body. Eventually she began getting pushed uphill on the mountainous terrain of the barren zone and that lack of assistance for Kiba allowed her to take one hard step forward with a shove and a yell of exertion.

Kiba was knocked from his Tsuuga and sent rolling backwards down the hill, ending with him sitting at the bottom of it, dizzy from what had just transpired, "How in the hell did she do-?" He stopped asking questions when he saw Fuu nearly upon him from a straightforward charge, a look of pure anger on her face.

"Leave me alone!" Fuu shouted before delivering a driving punt kick to Kiba. Her entire attacking portion of her leg, all the way up from her foot to her knee connected with Kiba's front; either his chest or his face. Blood flew freely from his clearly broken nose and smashed face as he sailed at a low altitude across the ground before hitting it an rolling bonelessly, clearly unconscious and probably taking more damage from the nasty nature of the backlash from the kick.

"Kiba-kun!" Hinata shouted as she rushed over to try and help her broken teammate any way she could. Her eyes allowed her to see all of the broken bones he had taken just from one kick. She was beaten over to Kiba by Sekka and a group of medics who were already working on him, "I-Is he going to be alright?" Even Akamaru had ceased fighting to run over to his fallen owner.

Sekka frowned as he had been running a prognostic jutsu on Kiba's person, "He was pulverized. I don't think I've ever seen a genin produce blunt damage like that. He'll be fine if we get him out of here now!" The other medics began loading up Kiba on a gurney while Sekka stood up to address the situation to the crowd, "Inuzuka Kiba is eliminated!" As they hustled him off of the field Akamaru trailed after, the battle secondary to the health of his friend.

Hinata spared a glance at Fuu who was pacing around rather angrily, almost muttering to herself about that idiot and how he should have just left her alone… left her alone just like everybody else.

The thing she took notice of was the constant flow of chakra moving through Fuu's entire body. When Kiba had attacked her it seemed to flare up and turn her entire body in to a scorching blaze of chakra. When she had rushed after Kiba to attack him the same thing had occurred only lessened. Whatever that was Kiba's attack hadn't left a scratch on her. Whatever had just happened had to do with chakra and chakra flow. And that meant that this girl was her responsibility to defeat…

Meanwhile over with Dorobou and Shino the battle had come to a standstill. Shino hadn't expected the sudden finish that had befallen Kiba, and even though he found the boy a little overbearing at times he was still his comrade and friend.

"I told you that Fuu was fussy." Dorobou said, getting Shino's attention as he seemed to be amused by Fuu's reactionary actions against Kiba, "She doesn't like to fight, but that doesn't mean that she won't fight. She's far from a pacifist. Fuu would much rather prefer her own company to that of others… it even stretches out to the fact that she would lash out at her teammates and sensei at first when she started out as a ninja. I'm the only one she won't attack for certain. Because she is my soulmate."

"What could you possibly mean by that?" Shino asked, his bugs buzzing angrily in respects to his own emotions that he would not overtly show.

"I have been entrusted with carrying on a special kinjutsu from my village. More infamous than our secret weapon for what it wound up being used for in the past." Dorobou said proudly, "It would kill a lesser shinobi so only the strongest of prospects can receive it. The Jiongu (Earth Grudge Fear). Fuu realizes that this turns me into as much of a weapon as she is. I am just as inhuman as her. And like her my abilities are unnatural."

"Unnatural?" Shino said. All the while they had been talking he had been cutting off possible paths of retreat with his bugs from behind. There was no way he would be able to run without being swarmed with his insects. It was a good thing this person liked to gab so much.

"I won't tell you about my ability, but you've already seen Fuu and would guess it without much help. Fuu's marvelous body adjusts itself to necessary situations depending on the amount of motivation or emotion she feels at the time. If she is scared or angry her power is incredible. Tekiousei-Tai (Adaptable Body). A gift from her biju."

Shino raised an eyebrow at that, "Biju?"

XxX

In the competitor's box, Naruto's eyes widened before he palmed his face, "Oh no…" He sank his head down on the railing and shook it, getting the attention of Shikamaru and Ino who had heard the same, "You seriously can't be telling me…"

XxX

"Yes." Dorobou said, looking over to Fuu and blowing a kiss that she merely sneered at him for, "Fuu is the jinchuuriki of the Nanabi no Kabutomushi (Seven-Tailed Rhinoceros Beetle). She contains the beast within her body."

"Why you…" Fuu muttered lowly, shaking in anger with tears pricking at her eyes, "I didn't want him or anyone here to know that!" She shouted throughout the now silent arena, "Isn't it enough that you and those monkeys in Taki all know? No one here had to know that! I didn't need them looking at me the same way too!"

At that moment, Fuu was angry enough to punch the ground and cause a tremor that disrupted the footing of Hinata who was trying to attack her by surprise. The alarm on unknowingly averting an attack on her person turned to a feeling of anger at the fact that she was attacked again, "You didn't get the point when your mutt-faced friend attacked me? I said leave me alone!" Fuu picked up a piece of rubble from at her feet and flicked it at Hinata, hitting her in the forehead as she got back up and knocking her backwards ten feet with a red bleeding bruise on her forehead. She wasn't done with this little situation however.

Shino felt the fear creep into his chest at watching another teammate be hurt by something he had only heard rumblings about of being done in other countries. Fuu wasn't even letting her get up, simply kicking and stomping the downed Hinata, "Call her off." He demanded coldly as his bugs began to creep from their hiding places, moving in slowly and threateningly.

Dorobou began to laugh at Shino's threat until from under his cloak a mass of thick black threads emerged from his body and boosted him into the air as he jumped himself out of being boxed in by Shino, clearing the space clean over his head, "Sorry Aburame, but I've always wanted to see if these things could pluck and use more productive organs other than hearts and stuff. Let's start with Hyuuga eyes!" He shouted maniacally.

Shino immediately sprinted as fast as he could after Dorobou, sending out more bugs to try and latch onto him while he was in the air. In response, once Dorobou landed he sent a wave of his threads at Shino in a method of attack. Taking note of his claim of plucking out organs, Shino immediately called a mass of bugs towards him to swarm around his body rapidly in a dome shape, "Mushi Kame no Jutsu (Insect Jar Jutsu)." The attack was averted, but once the shield dropped Dorobou had reached Fuu, who was holding up a very beaten up Hinata by the collar of her jacket, "No…"

"You're so lovely Fuu." Dorobou said with a smile as he walked the rest of the way over to Fuu who merely glared at him, "Now let's see if I can take those eyes of hers." Fuu let out a disgusted scoff that he decided to address, "I'd never take anything from your exquisite body Fuu, of course. That would be a real crime."

"…Only because I'm still _useful_." Fuu said spitefully, still holding the unconscious Hinata up, "And she kept trying to attack me so I had to capture her. I'd never intentionally give you or the village anything you want."

"Stop!" Shino shouted as he could see the threads of Dorobou inching towards Hinata. The grin on the young man's face as he turned around to face Shino let the insect user know that there was only one thing he wanted at this point, "She can barely fight anymore. If we surrender would you let her go?"

"Hmm." Dorobou said in mocking contemplation, "I do want to see if Jiongu is compatible with taking Hyuuga eyes… but then again you're giving me a surrender. If I attack after you've done that then I'll probably blow my shot at a promotion for not being P.C… so yes. Surrender and we'll let her go."

"Fine, we surrender." Shino said without hesitation, "Now release Hinata!"

Dorobou looked over at Jei and Genma as both nodded and Genma gave the announcement, "By way of verbal surrender the winners, and advancing to the next round: Fuu, Dorobou, and Houki!"

The crowd reaction was more along the lines of light applause more than anything due to the revelation of Fuu being a jinchuuriki. Said girl released Hinata and let her fall to the ground before walking back towards the waiting area, glaring daggers at the audience as she could make out some of the conversation being made by the spectators, talking about her. Shino much to his credit paid neither Taki ninja any mind as he made his way to Hinata to make sure she was alright.

Dorobou walked fast enough to catch up to her and Fuu turned to glare at him, "When this is over and we leave this place… I don't care if you're the only person since Kakuzu that can perform the Jiongu. I'm going to tear you apart for this… and the village can do whatever they want with me afterwards if they find out."

"Keep that anger for the next round my love." Dorobou said, shrugging off Fuu's threat even though he was keeping a rather wide berth from her. He only said it to motivate her powers to fight. How she felt was of no consequence to him, she was never in a good mood anyway. If he was close enough to touch her she might lose the only inhibition she had against outright attacking him just like anyone else that got within reaching distance of her.

"Stay away from me." Fuu muttered irritably.

XxX

"I can't believe it." Kurenai said as she walked with Asuma through the bowels of the arena to head to the medic bay to tend to her students, "Takigakure brought their jinchuuriki here? Why? And how could a jinchuuriki be a genin?"

Asuma shook his head and lit up a cigarette, not getting any comments from Kurenai thus showing how worried she was, "You're saying that like Naruto isn't one too. Jinchuuriki are people Kurenai." She had the good sense to look shamefaced at that, "And even if one is really strong their village doesn't have to promote them. Remember that most jinchuuriki aren't exactly the most reliable in team situations, so how would one be promoted to a position to lead a squad? Naruto's actually the rare jinchuuriki that's stable. This is just a show of force for Taki to get them clients. Fuu isn't going to be promoted no matter what."

"That's terrible." Kurenai said before remembering what Fuu did to Kiba and Hinata, "She seemed so angry. Enraged, even when she had the upper hand on Hinata. How could anyone be so violent?"

"You're going to remember that aren't you?" Asuma asked, getting a nod from Kurenai, "Good. Could you possibly see Naruto ever being like that?" Kurenai shook her head, "And what does that tell you? You know how people treated him and he didn't end up anything like Fuu."

"It tells me that we are all very lucky that his will is so strong." Kurenai said with a frown on her face, "Because he has every excuse in the world to be the one who's angry like that girl."

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Repeat after me: I am invincible

When your opponent lands a particularly nasty shot in some way and you don't die from it don't lay there on the ground in an attempt to clear the fuzziness away. This isn't a point spar and there's no standing eight count. I don't care how many bells are going off in your skull or how hard your body is screaming at you to stay down idiot, showing that you're hurt or that they did damage to you only tells your opponent, "I'm hurt. Please come hit me again, I think another good one will finish the job."

Do not give any tells. Never drop your combat stance. Dropping your stance is the first sign that you're on your last legs. If you can't even keep your body primed to defend itself in the most basic way you know how it's obvious that you can't go any longer. A perfect example of a guy that never gives any tells is Hatake Kakashi. You could run the kid over with a speeding ox-pulled cart and he'd probably pop back up with a look on his face like, "What, that's all you've got? Fucking pussy."

Kakashi's facial expressions are the best because half of the time it looks like he doesn't even know he's in a fight.

It's got to be the mask.

Note to readers… invest in a mask or something that can cover your facial reactions.

* * *

Jutsu List

Boukun no Seishinbyou (Tyrant's Psychosis). C-rank genjutsu, offensive, supplementary. The victim of this genjutsu will find themselves in an increasingly aggressive battle against a mental avatar of the current opponent. No matter the skill of the victim and the skill of the user the 'battle' will steadily turn from even-paced to eventually fully in the user of the genjutsu's avatar's favor. The victim will feel as if they are getting beaten up, injured, or wounded in some way by a combination of fighting techniques they have seen in the past so as not to compromise the user's actual fighting style.

Raiton: Yokuatsu no Houden (Lightning Release: Oppressive Discharge). C-rank ninjutsu, offensive. The user will make hand-seals and their body will release a sudden electric wave that will deliver a shock to anything caught close to it.

Kekkai: Fushigikabe (Barrier: Wonderwall). C-rank ninjutsu, barrier ninjutsu, supplementary. This jutsu is performed by setting the parameters of the jutsu with prepared markers. After the application of a flaring of the user's chakra the jutsu will raise up a sturdy wall made with tough, tightly compacted material. Depending on the size and structure of the field enemies can be pigeon-holed or completely blocked off from a direct frontal approach. The skill of the user also comes into play with this jutsu as well. A skilled user can create walls in quick succession to capture opponents and trap them with a finishing cover over the top of the wall, or it can be left open to bombard the trapped enemies from above.

Tekiousei-Tai (Adaptable Body). Taijutsu, fighting style, offensive, defensive, short-range, tailed beast skill. Through the influence of her biju, chakra is always flowing from Fuu's system through her muscles and joints to vitalize them. Through this method Fuu's body subconsciously adjusts its muscle density and solidarity depending on her mindset. The more emotion she feels, positive or negative, or determination towards an action she feels, her body responds accordingly at that moment, providing her with a boost of a physical nature. The reaction is unstable at best, however with time the user is able to determine the amount of power the body will attempt to use in certain situations and can adjust their fighting style and overall life in general to the ability. Has been compared to Tsunade's chakra enhanced strength, but it is far from the same. As long as Fuu is physically aware and her emotions are in play then the potential of this ability is incredible.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5) **Revamped**

Team 10

Uzumaki Naruto

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 20.5**

Nara Shikamaru

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Total Score: 19**

Yamanaka Ino

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 16**

Iwa Team

Hisashi

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 17**

Misaru

**Ninjutsu: 1.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 13.5**

Jun

**Ninjutsu: 1  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 0.5  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 13.5**

Team 8

Inuzuka Kiba

**Ninjutsu: 1.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 1  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 15.5**

Aburame Shino

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 1.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 17**

Hyuuga Hinata

**Ninjutsu: 1.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 15**

Taki Team

Fuu

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 22**

Dorobou

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 19**

Houki

**Ninjutsu: 1  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 1.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 12.5**

* * *

**I would just like to take this opportunity to use this platform to say flat out that I DESPISE college, with a vengeance. It's not that I hate the concept or even the venture of higher education, not at all. I wouldn't have a problem at all if it was JUST THAT. But it isn't. If it was just about the classes themselves or even the concept of immersing yourself in the entire experience (even though I'm not fond of the 'experience' either) then I wouldn't have anything really negative to say about it. No, my problem is that to get your foot in the door you have to jump through hoops like a fucking circus seal!**

**I hate the entire system of registration. I hate the bullshit inefficient financial aid setup. I hate the fact that it takes a month to get ANYTHING done. And I hate the fact that you never get the information on anything that you need done until it's too late and past the point of reasonability for you to do anything about it.**

**I'm saying these things because unless God smiles down on me with a miracle for the first and only time ever I will probably not be attending college this semester even after the hits kept coming and coming and coming this last one. It's like it's been divine intervention trying to keep me out, and it's finally come to pass.**

**I want to hurt something. I want to hurt it very badly. I'm more angry than I've ever been in my entire life, and this is just evidence that you can do everything right in life and still fail.**

**I'll stop the rant here because I've just wasted well over 200 words just to bitch about something you don't care about.**

**Hope you enjoyed the chapter, now I've got a plan I need to come up with and a lot of yelling to get ready to receive later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	25. Talent Borrows, Genius Steals

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. My punching bag is very grateful that I am taking the time off to write this chapter, I hope you are too.

**Chapter 25: Talent Borrows; Genius Steals**

* * *

Kurenai and Asuma walked into the medic bay and walked until they found the section set up for Team 8. Hinata was unconscious with the battle-wear clear on her person. Kiba wasn't in the room, possibly still being actively worked on by the medics. Shino was in the room though, sitting away from Hinata's bed in quiet contemplation. As the two jounin got closer he looked up through his sunglasses, "Kurenai-sensei, Asuma-sensei." He said in an even-toned greeting.

Kurenai gave Shino a smile and walked over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder as she kneeled down to pet the whimpering Akamaru that had been sitting by the chair, "Are you alright Shino?" She asked in a concerned voice.

A nod came from the young Aburame, "I am uninjured Kurenai-sensei, do not worry about me." He then spared a glance over to where his female teammate lay asleep, "The others though weren't as lucky as myself."

"How are they?" Asuma asked, feeling a little bit of concern himself. Hey, they were all Konoha ninja, his team and their team were friends and classmates in the Academy, and his… comrade Kurenai was their sensei. He could show some worry. He even put out his cigarette before entering the room, that was how much he cared.

"Hinata will be fine with a day's rest they say, a little sore but nothing more." Shino said informatively before his eyebrows furrowed, "Kiba on the other hand needed to undergo intensive treatment, but he should be able to leave once the exams end. They say we should watch out for the atmosphere shift once we leave and that he should be checked out upon his return to Konoha."

"That's good." Kurenai said, sighing in relief at the same time. The brutal kick from Fuu to Kiba was exceptionally violent and he had been completely unable to protect himself whatsoever. She noticed the stoic boy shift slightly in his chair, and while for a normal person it could be taken as just that, for Shino it might as well have been him letting out a long sigh, "Shino what's wrong?"

"I… I'm sorry Kurenai-sensei." Shino said, "I wasn't strong enough to win or keep them safe."

Asuma stepped in front of Shino and smiled at him, "It was your first exam kid, and you're just a rookie. You outdid hundreds of others and you just got unlucky in the team you ran up against. All you can do is prepare for the next time. Those weren't normal genin."

"Everything will be fine Shino." Kurenai said reassuringly, "Once you heal we'll get right back to work. Now do you want to head up and watch the rest of the day's fights? You can go with Asuma."

Shino thought about it for a moment before shaking his head in the negative, "No, I believe it would be better for me to stay here in case Hinata wakes up or Kiba is returned from his treatment."

Asuma nodded and turned to leave with a wave, "I'll be heading back up and leaving you with your team then Kurenai. Make sure they get some rest after all of that." Kurenai nodded and went to go find a seat to go sit with Shino.

XxX

"Taki brought out a jinchuuriki." A said in the aftermath of the last battle, "And a user of their kinjutsu as well. They certainly went all out for this exam didn't they?"

"It's meant to show a village's ability and power for the future so I don't see a reason not to." The Kazekage said as a method of reasoning, "Jinchuuriki can be genin as well. As a matter of fact a lot of them don't rank that high in my experience. The highest ranked one in memory is our absent colleague the Mizukage Yagura."

Onoki let out a laugh, "And you see what he's doing don't you? Killing bloodline users. He's touched in the head."

Hiruzen personally wanted to get off of the subject, because the topic of a jinchuuriki always went down an ugly road as a conversational topic. It was just inevitable, "I believe next up is that new hidden village Otogakure."

The attempt at switching topics worked as the Kazekage responded, "Yes, the village only sent one team and they made it all this way. I almost had a meeting with the leader of this village a few months ago."

Hiruzen raised an eyebrow at this, "Almost? You mean you didn't meet with their leader?"

"I'm afraid not Hokage-dono." The Kazekage said with a shake of his head, "A representative from that village would not divulge the identity of his leader nor was he very forthcoming with the general locale of the village. I did not trust a meeting with such a figure that deemed himself the 'Otokage'. I'm afraid Suna is still just as in the dark on the village as everyone else."

"Oto_kage_?" A said before letting out a laugh, "Someone is certainly quite sure of themselves and their village aren't they?"

XxX

(Competitor's Box)

"I can't believe it…" Ino said quietly now that Fuu and Dorobou were back in the waiting area with the rest of them, "I can't believe that Hinata, Kiba, and Shino were beaten like that. And _another _jinchuuriki?" She finished with a hissing whisper, "Do we even know how to deal with the first one we found out about yet?" She asked, looking over at Shikamaru.

"I'm working on it." Shikamaru said, thinking tediously. The proverbial smoke was pouring from his poor overworked brain, 'I need more time. We need to win the next round first… then I'll have all night to actually think of something. Then I'll know more about both of them if they advance.' Shikamaru had directly instructed them all not to go jackhammer until it was necessary. In all honesty the Iwa team from the first round weren't that difficult to defeat at all. Naruto probably could have done it by himself or only one of them with him at the most, but that wouldn't have shown good judgment, thus they wouldn't have been promoted just from that overwhelming show of force.

Now though, with the knowledge of two jinchuuriki in the exams and knowing the caliber of the opponents they were to face next round they wouldn't have much of a choice in the matter.

Naruto was looking over at Fuu who was leaning against a wall looking out onto the field not paying anyone else any mind, 'She was so angry about being revealed to be a jinchuuriki. She cried for a second… so I'm not the only one that doesn't enjoy being one.'

"-ie-kun!"

"What?" Naruto said abruptly, getting shaken back into focus by Ino who was looking at him curiously, "What's up Ino-chan?"

"Kiba was really hurt out there." Ino said, rubbing her arm sheepishly, "I think this is really the first time that I'm getting the point of how dangerous these exams are. Even Hinata took a beating out there. I didn't think I'd even see her fight, let alone take that kind of punishment."

Naruto frowned at remembering what had happened, "She went right at that Fuu girl though. It was pretty surprising."

"Hinata-sama's spirit may have been impressive, but without the talent to back up that fire it was her fate to fall." Neji interjected as he walked past Team 10, "As you saw it was her destiny to be a failure despite her status in the clan."

That bastard just had to raise Naruto's hackles again didn't he?

"No one was talking to you." Shikamaru said to Neji once he saw Naruto clench his fists tightly, "Honestly, there's no need to try and start such a troublesome situation for no reason." Trying to be the voice of reason was such a pain in the ass.

Neji turned towards Shikamaru with a smirk, "It is just the truth. It's not my problem that your teammate can't accept his own fated status as a failure. He must empathize with Hinata-sama's plight to try to prove herself. Is that it?"

Naruto growled at Neji and made to step forward before Shikamaru spoke up again, "Well if Naruto's a failure then what am I?"

"You are merely a slacker." Neji explained calmly, crossing his arms over his chest, "This has no bearing on your fate though. You are destined for the future of mediocrity, not necessarily failure."

"So are you saying that I'm destined to be mediocre because I slack, or I'm destined to slack because I'm mediocre?" Shikamaru asked Neji with a raised eyebrow, "Because if it's the first one I can stop slacking if I felt the need to, so would that make me extraordinary? Or if I was just born awesome then wouldn't my slacking not matter? What's the point of trying to be great if it's your fate? Won't it just happen anyway? There's so many places I can go with this, I just really want an answer though." A small smile came to Shikamaru's face, "You sounded so much like you knew what you were talking about… so how about it?"

Neji could of course tell when Shikamaru was poking fun, thus he didn't bother responding. He merely walked along away from Team 10. Naruto was more than happy to see him leave and then looked down to his fists to see that Ino had managed to loosen one and get her hand to wrap around his, probably to keep him from stepping forward to smack Neji one, something that would have gotten them disqualified.

The understanding smile he got from Ino got him to calm down even more than Shikamaru's shooing away of Neji did, "…Sorry about that. Thanks Ino-chan, Shikamaru. I was really about to hit that jerk." Naruto punched his palm, "I'm going to stomp Neji's ass and I'm not going to stop until I'm wearing socks made of dried sh-."

"-Okay whatever. Just be cool." Shikamaru said in an advisory manner, ignoring the rather graphic threat, "If it really is that big of a deal to you then all you have to do is wait until next round. Until then it's time for the next fight. It's Team 7 against those Oto gu-."

"Come on Goldie-kun, it's Sasuke-kun's turn." Ino said suddenly at the reminder of the next match as she dragged Naruto over to the railing to watch, cutting Shikamaru off mid-sentence, "I wonder what he learned over the last month."

With a sigh, Shikamaru shoved his hands into his pockets and walked over to watch the fight as well. Playing straight-man to Naruto and Ino's over the top natures was a tiring endeavor… at least for him anyway.

XxX

In a separate box seating area, Gato looked rather unpleased as he gazed down at the field. An older batch of Iwagakure genin that he had given more than ample monetary motivation to perform their job failed to kill even one of Team 10. The Konoha squad didn't even find it necessary to resort to killing one of them to survive the battle.

Oh well. He still had one chance left at exacting some kind of revenge on one of the genin teams that screwed him over. His Oto associate assured him that his genin were more than capable of accomplishing their goals.

All of the work he had gotten out of Otogakure had proven that in the past, and the 'Otokage' had assured Gato that his genin team would be going for nothing less than the kill against Team 7.

XxX

On the field stood Sasuke, Chouji, and Sakura facing off with the mummy-looking Dosu and his partners that looked quite confident. Kin seemed to be looking at Sakura as if she would walk right through her, something that earned her some measure of ire from the pink-haired girl. Zaku just looked at Chouji and couldn't stop chuckling, especially since Chouji was still eating chips at the time.

The look on Sasuke's face was cool and calm by design, but the fact was that he was extremely excited to finally get his own fight out of the way. He barely registered Sekki asking him which side of the coin flip he wanted, "Tails."

The coin was sent up and landed heads up, thus the pick went to Team Dosu, "One-on-one matches…" Kin and Zaku smirked at that. The chances of getting a kill in one-on-one matches was higher than in a team battle where teammates could save others.

"Fine." Sasuke said, not caring too much one way or the other how he got to fight as long as he was provided the opportunity to do so. The two teams headed off on their own to decide who would be the first to fight whom on the Oto team, "So… who wants to test the water?" He didn't have any problems with going first, it might make things go faster, but it was about more than him in this instance.

'This is my chance.' Sakura thought to herself before taking a deep breath, "I'll do it." She volunteered with a serious look on her face.

Chouji stopped eating for a moment to look at her in surprise. What exactly had he missed while he had been training with his father again? This was certainly new. It was either Sasuke or him that went in first to fight… it was kind of the reason he had become more confident in his own abilities, "Uh, are you sure Sakura? Sasuke or I could fight first if you aren't."

"I'm sure Chouji." Sakura said resolutely before putting a smile on her face, "I've got to stop following along sometime don't I? I can do it." She turned towards Sasuke to see if he would offer any sort of dispute towards her fighting first.

Sasuke merely gave her a normal even-tempered look, only this one came with a nod of a seemingly appreciative nature, "Go on then if that's what you want."

That nod was more or less as close as anyone was going to get to hearing Sasuke say 'I believe in you'… at least as close as anyone was going to hear in this century.

On the other hand though, from their area off away on the other side of the field, Dosu managed to somehow hear every word that was being said over on Team 7's side over the low waiting rumble of the crowd, "It seems the little girl wants to play at kunoichi and go first."

"I'll take her then." Kin said, flipping her very long black hair back, "Someone has to put the princess in her place." With that she turned and strode confidently out to face Sakura, this time on the stone bridge spanning the stream in the arena. She looked over the younger girl and scoffed, "Are you sure you want to fight me sweetie? You might mess up your manicure."

Sakura let out a humorless laugh with an unamused smile on her face, "As long as I get to mess your face up too I don't think I'll mind too much."

'Catfight.' Genma thought to himself before shaking that thought out of his head, 'Kami what's wrong with me? They're like 15 years younger than me.' Clearing his mind of the previous thought, Genma started announcing, "First round match, fight one: Haruno Sakura of Konoha vs. Tsuchi Kin of Oto! Begin!"

Sakura drew a kunai while Kin drew a trio of senbon. Both of them jumped away from the other, thinking that their opponent would throw their weapons. When nothing initially happened Sakura took it upon herself to act first and quickly used her free hand to throw shuriken at Kin, which she easily dodged.

"Hah." Kin responded in kind with her own attack of senbon, one of which came close to hitting Sakura as it bounced off of the surface of the stone bridge near her leg once Sakura turned to run, "You'll need more than cookie-cutter Academy crap to beat me." Chasing someone was such a pain, but if Sakura was going to run the fight wasn't going to end until she ended it herself.

As she neared the forested section of the field, Sakura made a quick set of hand-seals, "Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Jutsu)!" Making several copies of herself that all split off and headed into the forest in an attempt to confuse Kin, Sakura already had her main plan set in mind.

It wasn't like a forested environment was foreign at all to Kin, thus she had no problems with the shift in the combat zone. As far as she was concerned it was just a lowly attempt to throw her off-guard, "Just because you're a Konoha ninja doesn't mean you stand a ghost of a chance in this place with me."

"You sure do like to talk a lot."

Sakura's voice was thrown through the area to reach Kin's ears as she entered the foliage. A simple trick. It seemed like all Sakura could do to fight were simple tricks, "You know your rookie friends that won their first fight earlier might have done nothing but run away until the very end, but at least they made it interesting. Do you really think I couldn't tell which you was the real one?" She asked before the sound of a cord snapping directed her attention down to a broken wire.

"No, I didn't think you could… because you didn't."

A series of kunai flew from the leaves at Kin, forcing her to dive out of the way to dodge, 'That was too eas-. No, I was _supposed _to jump this way!' As she thought that a log swung down from the branches directed right at her. Kin jumped over it to stick to the surface of a nearby tree that the log slammed into, dislodging her and knocking her to the ground, 'That trajectory was dead on! How'd she set it up that well with less than a minute?'

Sakura jumped out from her place of hiding with her kunai still in hand and landed on the ground with barely a sound before taking the opportunity to rush Kin directly. The slight noise provided by the quiet footfall told Kin where Sakura was however, and the Oto kunoichi was quite angry with her at the moment. Kin glared deeply at Sakura before throwing more senbon at Sakura.

'Once I dodge these she won't have any time to grab anymore, and she won't have any weapons with her that I can see either.' Sakura thought as she moved towards the side, avoiding the weapons, 'Alright now let's-.' She stopped in her tracks and fell backwards, senbon stuck in her abdomen. Luckily she wasn't hit in a soft spot, though it still hurt damnably, "What? I dodged them!"

"So sorry…" Kin said sarcastically as she got back up off of the ground, "But you dodged the ones with bells." She pointed where her discarded senbon had wound up and Sakura saw that small bells had been tied onto the ends of them, "I threw ones without bells to attract your attention so you wouldn't react to the second set that didn't have them. Kage Shuriken (Shadow Shuriken)."

XxX

Shikamaru and Naruto's eyes turned to Ino who was watching the battle with her cheek in her hand as her fingertips drummed the railing. She wasn't even dignifying her teammates by paying attention to the fact that they were looking at her. She did manage to speak though, "That doesn't mean that she's better than me with senbon, her aim is terrible. She just has a trick… a trick that I'm going to steal when I find out a better way to do it."

Shikamaru shrugged at the idea, "Well it would fit in with the theme we seem to have with shadow-named techniques."

A thoughtful look came onto Naruto's face, "I know a move that's kind of like that. Maybe it works the same? I've never actually used it before so I don't know." Ino turned towards him with a hopeful look in her eyes that got him to back up a step, "Um… I will teach you after the exams are over?" Ino nodded happily and turned back towards the fight, getting a sigh of relief out of Naruto.

Shikamaru laughed and made a sound of a whip thus getting Naruto to glare at him, "Oh don't give me that look you know it's true." Shikamaru let out a sigh of his own and shook his head, "We all are…" He said in a disenfranchised manner.

"Come on Forehead!" Ino yelled down to Sakura, "Don't lose like that! If you can't beat her then you'll never even touch me!"

XxX

Kin heard Ino's attempt to motivate Sakura and turned to look and scoff at the blonde girl, "So I guess being a loud, fake kunoichi just runs rampant through Konoha's ranks. How could weak girls like you ever think you could win here!" She finished, throwing more senbon at Sakura in an attempt to finish her off.

The needles hit Sakura before in a puff of smoke a log lay on the ground in her place. Sakura had made the hand-seals for the Kawarimi while Kin had been busy with her attention turned towards Ino.

As Kin started looking around for Sakura, the trees around her began to shake off a large amount of leaves due to movement, "So now you're a squirrel? I guess you would be a rodent wouldn't you?" The leaves around Kin slowly began to change in appearance from leaves to cherry blossom petals and as they fell around her and on her they began to cut her.

So this was Sakura's trap? Kin wasn't about to stay there if that were the case and she made to run out of the falling cherry blossoms, but as she did so they brushed against her and cut her further and running through them kicked up the multitude of petals already on the ground, forcing them to cut her as well. Kin was caught in a torrent of cherry blossoms made by her own doing and yelled in pain due to all of the cuts that were piling up all over her face and body.

In the real world however, there was nothing happening. At least not on the scale of things from Kin's point of view. Sakura actually had been in the trees though, and she had been intentionally forcing leaves to fall to mask the activation of her genjutsu that seemed to be working beautifully.

"Sakura Hanakaeba no Arashi (Cherry Blossom Razor Storm). And now it's time to finish…" Sakura said to herself before jumping down from her perch and landing directly on top of Kin, knocking her unconscious, "Ow… next time I'll need to finish better." She muttered to herself, rubbing her backside after her fall. Getting up and looking down at Kin, Sakura poked at her limp body with her foot before walking away, "Thanks for the help Kakashi-sensei." She said quietly to herself.

"Winner of match one: Haruno Sakura!"

Sakura smiled brightly and waved to the crowd while holding her wounds from Kin's weaponry, a rather modest celebration, though in her head it was a different story, **"Hell yeah! We totally kicked that bitch's ass! I know Sasuke-kun had to see that!"**

XxX

"Wow." Asuma said from the stands, sitting beside Kakashi, "Didn't see that coming."

"Yep." Kakashi replied with an eye-smile at her performance. Sakura had actually done very well. She'd taken a few wounds but she could get that patched right up, "Just needed a little push. A push, and some genjutsu theory… and a living practice dummy."

Still in the vicinity though, sitting right by both Konoha jounin, Gai was still there and he was even more enthusiastic than Kakashi seemed to be about things, "Kakashi! Your hands-on teaching of your student is reminiscent of my own manly education style! I cannot wait to see what other things you've taught them for the exams!"

Kakashi just kept looking down at the field for several more seconds before turning towards Gai, "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

"Damn you and your hip attitude Kakashi!" Gai exclaimed in a grandiose manner, disturbing the other spectators enough to get popcorn thrown at him. He didn't seem to respond too much, instead focusing on Kakashi, "Our competition this time will be between our students! Yes! Whoever has their students advance furthest wins!" He neglected to remember the fact that there was sort of a standing bet going on between the Konoha jounin already over the exact same thing.

Asuma just stared at Gai before shaking his head as he put a cigarette in his mouth, "Goddamn man I would just love to live in your world for just three hours or so. I don't think I'd get much done, but I don't think I'd care too much either."

XxX

(On the Field)

Sakura was given rest to allow herself to patch herself up since no medical treatment could be given to active competitors. Thus Sasuke walked down for the next fight, this time facing off against Dosu in the usual starting place of the Zen-garden, "Sorry about this. Nothing personal, it's just that we have to kill you and yours. You in particular Uchiha Sasuke."

A usual smirk of amusement came from Sasuke, "Well this is embarrassing. You seem to know who I am and I don't have a clue who you are."

"My name is-."

"-I never said I cared enough to find out." Sasuke interrupted in an attempt to infuriate his opponent prior to the battle at hand, "I just said that it was embarrassing that I don't know who you are… mostly for you. But I guess it really doesn't matter though." He set himself in his combat stance in preparation for the start.

"Kin let her guard down and underestimated your teammate." Dosu said, narrowing his single visible eye at Sasuke, "That won't happen again with you. I guarantee you'll remember my name since it will be the last thing you ever hear."

"Match two: Uchiha Sasuke of Konoha vs. Kinuta Dosu of Oto!" Jei shouted, getting everyone's attention. Sasuke was more or less an attraction to the event off of name value alone. Just calling out his name got a mass of cheers from the people, "Begin!"

Wasting no time at all, Sasuke and Dosu rushed at each other head-on without hesitation. Sasuke moved to strike first, but stopped himself and instead jumped back when from one of Dosu's long sleeves he revealed a metal gauntlet with pores throughout it on his right arm and attempted to punch him. Sasuke felt a strange ringing in his ears that made him feel slightly lightheaded but found no reason for it. Literally nothing had happened in that exchange.

Dosu seemed to smile under his bandages once he saw Sasuke activate his two-tomoed Sharingan to continue the fight. He held up his gauntleted arm and beckoned Sasuke forward as if asking him to attack again. In response, Sasuke threw a kunai that Dosu blocked with his gauntlet before the Oto genin rushed forward to take Sasuke down. He had his right arm cocked back and ready to attack before he ever even got close to Sasuke, something that the young Uchiha saw in slow motion due to his kekkei genkai.

In response to Dosu's direct attack, Sasuke retreated back away from Dosu and jumped onto one of the elevated meditation rocks in the Zen-garden, watching intently as Dosu jumped at him to attempt another attack. Sasuke didn't even let him get close before jumping off of the rock and over Dosu, 'A direct attack. He really seems to want to fight me with taijutsu.' Even as he thought this, Sasuke was steadily getting a headache and he simply couldn't comprehend why.

He couldn't comprehend why until he got a good glimpse at Dosu's right arm. He had been intentionally swinging it wantonly during his sprint up to Sasuke and even when Sasuke jumped from his perch on the rock he still went through with his punch. Sasuke didn't know why until he noticed a faint glow with his own heightened eyesight and perception. It was chakra directed through the gauntlet and it was causing Sasuke's headache.

What a subtle attack. He hadn't even gotten close to hitting Sasuke yet, and even then he had an increasingly pulsing headache that was steadily getting worse. So that was why after he dodged Dosu's first punch he felt like crap inexplicably. Whatever that arm of his was doing, Sasuke wanted no close-range part of it. And luckily he didn't have to fight like that.

Dosu crouched atop the rock that Sasuke had just jumped off of to avoid him once again, "Is this all that the almighty Uchiha Clan is capable of? Konoha really is a soft village after all if this is what they consider to be a genius shinobi."

"Heh." Sasuke said with a smirk, not letting the jab get to him. As if he'd fight on his opponent's terms just because of a reason like that, "That arm of yours is really interesting. Too bad you can't get close enough to actually do anything useful with it."

Dosu stood up from his crouch seemingly accepting Sasuke's challenge, "We'll see about that." He dropped down the backside of the rock out of Sasuke's sight, but even though Dosu moved quickly, concealing his movements as he rushed from rock to rock for cover Sasuke was able to see and keep track of him.

"So you want to play whack-a-mole?" Sasuke said to no one in particular though it was directed at Dosu, "Fine. Let's play." Sasuke jumped atop a rock and brandished a kunai. At the first hint of seeing Dosu he threw his weapon.

Dosu saw the weapon coming and lifted his gauntlet to block his head, but it landed sticking itself in the rock he was about to take cover behind. He averted his path and headed the other way to disrupt Sasuke's tracking of his movements. Dosu wasn't nearly fast enough for Sasuke's body to be unable to keep up with him though, he had been getting beaten up by Hatake Kakashi for an entire month.

'Not even close to getting away from me. You aren't going to even get close, cover to move behind or not.' Sasuke immediately brandished a fuuma shuriken to go with the rest of the kunai he had in his hands to bombard Dosu with, "Let's see you dodge this!" In one move he threw them all in a widespread manner the moment Dosu emerged from behind cover once more.

The sound of the metal flying through the air filled Dosu's ears, "You'll never touch me with any of that!" He yelled as he jumped onto a rock to avoid the weaponry. Over a dozen metal kunai and shuriken littered the rocks filling the Zen-garden, and like Dosu said none of it ever touched him, "I can hear the trajectory of your projectiles and can judge the proper way to dodge them. You'll never touch me with a shuriken." He said before jumping back down into the rock pit, planning to finish closing the distance on Sasuke, "What is this?"

Until he realized that the entire area surrounding the rock he had been on was tangled in ninja wire, making the area look like the nest of a metal spider or something. Looking up at Sasuke on top of his own rock he saw a wire trailing through his mouth while he had been finishing up a chain of hand-seals, "Katon: Ryuuka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Dragon Fire Jutsu)!" Fire flew from Sasuke's mouth along his ninja wire and turned the trap into a screaming metal deathtrap.

Knowing that he was trapped while in there and not wanting to find himself trapped in what was to be the equivalent of a stone oven, Dosu jumped back on to the rock that was the center of the wired attention as the fire blazed around the rock. He needed to find a way out because the rock was rapidly heating up. He wouldn't be safe there for long.

Sasuke knew he would get him with the jutsu or he would trap him up on the rock out in the open, which would eventually catch fire and finish Dosu. Either way he was easy pickings for what would be next.

"Give up." Sasuke warned as embers floated through the air, enhancing a rather treacherous appearance that had initially been given by the orange glow of the flames.

XxX

"Sasuke-kun is so cool!" Both Ino and Sakura shouted as it looked like Sasuke had his win in hand.

Naruto on the other hand leaned against the railing, "Come on. I'm cool too… I chucked a fucking machete through a barrier and beat two guys at once with brute force and wind chakra. Nobody said anything about that."

Shikamaru placed a hand on his shoulder, "I told you already Naruto; guys like us are just designed to be uncool. You can't beat standing in the middle of a raging fire on the cool scale, it's visually magnificent and airheads love it." He said pointing at Sakura and Ino who were still gushing over Sasuke's tactic, "Find a way to make wind chakra look cool and I'll find a way to make creeping shadows look cool. Then maybe guys like us will have a chance."

Chouji put a hand on Naruto's other shoulder, "You get used to it Naruto… trust me."

"He's not that cool." Naruto insisted, "I mean he's _looking_ at the explosion. Cool guys don't look at their own explosions."

"Technically it's an inferno, not an explosion." Shikamaru said, with Chouji nodding in agreement.

"Oh shut up with your 'logic' and 'correct definition of words'." Naruto wasn't going to let something stupid like common sense and actuality mess up his argument.

"Hey!" Sakura said, turning away from the field and towards Naruto and Shikamaru as her senses had picked up something rather late, "…Did you just call us airheads?" Ino seemed to then pick up on that as well and looked equally upset.

Shikamaru looked over at her impassively before looking back at the field as if he hadn't been in a conversation beforehand, "Hey look, Sasuke's going to finish it." That was all it took to get Ino and Sakura's attention back onto the field, "*sigh* Airheads…"

XxX

(On the Field)

At this point Dosu's common sense was crying out for him to give up, but it was his slated mission, it was the mission of his entire team, he was supposed to kill Sasuke Uchiha. Otogakure ninja did not fail their missions, there was simply no room and no place for it. That was why Team Dosu were the only genin from Oto sent for the exams, because they were supposed to be the only ones necessary, they were the only ones sent to represent Otogakure as a means of showing strength.

Even the metal on his gauntlet was heating up enough to burn at the touch now. He couldn't stay on his rock for much longer or he'd just catch ablaze and die soon anyway once the flames grew high and hot enough.

"Don't do it." Sasuke said, making hand-seals and stopping on the tiger seal as he charged up the chakra needed for his next jutsu once he saw the subtle shift of Dosu's body, "You'll never make it to safety, you'll never even get close. Just give up." He had trapped him. Sasuke didn't even want to actually follow up because unless Dosu quit there was only one feasible way that the fight was going to end.

"If I give up or lose without taking your head I fail…" Dosu said lowly, taking a few steps backwards, "If my team loses to all of you then we fail and our village looks weak. If we fail a mission given to us as important by our Otokage then we are dead anyway. So we aren't going to give up by choice." His foot shifted back as if he was preparing to move forward, "Sorry."

"I'm telling you if you move-."

"Let's see if your Sharingan can predict sound."

"I'm not joking!"

"Neither was I. Sorry." With that, Dosu ran forward and jumped off of his deathtrap towards Sasuke, the only other rock he could have possibly reached from his position, his arm set to utilize the abilities of his gauntlet if he got close enough to do so.

He didn't.

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

Sasuke didn't hold back and fired directly at Dosu, hitting him in mid-air and catching his body ablaze as the fireball stopped him while in flight. He then proceeded to drop down into the fire created by Sasuke's previous jutsu that had trapped Dosu and from that point all Sasuke could do was stare into the fires of his own creation before snapping out of what he had just done.

He turned around and jumped down the clear side of his rock that was left untouched so that he could leave it and he simply walked away while proctors headed over to put the fire out. There was no reason for it to be like that. If Dosu had quit then the proctors could have put the fire out and gotten him away, "I was his mission." Sasuke said to himself, trying to reason why Dosu attacked him in the end when there was no logical reason behind it or way that it would work, "And he put his life on the line to take mine…"

"Winner of match three: Uchiha Sasuke!"

XxX

Shikamaru, Naruto, and Chouji just stared over at the remnants of Sasuke's fight with Dosu without flinching. They were ninja and death was a part of their job description, and Naruto and Shikamaru had killed in the past before as well.

"Naruto." Shikamaru said plainly.

"Yeah Shikamaru?" Naruto replied evenly.

Shikamaru rubbed his temple as the proctors put the fire in the Zen-garden out, "I know you're not really one to surrender or quit in the middle of fights or anything like that, but if you're ever stuck on an isolated rock in the middle of a raging fire and you _don't_ have a way out of it and surrendering is an option you'd better do it or I'll drag you back from hell somehow to smack the stupid out of you."

"Got it." Naruto said in full understanding. They then looked over at Zaku who wordlessly walked down for his fight, 'Why didn't he stop the fight for his friend? That didn't have to happen.'

Chouji could tell what Naruto was thinking as he watched Zaku descend the stairs towards the entrance tunnel for his fight, "Don't worry." He said, getting Naruto and Shikamaru to look at him, "I'll ask him that myself right now." He then left to follow behind Zaku and meet up with Sasuke to switch out for the next fight.

Elsewhere in the viewing area, Gaara's eyes were locked on the charred remains of Dosu as the proctors tried to keep it from view of the audience and tried to get it out quickly. Temari and Kankuro could feel the bloodlust around the young man rising and backed off to give him his space.

XxX

(On the Field)

After a rather short talk between teammates, Sasuke relinquished the fight with Zaku to Chouji. It hadn't even taken that much convincing in order to do so. And so Chouji faced off against Zaku on the barren, mountain-based side of the field instead of the usually chosen neutral starting place of the Zen-garden for obvious reasons.

Chouji stared at Zaku who even in the situation he was in looked back at him with a smirk on his face, "I don't understand why you didn't throw in the towel for your teammate just now." Chouji said, "You had to know he wasn't going to get out of that mess."

Zaku let out a cruel sounding laugh, "Dosu was the one that wanted to fight Uchiha. He knew what the score was. It's our mission to kill Sasuke during these exams… that's what I'm going to do. And once I win here and finish off the rest of the round I'll just keep on winning until I reach that other Konoha rookie team that advanced earlier. Apparently if I kill them there's a nice little prize in it for me as well."

He was talking about Shikamaru's team. This guy didn't just want to kill him or Sasuke he wanted to kill Shikamaru as well if he got the chance, "You want to kill my friends?" Chouji said with an edge to his voice.

"Oh so fat boy can hear after all? I thought that all of that blubber of yours might be clogging up your ears too." Zaku taunted cruelly, setting himself in a fighting stance to prepare for the start.

Chouji's frame stiffened at the insult, "…What did you just say?"

"You heard me!" Zaku said, "You're so fat I'm surprised you're not leaving your footprints in the rock!"

Chouji didn't verbally respond to that jab, his gaze was merely set on the ground so that Zaku couldn't see his eyes, "…Start the match."

Genma looked over at the younger Konoha shinobi and shifted the senbon around in his mouth before shrugging and looking at Zaku, "Are you ready?"

"Oh yeah." Zaku said, cracking his neck to the side.

Genma nodded and began the announcement, "Match three: Akimichi Chouji of-!"

"START THE DAMN FIGHT ALREADY!"

"Begin!" The Konoha-born proctor said suddenly after Chouji's angry outburst before getting the hell out of the way. There was no way he was staying near that battle if he didn't have to.

"Baika no Jutsu (Multi-Size Jutsu)!" Chouji's body ballooned outward to a rounded and expanded appearance in the abdomen that Zaku took a step back at seeing, "Now you're dead you bastard! Stop me if you can!" He then tucked his limbs and head inside of his clothes to give himself a massive ball-shaped appearance.

"Holy crap!" Zaku exclaimed, taking a jump back away from Chouji at the sight of him, "What the hell is that?"

"Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank)!" Chouji's ball-form began to roll in place, picking up momentum before it moved forward towards Zaku with the intent of running him over and squashing him.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Zaku growled to himself at the sight of the incoming Chouji, "There's no way I'm going down like that!" He put his arms straight out to reveal hollow tubes open through his palms, "Zankuuha (Decapitating Airwaves)!" From the tubes in his arms a harsh blast of air came out that struggled to stop Chouji in his tracks, "You can't beat my air waves!"

Though he said that, he seemed to be having one hell of a time holding Chouji back from smashing him, even with the wind from his air tubes stopping him. Still, it gave him an opportunity to dive out of the way to avoid being smashed, "Is that the best you've got!" Zaku taunted as the ball rolled away from him and didn't turn back around, "Are you running? I don't blame you fatso!"

Despite the insult, Chouji just kept rolling on away not even bothering to turn back around towards Zaku. Feeling triumphant, Zaku smirked and figured that he wasn't able to see or hear anything while in that form and proceeded to chase after him to finish him when given the opportunity.

What he didn't realize or seem to notice that Chouji had however, was that the barren, rocky area that they had chosen to fight in was sloped and uneven in many places with hills and craters and all kinds of things… and against the wall that was at the end of the field the terrain turned into something of a makeshift ramp against it… a ramp that Chouji rolled himself up once he reached it as far as he could go.

Then he rolled back down in the exact opposite direction.

Now if Zaku could barely stop Chouji when he had started from a dead stop on flat ground, how would he fare now that Chouji had been rolling for quite some time and had even gotten a boost from rolling himself down a ramp on very uneven ground?

It was just simple physics.

Hey, spending six months on a team with Sakura and spending years and years hanging out with Shikamaru had to rub off somehow.

So now coming with at least three times the momentum, Chouji flew right at Zaku who stopped in his tracks once he saw the ball roll up the side of the wall and right back down coming right towards him, "Block this!" Chouji shouted mid-roll.

And try Zaku did, firing up his air tubes for a blast that was at least twice as strong, "Zankuukyokuha (Extreme Decapitating Airwaves)!"

But a blast twice as strong just wasn't enough for what was at least three times the original force of Chouji's own jutsu, thus it did not stop the rolling this time around… and Chouji rolled right over him, smashing Zaku into the ground and even staying on him for an extra moment to 'spin his wheels', pulverizing the rock with his own spinning before rolling off of Zaku.

Genma immediately headed over to where Zaku got hit and looked at the groaning, broken body of Zaku that was still alive… but he sure as hell wouldn't be getting back up, "Winner of match three: Akimichi Chouji! Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke, and Akimichi Chouji advance to the next round!"

XxX

In the competitor's box, Shikamaru let out a chuckle as the crowd cheered for the victorious Team 7, "That guy more or less dug his own grave right from the start."

Nearby, Sakura nodded with an awkward smile on her face, "Yeah… it kind of didn't take anyone on the team long to figure out that calling Chouji fat wasn't really the smartest thing to do." She turned back to the field where they had managed to peel Zaku off the ground and put him on a gurney, "Still, that was kind of violent wasn't it?"

Naruto gave Sakura a deadpan stare and pointed over at Sasuke, "Sakura-chan he just set a living human being on fire and you're talking about the way Chouji won being violent?" He then looked over at Ino who had her mouth open ready to speak, "And if you say 'that's different' you're full of crap Ino-buta-chan."

"Stop calling me that." Ino seethed out through clenched teeth while Sakura had to if nothing else giggle at hearing someone else make fun of the meaning behind Ino's name.

As she kept laughing, Sakura couldn't imagine anyone on her own team calling her the nickname that Ino usually lambasted her with, "I can't believe your own teammate calls you that." She managed to get out between her laughter.

Her laughing stopped however once Gaara and his teammates walked past her on their way to the stairs to enter the field for their turn. All of them noticed that unlike his siblings that didn't pay any of them any mind, Gaara made direct eye contact with Naruto as he passed, if only for a moment. The feeling of the temperature of the room dropping left once Gaara and his team exited to head to the field.

Kabuto saw this and walked over from his own team to talk to the rookies, "Wow… even I felt that." He looked at Naruto, "What did you do to make that guy so mad?" The older genin inquired.

Naruto didn't know how to respond other than with the only answer he could come up with, "I got in his way I guess." He replied vacantly, still looking at the stairwell Gaara had descended even though he was no longer there, "I kind of had a run-in with him during the last part of the exam."

"Really?" Kabuto said before laughing nervously, "Well my team is probably going to have to fight him next round so did you get anything out of his skill set."

"Sand." Naruto said, "Lots and lots of sand. Stay the hell away from it."

A frown came across the silver-haired, bespectacled young man, "That's it? You don't have any real advice to help anyone fight him?"

"Well what are your abilities then? What can you and your team do?" Naruto asked Kabuto in return, "I can't tell you how to fight him if I don't even know how you fight."

A smile came to Kabuto's face, "That sounds like fishing to me… but us? We're nothing special." He said in a modest, pleasant fashion.

"Oh." Naruto said in understanding before turning to the field to watch the fight, "That's easy then." Whether he knew it or not, everyone including Neji and Team Gai as well as Fuu and Dorobou were listening to him, "You run." Naruto said without hesitation, "You run or you quit."

"That's it?" Kabuto asked him in disbelief, "You're kidding right?"

"Well you can die too." Was the dry response from Naruto, "…That's always an option."

"He can't harm Fuu." Dorobou said in an opinionated manner, though said girl seemed to be listening to what Naruto had to actually say, "Sand? That's all he has?"

Neji scoffed over with Team Gai, "Don't try to offload your own fears onto the rest of us. A few of us aren't outright failures like some." Tenten and Lee looked at Neji in an almost disgusted manner and shook their heads.

That managed to get an angry look from Naruto directed at Neji, though he just let it drop. Neji was ignorant and he didn't know what the Dorobou guy's problem was thinking that Fuu could beat anyone just because she was a jinchuuriki, "I don't really care what you think."

XxX

(On the Field)

Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro stood across from the team from Ame that had made it to the finals. The similarly dressed Oboro, Mubi, and Kagari all with their breathing apparatuses waited at the ready.

"Tails." Sekka commented on the preceding coin flip, "Suna team chooses."

Before anyone could even take a chance to think about it, Gaara spoke up, "Team battle." He said plainly, surprising his own team that expected him to rather fight alone.

Not willing to question Gaara due to knowing firsthand what Gaara was like, having cleaned up a few of Gaara's messes in Suna, Sekka merely backed out of the way… far out of the way… all the way out of the Zen-garden, 'Poor bastards… why did they pick this terrain to start in? Just for the sake of a face-off?' A sandy area with rocks littering the vicinity… not the best of choices to be made in his opinion and experience, "First round match, one team battle only! Sabaku no Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro of Suna vs. Oboro, Mubi, and Kagari of Ame! Begin!"

Temari grabbed the large fan from her back and Kankuro took the bandaged bundle from his back to prepare to fight, but Gaara's voice stopped them, "No. Just stay out of my way." He said as the cork on his large gourd of sand popped off the top of it.

"Are you sure Gaara?" Kankuro asked tentatively, he involuntarily took a step back when the sand began to filter out of Gaara's gourd.

"Leave." Gaara reiterated with more of an edge this time to get his point across, "Or I'll kill you too. I don't need either of you to finish the exams at this point. I could have killed either of you any time after the second exam. You're in my way."

Kankuro growled to himself, but Temari put a hand on his arm and shook her head, choosing to listen to Gaara and get the hell out of the way.

"You think you can just leave?" Oboro said, his voice restricted by the breathing apparatus, "Sorry, but you're not that lucky!" As he said that, multiple eerie black forms of the Ame team came from the surrounding rocks and even rose from the ground all throughout the Zen-garden, "You're staying right here where we want you, surrounded."

That statement was responded to by Temari when she took her fan and let loose a swing of it that cut a path through the black copies, making them look like inky illusions as she and Kankuro just kept on walking their way out of the Zen-garden, "We're not leaving because of you." She said calmly.

"We're leaving because of _him_." Kankuro said, jerking his head back towards Gaara before continuing on after Temari, "You guys should just quit now while you're ahead."

Kagari scoffed, his voice also distorted by his breathing apparatus, "You think only one of you can beat all three of us?" Kunai from different angles flew at Gaara's unmoving form only to be stopped harmlessly by a shield of sand holding them in place before they dropped to the ground harmlessly. Gaara's response was the entire amount of the sands in the Zen-garden whipping around in a torrent.

In the midst of all of this, Gaara stood there calmly in the center with his arms crossed and an emotionless expression on his face, "You're annoying me." He said as the sand settled to reveal himself standing all alone in the area. The entire place was still as the audience just watched and waited for something; an ambush on Gaara's person, something.

They weren't let down as this time a multitude of more exact copies of Team Oboro emerged, wearing their actual clothes and looking just like them.

"Clones…" Gaara said in his gravelly voice, "I hate clones." More sand began to rush about dangerously, smashing about and stripping the surfaces off of the rocks in the Zen-garden, but not doing any damage to the clones even to dispel them, nor were there any cries of pain or alarm. But they had never left the Zen-garden, if they had then Kankuro or Temari would have done something.

Gaara looked around the entire battlefield, ignoring the largely useless clones of theirs that weren't doing a thing but standing around. No sign of them anywhere. That really only left one place for them to be, and they wouldn't have tried it at a distance with their useless clones littering the immediate area, thus Gaara kneeled down and placed his hand on the ground, burying it into the sand.

He seemed to be patiently fishing for something and seemed to find it after not too long, "Sabaku Kyuu (Sand Binding Coffin)." With that being said, Gaara pulled his hand out of the sand and shortly thereafter the three Ame ninja emerged from the ground before being lifted into the air, suspended there by the sand entirely encasing their bodies, "You're from the village of rain correct?"

They didn't respond to Gaara's question as they were busy wondering what the hell was happening and why they couldn't get free despite their attempts to struggle. It was impossible for them.

This suited Gaara just fine however because the question had been rhetorical and he hadn't necessarily cared one way or the other about their answer. He instead lifted his arm into the air with his hand held wide open, "Well let's make it rain blood." He said darkly before making a tight fist with his outstretched hand, "Sabaku Sousou (Sand Waterfall Funeral)!"

And that was it. The sand imploded and crushed all of Team Oboro and much like the name of the second of Gaara's chaining techniques the blood fell from the sky and showered the Zen-garden with gore. The crowd collectively began to freak out at Gaara's one-man decimation of an entire team as he filtered his sand back into his gourd and calmly walked away.

Over with the proctors, Jei grabbed Sekka by the front of his clothing looking angry, "You knew that was going to happen didn't you?" He accused, seeing the way that Sekka had been treating Gaara since being asked to oversee the beginning of the fight (if one had the audacity to call it that), "Why didn't you tell us that was going to happen?"

"There was nothing we could do." Sekka said in a calm manner, the medic-nin yanked himself from the bald Kumo-nin's grasp as he did so, "You couldn't stop Gaara even if you had know what was going to happen. It wouldn't have made a difference. That's not a regular genin, he's not even a regular person."

"What is he then?" Genma asked, still not particularly over the rather graphic deaths of an entire genin squad.

"Just like that girl from Taki only ten times worse. He's Suna's nightmare." Sekka said, shaking his head, "He's _our_ jinchuuriki." He moved away from his fellow proctors to announce the results that were clear for all to see, "The winners of the team battle and advancing to the next round: Sabaku no Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro!"

Not even polite applause was given.

And Genma could now officially say once and for all to everyone that still had their problems with Naruto that Konoha had absolutely nothing to complain about when it came to Naruto being their jinchuuriki if that was what other villages had to deal with in their genin jinchuuriki, 'I hope everyone watching this at home figures that out. For Kami's sake that was just…'

XxX

Everyone in the competitor's stand that had borne witness to the demise of the Ame genin had no words for what they had just seen. The way Sasuke killed Dosu in the last round was one thing, what Gaara had done was something else completely. The only one there that wasn't surprised was the only person there that had actually experienced it firsthand before.

Naruto let out a sigh to disguise the discomfort he felt, evident by how tight his hands were clutching the railing. He had already seen what Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro could do when his clones went at them in the caves, but having Gaara's sand defeat actual people was something else to see altogether, "I knew that was going to happen… I didn't think there'd be so much blood though." He said to himself quietly, 'And damn it we still haven't seen _anything_ that we can really take advantage of!'

Shikamaru's mind was racing though, 'Okay, he doesn't move and he doesn't like to have his team anywhere around him… ever. And we are staying right the hell out of that sand trap garden if I have to pin our feet to the ground somewhere else. We need more.' Next it was that Kabuto guy's cloth-faced team's turn to fight against the team of older Kiri ninja. They were already on the field, ready to go, 'I hope whoever wins can push the hell out of them next round.'

The battle was mostly underwhelming thus far, more of a dogfight than most of the other matches that had been fought, but there wasn't much to see other than the guy that could stretch his body and the guy that could absorb chakra on Kabuto's team. Kabuto himself seemed to be really good at dodging attacks and quite alright at taijutsu, and as they took the win they got their round of applause, but Shikamaru wasn't given much confidence after that first showcase that next round would be any tougher for the team from Sunagakure.

XxX

A pretty boring series of one-on-one fights led conversation to break out again prior to the thirty minute break between rounds, though just like before there was no one approaching the Suna team or Taki's team who finally got their third wheel Houki back from the medical bay.

This led to Naruto actually taking a minute to go out and get himself something to drink due to thirst… also to give himself a minute to smoke a cigarette, he felt like he deserved one after round one and that he needed one after seeing Gaara obliterate those other genin. He took long enough to finish one cigarette off before stepping on the butt of the cigarette on the ground on his way back to the viewing balcony.

On his way back he found Fuu sitting on the stairwell by herself and stopped walking, standing to her side less than 15 feet away. He felt like walking back to the viewing area was the smartest move at the time, but for the life of him he just couldn't bring himself to do it. From the angle he was standing at he could see her eyes. While she didn't seem nearly as angry or irritated as she did when she was around people, as a matter of fact she seemed to like being by herself, he could also tell the look of her eyes… and they were just like the way his used to be.

…

Damn it he was going to get killed in a stairwell between rounds. Who dies during the intermission? That would be the lamest thing conceivable.

Well at least being a nice guy would only wind up with him dying alone, worst-case scenario. Not Shikamaru or Ino this time.

Maybe they'd promote him posthumously?

Nah, they'd call his trying to talk to Fuu by himself a tactical fault and he'd never get that sweet flak jacket… even if he otherwise would have gotten it lain on his grave.

"Hey." Naruto said, noticing Fuu's eyes immediately dart to the side towards him, allowing her to see him through the hand rail set up on the stairs she was sitting on, "What are you doing out he-."

"I'm not staying in that room with all of those people just to watch a shitty fight between people I'm never going to face." Fuu said, cutting him off tersely as she narrowed her eyes at him, "Now what are _you_ doing out here?"

He was tempted to mouth off and say that technically he was supposed to fight next again once the intermission was over, but making an enemy out of another fellow jinchuuriki was not high on his list of things to do at these exams, "Just taking a walk to clear my head, kind of like you I guess. Do you mind if I sit down?"

"Yes." Fuu said lifting a hand and making a fist to crack her knuckles with just the motion of doing so, "I do mind. Now beat it kid before you wear out what little welcome you had and I beat you."

There was a low and underlying killing intent coming from Fuu but when Naruto took a step back it lessened slightly, "I don't want to fight… yet anyway. Not until I win the next round" He said as he leaned against the wall in the hallway, "I heard what that guy said, your teammate."

Fuu's eyes turned away from Naruto to look down the stairs at the reminder of her outing as a jinchuuriki last round, "So what? All that means is that more people I've never met are going to think I'm a monster, just like always."

"You're not a monster." Naruto argued in return.

"What would you know about it?" She snapped in return, looking at her hands, "You saw what I did out there to that other team from Konoha. And you're telling me you don't want payback? You're telling me you don't think I'm a monster? Every single time I've ever touched someone since I was a little girl I've hurt them. I break things and I break people without even trying to. So don't give me that crap, because you don't even know kid."

A frown came over Naruto's face before he said his next bit, "Well you can touch me… I'm pretty sure I won't break."

Fuu let out a humorless laugh and placed her hand on the metal railing with an oddly sweet smile on her face, "Well come over here and shake my hand then." She said pleasantly.

Well, she said to come on over. Naruto was pretty sure if she was trying to trap him he could evade an attack easily enough. Thus he took her up on the offer and walked over. The closer he got, the more strained the smile on Fuu's face became before he finally heard a strange noise that sounded like metal groaning .

"And stop right there." Fuu said in a strained voice once Naruto got within 5 feet of her. She let go of the metal railing and Naruto's eyes looked towards it to see that her grip had left a crushing mark in the railing, "You still want to shake my hand? How about give me a hug? Are you still sure you won't break?"

The sarcasm was rampant in her speech, getting Naruto to look at her through squinted eyes, "I was serious you know."

"It doesn't matter if you were or not." Fuu said, "You think you're the first person that tried to be all friendly with me to get me to let my guard down? You're not. The Academy teachers, the caretakers, my classmates… so many of them got me to think they were my friends and when they got close enough they would attack me… they'd say that my abilities with the Nanabi's powers were too weak and report it to the village leader."

No one had ever treated Naruto like that when he was a kid, people basically treated him like a leper and went out of their way to stay away from him, but he wasn't attacked by his own villagers or falsely befriended. She was basically telling him that she was befriended just so others could get close enough to force her to activate her abilities with her biju, "That's horrible! Who does that?"

Technically Jiraiya did, but that was just one person, and he apologized afterwards. Fuu was talking about multiple people used to spontaneously attack her to test her skill with her ability and they didn't seem to care.

Ignoring him, Fuu then punched the rail, bending it thoroughly from the force she used, "So no. I learned that no one ever wants to be around me without causing me some kind of harm. Anyone willing to stick around is just biding their time to attack me. So you can shake my hand, I'll turn your bones into powder… you can hug me too if you really want to, but I'll snap your spine like a hickory stick. You'll wait until I drop my guard at any moment and you'll turn on me… you're my enemy remember? So slay the monster… kill me and I bet you they'll just drop a promotion in your lap out of gratitude."

"Will you stop saying you're a monster!"

"Why does it matter to you?"

"Because if that stupid thing inside of you makes you a monster that means I'm one too!" Naruto yelled at her, taking great care not to step forward to set her off any further. Still, he was going to get his damned point across one way or another. Fuu's eyes widened at him before rolling in distrust. Seeing he had to prove it, Naruto backed off and drew his machete, putting Fuu on instant alert. Naruto merely dragged the blade of the machete across his hand to draw blood and sheathed it again. He wiped the blood on his pants and showed Fuu the light wound.

Watching the cut heal visibly right before her eyes set Fuu's doubt back to nearly nothing. No normal person healed like that, "You're a-?"

"Yeah." Naruto said, fishing some medical wrap out of his supply pouch that he began to wrap around his hand, "And I know I'm not a monster. Neither are you, and I'm going to prove that to you and everyone one way or another."

Having spoken his mind to Fuu, Naruto walked past her to head back into the viewing area to link up with his team before the next round began. Once he went further down the hall he found Sasuke standing on the wall, "So what was all that about dobe? I heard the echo of you yelling."

"How much of that did you hear?" Naruto asked.

"None of it." Sasuke replied honestly, "But I'm fighting her next. I was just wondering if you told her anything about us to help her team win in case you're scared of taking me on again." He finished with a smirk, "Because you should be. It won't be as even as it was last time."

"I agree." Naruto said with a challenging grin, "I'm going to beat you way easier this time. We all know I was winning the last fight."

"In your dreams dobe." Sasuke said with a scoff as they began walking back to the waiting area, "I must have kicked you in the head too hard the last time."

Before Naruto could open his mouth to offer up a sniping response, Gaara's voice stopped them both, "Uzumaki." Both Konoha genin turned around to see Gaara standing in the low-lit hallway staring at the both of them, "I'm going to kill you. I just want you to know that. And unlike your friend Uchiha I _did_ hear what you said to the girl. I want to tell you right now that we _are_ monsters…"

Sasuke looked ready to defend himself. He could tell something was off with Gaara from the moment he first stood in his presence and watching him crush three genin to a bloody paste didn't really remedy the mindset any, "We're not friends. And what are you talking about?"

Gaara's seafoam colored eyes turned to Sasuke momentarily, "I wasn't talking to you. Shut up or I'll kill you too."

Sasuke bristled at the casual threat and turned his Sharingan on in response, "Come and try it you psychotic little-."

"You're not a monster Gaara." Naruto said, cutting off Sasuke from forcing the situation to escalate any further, "It's what's inside you that's the monster. Don't let yourself become the thing that everyone thinks you are."

"Dobe what are you doing?" Sasuke said, still defensive and with good reason to be so once the cork popped off of Gaara's gourd and sand started filtering out of it. Both of them knew full well what that was used for, "Stop trying to talk down the homicidal guy and think of something that will actually work. I don't feel like fighting him in a hallway."

"It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks." Gaara said as his sand began to slowly billow about, "If they believe I'm a monster, a demon, it's only because I am. From the moment I was born I've killed. I took the life of the woman that brought me into this world. Ever since the age of six I've been killing assassins sent after me by my own father the Kazekage, the man who had the Ichibi no Shukaku sealed within me to make me Suna's ultimate weapon." His sand started to creep along the ground towards Sasuke and Naruto who both drew weaponry in case it came to a fight, "Mother wants both of your blood right now… she's screaming for it."

"I thought you said your mother was dead." Sasuke said with a kunai drawn and at the ready for all the good it probably wouldn't do, 'This guy is really insane.'

If that weren't enough for Sasuke, Gaara began talking to himself right there in front of them, "…Please mother, just wait. Wait a little bit longer. I promise you'll get more blood soon. Not here… this isn't the place to kill Uzumaki. This isn't the place to kill Uchiha. But I'll make them both pay… I promise. No one will make me disappear."

Both Naruto and Sasuke slowly began to back away towards the waiting area while Gaara kept muttering to himself and his 'mother', not even noticing them creeping away from him, "What the fuck was that all about?" Sasuke said once they got far enough away.

"I don't know." Naruto said, wiping a cold sweat from his face once the tension from before died down. He hadn't even known he had been perspiring, "I don't think I'll be taking the stairs again for the rest of the tournament though. I think I'll just walk up and down the wall." There were still ten minutes left in the intermission.

Even though the situation had faded out, Sasuke was well aware that he had missed a significant chunk of what the issue was with Naruto, Gaara, and even Fuu. Why was Naruto out there talking to her in the first place? Gaara really had a monster sealed inside of his body like Fuu? And when he said that they were monsters it didn't sound like he was simply referring to himself and Fuu. It sounded like he was talking about Naruto as well, 'Naruto has a monster in him too? That had to be what he was talking about. But Naruto isn't anything like either one of them. No way.'

Why couldn't things be simple and straightforward? They were supposed to be there for a promotion test and now they were stuck surrounded by these jinchuuriki guys and people trying to kill them. Did most other genin taking these exams have to deal with this stuff when they took them? It would have to be pretty hard to dredge up this much crazy and stick it all in one exam twice a year.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Fuuinjutsu is just one part of your never-ending war on life

Now like I said before at the start of this book; it is not only meant to teach you how to make nifty little seals, it is also meant to coach you on life, since if you're reading this book and decided to intentionally specialize in fuuinjutsu you need all the advice and guidance you can get.

In an effort to make a man out of you I will now be giving you a crash course in my true major and life's calling; picking up the luscious ladies. Trust me chums, listen to Jiraiya-sama and you won't be able to keep the women off of you, this is my money-back guarantee to you, the consumer.

First thing's first: being a ninja is cool… to civilians. Civilian girls dig the danger aspect of your life, wishing that it would insert itself into their lives somehow to make their existence less mundane. She yearns to be one of those women seeing her lover off to war like in those books and movies all over the place. If you have a headband that's the opening for you to buy her a drink, if you have a regulation flak jacket then you've earned yourself two good hours to woo the lass with your stories of awesome. Basically, the more regulation items on your person that signifies that you are elite and important to the hidden village military society the easier it will be for you to hook up.

A note to remember though if you are pursuing a civilian woman. They are high-maintenance and a lot of them have gold-digger tendencies whether they know it or not. If you are preparing to make a girlfriend or a wife out of a woman like this then you had better have a lot of free time and funds because you're going to need it.

If you're looking to pick up women based off of the merit of your job then you'd better shoot for a civvie chick. If you're aiming a higher up the totem pole at the pinnacle of human female development, the kunoichi, then you must know this: your rank means little to nothing to them usually. A kunoichi is a ninja just like you. You have about a snowball's chance in hell of going home with a kunoichi that outranks you. It just isn't going to happen. As a matter of fact even if you're her rank she won't treat you with any romantic interest without a good reason (Such as you saving her life, you being friends with her for years and earning her unconditional trust, you being smoking hot and having her crush on you for years, things like that.) so rank is useless.

Also you must, must, _must_ make sure that if you're going to try and get with a kunoichi that you are just as strong as her or stronger. This is not any sort of chauvinistic bullshit, this is mostly for _your _safety, because if you piss a kunoichi off your rate of survival drops depending on how strong she is by multiples of two for each rank. They will gain strength past the limits of their normal parameters for every rank past Academy Student that they obtain. I've done my math over the course of my many years of life, do not dispute me! Who's reading whose book here?

I have much more advice than this (I have enough to fill a fucking book… as a matter of fact I might just do that.), but I'll leave you with this gem.

**The Only Pickup Lines You'll Ever Need:**

1) "Hey, my friends over there were wondering if you liked me."

2) "Just to get this out of the way; I'd like some sausage and eggs for breakfast."

3) Jiraiya: "Hey are you a courier ninja?"  
Hot Chick: "No. Why?"  
Jiraiya: "Because I swear you were checking out my package."  
Hot Chick: "*titters* I was. Now ravish me please. Call down the power of the ancient gods and ravish me pagan style you beast of a man."

You're welcome in advance.

* * *

Jutsu List

Sakura Hanakaeba no Arashi (Cherry Blossom Razor Storm). B-rank genjutsu, offensive, supplementary. Victims of this genjutsu will see a rain of cherry blossoms around them. The slightest movement will result in the sensation of being cut with tiny blades in order to force movement. Movement is necessary for the full scope of the jutsu to be felt; the movement of the body and its nerves will guide the foreign chakra through the system of the enemy making the illusion of more blossoms cutting into the target. While painful and difficult to stomach, staying still in the 'storm of blades' long enough to break the genjutsu is the best way to ensure the least amount of pain, but it also makes you a target for the caster of the genjutsu to attack directly with a follow-up.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5) **Revamped**

Team 7

Uchiha Sasuke

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 20**

Akimichi Chouji

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 1  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 17**

Haruno Sakura

**Ninjutsu: 1.5  
Taijutsu: 1  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 1  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 16.5**

Team Dosu

Kinuta Dosu

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 16**

Abumi Zaku

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 1  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 13.5**

Tsuchi Kin

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 14.5**

Sand Siblings

Gaara

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 1  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 21**

Temari

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 19**

Kankuro

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 19**

Team Oboro

Oboro

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 16**

Mubi

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 1  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 14**

Kagari

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 1  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 1.5  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 14.5**

Team Kabuto

Yakushi Kabuto *(You'd damn sure better know what the star means…)

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 16**

Akadou Yoroi

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 1  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Total Score: 16**

Tsurugi Misumi

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 1.5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 15**

* * *

**Hello all, hope you enjoyed. Alright peeps let's break this down so that it's easy enough to understand and is not open for too much interpretation. **

**Fuu has more of a reactionary social tic unlike Gaara's active belief that anyone that gets in his way in any form is a threat to his existence and he must kill them. Fuu's powers are based on her own awareness and how she reacts emotionally to anything; you know, fear and all of that jazz. By virtue of this in order to keep their 'weapon' sharp Taki more or less forced her to believe that any social situation she finds herself in is a chance for someone to harm or kill her. The more people around her and the closer they are, the more on edge she is, especially if their intentions to harm her are crystal clear. The only time she is ever really calm is when she's alone. **

**But here's the real kicker… being alone tends to really suck. Fuu's condition is also the reason she has a powerful partner using Kakuzu's technique, because there has to be **_**someone**_** around, and it has to be someone that's able to handle themselves.**

**Alright. My troubles are not solved for those that care because I am not going to school this semester, but at this point the overwhelming rage and the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach is gone and I am left with a sense of tentative optimism… because there's no way things can get any worse.**

…**God I just screwed myself over tomorrow didn't I? Tomorrow I'll probably have to run a Jack Bauer-esque marathon to save the country from terrorists or do something reminiscent of Bruce Willis in **_**any**_** of the Die Hard movies. **

**I hope it's the one where he roped Samuel Jackson along for the ride… I need an unwilling partner to spout hilariously vulgar and completely unrelated one-liners in a yelling fashion for no reason whatsoever. There's just not enough of that in my life.**

**But then again everyone needs a little more Samuel L. Jackson in their lives.**

**Everyone. **_**Period**_**.**

**Kenchi out.**


	26. Lying in the Gutter, Gazing at the Stars

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I would cry, but that would imply a sort of weakness or chink in my armor, and if anyone knows anything about Kenchi618 it is that he is invincible… and that he is fueled by almonds, Jack Link's Beef Jerky, and Cherry Coke. I will accept Mountain Dew: Voltage as a substitute for the last thing, but it has a tendency to mess up my transmission.

Things may not be going my way right now, but that's okay because I am STILL the greatest man alive at the moment!

Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 26: Lying in the Gutter, Gazing at the Stars**

* * *

With only a few minutes before Team 10's scheduled clash with Team Gai, the younger team of genin met each other in a preemptive powwow of sorts to hash out a makeshift gameplan now that they had seen all of Team Gai in action (Naruto had previously fought Tenten even though she hadn't been seen in the tournament so he got them up to speed). The anchor point of the brain-trust was Shikamaru and he had only come to one definite conclusion on their chances next round.

"We're screwed." Shikamaru said calmly and completely serious, nodding as he was certain of his statement, "We're completely, totally screwed."

Ino's jaw dropped at Shikamaru's blunt dismissal of their chances at victory, "What the hell do you mean we're screwed? We can't be screwed! Goldie-kun tell him we're not screwed right now damn it!" She said almost desperate to hear a contradiction to Shikamaru. Naruto could only give her a helpless shrug in response, "Why are we screwed?"

"One reason and one reason only." Shikamaru began to logically explain, "It's not Tenten… It's not really Neji even though he's definitely a big problem… because Naruto can beat Neji, and I might be able to as well. It's all Lee."

Ino tilted her head cutely to the side in confusion, "Lee?"

Naruto nodded, understanding Shikamaru's point, "Yep. Rock Lee."

"Why Lee?" Ino asked, honestly wanting to know exactly why he was the one they couldn't plan for.

Naruto and Shikamaru both looked at each other before nodding simultaneously, right before Naruto began desperately speaking, his blue eyes quivering, "Lee is _so_ fast! He's faster than me! Way faster than me! He can outrun Shikamaru's shadow all day long and you can't hit a moving target like Lee with your senbon or your clan jutsu Ino-chan! None of us know any genjutsu!"

Picking up where Naruto left off, Shikamaru argued his own point, "If it comes to a team battle then they've got it covered from each side, they know how their team works for them and they can cover Lee to come in close and pick me and Ino off. If it comes down to one-on-one matches then which one of us is going to fight Lee? He'll outwork me and muscle through my plans, and a dogfight with Naruto still has a good chance of him losing. Basically whoever fights Lee is going to get the crap kicked out of them win or lose."

"Okay…" Naruto said, trying to get a handle on the situation, "I'll fight first no matter what, and I'll stay in until Lee shows up. I'll either beat him or I'll lose… but I know I can wear him down enough for the next one of you to win after me."

Ino gave Naruto a deadpan look before adding her own opinion, seeing as how they left her out of the one-on-one deliberations, "Oh Goldie-kun that's so noble… but it's the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my entire life. We're picking one-on-one fights and I'll fight first. I know how to do this. You guys are looking at this the wrong way. It needs a woman's touch." She replied confidently. This confidence only got looks of skepticism from her two male teammates that got Ino to give them deadly serious glares, "I'm fighting first, if you stop me I'm going to poison your food with something humiliating the first chance I get. You know I can."

A squinted-eyed look came over Naruto's face, "Um, Ino-chan? I don't think-."

"I. Fight. First." Ino said with emphasis in her voice and a deceptively sweet tone to go with her smile, "Okay?" For some reason a shiver went down the spines of both Shikamaru and Naruto. There wasn't really anymore time to deliberate as intermission was just about over and it was showtime once again.

XxX

(On the Field)

During the coin toss, Neji just kept staring at Naruto with a smirk while Naruto tried to glare him down. He just wanted to beat that smug look right off of his stupid little riotous, high and mighty son of a-.

"Heads." Jei said, stopping Naruto's train of thought on mushing Neji's face into the sand in the Zen-garden… sand that probably had the remains of four people scattered in there somewhere. Heh, that would show him, "The older Konoha team gets to pick the conditions for the round."

"One-on-one." Neji said, sounding as if victory were assured by breaking up what had seemed to be a well-oiled machine of teamwork.

A nod came from Jei, "Alright, go pick your reps for the first fight." He instructed before both teams stepped away from each other.

Team 10 took this moment to address Ino fighting first one last time, "Ino-chan." Naruto said, stopping her and putting his hands on her shoulders, "Are you sure you want to go first?"

Instead of instantly answering, Ino frowned at Naruto and looked between him and Shikamaru before answering, "Do you really believe in me that little?" She asked, getting both of their eyes to widen, "I've been training hard to get better too just like you have for situations like this." She said, gesturing back towards Team Gai, "What's the point of letting you get all beaten up for no reason while I just sit off to the side? I've done enough of that thank you. This will be fine. I know what I'm doing."

With that, she got herself out of Naruto's very loose grip and walked towards Jei, leaving Naruto and Shikamaru to walk back to the viewing area by themselves, "Man I suck." Naruto said to himself, "For so long I've been thinking about how to get stronger to protect you guys and help you out because I thought that was what I was supposed to be on the team for. I didn't stop to actually think about how either of you felt about it."

"Neither of us ever particularly liked the idea of letting you do the lion's share of the fighting Naruto. Remember the mission to back up Team 7 in Nami no Kuni?" Shikamaru said, falling in step with his teammate, "You may have thought we died for a bit, but before that we had to watch you get torn apart by Haku in that dome of mirrors without having a way to reach you. That really stuck with us, especially Ino. This 'plan' of hers is something she thinks she needs."

XxX

Ino's eyes twinkled in triumph when she arrived back over to Jei to find Lee already waiting there. Once he saw her he frowned heavily, "I was hoping to face Naruto-kun first." Lee said in a disappointed sounding tone of voice, "He seems to have gotten stronger than when we first met."

"Oh, Goldie-kun is way stronger now than he was when he probably met you." Ino replied nonchalantly, "But sorry to say, you've got to fight me first if you want to get to him. I don't plan on making it that easy for you either."

Even if he wasn't fighting the person on this team that he was the most excited to face, a fight was still a fight, and Ino seemed to not be willing to hand him his victory on a silver platter, "Very well then Yamanaka-san. If you are to be my opponent then I will fight you with all of my strength."

'I'd honestly rather you didn't.' Ino thought to herself as she set herself into a special looking fighting stance. It was basically her regular stance that she used before, the Academy style that allowed her hands to be free for hand-seals, but this variation had her hands set in a way that slightly crossed them in front of her body, almost as if she was preparing for a preemptive block. It didn't seem like she was ready to trade strikes with anyone and it didn't look as if she was going to focus on her ninjutsu either.

"Quarterfinal round matchup, fight one: Rock Lee of Konoha vs. Yamanaka Ino of Konoha! Begin!"

Lee set himself in his stance, coiled and ready for whatever Ino's first move would be as he was prepared to fight a reactionary battle due to not knowing much about her fighting style. He was most certainly not prepared for Ino's hands to fly up to the back of her head in order to undo her ponytail and shift her posture into that of a pinup pose, complete with a cute and seductive wink at Lee.

"You don't really want to hurt me do you Lee?" Ino asked in her sweetest voice while keeping her pose, "I'd really rather we just put all of this silly fighting behind us, so how about it? If you quit I'll quit. That's fair, right? I'd be in your debt." Lee didn't seem like the kind of guy that spent much time around girls other than his teammate and she certainly didn't seem like Tenten would ever use this tactic.

It was just unfair, because even with Naruto's six months of building up a tolerance to Ino's charms this strategy always got him in the end without so much as a fight. There was no way Lee could resist it if Naruto couldn't. It was the closest thing that Ino would allow on that team to Naruto's Oiroke no Jutsu.

But for everything there was always an anomaly of some sort, and Lee seemed more confused than dumbstruck, "I do not understand Yamanaka-san, why would I concede to a draw when the battle has not even begun yet? And are you stretching after the fight has begun?" Lee shook his head and let out a chiding laugh, "Bad form. Very bad form."

Ino was surprised enough to drop her jaw at the lack of appropriate response, "You're supposed to fall to your knees at my charm!" She yelled at him in return, "Damn it if Goldie-kun had enough skill to make a subtle breeze with his wind chakra to blow my hair around you'd be putty right now!"

"Don't blame me for that crappy idea Ino-buta-chan!"

A growl came from Ino, "That's it, fuck it I'm pissed, let's fight!" And in one motion from the place of her hands behind her head she drew a senbon from a wrist-band that she hid underneath her left arm warmer and launched it directly at Lee with her right hand.

That was the go ahead for Lee to begin moving and he did so with gusto, trying to take advantage of Ino's wasted throwing motion once he avoided the small needle. But there was no wasted motion in Ino's throw, and she was able to get her hands back into her ready position just as he was upon her. Ino shot a leg out to catch Lee in the stomach, but he was too experienced at taijutsu to hit so easily as he simply moved out of the way of her straight kick and swept her standing leg out from under her knocking her to the ground.

The moment she hit the ground, Ino had already reached back underneath her arm warmer to let loose another senbon and her attempt to throw it forced Lee to pause in his attempt at an overhead ax kick that would have been directed at her. With the opening from Lee's hesitation, Ino rolled backwards to get back up before he launched another attack and jumped away from him.

"You cannot get away that easily!" Lee said as he rushed forward towards her again. He didn't get close enough to attack her again however, as Ino grabbed a small smoke bomb from her supply pouch and threw it at the ground directly underneath herself. It exploded in a cloud of blue gas and forced Lee to immediately stop his advance once Tenten yelled out to him.

"That's not smoke Lee, that's some kind of poison! Stay away from it!"

Lee immediately jumped back while holding his breath to keep from inhaling any of the gas at all, but was forced to dodge three more senbon flying at him from the cloud. He honed in on an Ino running away from him out of the cloud to get more distance and he took the long way around to cut her off and avoid the poison cloud.

The moment he really got past the cloud however, Ino jumped out past him perpendicular to his movement with an obviously poisoned senbon in her hand ready to give him some amateur acupuncture, showing that the Ino he had originally intended to pursue was merely a Bunshin.

Unfortunately Ino's movements weren't fast enough to catch Lee off-guard even though he only saw her coming from his peripheral vision.

Lee used his hand to block Ino's senbon hand downward, throwing her stumbling past him off-balance. He followed up by attacking with a counter spinning back sweep that knocked Ino off her feet and sent her spinning off into a corner pillar of the stone bridge set at the stream, "Konoha Reppuu (Leaf Gale)!"

Ino hit the pillar with her body, racking her body with pain as even from an attack such as that, just a leg sweep, there was incredible technique and momentum behind it, "Ugh." She sat up against the pillar with a wince as Lee came back in to attack her. His first punch missed and smacked off of the pillar and Ino's retaliatory strike was blocked and returned with an elbow to the side that sent Ino stumbling in that direction, 'His style is way cleaner than Naruto's. When I miss I pay for it right then and there.'

If you made a mistake when fighting Naruto his main objective would be to first try to grab you somehow, and if you knew how to defend yourself you still had a chance to avoid damage, one more mistake though and you'd wind up in quite a bit of physical agony if he managed to get a hold of you. On the other hand Lee would hit her the exact moment she screwed up, and unlike the spars with Naruto his punches were intended to break her.

'I've got to get away.' Ino thought to herself, barely able to defend against Lee as he battered her even through her attempts to block him. As she was being pummeled even around her tries to prevent such with her arms, Ino kept taking steps back. This eventually led to Ino stepping off of the edge of the flat ground and falling into the stream trench, "Damn it!" She yelled as she shakily landed on the surface of the water.

"You cannot run now!" Lee said as he jumped down into the trench as well and faced off with Ino as they both stood on the surface of the water.

While Lee seemed fresh and in his taijutsu stance ready for more combat Ino was bruised and rather thoroughly beaten as well as breathing heavily, 'Okay, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.' She planned on getting herself out of that damn moat the moment she could until she really got a good look around and a light clicked on in her head.

Running away was never going to work despite the fact that in Shikamaru's own quoted opinion Team 10 specialized in it, or more specifically 'hiding and running away'. The further she ran Lee would always catch up to her, so her best chance was to pigeonhole him so that lateral movement wasn't as much of an issue. If she could do that then she could find a way to poison him, she just knew it.

And this was the best place for it and the only real opportunity she would have.

Ino moved to the right, but Lee jumped in front of the direction she would have wound up taking, cutting off what he had thought would be an attempt by her to run away down the length of the stream. This was what Ino wanted though, as it made it so that if Lee tried to dodge to the sides there was only so far out of the way he could move without hitting the moat walls.

Once she saw Lee take the bait, Ino formed the ram seal to build up her chakra as she took a deep breath to focus it in the back of her throat, 'Let's see you punch your way out of this!' "Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!" Ino opened her mouth and spewed out a yellow poisonous fog directly at Lee, wide enough that he wouldn't be able to dodge it, and it expanded upwards so that he would not be able to jump over it.

XxX

Both Naruto and Shikamaru were watching Ino with rather proud looks on their faces. Ino's training for that jutsu partly consisted of building up a powerful natural immunity to the poison that she exhaled. Even after learning the process to execute the jutsu at the start of the month she had to adjust her body to handle storing the poison, something that was very hard on her for weeks at a time as she had to directly ingest the ingredients for her own poisons.

This was all done to make her little area of focus just a bit more practical for use in battle. She had done it for them.

"Lee!" Tenten yelled in alarm once she saw Ino fire her poison mist from her mouth, "He can't dodge that! He'll die!" Neji didn't respond, he simply stared at the unfolding battle in front of him impassively, though one could see the subtle tightening of his muscles showing his focus on the outcome.

XxX

Back on the battlefield, Ino's poison cloud settled over Lee's body and Ino stood staring and waiting for it to disperse so that she could see if she had won or not. She was ready to apply her antidote if the need arose immediately after she was called the winner of the match, 'I knew I could do it somehow.' She thought to herself as the air in the moat cleared out… and Ino almost lost her concentration on water-walking once she saw what awaited her, "You've got to be kidding me!" She yelled.

Why did she yell? Because Lee had gotten down on his hands and knees and had dunked his head underneath the water to avoid the poison. He suddenly pulled his head out of the water and stood up while taking a deep breath, "Ah, that was a close call… you are very skilled Yamanaka-san. I was right not to underestimate you."

There was no way Ino was going to let herself lose after everything that it took to get him down in the moat in the first place and she'd be damned if she was going to let her prey escape. He had to get close to defeat her, thus he had to be the one to stay close. She was the one dictating the field of the battle and she was keeping it down there where she had a chance at hitting him with something.

"It's not over yet!" Ino said as she made a small chain of hand-seals and inhaled deeply again, "Dokusei Tanki-sha (Toxic Spitfire)!" Ino fired a barrage of several blue poisonous projectiles from her mouth at Lee, forcing him to back off and run away to avoid getting hit with one. Ino wasn't done as she remade the seals and fired another set, keeping Lee in a constant state of retreat.

Lee dodged Ino's poison shots deftly as he kept moving further out of her range of fire far enough for her to stop shooting, "Once again I have to curse my lack of ninjutsu Gai-sensei." Lee said to himself lowly. He was worked in a funnel. The closer he would get to Ino the easier it would be for her to hit him with one of her poison ninjutsu. And here he thought all Yamanaka ninja used their mind techniques to win.

"Lee!"

At that moment the booming voice from the crowd sounded out over everything else once more and Lee obviously knew who it was after spending well over a year and a half training directly under him, "Gai-sensei?"

"Take 'em off!" Gai shouted confidently, "I'll allow it so that you can continue showing everyone just what you're made of!"

Hearing that he was allowed to 'take 'em' off' put a huge smile on his face and he immediately bent down to do just that. Ino figured that they were talking about something else entirely, "Ew! No, you do _not_ take 'em off! You leave 'em on! I don't want to see you go commando in that jumpsuit!" When Lee stood straight back up holding a pair of ankle weights Ino blinked in surprise, "Oh. Nevermind… but what are a few pounds of weight going to do?"

"That is much better." Lee said to himself happily before throwing the weights out to the sides. Once they hit the walls of the moat they smashed holes into them, showing just how heavy the weights were, "Now let us finish this Yamanaka-san." Lee said as he began to unwrap the bandages from around his hands.

Ino was now on the defensive more than ever, "You should have thrown those at me if you wanted a decent attack!" Ino shouted, "You aren't going to even get close to me again as long as we're stuck in-!" Before she could even finish, Lee ran at her faster than he ever did before, 'He gets faster?' Not giving up, Ino went back to the well so to speak and fired her poison rounds from her mouth, but Lee dodged them as if they were nothing. Getting desperate to stop him, Ino grabbed at the arm warmer on her right arm and pulled it back to reveal five wrist and forearm mounted devices; small barrels mounted on leather straps with strings at the back for Ino to pull to force them to fire.

And fire Ino did, shooting five senbon simultaneously down the moat of a stream at Lee in a manner that one would find it horrifyingly difficult to dodge.

But Lee did dodge, and dodge did he ever. Because the next thing Ino knew, just as she had started building up the chakra for her poison gas attack to keep him from getting closer to her he blurred right out of her sight and was right in front of her. Before she could even gasp in shock he had kicked her just as hard as she figured a mule would find a way to, possibly harder because she was flying through the air, 'No it's not over yet… it can't be.'

Ino made a move to try and turn herself around in mid-air to land better, but Lee was flying through the air with the same trajectory as her, following closely directly underneath, "Kage Buyou (Shadow of the Dancing Leaf)." Bandages began to wrap around Ino's body and constricting her from moving or trying to escape, "You are a very talented kunoichi Yamanaka-san, but our battle is over."

Lee then caused then to tilt directly upside down as he grabbed a tight hold of her and began rotating them.

XxX

In the stands, Asuma jumped up from his seat the moment he saw Lee hovering underneath Ino, "Gai, did you teach him how to open the gates and then tell him it was alright to use it on my genin?" He asked tensely, "He could kill her with that!"

"I know Asuma." Gai said seriously, "But he wouldn't have gotten close to her any other way as long as they were down there. She's smart enough to keep him back until she found a way to defeat him. It was necessary."

That didn't explain anything, nor was it what Asuma wanted to hear at all. But starting a fight in the crowd with his comrade wouldn't solve a thing, and besides, Ino was a ninja. She was prepared for something like this to happen.

XxX

The moment Lee started hovering beneath Ino it was quite clear that there was only one attack that would be worst-case scenario for her in that kind of position and they could see it in slow motion as if even they had Sharingan, "She can't break that…" Shikamaru muttered to himself and like a shot both he and Naruto were off running out of the room and down the stairs to get out to the field as fast as they could.

XxX

'I can't break free! I can't even move! There isn't any space for me to work the seals for a Kawarimi!' Ino thought to herself as she took a deep breath and braced herself for impact, '…Damn it.'

"I'm sorry to use one of the Eight Gates on you, but… Omote Renge (Front Lotus)!" Lee slammed Ino and himself top-first into the surface of the water, submerging them both in the water with a crash that sent water flying high into the air from the force generated by Lee's attack. The crowd let out a respective groan due to the rather brutal looking maneuver and seemed to be waiting on their hands for the combatants to surface.

After a few seconds, Lee emerged from the water to stand back on the surface and dragged Ino out as well before placing her over his back and getting both of them out of the moat and back onto land. Taking a few steps he set a motionless Ino down and walked away from her before heaving a sigh.

"Yamanaka Ino is unable to continue. The winner of match one is Rock Lee of Konoha!"

Lee gave a thumbs up and a bright smile before Naruto and Shikamaru ran over, beating the medics to Ino.

"Ino/Ino-chan!"

Her eyes shot open as Shikamaru helped her sit up so that she could spit out the water in her lungs from being stuck underwater and cough. Shikamaru pat her on the back to help her cough the water out, "Take it easy alright." He said once her coughing started to die down, "It's over."

Ino's loosened and thoroughly soaked hair obscured most of her face from view, though her voice was weak when she tried to speak, "That really hurt… *cough* …_so_ bad…" A weak smile pasted itself across her face, "Luckily my neck broke my fall."

'If it was on the ground instead of in the stream that would have killed her.' Naruto thought to himself. Ino wasn't going to be walking herself back up to the viewing box, that was for certain. Naruto looked up from Ino who was being looked over by the medics to Lee who was standing a ways away getting his second wind. It didn't look like he was going to switch out at all, "Lee's really dangerous… I'm-."

"-You're going to take Ino to the medic bay." Shikamaru said, cutting Naruto off and getting him to turn towards him suddenly, "I'm fighting next." He threw one of Ino's arms over his neck and helped her stand up so that he could walk her over to Naruto.

"W-What?" Naruto stuttered out as Ino was more or less dumped on him so that he was forced to keep her upright. He shifted her about so that he could hold on to her the same way Shikamaru had been, "Shikamaru are you serious? You're going to fight him?"

"Yeah… and you're taking Ino to the back because she doesn't really trust anyone to watch her vulnerable body except you." Shikamaru said as he shooed Naruto away, "Now get off the field. Two minutes are almost up."

Apparently the medics doubled as field security because they then began escorting Naruto off of the field. Without much of a choice left in the matter, Naruto moved Ino so that he could carry her piggyback-style to keep her from having to try to help him move her. A frown was evident on his face as he left the field, leaving Shikamaru out there with Lee.

"-ot… -im…"

Naruto heard Ino speak too softly for him to make out what she had said, "What was that Ino-chan? I didn't hear it." He asked, turning his head back to get a better view of the girl he was carrying.

Ino just weakly shook her head, not particularly up to talking anymore. It didn't matter anyway, not to anyone other than her at least, 'I got him…' She thought to herself as she set her head on Naruto's shoulder and decided to get some rest and heal now that she was eliminated, 'At least I got him.'

XxX

Genma was the next up to referee the upcoming fight and gave a mental time check before looking over at Shikamaru, "Are you going to get over here anytime soon kid? It's time to start."

A dry yet irritated look came over Shikamaru's face at Genma's question, "After what I've seen since round one from both him and every other fight start in this tournament ever I don't have to be anywhere near him to start, and if you think I'm going to walk over there and stand right in front of _that guy_ to start this fight then you must be as dumb as I look."

A twitching eye from Genma was his response at first, 'Finally one of these kids picked up on it. The whole field is the starting point. He didn't have to be such a brat about it though." Genma then began the fight announcement, "Match two: Rock Lee of Konoha vs. Nara Shikamaru of Konoha! Begin!"

If he wasn't already far enough away, Shikamaru turned tail and immediately began running away from Lee without even bothering to try and attack him directly.

Caught off-guard, Lee took a second before taking off in pursuit of Shikamaru. If he could outpace Ino then he could do the same to Shikamaru far more easily, even as exhausted as he was from using the Omote Renge. He felt slower than he should have felt without his weights, but as far as Lee was concerned he had just burned out his muscles beforehand with the use of the gates. He was merely tired.

Eventually he caught up to Shikamaru just outside of the forest area and cut him off by stopping directly in front of him, his back turned to Shikamaru, "You will not be going any further." Lee said, turning around and standing in his taijutsu stance before he looked down and realized something, "And neither will I. I am aware of your shadow ninjutsu Nara-san. If I get close enough to try and hit you I will be well within the range of your shadow. So the best way to ensure my own victory is to stay away and keep my own distance."

Shikamaru had a bored expression on his face and his hands in his pockets, "Sure. Whatever you want to think chief."

"But…" Lee said, immediately afterwards, "If I cannot attack you I cannot defeat you. So I must engage you in order to win this fight. So prepare yourself!"

Shikamaru just shrugged in response, "Alright. We can do that too." He took his hands out of his pockets and prepared himself for action.

"But…" Lee continued, once again about to contradict his previous statement, "I still have to think of a way to get close without getting caught in your shadow." He then looked around at the trees and the foliage around them, more specifically behind him, "Haha!" Lee exclaimed victoriously, "I have the advantage! You have nowhere to hide your shadow in an effort to ambush me. Therefore all I have to do is keep an eye on the shadow at your feet!"

Shikamaru nodded as if Lee's plan made sense before he spoke again, "How long has this been going on? I sort of lost count. Hey, proctor guy, how long has it been since the fight started?"

Genma shifted his senbon around in his mouth impatiently, "This 'fight' if that's what you want to call it has been going on for over three Kami-forsaken minutes." He could appreciate a chess match of an encounter, but this was far from that. It was like both sides were stalling… or Shikamaru was stalling. Lee was just being weird, "Why does it matter?"

No answer was given by Shikamaru who just rubbed the back of his head and spoke to himself, "Really? Well I guess this thing's been dragging out for long enough." He ignored the crowd's jeering of 'we agree' and he suddenly formed the rat seal to force his shadow to stir, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu)!"

"I appreciate your straightforward approach Nara-san, but-!" Lee tried to begin moving to avoid Shikamaru's shadow, but his body parts felt like lead, "What? Am I already captured?"

"Nope." Shikamaru said, "Ino just managed to get you with one of her senbon before last round ended. But it wasn't anywhere vital so it took a while to begin taking effect. There wasn't any reason to try to make you fight if you weren't going to attack me, so I just waited it out." He said as his shadow shot out towards Lee with intent to capture.

XxX

Naruto looked over at Ino who was sitting on a nearby bench getting rest and took note of the serene smile on her face, "You got Lee Ino-chan? When? You didn't hit him when you were attacking him."

"I didn't." She admitted, "But he dragged me out of the water after he piledrove me into the stream didn't he? And they didn't call the fight yet so it wasn't really cheating."

Tenten looked at Ino in surprise, "You actually poisoned him! Give me the antidote!" Her teammate was down there with a toxic substance running through his system.

Ino shook her head, "There is no antidote, it was just a paralysis serum that wears off in a few hours. It makes your body feel like you're playing tug of war with an ox just when you try to move an arm or leg, and I stabbed him with two of them. He can't outrun Shikamaru's shadow like that."

XxX

"Gotcha." Shikamaru said once his shadow got a firm hold of Lee's, "And that's checkmate. Give up or I'll make things get way worse for you. If you couldn't move before there's no way you can possibly move now."

'I have come all this way. I cannot just surrender like this.' Lee thought as he began to focus his chakra inside of his body, 'I refuse to lose!'

Shikamaru was unaware of the buildup of power beginning inside of Lee and tried to reason with him, "You fought hard and you beat Ino, that's something you can go out on, leave the rest to your teammates. I'm not sure I can hold back on my next move without killing you."

"I will not lose!" Lee shouted at the top of his lungs, surprising everyone in the arena that thought it was Shikamaru's victory for sure, "Kyuumon (Gate of Healing), open!" Lee's body underwent a vast increase of stamina that seemed to thoroughly revitalize his body and forced his muscles to improve back to the way they were when he defeated Ino, this allowed him to get the feeling in his body back, but it wasn't enough, it just meant that he was back to normal, "Seimon (Gate of Life), open!"

Shikamaru immediately went on alarm after hearing Lee shout. Once he opened the next gate he could immediately begin feeling the strain on his person to keep control over Lee. Luckily he had been training to keep a hold on stronger opponents like Naruto, and the Seimon only made it so that Ino's poison was useless in his system and he had enough strength to begin defending. It was still cause for great concern, "What the hell is going on?" At this rate, the hold on Lee would break, and the fact that his skin turned red once he opened the last gate didn't give him any solace either.

It wasn't fast enough for Lee's tastes though as he continued to struggle, and the moment he realized that brute force could break Shikamaru's shadow he decided to go for broke himself and open all of the gates he was able to, "Shoumon (Gate of Pain), open!"

"He has more?" Shikamaru asked, visibly sweating to keep a hold of Lee. If his hold on the Kagemane no Jutsu failed then he didn't want to know what would happen to him, 'Come on, there has to be a way to work this out!' He had to think of a way to win, there had to be something.

XxX

Asuma was on the edge of his seat, just watching with rapt attention and horror as Lee seemed to keep getting stronger and stronger. There was no way Shikamaru could deal with that, no matter how smart he was. It was brute force in its purest form, too much for Shikamaru to overcome with only the use of his mind.

"Gai how many gates did you teach him to open?" Kakashi asked accusingly, "This is insanity, giving that much power to a genin. You know how dangerous the gates are." For everyone, the user and especially the target. Shikamaru could be beaten to death if he was hit the wrong way by Lee. It just didn't seem fair by any stretch of the imagination, even used by a kid that had no talent for ninjutsu or genjutsu.

"You wouldn't understand. So I don't care about your judgment. Lee needed this." Gai said, confident in his decision to do so until Asuma grabbed him by the front of his flak jacket and pulled him close to look into his dangerous eyes.

"Lee got lucky with Ino, but if Shikamaru gets killed just because you wanted to give your student a nifty little world-beating kinjutsu I'll make you pay for it myself." Asuma said with barely restrained rage in his voice, "I can overlook once, with one gate. This kid knows how to open _four_ gates!"

"Five…"

"What?" Asuma said, more or less demanding Gai to repeat himself, "What did you just say?"

"Lee can open five of the eight gates." Gai said, not bothered by Asuma's grip on his clothing, "He still has one left to open. There isn't any sense of fair play here Asuma. This battle is serious."

XxX

From her seat, Tsunade could only shake her head, "A genin being taught to open the Eight Gates… that's sheer irresponsibility. It's over."

There was no feasible way Shizune could argue the point against her. It was clear how much power was radiating off of Lee, more than enough to finish Shikamaru, 'But opening that many gates tears your muscles after its use.'

XxX

"This… is… so… troublesome…" Shikamaru grunted out, struggling to keep his focus. He had a plan… not much of one, but it was the best shot of him not getting turned into human paste by Lee's fists, "I hate my job!" He was wasting his chakra just trying to keep this monster from breaking free.

"Tomon (Gate of Limit)!" Lee shouted at the top of his lungs, "Open!" The chakra rolling off of Lee's body was clearly visible, and then he did something terrifying, he crossed his arms in front of his chest as if Shikamaru's shadow wasn't even binding him, "This is it!" He then disappeared from Shikamaru's sight as if he had teleported.

"I surrender!"

Lee reappeared directly in front of Shikamaru with his fist cocked back, his body showing the full benefits of the five opened gates complete with the totally white eyes. He didn't let the punch go however, "W-What?"

"I give up." Shikamaru said, stepping back away from Lee with his hands up in a placating gesture, "I'm not going to get kicked to sleep permanently when I know I'm beaten. You win." He then turned his back and started walking away casually, "I'm done."

Lee stood stunned as his body still blazed with the effects of the Eight Gates.

"Winner of match two by way of verbal surrender: Rock Lee of Konoha!"

XxX

"It figures that a team with a failure on it would have a coward on it as well." Neji quipped in regards to Shikamaru's sudden surrender and no one there had any room to argue to the contrary. This left Naruto all alone with the series currently being three-on-one.

Said blonde didn't even bother to respond to Neji's shot at him as he was down the stairs and out the tunnel the moment he heard Shikamaru say that he surrendered. He sprinted over to the site of the last battle, and ran directly into Shikamaru, "What the hell am I going to do to beat that?" Naruto said in a low yell.

"Nothing." Shikamaru said plainly, "Just listen to me and do this." He said before pulling Naruto close to whisper in his ear. By the time he finished, Naruto's eyes were wide and he nodded dumbly, "Now stick to the gameplan… no bravado or hero tactics here." With a firm pat on the shoulder he walked past Naruto back up to the observation area.

Naruto himself instead of charging out to begin the battle the way he was about to simply began walking his way up to Lee who was still teeming with power. By the time he got to face off with Lee he had a calmly lucid look on his whisker-marked visage.

"Are you ready?" Sekka asked as it was his turn to referee the next match.

"Yes." Lee said firmly, ready to uncork the assbeating of a lifetime on Naruto once the fight was started.

Naruto looked between Sekka and Lee, 'This better work Shikamaru... Tenten and Neji don't look like they're coming down, but why would they when Lee is like this?' Naruto stayed silent before turning to Sekka and cocking his head curiously in a fake-ignorant ruse, "Huh? I'm sorry did you say something?"

Sekka raised an eyebrow, "I'm asking if you're ready."

"No." Naruto said crossing his arms resolutely, "I'm not ready. It hasn't been two minutes so I don't have to fight yet."

XxX

The cigarette that had been placed in Asuma's mouth as a way of relieving his stress at the current scene dropped unceremoniously once he heard what Naruto said. He turned to Gai and saw a look of pure horror on the man's face and a grin sprang to Asuma's own.

It wasn't over yet.

"Yes!" Asuma shouted at the top of his lungs, "Yes! I don't know which one of those two little bastards thought of that one but yes! Oh Kami yes!" He turned to Gai and stuck up his middle finger in his face, "That's what I think of your Eight Gates Gai! And that's what Shikamaru and Naruto think too!" He started walking around his aisle with his hands up in the air in victory as if a giant had just been slain with a slingshot, "Kami I love my team!"

"But… but…" Gai looked absolutely mortified as he realized what had happened, "…That's not fair. That's completely unyouthful."

Still in the middle of his impromptu victory dance, Asuma still had enough time to stop in front of Gai and taunt again, "Well there isn't any sense of fair play here Gai, this is a battle!" He said mimicking Gai's earlier words, "That's what you get for bringing an explosive tag to a fist-fight! If the fists don't get close enough to fight and the tag goes off anyway who does it really hurt? _Nobody_!"

Kakashi looked at Gai's ghost-white face, loving the silence, and then back down at the battlefield, somewhat impressed, "Teamwork even in a series of one-on-one fights? Good stuff." The masked jounin said appreciatively.

XxX

In the viewing area for the other fighters there was a sort of stunned silence over what Naruto had just said until Neji let out a sigh, having seen the entire battle with his Byakugan, "That will be it for Lee." All eyes turned to him as he unhappily spoke again, "He will lose this battle… even if we switched out to save him he won't be any more use for the rest of the round if he even recovers enough to be a factor tomorrow."

"Are you kidding me?" Sasuke said, his Sharingan was on just so that he could even attempt to keep up with Lee after seeing Lee's first move once the other gates were activated, "Right now I can see the chakra flying off of him clearer than anyone else here and Naruto can't beat that. If he can even take one punch from that and get back up that would be amazing."

"True." Neji said, "But whatever Lee did to fully power out of the Nara boy's shadow technique and the girl's poison is damaging his body, and it is only temporary, meant for a quick burst before leaving him. I can see his chakra clearer than you can. I can see it coursing through his entire body, in places where it shouldn't be as intense, careening from his actual chakra gates themselves."

Tenten didn't really understand what Lee had done to gain so much strength, he could probably pummel a jounin into powder as he currently was, but she could understand what Naruto was doing, "Oh you've got to be kidding me. He's stalling."

Even the odd man out of the Konoha genin, Kabuto seemed interested in the turn of events, "He can't do that. Can he do that? Stall?"

After staying silent long enough to think about it, Sakura seemed amazed by the revelation, "Of course. At the beginning the proctors said that in the case of one-on-one matches there was a two minute period maximum between for people deciding if they wanted to switch out or not so that teams could deliberate. That was more so that people fighting back to back battles could rest, but they never said that fresh fighters couldn't use it either."

Neji nodded seriously, "He doesn't have to fight Lee or even try to outlast Lee while he is using these powers. He just has to waste as much of the clock as he can. It took thirty seconds for Uzumaki to get himself down to the field. It took fifteen seconds for him to get the scope of this plan from Nara when they were talking, twenty more seconds for him to walk over to the proctor and Lee… he had fifty-five seconds of stall time by the time he was even asked to begin."

"Yep."

Everyone turned around towards the back of the room to see Shikamaru sitting on the same bench as Ino resting his hands behind his head comfortably while she sat next to him still very injured, but smiling nonetheless, "Since I was going to lose anyway there's no reason to get put in traction before tomorrow trying to hold back a freight train when you can just let it run its course."

XxX

"I can do that right?" Naruto asked before pointing down at his foot to make up a fake excuse, "Because I think I've got a rock in my sandal and I want to get it out. I need a little bit more time to make sure I'm good to go. As long as I'm ready to go when two minutes are done it's cool right?" 'Please say yes.'

'You sneaky little…' Sekka said, trying to fight off a smirk, "You have thirty-four more seconds and the fight will start whether you're 'ready' or 'not'."

Naruto nodded and a smirk was unable to be hidden from Naruto's face as he remembered Shikamaru's words to him before he walked out to meet Lee.

_Just listen to me and do this. _Nothing_. You don't do a single thing. Before every fight they ask if the competitors are ready, which means that they won't start the fight if you don't consent before the time limit for the rest period expires. Use that. Lee said that he opened one gate to attack Ino, but that power only lasted for one attack, and did you see how tired he was afterwards? He can't hold that form of his forever, and you're going to draw this out for as long as you can because once it dies off he'll be completely exhausted. Now stick to the gameplan… no bravado or hero tactics here._

'We don't fight fair.' Naruto thought to himself as a method of reasoning out his own actions as Sekka counted down the last fifteen seconds prior to the fight starting, 'Everything in this exam is a weapon. The field, even the rest time is a weapon.' Lee's skin color turned back to normal with only a few seconds left and as Shikamaru said, he was completely spent. It was evident in his eyes that Lee had nothing left to give.

Beautiful.

But he was going to feel like a bastard after this was over.

"Seven, six!" Sekka voiced out loudly before beginning introductions with six seconds left of stall time, "Match three: Rock Lee of Konoha vs. Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha! Fight!"

"Sorry Lee, but I'm not losing here for any reason!" Naruto said as a form of apology for the plan to defeat him. He ran towards Lee who seemed barely able to keep one eye open but was still standing up. Lee's arms were down as now that the effects of the gates had worn off, Ino's paralysis poison had come back in full effect.

The first move from the blonde was a simple stepping thrust kick that even then Lee was able to catch with his lowered hands, but he found that Naruto's foot was stuck in his grasp due to Naruto's fighting style. Before he knew it, Naruto had jumped his other leg off of the ground and planted it firmly, shin and ankle first, across the side of Lee's head. The single kick left Lee loopy and on increasingly wobbly legs as Naruto backed off.

Naruto grit his teeth as he ran forward one more time and jumped towards Lee, drilling him in the head with a high-speed single-leg jumping knee strike, "Kakeyapakto (Flash Mallet)!" For extra purpose he grabbed a hold of Lee's head and pulled it towards the knee in midflight for added impact. And that was what it took to finally put Rock Lee down.

Sekka kneeled down by Lee and revealed that he was unconscious. His eyes were open but dull, and his body twitched as it tried to move, almost as if he wanted to keep fighting, but due to the paralysis poison he was unable to actually do so, as if a medic-nin would actually let an unconscious man get up to keep fighting anyway, "The winner of match three: Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha!"

Naruto didn't react to the cheering this time, he simply crouched down and turned his eyes up towards the competitor's box. There wasn't anything to celebrate yet. It took two of his teammates to put Lee down, because he didn't do a thing himself.

Tenten walked out from the tunnel next, a serious look on her face as Lee was being tended to by the medics.

As she walked over, Tenten placed a hand on her hip while Naruto was still crouched, "You sure you still want to fight?" She asked him, "You're all alone now."

"Ino-chan didn't get taken down and Shikamaru didn't burn Lee out just so I can stop now that it's two-on-one." Naruto replied, standing back up straight as he pulled his goggles around his forehead down over his eyes, "Besides, I told you I'd beat you didn't I? Now I don't have to look for you later just to fight again."

Tenten laughed softly at his statement, "Bring it on Naruto-chan."

Both Naruto and Tenten were ready to go as they were set in fighting stances before Jei even made it over to referee the fight, "You both ready?" He got a pair of nods from the two genin, "Match four: Tenten of Konoha vs. Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha! Begin!"

"Last longer than five minutes this time why don't you!" Tenten shouted as she grabbed a kunai and threw it directly at Naruto immediately.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" After making his hand-seal to create them, two clones appeared with one pulling Naruto out of the way to take the kunai hit for him. The second clone returned fire with a kunai of its own that Tenten countered with another kunai toss of hers before using her other hand to deal out a shuriken that dispelled the clone.

Playing up a theme from their last battle, Naruto made fifteen more clones to attempt to surround Tenten for an organized attack attempt, but she hadn't gotten any slower from their last encounter. Even so, as she took the time to dispel his clones with weapons to keep them from getting around her it gave the original a chance to move in and try his luck up close and personal.

This was perceived as Naruto to be a bad idea once he was suddenly forced to get directly back in order to avoid a whip cracking in his face. Naruto jumped away and stared at Tenten who was now holding an actual bullwhip in her hand.

"A whip?" Naruto asked out loud incredulously, "Who carries a whip? Ever! For anything!" There was having a lot of weapons, and then there was venturing into the realm of the absurd. There were many, many jokes of a Jiraiya-esque nature he could have been formulating in his mind at the moment, but then there was the part of him that was terrified at the thought of getting hit with that thing, 'I am _not_ getting hit with a whip today!'

Tenten scoffed in return, "Do you really think I'm going to let you swarm me with ten-million clones again like the first time we fought? I'm using one hand for the whip, the other to throw stuff at you and keep your clones the hell away from me until I can whip you into submission." She finished with a crack of said whip for emphasis.

There was something wrong with the way that last portion was worded but for the life of them they weren't thinking about that at the moment.

At once, Naruto made the hand-seal for more Kage Bunshin and formed a platoon of thirty clones flanking him before he made the gesture to send them after Tenten. Said girl swung her whip at the legs of the attacking clones, but they dodged by jumping over it. Once they did so however, Tenten started quickly backpedaling and using her free hand to pepper the clones with a ranged shuriken attack while they were in the air and falling back towards the ground. The ones that survived quickly learned that her swing with the whip before had been to lure them into the air intentionally as she masterfully kept them back, retreating all the while as she dispelled the bold attack attempts of Naruto's clones.

Even if he pulled his machete out he would never get close enough to use it so that was out for close quarters combat. She wasn't letting the clones surround her so he couldn't bombard her with distance weaponry, and she was forcing him to chase her because if he backed off to try and change the area of the battle he would still be playing into her hands. The further away from her he got the better off she'd be in the long run as long as she could see him.

He wasn't significantly faster than her enough to flank and overwhelm her that way either.

'Are you telling me that even after all this time she's still got my number?' Naruto thought to himself as he stayed far back enough to keep out of range of the whip but close enough to continue chasing her until he thought of something. Tenten would periodically throw weapons at him, but with the shuriken and kunai sent his way he could see them and block with the wide flat of his machete, 'Come on, calm down and think. What would Shikamaru do?' The last thing he wanted to do was panic and make a mistake that would turn things from bad to worse.

Well first of all they were out in the open, running nearby the stream, so the first thing Shikamaru would have done would be to angle the fight over towards places where he could hide and take cover. Easy enough. So without a word, Naruto began running closer and closer to the streamside still blocking Tenten's weapons before jumping the divide of the stream with the assistance of a suddenly created Kage Bunshin to shove him and make sure he made it.

Tenten narrowed her eyes at the two Narutos running perpendicular along the stream and threw a barrage of weapons at the one she figured to be the clone, forcing it to trip up and clumsily fall into the stream/moat in its effort to avoid the weapons while the other continued to pursue her on the other side of the stream, "The further away you get from me the easier you're making this you know. I've been throwing with my right hand."

"So what?" Naruto said as he continued to give chase, subtly and steadily trying to gain more distance towards the forest off to the side.

A grin came over Tenten's face at the asking of Naruto's question, "I'm left-handed." With that, she tossed the whip in her left hand to her right and that left her dominant hand free to do as she pleased.

"Motherfucker!" Naruto shouted as he could see the deadly, deadly metal projectiles flash into Tenten's left hand. No more time to mess around and try to guide her there, it was time for a tactical retreat as he turned on the afterburners and made tracks into the forest to avoid the aim of the sure-shot kunoichi. He suffered a few cuts in his clothes before he managed to get out of her sight, but better those than him.

"Aw, don't run Naruto-chan!" Tenten said as she jumped the stream herself and went into the forest area intent on turning Naruto into a human pincushion, "I won't hurt you that bad."

"I am not running away!"

"That's what it looks like to me." Tenten commented, putting the whip away since its use had run its course, "I won't miss again the next time I throw. I'll be locked onto you." She saw a motion to the side of her from the brush and threw a shuriken, hitting whatever it was as a puff of smoke came up from the place, "A clone. So this is all one big ambush." A few more rustling leaves in the trees and in the bushes resulted in Tenten hitting them nearly effortlessly as she slowly stalked through, "At this rate you're going to lose half of your surprise attack squad before they even surround me."

A nagging feeling in the back of her mind told her to duck immediately, and it was a good thing that she did because two of Naruto's clones were behind her. With a swing of their wind-chakra circulating machetes they cut through the nearby tree and felled it with one swing. Tenten filled them with metal in immediate retaliation, ridding herself of them as well. She really wished she'd never sold him that thing.

And like a scene from a movie, Naruto's clones began advancing wantonly on her direct position, using the trees for periodic cover once they saw their clone brethren begin to fall. The gate had slammed shut on the trap.

"We've been through this already once before Naruto." Tenten said in between her extermination of his clones that were getting closer all around, "Did you think that just by being around trees that would change anything?" She asked before stopping her technically perfect barrage of accuracy to place two scrolls upright on the ground, making a few hand-seals after doing so, "The venue might be different but song is still the same, Soushouryuu (Twin Rising Dragons)!"

She had apparently improved on the jutsu since the last time. This time the smoke expelled outward in a gust of air that obscured the clones' initial vision and stopped their advance for a moment. At that point the scrolls released smoke and unfurled into the air in a spiral of dragons just like before, and also just like before, Tenten jumped between them as high as she could and began throwing unsealed weapons at her multitude of targets.

Her aim was impeccable. Everything hit at least one Kage Bunshin, there were times when weapons took down more than one. When the clones started trying to take cover behind the trees she had an answer for that too, she started throwing kunai with explosive tags attached to make a nice little explosion that took out multiple clones at once. The trees knocked down by the explosive tags still hit clones as well.

Even when she ran out of things to throw in her supply they kept on coming though. It didn't seem like he was leaving anything to chance with his Kage Bunshin assault this time, but she had something for that as well, "When I said that it was still the same I might have lied a bit." She said revealing that she had wires attached to her hands that were connected to the weapons. She then started to spin around as the scrolls fell to the ground. The momentum from her spinning forced the attached weapons to do the same and they cut through anything that thought she had spent her entire payload of weaponry.

With one thing left to do, Tenten cut her own ties to her weapons, sending them flying in all directions one last time with a flourish before she landed on the ground in a crouch. The forest area had been utterly devastated. She had knocked down at least five trees with her explosive tags and had cut deeply into many other trees with her larger weapons.

This time unlike the last time she fought Naruto and was fooled by his Henge, she took note to make sure that all of her weapons were impaled into something, either the ground or a tree. When he last fooled her he had been a fuuma shuriken that had been laying flat on the ground, she should have seen that back then. This time there was nothing out of the ordinary. Nor was there any sign of Naruto or any Kage Bunshin.

'I got them all…' Tenten thought to herself, 'But Naruto isn't here. Did he run?' Naruto didn't run away, he merely got far enough away to be able to observe things that happened so that he could react accordingly. He wasn't there though. Either he had the best camouflage known to man or he was no longer in the forest area, 'I didn't let a single one get away. I aimed at the back first when I started my jutsu in case any of them tried to leave.'

The crowd was even slightly confused at the lack of Naruto as they muttered amongst themselves about where the young man could possibly be. Most of them had a great vantage point of Tenten's attack in the forest and saw her decimate every single replica without fail. There was no Naruto.

'Where is he? I can't fucking find him!' Tenten thought angrily to herself, picking up a random katana that she had used to chuck at and skewer several clones during her previous barrage, 'I just killed upwards of one-hundred Narutos and not even a single one of them was really even the real Naruto. How did I lose track of him? Let's backtrack.'

She exterminated the multitude of endless Naruto clones in the woods.

She fought off the attempt to lure her into the ambush forcing a premature springing of the trap.

She jumped the stream and chased Naruto into the woods in the first place out of his fear of getting a kunai tossed up his butt once she started aiming with her dominant hand.

He ran on the opposite side of the stream from her after getting help from a clone to make the jump go smoother, possibly in an attempt to get ahead of her and cut her off.

An analysis of the situation forced her to stop thinking backwards once she replayed the events of the moat-side pursuit in her head. Naruto made a clone that helped him jump it with no effort so that they could pursue her. This made one Naruto right behind her and one on the side of her across the moat. She got rid of the clone chasing behind her that tried to dodge a projectile attack and fell into the stream trying to avoid her. That impact would have dispelled any clone with as fast as they had been running and as hard as he would have hit the surface of the water tripping up at that speed so she looked past it, focusing on the threat of the real Naruto.

…Or what she thought was the real Naruto. She had been around the real Naruto quite a bit during his time before actively becoming a genin back when they had trained in the same area. He had shown that there were times when he was very clumsy when things weren't serious… that had to translate over to a battle at sometime and apparently then was that time.

…Because the Naruto that had fallen into the moat was the real Naruto.

"Son of a bitch, I can't believe it…" Tenten muttered to herself, taking an angry slash at a tree that stripped some of the bark off of it. At that, she immediately made to backtrack to the moat to pick up his trail again, "I hope the fall knocked him out…" And once she landed on the surface of the water in the moat she could see orange in the distance. Running towards it she saw that it was Naruto's short-sleeved windbreaker. She threw a kunai at it only for it to be revealed as the actual article of clothing and continued down the stream.

Further down the way she saw Naruto, sans windbreaker, floating face down in the water. The need to win was higher at the moment than concern for her friend as she drew a shuriken and threw it at him.

Hey, if he was already unconscious and drowning a shuriken in the back wouldn't be that much worse would it?

But when Tenten hit her mark that Naruto face down in the water burst into a puff of smoke. Further down the line of the twisting stream she saw a flash of orange that vanished once she looked up at it, "He's luring me." Tenten then set out to pursue Naruto and take him down before he figured to jump out. Much like Lee earlier if he was stuck in the moat he would be a far easier target.

As she reached the place where she saw Naruto last she came upon another windbreaker floating on the surface of the water. Again, Tenten threw a weapon at it before she reached it but then paused and covered her face when the piece of clothing detonated, 'A proximity explosive tag?' If she hadn't been trying to hit anything out of place with a weapon she would have run past the vest and the tag hidden underneath it been caught in that explosion, 'Oh you sneaky bastard.'

XxX

"Hey!" Ino said in an offended voice once she saw the explosion. Sakura had helped her over to the railing so that she could watch the fights, "He blew up his top! I made him buy that for himself on our first day as a team! Doesn't he have any consideration?"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes, "You make it sound like he doesn't have seven more just like it."

"That's not the point…" Ino said with a pout.

XxX

Tenten kept chasing him through the moat, getting close enough to see him just around the bends of the moat before it straightened out near the bridge. She tried taking aim and hitting him with something to at least slow him down but the bends of the moat walls and Naruto's attempts at running serpentine were effective enough to keep her from hitting him at a distance. Luckily his use of zigzagging allowed her to get closer faster. Naruto simply kept running without turning back until he passed underneath the bridge.

Tenten ran underneath it as well until Naruto abruptly stopped and turned around, holding his hand out, "Stop!"

Surprised by the force of his yell and the fact that he was finally stopping to face her, Tenten did just that, holding a katana at the ready, "Done running?"

"Kind of." Naruto admitted as he slowly made four slightly clumsy hand-seals, further putting Tenten on guard for whatever he had in store, "I'm done running because you lose. Fuubaku Houjin (Sealed Bomb Square Release)!"

Underneath the bridge where Tenten was still standing, there were tons of explosive tags, slapped to the sides of the walls in the dark underneath the bridge to mark the starting point of his trap and out in the open where Tenten was standing, just on the side walls instead, "What is this?"

"If you move then the tags will detonate." Naruto said with a grin on his face, "…Or I can do it myself if I make a single hand-seal, so…"

Tenten stared at Naruto with a hard look before sighing, "Fine. I quit. Now deactivate these things already."

"Not until I hear someone say it's over." Naruto said, looking up at the top of the moat wall at Jei.

The Kumo-nin looked at Tenten who nodded slightly before he projected his voice over the arena, "By way of verbal surrender the winner of match four is Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha!"

"Now let me out already!" Tenten said angrily, not liking the idea of being surrounded by so many explosive tags. There really were a lot of them, "Why do you have so many of these things?" She was now also regretting the fact that she was the one that gave him ink and sealing paper.

Naruto made a reverse ram seal to deactivate the trap and shrugged, "Because it's the second easiest thing I know how to make. I learned how to do this jutsu in a book." He walked over and began stripping the tags off of the wall to reuse since he deactivated them and had two minutes to do so.

Tenten frowned at being defeated but lost her ire as she watched Naruto and a few clones diligently take down his explosive tags. She got herself out of the moat and waited for Naruto to jump back up before addressing him, "I want a rematch when this is over." She said suddenly.

Naruto had been walking over to Genma who was set to call the last fight when he heard Tenten call out to him. He couldn't help the cheeky grin that came across his face as he turned back towards her, slightly lamenting the loss of his orange windbreaker top as now he was left with his long-sleeved blue shirt meant for winter wear, "Tell you what, come back in five months and challenge me again to see if you're any better… and you owe me something cool."

"What?" Tenten said indignantly, "Five months? And what do you mean I owe you something cool? Are you freaking kidd-?" She then stopped herself before she began to laugh. She started laughing harder and harder as she started walking away back towards the entrance tunnel to get off of the field, 'Stupid kid. He really beat me just like he said he would.'

Well Tenten seemed to be taking the loss well enough. At least it didn't seem like she was necessarily mad at him for it. That was good, he didn't want to make a friend mad just because he had beaten her. But the smile quickly dropped from his own face as he realized there wasn't really anything to smile about. He still had one fight left in order to advance.

The crowd began to cheer as it was the first series of matches that went this far. All others became rather one-sided after a time, while in this one the momentum seemed to be swinging from one side to the next. The next match would decide who advanced further.

It was one Naruto that was more or less still fighting fit against Neji who was supposed to be Konoha's best genin.

Both of them locked eyes, Naruto on the ground level of the arena and Neji up above in the competitor's box before he turned around and walked out of Naruto's sight to come down to fight. This was just what Naruto wanted the entire time; him vs. Neji.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

The mental portion of your combat readiness

The psychological part of our lifestyle is pretty important too. It doesn't matter how good you are, if your mind is in the wrong place you will be beaten by a genin even if you're a jounin.

One thing about it is overthinking your fights. If you overthink something long enough you're almost guaranteed to suck at it big time. Think about every single written test you've ever taken… I know I do. That should be a good example of performance anxiety, when you are fully capable of doing something but the nerves just screw you over. If you were given a test on the spot about something you couldn't possibly know anymore about you would kill it, but if you were given a week to prepare for the exact same test and you were told that if you failed it you could never be a ninja you would completely blow it, or at least not do as well.

The same thing works for fights. You do better in a random ambush than you would do if you were marching towards a pitched battle that you know is important.

To prevent overthinking anything like the consequences of said pitched battle that you spend two days travelling to, simply refrain from thinking of the consequences of the battle. Throw your rationality right out the door. This is harder than it sounds because you'll be thinking of your life, the life of your comrades, what could come if you lose the battle, all sorts of things. It takes practice with smaller things before you stop caring about losing.

I'm not saying to not be prepared; get your shit together for certain, make sure you're prepared, know you won't quit on yourself or your friends when the going gets tough, but as long as your bases are covered and there's nothing left to do but fight you should just go ahead and go about your business. A fight is a fight, so don't make it any bigger in your mind. Remember, your life is small and meaningless. The world's going to keep on turning with or without you sleeping in the ground.

Also learn to trash talk and have pre-fight intimidation practices in case you ever end up in a faceoff, because the less sure you can make your opponent feel of their chances the smoother things will more than likely go for you. Develop a thousand-yard stare that could pierce iron, learn to verbally cut your opponent to tatters and shoot their spirit from the skies, get a war dance or a grandiose pose that signifies that you are awesome and that your enemy will not win that fight.

Another thing to not do in order to keep your own sanity: avoid paying attention to your opponent's own prefight battlefield rituals, because some of that stuff gets abundantly weird. I'm talking twisting their own nipples weird or licking their lips with an abnormally long tongue weird. Don't be that guy, and for your sake don't pay attention to that guy, because the last thing you want to do to a guy like that is get close enough to fight him.

Who knows what he'll do to you if you give him the chance?

* * *

Jutsu List

Dokusei Tanki-sha (Toxic Spitfire). C-rank ninjutsu, offensive, short-to-mid range. This technique kneads the chakra in the body into a chemical substance that mixes with the saliva and is then ejected through the mouth, to be sent flying at an opponent in an unpredictable manner. It is a dangerous ninjutsu because if an opponent is hit with the attack they will find themselves poisoned by the chemical that makes contact with them as it will even easily soak through clothing and harm with direct skin contact, but the true purpose of this jutsu is a feint meant to disguise smaller and harder to see senbon that are spat at an enemy simultaneously in a straightforward manner. The poison spit direct the opponent's true attention with their strange and dangerous trajectory and intimidating appearance, but the real threat are the poisoned senbon that are harder to see and pay attention to.

Yamanaka Ino's Personal Poison Supply Color Correspondence and Usual Carrying Amount  
Blue: Sleep (Adequate Amount/Easy to Create)  
Red: Hallucinogen (Sparse Amount/Many Necessary Ingredients)  
Yellow: Paralysis/low effect (Abundant Amount/Easy to Create)  
Purple: Fatal/slow acting (Adequate Amount/Easily Procurable Ingredients)  
Black: Fatal/fast acting (Very Sparse Amount/Difficult to Create/Many Rare Ingredients)  
?: Interrogation serum (Not Yet Designed/More Research Necessary)  
?: Love serum a.k.a. Glorified aphrodisiac (Not Yet Designed/More Research Necessary/Currently Debating the Uses, Merits, and Ethics of Creating)

Kakeyapakto (Flash Mallet). D-rank taijutsu, offensive, short range. This taijutsu attack is a run followed by a quick and sudden jumping/diving knee strike to the face/head of an opponent. Rather simple in theory and execution, it uses the speed of the motion and the original force the user is able to generate with the attack to focus the point of the knee into a blunt smashing object. The potential damage of this attack is very high. A skilled Nebaiken practitioner can use this technique to chain into more complex maneuvers in case the strike is blocked.

Fuubaku Houjin (Sealed Bomb Square Release). Ninjutsu, barrier ninjutsu, fuuinjutsu, supplementary, short range. An array of exploding tags are placed around an area that can be detonated with a hand-seal and should their opponent attempt to move to exit the trapped area, the tags explode. The tags can be shut off by the controller.

* * *

**Chapter up. Next chapter is the rest of the quarterfinal fights and possibly the time between the fights on day one and day two for some more development if'n you catch my drizzift. Now I'm going to go take a nap before I go to the gym and get ready to go watch the UFC PPV tonight. Maybe those things will perk me back up?**

**Anyway, I'll catch you all later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	27. Way to Fall

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I have been hit with a hurricane, an earthquake, and all sorts of bureaucratic b.s. over the last week alone (That still might not be over yet. I'll find out by tomorrow before noon.)

...What the hell is going on around me?

**Chapter 27: Way to Fall**

* * *

In the stands, Shizune sat holding Tonton in her arms so that the little pig could see what was going on as well. She seemed to have an excited expression on her face as Neji walked out to face Naruto in the last fight of the series, "Wow, that was pretty cool. They came back from a three-to-one deficit by pretty much outsmarting two opponents back-to-back." Lee had accessed the Eight Gates and was forced to blow the technique without ever dealing a scrap of damage thus it was easy pickings for Naruto to finish him off in a move or two. Against Tenten she was outsmarted by Naruto's copious use of clones and field positioning, "This has been an impressive series."

"Impressive nothing." Tsunade muttered staring at one of the tickets in her possession, "If that brat knocks off the Hyuuga kid and eliminates that team from this tournament I'm out 200,000 ryo." Shizune's face was absolutely mortified at hearing that and Tsunade gave her a sheepish look, "Hey, they seemed like a sure thing to advance."

"You said you bet 20,000… altogether!" Shizune said loudly, Tonton also oinking angrily in her arms, "What are we supposed to do if you lose? That was most of our money that we have on us and there's no branch of our bank in this country! We'll never get enough supplies to make it out of the country now!" Why did she have to be the one that was responsible? Sometimes it was like travelling with a kid, a kid that liked alcohol and had the greatest chest in the entire world bar none.

"It'll work out." Tsunade said, not fretting over the monetary situation, "The brat just fought a full-scale battle. Did you see all of those clones he used? He's got to be exhausted after all of that. The Hyuuga kid is fresh and he's supposed to be the best. He can beat a tired rookie."

Normally, but if she thought that Naruto was actually tired after creating a hundred clones then she was horrifically mistaken. And there wasn't really anything normal about this rookie.

XxX

In the viewing area for the competitors, Tenten walked her way up to the railing and leaned against it with a sigh, "I can't believe he beat me. Half a year ago he couldn't even touch me." Her brown eyes then blinked in thought, "I guess he technically didn't touch me this time either… but man. He said he'd get stronger and he did."

"I didn't think Naruto could fight smart like that." Sakura said after seeing him trap Tenten. The last time she had seen him fight by himself he more or less tried to kick Sasuke to sleep until the self-imposed time limit on the match expired and that was the limit of his strategizing.

"Goldie-kun isn't stupid." Ino said, leaning on the railing near her old friend, "He just likes using his body more than he likes using his head." The wounded blonde girl smirked at Sakura despite her injuries, "But he always keeps saying his mind is scary… and he's kind of right about that. Shikamaru might be smarter than us and can come up with a plan for anything, but Goldie-kun is clutch and he can pull a win out of his ass if he has to."

Sakura took Ino's words to heart as something to remember since if they won their fights Team 10 and Team 7 would be facing off in the next round, but still, "You're talking like one of Naruto's half-baked plans would work on Sasuke-kun. He's still a long way from being that good." She looked over at Sasuke and noticed that he was looking intently at the field, as if he were trying to discern some kind of riddle. Or maybe the upcoming fight was just too interesting for him to respond to.

"Who cares about that?" Tenten said, possibly cutting off the two younger girls from bickering, "This is the last fight and the only thing you should be worried about right now. The winner's team advances. But Naruto can't beat Neji even if he could beat me. There's no way."

Shikamaru shook his head at Tenten's words, "I wouldn't be so sure about that. Naruto hasn't used up his bag of tricks yet."

Over with the kids from Suna, even Gaara was paying full attention to the battle for his own reasons, 'Keep winning Uzumaki. You'd better keep winning so that I can kill you legally or you'll regret it.'

XxX

Asuma had now settled down from his previous celebratory actions and had instead taken to taunting Gai, "So how's that two match lead working for you Gai? Oh wait, that's right they dropped the ball! Now it's dead even again, like nothing ever happened at all! I want my 80,000 ryo!" 20,000 ryo per sensei, since Gai, Kakashi, Asuma, and Kurenai had all bet on their teams to go further in the tournament. The winner of this series and Kakashi's team would be the only Konoha teams in the bet left to contend.

"It's not over yet Asuma." Gai said with a pinging smile, "You know full well how good Neji is. He won't fall easily even to one of your wily students."

"Yep. They're wily." Asuma admitted freely, "Team 10 is number one at running away, hiding, playing possum, misdirection, and all of that off-handed stuff. But when it comes to a straight fight there's one of them I'd never bet against, and he's out there right now."

Sitting to the side of them both, Kakashi took that moment to give his opinion, "You know, I'm actually really looking forward to this. I daresay I'm excited to be a part of it." He said in his usual dry tone of voice.

"So who's winning?"

The three men all turned to the side to see Kurenai descending the stairs with Shino helping Hinata on the way down, "It's more or less dead even going into the last fight." Kakashi said as he didn't trust Gai or Asuma to give impartial commentary on the happenings thus far, "It's actually been a really exciting series. And as you can see, Naruto and Neji are the last two standing."

Hearing that Naruto was about to fight Neji gave Hinata pause as she gasped at the news. Yet when she looked at the field she saw Naruto and Neji walking towards the Zen-garden from their respective places on the field to begin the faceoff, "Naruto-kun's going to fight Neji-niisan?"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

"Naruto-oniisama is going to fight Neji?" Hanabi said as she looked at the screen. So far this series of matches had brought up spirited debate and conversation among the people in the stadium, mostly questioning over how Naruto ever hoped to fight toe-to-toe with someone like Neji.

While her father was watching intently, prepared to see a more wider breadth of Neji's skills, Hanabi had a smirk on her face. Everyone thought that with Naruto's style of getting close he was at a marked disadvantage due to the Juuken and the Byakugan. Well she knew something they didn't, and she figured that she rather liked keeping the secret that she had.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

On the field, Genma stood between Naruto and Neji as they both stood across from each other. Neji's face didn't show any inflection of opinion on Naruto's reaching him in this tournament, but he spoke up anyway, "Are you ready to face your fate as a failure once and for all? This should be the ultimate lesson for someone like you, someone that did so much to get so close, only to fall in the end."

"If I lose it won't be because it was my fate to." Naruto said, his goggles that he pulled down before his fight with Tenten still obscuring his blue eyes from Neji's view, "It'll be because I wasn't strong enough today. But I am strong enough. Fate doesn't have anything to do with this fight. And I'm not a failure."

"I'll leave you with this…" Neji said coolly, closing his eyes and crossing his arms, "A bit of counsel to think on while you're sitting in the hospital after this is over. For as long as people have known of you it has been because you were a prankster, a loudmouth that everyone in the village had heard screaming to the skies about your foolish goal of becoming Hokage. What chance do you think you have of becoming Hokage? Every Hokage has been a splendid ninja from the moment they began, the second they picked up the art. Can you honestly tell me you can compare yourself to any of the past Hokage at this point in your career?"

Naruto's fists clenched in anger before unclenching, "Does all of this have a point or what? If I wanted someone to talk down to me I'd let Sasuke-teme do it. At least his banter is better than yours."

A smirk came across Neji's face as his eyes remained closed, "My point is simple. People don't change. The way you are born is the way you will be for your entire life. A failure will always be just that, a failure. And the only escape from your fate is death."

"So all of this was just me going with fate?" Naruto said, gesturing to the arena around him, "Getting this far in the exams, beating your teammates? Well fate must just love me then." He said that ironically because fate most certainly did _not_ love him, and he knew that from personal lifelong experience.

Neji shook his head, "Your victories are all circumstantial. You defeated Lee, why? Because of your teammates. You defeated Tenten with pure luck. It was pure luck that you fell into that moat and avoided the fate of your clones to her jutsu. And it was all done so that you could be taught this lesson by me personally. No matter how hard you struggle, no matter what you do, you cannot escape your fate."

Taking the last of Neji's words with a scoff, Naruto stood at the ready in his combat stance, "You make your own fate."

In return Neji slid into his own taijutsu stance with his eyes still closed, "It seems as though you are one of the types that requires a point to be beaten into your head."

"Likewise…"

The crowd was buzzing and roaring in anticipation for the bout. Genma looked between the two genin, and if those two didn't look ready to fight then he needed to reevaluate the definition of the word 'ready'. There wasn't even any need to ask them, he already knew the answer, "Match five, the final match of the series! The winner's team advances to the next round: Hyuuga Neji of Konoha vs. Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha!" If anything the people got louder in anticipation once he introduced them. A part of him wanted to milk the tension for all it was worth, but that would have been tacky, "Begin!"

"My eyes can see everything about you, and they can see that you are destined to fall!" Neji said before opening his eyes, "Byakugan!" The veins around Neji's eyes became visible, indicating the activation of this technique. With his enhanced eyes he clearly could see the grin that pulled from Naruto's mouth once he did so and the twinkle of his eyes underneath his goggles.

"Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!"

A bright flash of chakra emitted from Naruto's body in the form of a shockwave as far as Neji's eyes could see. A regular person could never see the technique, but Neji was able to, and he got more of it than he ever wanted to get a glimpse at as he recoiled in pain, holding his eyes and stepping backwards out of his stance.

XxX

Up in the balcony, Sasuke, who had been watching with his Sharingan on, abruptly turned his kekkei genkai off and turned away from the fight holding his eyes, "Gah! What the hell was that?" He shouted in pain.

"Sasuke/Sasuke-kun!" Chouji and Sakura ran over to Sasuke who had seemed to suffer some kind of damage to his eyes, "What happened?" Chouji asked in concern.

"It feels like a flash bomb went off in front of my face!" Sasuke said, rubbing his eyes to get some kind of relief.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Hanabi shook her head once she saw Neji recoil in pain at what the audience perceived to be nothing, "Poor Neji. Naruto-oniisama's technique is the downfall of all doujutsu of insight."

"What do you mean by that Hanabi?" The little girl turned to her father who was looking at her with his usual stern, taciturn face that would have intimidated anyone else. To her he was just 'dad' so it wasn't particularly unnerving, "Do you know what just happened?"

Hanabi nodded, "Yes father. Naruto-oniisama released a pulse of chakra that he uses to locate things around himself. But when you look at it with the Byakugan it looks like a flash of chakra moving in all directions before hitting us in the eyes." She shivered in her seat slightly at recalling her experience with it, "It's terrible."

It was strange to see his daughter acting like a normal little girl due to the way she was during training, but that shiver was not an adult Hyuuga gesture, it was something a little girl would have done.

But he understood what she was saying nonetheless. The Byakugan could see chakra. Naruto was releasing pure chakra as a method of sensing the environment around him. That chakra flew outwards sharply and swiftly, otherwise the technique would be useless for sensing if it were slow. And once the chakra hit someone's body it would also run up their front, as in their faces, and the chakra would also run across their eyes.

As far as a Hyuuga was concerned that was like running a searchlight directly at their face or worse. Worse because it seemed to hurt at close range, and worse because as long as the Byakugan was active there was no safety from that move even with their backs turned due to the 360 degrees of sight.

XxX

Naruto let out a boisterous laugh as Neji stumbled back, "Can you see me now?" He asked with a devious looking grin on his face, "Then take a look at this!" Naruto ran forward and placed his own head under one of Neji's arms before securing his own arms in place around Neji's torso, trapping him in place. He then popped his hips and lifted Neji in the air by this manner before bridging himself backwards and slamming Neji over onto the sandy ground, leading with his upper back, shoulders, and neck, "Ourora no Jozan (Aurora Divide)!" Naruto then rolled through his bridge and backflipped over Neji, landing on his feet.

At first Neji didn't move an inch from his position, laying on his shoulders and neck with the lower half of his body folded forward and the top half stuck in the sand, but eventually the rest of himself rolled through as well, depositing himself face-first on the ground instead of on his back.

Naruto figured he was out cold, or worse. The landing was terrible, he fell with all of Neji's and his own weight on the back of Neji's head, neck, and upper back. However Neji's hands gripped the sand in the Zen-garden tightly and he pushed himself back up to his knees and then his feet, showing Naruto that while he had his head in the sand he had deactivated his Byakugan, "Interesting…" Neji said as he slowly got up, "I believe you would do the same thing every time I activated my Byakugan… what a trump card."

"Little Hanabi told me that my sensor jutsu hurts the Byakugan." Naruto said with a smirk on his face, "And I figured, what better way to handicap you? If you can't use your Byakugan you can't use your Juuken. You're done!"

"I see…" Neji said wiping the sand off of himself and working his neck to ensure that he wasn't injured. The sand had _literally_ saved his neck, because Naruto had spiked him like a lawn dart, "It is quite ironic that despite the fact that the Branch House is slated to serve the Main House, it is a Main House Hyuuga that has revealed a weakness to our Byakugan. Ironic in the most anger inducing way possible."

Naruto shrugged with a frown, "Little Firecracker didn't do anything, I used the jutsu around her, it hurt her eyes. It's that simple, it's not hard to put together." It wasn't fair to blame Hanabi for watching him perform his jutsu the way any Hyuuga would have, "Hey, maybe I was fated to learn this jutsu so that I could kick your ass?" He joked, getting back into a ready position.

Neji set himself back into a basic Jyuuken stance, "I didn't say I gave up. I simply said that the Byakugan was useless against you. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. I am not that easy to overwhelm."

"Yeah?" Naruto said with a chuckle, "Well what are you going to do if you can't see inside of me to do anything? Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Four Naruto clones popped into existence and rushed at Neji directly, looking to take advantage in a hurry.

"If you think that I need my eyes just to fight…" Neji said as two Narutos came at him first, reaching out to grab him. He swatted the hand of the one on his right down and spun around, simultaneously grabbing that clone by the face and sweeping the leg of the other one, knocking it to the ground as his hand formed a claw hold on the clone's face and slammed it to the ground by the head, dispelling them both, "…You are _woefully_ mistaken."

Naruto had felt victorious until Neji managed to defend himself with a more brutal and direct looking attack style than Naruto had seen him use with his Juuken, "What?"

Neji stood back up regularly and remained in his fighting stance, "Do you really believe that all we are taught is how to attack the tenketsu and your chakra network? That we were poking around with your chakra from the very start of our training? Wrong." Neji said, narrowing his eyes, "Before we ever gain access to our Byakugan we are taught to fight from the moment we are able to stand and walk. So until we can access our Byakugan we are drilled in a harder style based on the principle of teaching our younger practitioners the basis of the Juuken and conditioning them to some of the motions they will learn later."

A blank stare came from Naruto, even visible even through his goggles as all three remaining Narutos tilted their heads to the side, "Huh?" They chorused in unison.

"Idiot…" Neji mumbled before trying to dumb it down, "Before we learn the actual Juuken, to get us used to fighting we learn a full-contact style based on the Juuken. One that doesn't cause internal damage and is less precise since it is meant to hurt you externally."

"Oh." All of the Narutos said at the same time, understanding him now, "But why didn't you just say that at first?"

"I did!" Neji snapped at him before regaining his stoic composure, "However I don't need to use chakra to deal you damage, but then again adding it doesn't hurt… because after all if I hit you in the heart or in an organ it doesn't matter if I can see it or not does it?" With that, Neji charged forward at Naruto and his two clones.

Running interference for their creator, Naruto's clones charged ahead to meet him, both of them throwing punches that Neji caught in the palms of his hands, but when he tried to pull away he found that his hands were stuck fast to the fists of the clones who both smirked as they had Neji held wide open for the original Naruto who ran up to Neji and jumped up and kneed Neji in the face, then sticking himself to Neji's chest with his right knee and his shoulder with his left foot as a base for himself to settle to aim his elbow at the top of the helpless Neji's head for a sharp downward strike, "Kuro ni Utsurou (Fade to Black)!"

Just before Naruto could deliver the crushing elbow strike that would have smashed the top of his head like a coconut, Neji allowed himself to fall directly back while Naruto's clones were still sticking to his hands. He used his legs for a pair of rolling throws to toss the clones overhead. He went all the way through with his roll, winding up with him on top, and the attached Naruto on his back on the ground. Neji drew his hand back for a palm strike meant to deliver crushing damage to Naruto's face.

However he was still close to Naruto, and Naruto switched up his taijutsu gameplan. He gained enough space between himself and Neji to shoot his legs up, wrapping them around Neji's neck and one of his arms under the shoulder, trapping him in a tight choke, "Sankaku-Jime (Triangle Choke)!"

Neji began flailing away once he felt his breathing begin to strain and eventually stood back up with Naruto's body hanging off the top of his head, holding his top half bent over towards the ground. In a move of desperation, Neji moved his legs by Naruto's head and began to stomp on his face, eventually dislodging him and freeing him before he could lose consciousness.

In retaliation for the stomps that busted his nose, after letting go of his choke on Neji, Naruto kept a hold of the end of Neji's very long hair while still on his back on the ground and proceeded to kick him in the head and face repeatedly and unmercifully.

'He fights like a thug.' Neji thought to himself as Naruto's kicks scrambled his senses. He reached for a kunai and used it to cut the last few inches of his own hair under his tie that kept it from swinging too wildly in battle. He looked down at Naruto angrily and turned his kunai in his hand to stab downward at the grounded Naruto only to find his blade clashing with Naruto's quickly drawn machete.

The blood from the wounds that had freshly been formed on Neji's face by Naruto's barrage of savage kicks dripped down onto Naruto's face before the blonde with the currently bloody nose and busted lip kicked Neji in the side of the head one last time to break up their crossed blades, allowing him to jump back to his feet.

Neji spit blood on the ground in a very undignified manner as he still held the kunai in his hand, "I see you fight appropriately to your station." He again saw a blank look on the bloody face of Naruto and sighed as he put the weapon away, "You fight like a hood."

"It's supposed to look ugly." Naruto said in defense as he sheathed his machete, "And it works. Now let's try this again." With that he made three more clones that went after Neji like before.

When they got close enough to engage him, one clone ate a kick to the face that dispelled it, but the two others managed to get a hand on Neji, sticking to him again to hold him in place as one of the clones delivered a nasty close-range knee strike to Neji's body. The original Naruto took note of this and formed dozens of clones that rushed forward to take advantage, this time with a knockout beatdown of epic proportions in mind.

Instead of panicking to free himself, Neji smirked at the advancing original, "I know the secret to your taijutsu." Neji said before somehow breaking the grip of the clones and a wave of visible chakra emitted from his body just as Naruto started jumping towards him set to attack, "Hakkeshou Kaiten (Eight Trigrams Palm Rotating Heaven)!" He began to rapidly spin, turning that visible chakra into complete shield of the energy that dispelled the clones and knocked Naruto away, sending him bouncing off of the top of a rock in the Zen-garden.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

'What?' Hiashi thought to himself in shock as he saw Naruto get sent flying by Neji, 'That was a Main Branch technique! How did he learn how to perform it?' He could see the satisfied look on Neji's face over the monitor as if the boy just knew that he was being watched by Hiashi right then.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exam Arena)

Naruto appeared from the other side of the rock his body had unceremoniously bounced off of, still ready to fight as he shook the sand off of his body, blood streaming down his face from his forehead, nose, and mouth from accumulated damage, "What was that? How did you break my grip?" No one had ever done that before. He had been overpowered once he had actually grabbed hold of someone, but once he grabbed someone that was that. He didn't let go until _he_ wanted to do so. Until now. He was actually more concerned about that than Neji's defensive jutsu.

"You think that I'm not aware of your application of the tree-climbing exercise to you taijutsu?" Neji said before chuckling a bit, "It took a moment at first to realize how you were sticking to me _with the back of your hand and the bottom of your knee_. But then I realized that you're just using tenketsu that most shinobi ignore due to the lack of use they generally find from them. I can break your chakra's grip on me by disrupting it with my own chakra flow in that exact spot. Most shinobi wouldn't be able to do this, you're just unfortunate that you ran into me."

Okay, so grabbing Neji and caving in his face with profuse violence was no longer an advantageous option.

Machete time.

"I don't need to grab you to hurt you, and I've been kicking your ass from the very start." Naruto said as the metal of his machete rang against the sheath when he drew it, "The only time you've ever hit me is just so you could keep me from putting you out. You can take a beating though."

"You'll never touch me again." Neji said resolutely, "You can't get past my ultimate defense."

"Let me guess." Naruto said dryly, "I'm fated to be stopped by it."

Chucking his machete would be a no-go this time. That only worked the last time because his opponents had trapped themselves and made it as easy as hitting fish in a barrel. Neji had already seen it once and wouldn't be stupid enough to stand in its way and test his defense against it even if he believed it was that strong, he could avoid it as easily as child's play. He didn't peg Neji as the type to do something unnecessarily so he wouldn't either.

But then again Asuma said that wind element chakra could cut through anything.

"Let's see if your ultimate defense can stop the ultimate battle element from cutting it to ribbons." Naruto said, holding his machete at the ready to charge Neji down.

Neji merely smirked and set himself in his stance, prepared for the clash of abilities, "If that is what you want. I'll be glad to embarrass you again before I end this battle, all without the use of my Byakugan. Even without the use of my kekkei genkai you're still just a failure, destined to fall to one greater than you."

Instead of charging, Naruto let his machete fall from his grasp as he held onto it by its chain to keep it from falling into the sand, apparently having second thoughts on the charge, "You know for someone that thinks they can see everything you sure are blind. What do you think of yourself? Tell me your opinion of Hyuuga Neji."

Neji blinked in surprise. No one he had ever talked down to ever asked him that question, "I'm referred to as a genius. A prodigy. The strongest Hyuuga of my generation some say."

"I didn't ask you that." Naruto replied, pulling his goggles up back to his forehead to look Neji in the eyes seriously, "I asked you what do you think of yourself, not what other people think of you."

Once Naruto's question rolled through Neji's mind for a few seconds, he clenched his fists hard enough to draw blood from his unbandaged hand, "I'm a slave, destined to toil for the rest of my life in a role thrust upon me due to an unfair caste, all for 'tradition'. No matter what I do, no matter how talented I show myself to be I will always be considered beneath talentless people who are incapable of being effective ninja. People like Hinata-sama." He finished, seething in anger, "I'm like a bird that's been caged, never to find a use for the wings I've been granted. Never to fly."

"And you're okay with that?" Naruto asked him, "You're alright with thinking of yourself as a slave, as useless? Then you're the failure. Not Hinata, not me… it's you." Neji's eyes widened at Naruto, "I might not be the smartest ninja ever like Sakura-chan or Shikamaru, and there are guys like Lee that are faster, and guys like you and Sasuke have amazing bloodline abilities that I can't touch, and Gaara and Fuu have powerful techniques that make fights so easy… I know that." He admitted freely, "I did fail. I got knocked down a lot… and believe it or not I got knocked down right at the start of my life, kind of like you."

Neji's eyes narrowed and the only thing keeping him from activating his Byakugan out of anger was the fact that Naruto could let loose a blast of chakra that would make him blind again. He didn't think he could dodge an attack blind.

He'd have to work on that later or something… in addition to trying to overcome his blindspot even when the Byakugan was active.

"What would you possibly know about having a mark on you that you can never rid yourself of? That follows you everywhere and will be with you until you reach the grave." Neji said in an accusing voice.

"You can believe me if you want to, it doesn't matter." Naruto said, not upset at all by Neji's refusal to believe his words, "But even though I've failed before, even though Hinata might have failed before, we're not _failures_. Everyone screws up, but being a failure is letting everything that's happened get to you, to let it beat you in the end like you did. You've got to keep reaching. You're not born to be a success or a failure, you've got to make it that way yourself. No matter what you're going to get knocked down somehow… you've just got to know how to fall… and get back up when you do."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Hanabi looked at the screen with Naruto's face on the screen with a huge smile on her face. One could even say that her clear eyes were sparkling at the way the whole thing looked on the screen. It was like Naruto was a superhero or something… mostly because on the massive screen that allowed everyone in the stands to see the action you barely registered the fact that Naruto was so short.

"Naruto-oniisama is so cool." Hanabi whispered in awe. She didn't even care if her father heard her that time. It needed to be said. Uzumaki Naruto was the coolest person she had ever met in her seven, going on eight, years of life. Of course that might have been because she didn't get to meet many people outside of her clan and he was the one she had the most pleasant prolonged contact with.

On the other hand, Hiashi didn't care about that. His mind was stuck on the concept of failure and Naruto was right, everyone made mistakes. No one is ever perfect, but if one shows the desire and intent to improve their faults then anything could be overcome in time, 'Maybe even the rift in our family can be as well.'

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exam Arena)

The crowd had been dead silent for Naruto and Neji's conversation, hence they heard it all. It brought a smile to Hinata's face when she heard Naruto more or less defend her from Neji's accusations of referring to her as a failure, 'Naruto-kun you really are a strong person.'

Kurenai had to smile at that kind of determination and even Kakashi's single visible eye crinkled in approval. Asuma just lit a cigarette with a cool look on his face that said, 'That brat's on _my_ team.'

And Gai… well Gai was being youthful, "Such passion and heartfelt determination!" Gai exclaimed with tears streaming down his face dramatically, "A spirit that shines bright in the dimmest of backgrounds can only be held by one brimming with youth! Go Naruto! Show the hard work that has brought you this far, and let it burn brighter than the flames of genius!"

Kakashi had to then choose that moment to chime in, "Uh Gai, not that there's anything wrong with rooting for Naruto… but this is the last fight. If Neji loses then your team loses, and that means you lose… and you're out 20,000 ryo."

"I deserve such a punishment for engaging in the unyouthful activity of gambling in the first place!" Gai said, now shedding tears over his own regretful actions, "And Neji will learn a far greater lesson should he lose! Yes, Naruto's victory is the best thing for everyone! Naruto! Take notice of my manly features as I, Maito Gai, cheer you on to victory!"

XxX

Kabuto looked down at the field sheepishly after hearing Naruto speak to Neji, "He's one tough guy isn't he?"

"More like stubborn." Sasuke remarked with a smirk.

Ino shook her head with a smile on her face, "That's our Goldie-kun though."

XxX

(On the Field)

"We'll see how strong that heart of yours is once you're in cardiac arrest." Neji said to Naruto, done with talking and prepared to fight again.

"You really are blind." Naruto said, swinging his machete around in a circle, "Not for the other reason I was talking about before, but because you didn't see this coming." Naruto said as he made a single half-ram seal with his other hand, "…Maybe that just makes you deaf though."

It was a wonder to Neji what he was talking about until he paid attention over the crowd noise and heard a sizzling sound underneath his feet, "What? No! I won't!" Neji immediately activated his rotation technique just as a massive blast rocked the area around him. The smoke from the explosions cleared and Neji stood standing in a smoking crater created by his jutsu and the explosion, breathing heavily at the near miss that he managed to block, "That was it? I told you that nothing gets through my defense."

"Nothing that you can see." Naruto said, still swinging his machete in a casual circle, "But who do you think planted those tags in the first place?" He said with a massive grin before letting out a sharp whistle.

Before Neji knew it, ninja wire had been bound tightly around his entire body, holding him in place, unable to initiate the rotation aspect of his defensive jutsu, "I… can't move." From the sand rose up three clones of Naruto; one behind him and one on either side of him, all holding the wires tight, "What?" The clones all had their goggles down and their bandit bandanna-style headbands pulled up over their mouths and nose in addition to being covered with sand, "The sand was loose enough for them to crawl underneath towards me! But how could they see me down there? How did they know where I was? And when did you make them?"

"I made them when you tossed me behind the rock with your spinny move." Naruto said, "You can't see everything important without your eyes on remember? You've got a bad habit of not looking around you past what you already see in your field of vision." That was a bad habit from Byakugan use that Naruto picked up on early, "What you see normally isn't all that's going on around you! And they found you because that jutsu I used to blind your Byakugan isn't meant to do that, it's supposed to be a sensor jutsu. Sand is loose enough for me to feel things through unlike solid ground, so they knew where you were the whole time.

"I can't believe it…" Neji thought, continuing to struggle in vain. One Naruto was strong enough on his own, three holding him was impossible to free himself from, and instead of using chakra they managed to sneak the ninja wire around him under the sand so there was no way to break free without the necessary brute force.

"Believe it." Naruto said, making a holding out his machete in front of him by the chain at the end of it as he started to swing it in a circle faster and faster, channeling wind chakra through it as he made a half-ram seal and held the extended fingers up to his neck as if he were checking his pulse, "You lose, dattebayo. Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!" Naruto began swinging the machete on the chain almost making it look like the blades of a fan before he held it up in front of his face and blew into it.

A direct cyclone the circumference of the swinging machete's length came flying out from the front of where Naruto was blowing through. It blew all the way towards Neji and engulfed him completely before small cuts began to appear all over his face, clothes, and body from the jutsu. Neji began to scream in pain from the wounds being created on his person, not even able to step back or get his arms up to try and protect his body, before he finally fell to his knees and slumped to the ground unconscious.

The clones dispelled as Naruto cancelled the jutsu and stopped swinging his machete, letting his arm and the chain go slack as the blade of the machete dropped limply into the surface of the sand. He let out a sigh as Genma walked over to Neji to check him over. As the proctor checked for Neji's well-being, Naruto placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He was glad he was done fighting for the day… just as soon as Genma-.

"The winner of match five: Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha! Therefore advancing to the semifinals of the tournament are the winners of bracket one: Nara Shikamaru, Yamanaka Ino, and Uzumaki Naruto!"

That was what he wanted to hear.

And apparently the crowd did too as they went wild at the conclusion of the battle. As the medics checked Neji over for any substantial damage, Naruto walked away and gave a few waves to the crowd with a grin on his face, keeping the cigarette trapped between his teeth. Eventually he got too excited to just walk back and started running and jumping around at his victory, all the way back to the tunnel.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Even Konoha's partial crowd had to cheer at the conclusion of the Team Gai/Team 10 series of battles. The fact that the resident jinchuuriki managed to pick up the win didn't seem to bother them much, if any at all. On the screen he didn't look like a container that was going to lose control and bring about Kyuubified doom upon them all at the drop of a hat, he just looked like an excited kid that had just picked up the biggest success of his entire life. Who couldn't feel that and get excited about it?

Up in the highest box with his sensei's two oldest teammates, Jiraiya had to let out a laugh, "Way to go kid. I told you if you really wanted something, you take it."

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exam Arena)

At the moment, the Konoha contingent were mostly mortified due to the actions of one of their jounin. This time shockingly it wasn't Gai, it was instead Asuma who was up and celebrating Team 10's victory the only way that was appropriate for that point in time with a come from behind win like that.

By standing and repeatedly pelvic thrusting directly in Gai's direction triumphantly… while he was still seated.

"Can you feel it Gai?" Asuma asked while pelvic thrusting after every other word for emphasis, "Can? You? Feel? It?" Kurenai was covering the eyes of Shino and Hinata from Asuma's rather lewd physical gestures, "That's the feeling of watching your team get smoked like the last pack in the carton! Kami, it's a good time to Sarutobi Asuma right now!"

While this was occurring, Kakashi took out a camera from one of his vest pockets and took a picture of the scene for posterity, "Feeding Team 7 at the restaurant last night due to Chouji's appetite: 1000 ryo. Jiraiya-sama's rare collector's platinum edition of Icha-Icha that I found yesterday during the festival: 10,000 ryo. Seeing your colleague do pelvic thrusts directly into another grown man's face while his girlfriend, two young children, and 20,000 people are watching, not to mention the fact that the camera is on him right now: priceless."

That was enough to stop Asuma mid-thrust, "Wait, I'm on camera?"

"…_Who's_ his girlfriend?" Kurenai asked, narrowing her eyes at Kakashi.

XxX

Shikamaru was watching the jumbo-screen feed, complete with Asuma-brand pelvic thrusting and a graphic displaying his name and the names of his students. Shikamaru palmed his face and shook his head while most of the others in the competitor's box started laughing, "…Asuma I swear to Kami… I thought you were cool. You're totally making us look bad after that win."

Meanwhile over on the bench against the back wall Ino was sitting down to rest again, only because Naruto was back up there as well, and Ino was currently fretting over the bloody mess that was Naruto's face and scuffed mess that was his long-sleeved blue undershirt and orange pants. He told her that it was mostly cosmetic damage, but she wasn't necessarily listening. He was bleeding from his hairline where he had bounced off of the top of the rock after Neji's Kaiten and it had time to run down his face without him wiping it away, but the bloody nose and lip he had suffered from when Neji stomped on his face were really the worst looking due to it running down the front of his face and shirt staining him with his own red.

At this point Ino wasn't even listening to him when he tried reminding her that he healed fast.

"Ino-chan it's alright, it's just blood and it's mostly dry by now!" Naruto disputed against his female teammate. He had taken a seat next to her to see if she was doing any better after getting thrashed by Lee and once she had seen how squalid he looked once he had taken his seat she immediately began to fuss even though she wasn't any better off at all. He guessed because she wasn't bloody. Some of it wasn't even his though since Neji had the 'courtesy' to bleed on him as well, "All I need to do is go to the bathroom to wash it off."

Maybe he should have done that before coming back? Or maybe during his celebration he could have jumped into the moat for a victory lap through the stream… but then he would have lost his cigarette. So that wasn't an option at the time.

Ino wasn't having any of his excuse making as she held his face in her hands and checked him over, "Goldie-kun there's a difference between being just resilient and running a marathon. You just fought three straight matches, and you still think you're alright?" Well, he was hungry… and he was starting to get a little sleepy, but he figured that was just the lack of adrenaline kicking his ass, "Ugh, you're a total mess. Poor baby… doing all that for us so we wouldn't lose."

"He's fine." A rather terse female voice said, getting their immediate attention. They both looked to see Fuu standing nearby, a decent distance away though as she tapped her foot impatiently and drummed her fingertips off of the bicep of one of her crossed arms, "Little wounds like that aren't enough to do any real lasting damage to someone like him. So you can get off of him now, you're just wasting your time."

Who did that girl think she was? Even if she was strong the way she showed herself to be in round one she wasn't going to stand there and tell Ino how to act after the bullshit she had just gone through a few minutes prior in her last fight.

"Why does it matter to you if I touch my teammate? He belongs to me." Naruto's eye twitched as Ino pulled the side of his head into a hug against her chest. Yes, it was nice… it was very nice, but he really didn't like the part where she said he belonged to her. The blonde Yamanaka girl was smirking at Fuu as she did this, rocking her body with Naruto's for added tauntability, "Of course I can see why you might be upset… I mean you don't have anyone this adorable to latch on to on your team… and now you have to go out there and get beaten up by the hottest guy in the tournament to boot."

Naruto took note of Fuu's reaction to Ino's remark and he could feel the same rising ire he felt when he started walking closer to Fuu in the stairwell, "Ino-chan that's enough." He said, confusing her over why it mattered.

"Why?" She asked as Fuu took that moment to walk away towards the doorway to wait on heading down to the field, "Oh, is it because she's a jinchuuriki?"

"No." Naruto said, his head still halfway against Ino's chest because come on, who in their right mind would push her away if they didn't have to? Still, he answered her question, "Just being a jinchuuriki by itself doesn't make you dangerous." Gaara was a serious contradiction to that statement, but he was willing to stick by it.

Before she reached the doorway, Fuu spoke up one more time, "I can 'latch onto him' all I want when I'm squeezing the life out of him next round." Her two other teammates Houki and Dorobou followed her out.

Dorobou took that opportunity to snicker, "But Fuu, I thought I was the only one in your life. You would cast me aside for a younger man?" Of course he got no response from her as she had already descended the stairs. Not that she would have even dignified that with a response anyway, "So beautiful and so cruel."

As the Taki team left, Ino blinked while still cradling Naruto's head to her chest, almost as if she forgot he was there, "What was that all about?"

He wished he could tell her exactly what she wanted to hear, but he didn't know what it was about himself. There was something familiar about how Fuu reacted though, he didn't know what it was but it was going to eat at him for the rest of the day once the fights were over.

"Looks like it's our turn again." Sakura said, patting her cheeks for blood flow in an effort to try and get herself warmed up somewhat for the next fight. She pointed over at Ino confidently, "Sit tight Ino-pig. After this is over you can start thinking about all of the ways I'm going to tear you apart tomorrow." She then paid attention to something very obvious, "Why are you holding Naruto's head like that?"

Ino tilted her head confusedly and answered her question with a frown, "Because Goldie-kun's had a long day and earned snuggle time with his Ino-chan." She gestured her head down to Naruto's rather worn out appearance, "Look at him. He just looks like he needs a hug." She said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"But what about Sasuke-kun?" Sakura said, not noticing the glare directed at the back of her head from said boy for bringing the topic up in the first place, "He's right here."

Ino fired back immediately, "Sasuke-kun's about to fight, and does it look like he needs a hug at all right now?"

Without missing a beat, Naruto responded in kind even though he wasn't even in the conversation, "Sasuke-teme always looks like he needs a hug." He said with a smirk before Ino used one hand to pull on his whisker-marked cheek, "Ow!"

"Be good." Ino chided as if she had some kind of control over Naruto. Since she had his head directly in her grasp she actually sort of did. But why could she argue with Sakura and he couldn't even crack a joke? That wasn't fair.

"Alright, enough." Sasuke said in an exasperated voice as he walked towards the doorway, "Come on Chouji, let's go win this thing." Said chubby boy hopped up from his seat on the ground near Shikamaru to head on out to the field.

Sakura saw her two teammates heading out to go down the stairs and ran after them to catch up.

"It is good to see that you were victorious Uzumaki."

Naruto and Ino turned towards the sound of the voice, this time it being Gaara, leaning on the wall near his team. The unexpected comment from Gaara actually managed to inspire Naruto to free himself from Ino's warm and demonstrative embrace, "Well thanks Gaara… I guess."

"If you failed to win I would have killed you."

Naruto raised an eyebrow while Ino paled at the directly blatant threat against his well-being. Naruto didn't react any further because he had a question that would have outweighed any trepidation he had at the moment, "Wait, you said you were going to kill me anyway."

"I was. I am." Gaara admitted, "But as long as you are in the competition I can do it without a chance of repercussions. If you had lost I would have been forced to kill you… and your entire team due to the inconvenience of going out of the way to then get to you."

The feeling of Ino clutching tightly to his arm got Naruto's resolve to harden in the face of Gaara's callous threat, "You'll have to go through me first."

"That was the original idea." Gaara said before moving towards the railing to watch the next match.

Temari and Kankuro had never seen Gaara after someone like this before. It was almost like Gaara himself was finding a way to take pleasure out of waiting to kill Naruto instead of just doing it, like a cat playing with a wounded mouse or something.

It was actually creepier than just watching him flat out kill things that made him angry.

And something about it just felt wrong. More wrong than it usually did, "You're not a completely worthless wind-user like I thought at first so I'll give you some advice." Temari said quietly so that Gaara didn't hear her, "If you get that far, far enough to fight Gaara, just quit. Surrender and leave. Go home as fast as you can."

"You can't beat Gaara." Kankuro said, following up on her point, "No one's ever even touched him before. Hope they've seen enough to promote you if you make it that far and just go."

XxX

(On the Field)

"Taki team wins the coin toss." Sekka said, pointing towards them, "Pick your matchup." He said as the teams stood on the stone bridge spanning the stream.

"Team battle to get this over with quick." Dorobou said confidently with a smirk. His strangely patterned eyes seemed to shine with poise, "We haven't seen anything impressive from these kids, even if one is the 'Last Uchiha'."

It wasn't anything that Sasuke hadn't heard before from opponents trying to taunt him. Team 7 had run into about four different teams inside of the caves under the mountain and each of them pretty much said the exact same thing… right before Sasuke kicked their heads in or Chouji stepped on their faces.

As they all looked ready to begin the fight, Dorobou looked towards Houki again, "If you go down again in this round you had better hope that you die in the process or I'll kill you myself weakling. It's been said before, but we don't need you anymore." Maybe intimidation would get him to fight a bit harder this time, maybe inspire him to get back up after just one hit.

Sekka shook his head at the brazen threat on his own team member before projecting his voice, "Quarterfinal match, one team battle only! Fuu, Houki, and Dorobou vs. Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and Akimichi Chouji! Begin!"

Sasuke was quick on the draw with his Sharingan activated to start the battle with a quick set of hand-seals and a bang, "Katon: Housenka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu)!" In a hurry, Sasuke fired a volley of small fireballs from his mouth in a wild trajectory.

Fuu immediately jumped backwards, far out of the range of any of Sasuke's fireballs as she jumped away from the bridge and away from the streamside towards the forest area where she leaned against the nearest tree in a manner reminiscent of the way she got out of the way last time.

Houki was shoved out of the way by an arm that stretched out and shoved him out of the way over the side of the bridge, sending him landing into the moat. Dorobou merely jumped backwards all the way to one of the corner pillars of the bridge, using the strange black threads in his body to grab a hold of it and help him get high up on it to avoid Sasuke's attack as his arm reconnected with the use of his black threads.

Houki surfaced from being shoved into the moat and stood up on the surface of the water, "Thanks Dorobou!" He said, as he honestly didn't feel like getting peppered with fireballs.

"Everybody gets one." Dorobou replied seriously before looking over at Sasuke, "Is that all you've got? I don't even need to try. Iwa Bunshin no Jutsu (Rock Clone Jutsu)!" He then spit out three wads of rock that landed hard on the bridge and formed into clones of himself.

A smirk came to Sasuke's face once he saw that, "If you haven't noticed, I know a guy that can make way more of these things that you… and his clones are better!" He shouted as he ran towards the forming rock clones, "Chouji let's go!"

Chouji had already been in his expanded body form, having used Sasuke's opening attack as the opening to do so, "Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank)!" Chouji immediately began rolling towards the rock clones and Sasuke. Sasuke jumped directly over Chouji and the rotund ninja bowled the rock clones over like pins as he continued on his way to attempt to fell the pillar Dorobou was hanging off of.

"I can already tell the big flaw in your jutsu other than being pretty slow!" Dorobou said as he jumped off of the pillar and landed on the railing on the other side of the bridge, "You suck at maneuvering that thing!"

"We knew that already." Sasuke said as he began to land from his jump directly on top of Chouji's spinning form. He was only able to stay on long enough to kick Chouji in the side, and this assisted him in turning the ball to aim it in a sharp turn at the Taki ninja, "We fixed that!"

Dorobou only had time to create more threads from his body to try and catch Chouji's boulder-like body, but all this did was serve as a cushion once it plowed into him and knocked him away, taking out the stone railing of the bridge as well with the force of the roll.

As the body of the kinjutsu using ninja took the hit, black threads visible as they wafted in front of him, Houki looked up in awe, as Dorobou flew by over his head, "No way!" He had never seen a situation where he had been outclassed like that. Of course then he had to deal with the fact that Chouji's boulder body was now directly above him, "AAAHHH!" He ran on the surface of the water and dove just as Chouji crashed into it with a great splash.

XxX

Fuu had to admit that she felt a twinge of satisfaction at seeing Dorobou get hit by Chouji's boulder attack. It felt good and she would have readily admitted that any day, whether he was her teammate or not. That word didn't particularly mean anything to her.

At that moment Fuu saw and felt a swirl of leaves surround her body and she went into a slight haze for a second before snapping out of it, putting her on instant alert as she hopped off of the tree she was leaning against. Her eyes looked around for an attacker but she could find none no matter where she looked.

After keeping her eyes peeled for a sign of any sort of movement and finding none she looked back towards the bridge but did not see Sasuke or Chouji, nor Houki or Dorobou.

Before she could start thinking about any of it she could hear the roar of the crowd get louder. She looked at them to see they were all looking directly at her, raising her ire for some reason. Before she could speak she heard the same noise of people directly behind her, but closer. She turned around to find herself in the middle of a crowd of people thousands deep of all ages and sizes, everyone she had ever met or seen all encircling her and getting closer with looks in their eyes of malicious intent despite the smiles on their faces.

In her head as clear as day she could hear those people asking her to come closer to them, some offering her a birthday gift, others just children offering her to join them to play, but as they got closer many of them began brandishing weapons, still smiling at her.

She felt like a little girl again, and she hated that because she knew what would happen next. Thus she let out an ear-shattering scream of desperation.

XxX

(Real World)

Houki's body was sent flying up from the surface of the moat to land on the bridge motionless. Sasuke walked up to him and kneeled down, grabbing him by his soaked hair to pull his head up as a method to check his consciousness. He shook his head and Sekka called it, "Houki is unable to continue! He is eliminated!" As medics hustled out to take him off of the field, Chouji made his way back to the bridge. It was an easy spot to fight from for those two as they were direct combat specialists.

"Good work." Sasuke said as Chouji looked just as soaked as Houki did, though not nearly as beaten up, not even close, "Where's Sakura? Did she help you?"

Chouji shook his head as he tried to swipe the water from his hair and headband, "No, she didn't even need to. I beat that guy in like twenty seconds." He pointed over to the end of the bridge where Sakura was running towards them, "There she is. Where were you?"

Sakura pointed behind herself towards the forest area, "I put Fuu under a genjutsu to keep her busy while we defeated the other two… I can't hurt her myself if Kiba couldn't so I figured I'd wait for you two instead of attacking her myself." She said with a smile before watching the medics carry away Houki, "Wow. Really? Again?" She said with a deadpan look on her face. Talk about a third wheel.

"Yep." Chouji said, proud of his handiwork, "Now let's go finish off-."

Chouji's comment was cut off by a scream that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. All of Team 7 turned to the forest area to see the sight of two fully uprooted trees flying from the ground. Through that, Fuu seemed to be running towards them rapidly.

"I thought you used a genjutsu?" Sasuke said, debating the merits of fight or flight in this instance. Pride be damned, that girl was radiating a strange green chakra that his Sharingan could see as clear as day. Little did he know it was a visible glow for those paying attention with regular eyes as well.

Sakura brought out a kunai for self-defense, "I did! It was weak though, so she could have broken it. It was just Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu (Demonic Illusion: Hell Viewing Jutsu). It was the second genjutsu Kakashi-sensei taught me when I was learning them, the one he used on me during the bell test." She felt out for her hold on the jutsu, "Wait, she didn't break it!"

"Then how is she still running towards us?" Chouji asked skittishly.

"I told you it was a weak genjutsu! She isn't bound by anything!" Sakura yelled in return before taking a chance and ending the genjutsu. She could swear she saw the awareness return to Fuu's face before it twisted in pure rage and she ran at them harder than before. Sakura threw her kunai at Fuu. Much to her chagrin however, it merely bounced off of her as Fuu started charging across the bridge faster than they knew they could run from.

Sasuke could see how fast she was moving with his Sharingan, so he technically had more time to try to come up with an answer… and he only really had one idea at the moment, "Chouji, I think we need to do it. We've got to use that move!"

Chouji looked at him in surprise, "Are you sure?" It was supposed to be their trump card in team combat, something that the two of them had created right after Chouji had returned from training with his father over the last month as a combination method of easily dealing with Naruto's multitude of clones and Shikamaru's shadow techniques simultaneously. It was an unspoken agreement that they were saving it for Team 10.

"Yes, right now! Let's go!"

"Whatever you say!" Chouji said as his body expanded and he began to roll towards Fuu in an effort to fight pure direct force against pure direct force, "Roll!"

Sakura looked on in horror. Fuu could stop Kiba's jutsu with her bare hands. What made them think she couldn't stop Chouji's clan jutsu as well? Turning to Sasuke she saw him running after Chouji and making hand-seals, "Sasuke-kun, what are you going to-?"

"Konbijutsu: Katon: Fumetsu no Ryuusei (Collaboration Jutsu: Fire Release: Immortal Meteor)!"

Both Sasuke and Chouji shouted this as Sasuke breathed his fireball directly at Chouji's rolling frame, turning his human boulder form into a flaming mass careening right at Fuu.

XxX

Naruto's jaw dropped as he almost hung over the railing trying to get a look at what he was seeing, "Holy crap! Sasuke just set Chouji on fire!" He blinked to himself about how wrong that sounded, "…And he was okay with it?" He turned towards Ino and Shikamaru, "We've got to come up with something like that."

Shikamaru knew that Chouji had things like this in him if he put his mind to it, but this was ridiculous, "…Good luck with that."

XxX

"Ah, so it did end up working after all." Kakashi said as he saw the jutsu from his two genin take shape, "Good for them. They never told me if they managed to work it out properly or not."

The casual way he was speaking made Kurenai question Kakashi's sanity, "One of your students is on fire… and you don't seem to care." It wasn't the first time she had felt this way about the man's mental faculties though. However this was absurd, "What kind of self-sacrificial jutsu-?"

"I told them specifically to never try it unless they were sure they had it worked out correctly." Kakashi said in defense of himself, "It's no worse than teaching a genin to open the _Eight Gates_." He said with a pointed look at Gai.

"He did what?" Kurenai asked with a dumbfounded look.

Kakashi looked at her with a cocked eyebrow before a look of realization crossed what was visible of his face, "Oh right, you weren't here for that. But yes, he did. And you can officially not refer to Asuma as irresponsible for the whole smoking thing anymore." Definitely not when other genin were slinging around body destroying kinjutsu and setting each other on fire for desperation attacks.

Lucky for all of them that there was no such thing as social services in this society huh? Yes indeed.

XxX

(Moments Ago - Within Fuu's Genjutsu)

Just like when she was a little girl Fuu no longer allowed the crowds, no longer allowed anyone to get close enough to harm her without making them pay for it. And she charged, mowing her way through the mass of people surrounding her just as easily as she did the first true time she activated her combat abilities.

She could never feel safe. She learned that lesson a long time ago. Everyone wants to hurt her, test her limits, and she always had to stay sharp. Her guard could never be down for her own security purposes. Anyone that got close to her was a threat to her safety, and anyone that was a threat to her safety had to be neutralized.

But then the genjutsu suddenly faded and the crowd left, the voices stopped.

Fuu looked ahead and felt pure anger as she saw Sakura and realized what had happened to her. She never stopped running. They could try to stop her but none of them could. If she so desired it there wasn't anyone that could stop her.

The large Akimichi boy began to roll towards her, maybe to slow her down. Fat chance of that happening. She'd kick him to the side like the ball he was and then she would move on to the other two.

Then he caught on fire.

XxX

(Real World)

Fuu immediately stopped running on a dime when Chouji's flaming ball form filled her vision. She couldn't just turn and get enough speed quickly enough to get off of the bridge, and the ball and the flames were too large to dive to the side to avoid. It was moving too fast to dodge by jumping from the bridge either.

This was going to hurt her and she knew it… and that only made her stronger.

Lifting her hands, Fuu stopped the gigantic rolling Chouji right in his tracks, forcing him to spin while in her hands as he rotated hard enough for the stone bridge beneath him to break slightly.

Fuu could feel the intense flames burning her hands and forearms and let out a scream at the pain running through her before her eyes let off a green, pupil-less glow and green chakra started radiating from her body. She shot a leg back and kicked the bottom of Chouji's ball and the bridge, propelling him directly into the air.

Sasuke and Sakura watched in combined awe and horror, everyone did, as from the bottom and the top of the red cylinder on Fuu's back a pair of chakra blasts emerged and expanded outward, humming as if they were four insect wings in flight. She flew up and met Chouji to where she kicked him in the air as he started to descend, still in ball form.

Flitters of ash came off of Chouji's ball-body. Fuu on the other hand had very severe burns on her hands and forearms and her white armwarmers had burned away, but she formed a fist anyway, one intended solely for Chouji as a receipt for his bold attack against her, "Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow)!"

She punched Chouji as hard as she could and sent him flying all the way up to the high ceiling of the arena where he hit it hard enough for parts of it to fall along with Chouji himself. Chouji was no longer in his ball form, but he was still expanded as he fell back to the ground. His body landed in the Zen-garden, sending up a mass of sand as Genma hustled over with a group of medics.

Fuu merely hovered in the air above the Zen-garden overlooking the scene before she heard a very loud and distinctive noise coming back from the bridge area.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – Bridge Area of the Field)

Sasuke and Sakura could only watch as Fuu flew into the air right before their eyes to follow up with her attack on Chouji, "Damn it!" Sasuke growled, his Sharingan eyes spinning angrily in his sockets. She was too high in the air for them to reach even with any of his fire techniques.

"Chouji!" Sakura cried out for their helpless teammate as she could see an angry Fuu gearing up to punch him.

With their attention swept by Fuu's overwhelming presence they never felt the creeping figure walking behind them, "That hurt…" Both Sasuke and Sakura turned around only to be swatted by two masses of black threads. Sasuke was sent rolling head over heels down the bridge while Sakura was smashed into the side of the bridge that still had a railing, "You and fat boy really did quite the number on me Uchiha." Dorobou said, "Even with the Jiongu that still hurt."

Sasuke sat up only to be hit with a dismembered fist that flew over and punched him before being retracted back to Dorobou. Sakura looked up at Dorobou and attempted to make a rushed set of hand-seals only more black threads to reach for her and grab her around both wrists in order to yank her up to her, holding her hands above her head as he delivered a hard punch to the stomach that had Sakura coughing up blood.

"Sakura!" Sasuke yelled as he stood back up and ran towards Dorobou, "You son of a bitch!" He reached under the back of his shirt and pulled out a fuuma shuriken but just as he was to throw it the thick black threads moved Sakura directly into his path, guaranteeing that a hit would cut clear through Sakura first before it ever reached him. In his hesitation another stretching punch nailed Sasuke in the face.

Laughter started to come from Dorobou, "There. You get the idea Uchiha. If you try anything on me you'll be killing her first if you even hit me at all!" He turned Sakura towards him with the use of the threads, "Don't worry beautiful. I won't be testing out that organ harvesting idea on you or anything. I doubt you have any that are useful to me. You're more useful to me like this." Sakura's arms and legs were bound by the threads so instead of lashing out with an attack she spit in his face and got another hard punch to the stomach for her troubles.

"What do you want?" Sasuke yelled at him, still holding onto the fuuma shuriken. It couldn't just be to win.

"Your eyes!" Dorobou yelled, "I missed out on my chance to obtain one pair of legendary eyes in my last match but I simply can't let an opportunity like this slip away. I've never transplanted organs into my own body before but I know it can be done, and with the Jiongu it's supposed to be easy! But you would probably surrender before you give them up to me and I don't want that. And you'll let her die before you ever give your precious eyes up, so I'll just kill you and take them!" He formed the bird seal and stomped on the ground, "Doton: Doryuusou (Earth Release: Earth Flow Spears)!"

Near Sasuke, the ground spiked up in an attempt to impale him where he stood. As he moved, he could see the ground shifting to do the same, allowing him to preemptively avoid repeated attempts at stabbing him with ever shifting spikes.

"I've had enough of you!" Sasuke yelled as he revealed it to actually be two fuuma shuriken, unfurling them both as he continued to dodge. In response Dorobou placed Sakura directly in front of him to be a human shield. Both of them looked at each other, and the look in her eyes told him to attack anyway. So that's what Sasuke did. With a yell of exertion he threw the large weapons directly at Dorobou and by proxy Sakura as well.

Sakura just stared straight ahead with not a hint of fear on her face as the blades flew through the air… right past both her and Dorobou.

The Taki ninja couldn't believe it. After the effort and the internal battle it took to decide to launch the attack in the first place not only did one do so, they both missed! He had to laugh, "What were you aiming at?"

"Not you." Sasuke said, gritting his teeth with a smirk revealing that he had ninja wire between his teeth and in his hands. The wires were attached to the shuriken that whipped around the pillars at the end of the bridge and came flying back towards Dorobou's rear, "Soufuushasan no Tachi (Manipulating Windmill Triple Blades)!"

The weapons cut through the threads holding Sakura's ankles and wrists, freeing her and allowing her a chance to escape. Dorobou immediately gave chase to overtake her as she ran directly towards Sasuke "You bitch! You're not getting away! I'm a genius! I'm the keeper of the jinchuuriki! I'm the greatest prospect Taki's had since Kakuz-!"

"Nobody cares…" Sasuke said, quickly making three hand-seals the moment he cut Sakura free. Lightning began to gather around his left hand and a loud noise that resembled the chirping of birds, "…About how talented you are in prospect. _I'm_ talented in prospect." His Sharingan glared angrily at Dorobou with hatred for trying to take a hostage against him, a hostage that was his comrade, "What matters is actually going out and proving how good you are… again, and again, and again! That's the only thing that being called a genius means; that you have to keep proving it!"

XxX

Gai turned towards Kakashi with a disapproving gaze while the other jounin were staring in awe at what Sasuke had formed in his hands, knowing full well what it was, "I can't believe you taught Sasuke that technique Kakashi. A pure assassination technique."

This time Kakashi didn't choose to ignore Gai's statement, "I don't really care about your judgment Gai… because _Sasuke_ needed this." He said, mirroring Gai's own comment on his teaching of opening the Eight Gates to Lee.

Hinata's Byakugan could see the massive amount of power rippling off of Sasuke's left hand, "His chakra is so intense." It had to be since it could physically be seen even without her doujutsu.

Kurenai had never seen Kakashi's own personal jutsu but she had heard about it and the telltale noise that it made when formed, "But still Kakashi. What made you teach Sasuke your first signature ninjutsu?"

"Because he's like me." Kakashi said, once again making Gai reflect on why he taught the things he did to Lee, "I've taught him to use this jutsu keeping in mind its one single purpose. To protect those precious to him." 'The way I wish I could have back then.'

XxX

He ran forward dragging his lightning-covered hand through the concrete of the bridge, tearing it up as he sprinted forward.

He could clearly see Sakura running towards him with Dorobou right behind her and his eyes were set firmly on him, "Being a genius means that you have to live up to those expectations! And for the sake of the people that believe in you, you can never let them down!"

Sakura turned her head to Sasuke the moment they passed by each other and for a second she felt like _she_ had Sharingan as she felt time stop. Quicker than a bolt of lightning, no way for anyone to actually have seen it, she could have sworn that he turned a slight glance of the only eye of his she could see towards her, as if to make sure she was okay before moving along, "…Never again…" She thought she heard him whisper to himself. And just like that the moment was over and they passed each other, one moving far faster than the other with a target in mind.

Dorobou saw the lighting around Sasuke's hand and moved his black threads directly at Sasuke in an effort to stop him, but all that got him was a mass of cut threads and a slight shock from a contact charge that slightly paralyzed him enough for Sasuke to finish, "No!" He yelled. He hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of his kinjutsu, 'I was going to be greater than Kakuzu…'

"Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"

Sasuke slammed the Chidori right into Dorobou's chest, punching it right through the left side of his heart out the back of his chest. His hand still chirping with the lightning chakra in his hand, Sasuke moved his mouth closer to the still standing, yet officially dying, Dorobou's ear. His whisper was only heard by himself and the dying man his hand was stuck through due to the sound of the Chidori still going, "You made a mistake when you tried to kill my teammate. I'll never let anything like _that_ happen again if there's anything I can do about it."

With a squelch he pulled his hand from Dorobou's chest and let him drop to the ground, no more motion in the black threads that had been fully on display outside of the genin's body.

He turned back towards Sakura, shaking the life fluids from the deceased Dorobou from his hand until he heard the sound of insect wings beating. He turned around to see Fuu right in front of his face, her glowing green pupil-less eyes staring at him, and he saw her fist coming directly at him in special Sharingan slow motion.

Sakura looked in shock as Fuu landed from her momentary position over the Zen-garden where Chouji had fallen to and punched Sasuke right in the face before he could ever react. Fuu was absurdly angry at Sasuke for adding the fire to the portion of the attack that had so badly injured her hands. If he hadn't then she would have been able to stop Chouji's attack with barely a problem.

Gritting her teeth angrily, she flew towards Sasuke who was tumbling hard backwards. Sakura tried to get between her and Sasuke, but Fuu merely barrel-rolled out of the weak girl's way, blowing her off of the bridge with the mere intensity of the chakra wings emitting from her red cylinder. With the distraction easily dealt with, Fuu turned her attention back to Sasuke.

Sasuke managed to roll through, loopy and bleeding from Fuu's punch, but he was able to form another Chidori in preparation for her. It wasn't fast enough to attack her with as Fuu body-tackled Sasuke, squeezing him tightly as she started to fly up into the air with Sasuke in her grasp.

Sasuke struggled, but it was like being caught in the grasp of a stone statue. In Fuu's bearhug he could feel his bones creaking as his arms were by his side out of the reach of the other, 'I can't even reach my hands to make hand-seals!' No Kawarimi for him.

After flying high enough in the air, Fuu just held him there in a hover as he continued to try and fight to no avail. She just stared at him as he continued to fight against her as best he could.

"Let go of me!" Sasuke managed to wheeze out as Fuu's grip was murder on his standard breathing. He may not have been able to get himself out with a Kawarimi, but he still had the Chidori in his hand and used it to shock Fuu's thigh, eliciting a cry of pain from her as her muscles tightened. Once she squeezed tighter it finally broke his focus and he let the Chidori go.

In response to his demand and attack she glared at him and her lips quirked slightly towards a sneer, "Whatever you say." She said before turning them directly upside down, allowing them to hover in the air for a few long, arduous seconds for cruelty before she turned her wings off. Both she and Sasuke began to fall to the earth with the naturally eternal weapon known to man as gravity, "Keshi Gomu o Oshi (Eraser Press)!"

Sakura had been knocked into the water and thus could only watch Fuu carry Sasuke over one hundred feet into the air before flipping upside down and allowing them both to fall to the ground. Sakura scrambled to get out of moat and over to the forested area where Fuu was dropping.

Fuu let Sasuke go and let him fall through the top of the canopy of the forest and merely stared as his body pulverized every last branch in his way on the fall to earth. She wasn't sure if all of the snapping noises were branches or Sasuke's bones, but with as thick as some of those branches probably were it was probably both.

Sakura ran towards the forest area of the field as fast as she could and heard the crashing noise of Sasuke falling through the trees, "Sasuke-kun!" She shouted, running through the brush and the foliage before finally reaching the area covered with destroyed branches, tree parts, and a broken looking Sasuke, "Sasuke-kun no!" She immediately dropped to her knees once reaching him, but didn't dare move him or touch him, "Someone help!"

He was still alive, but he was a complete mess. He was still conscious because his breathing was pained and his eyes were clearly showing that he was in agony.

The sound of something moving through the leaves gave way to Fuu descending towards the ground before turning her wings off, her glowing green eyes staring at Sasuke and Sakura. She began to walk closer towards them as Sakura reached for a weapon but found it futile to do so. Fuu had a limp due to the fact that Sasuke shocking her forced the muscles in her leg to lock and the nerves to go haywire, still she had a look of anger in her face.

"Stop!" Sakura yelled, tears beginning to fill her eyes as she thought about all that had happened, "You've won! We give up okay? It's over! We surrender!" That still didn't stop Fuu from continuing to walk forward, "I can't beat you, but I'll fight you to stop you if I have to!" Sakura stood up with a kunai, ready to defend herself, "I said we give up! There's no reason to fight anymore! After all of this are you going to kill Sasuke-kun the way you killed Chouji? They were both defenseless, Chouji was already beaten!"

Fuu stopped walking and simply stood in place, "You say you give up?" Sakura held her ground with her weapon just in case but nodded. At that the green, thin aura around Fuu's body faded and her eyes went back to having features and to their original orange color, "Fine." With that she turned around and began to leave the forest area as the proctors entered with medics, most of whom had been working on Chouji when Fuu had been fighting the others. They had only stopped on the bridge to check Dorobou for his vital signs only to find none, "She quit. He can't fight. I win."

Sakura nodded with a sniffle as she dropped back to her knees near Sasuke as the medics began checking him over. Sekka hurriedly projected his voice to announce the end of the fight, "The winners of the match and advancing to the semifinals as the winners of bracket two: Fuu, Houki, and Dorobou!"

Sekka went over to Sakura who couldn't believe what had just happened to them all. He placed a hand on her shoulder, getting her to look up at him, "Your other teammate in the garden, he isn't dead. The expanded form he had when he landed and the sand protected him when he hit the ground. He's pretty bad off, but he should be fine."

Sakura nodded, sparing a brave smile as the doctors loaded Sasuke up, preparing to move him somewhere to give him good treatment.

XxX

Fuu limped her way out of the forest and could hear the whispers of the crowd again now that they had seen her jinchuuriki form. It was expected, but she didn't care about any of them. She could have killed Sasuke. If she had released him any lower, making it so that he didn't hit the thick canopy leaves before falling through the branches to the ground he probably would have died. She also could have held him up over the barren area or the bridge itself. That would have done the trick.

She didn't kill the Akimichi boy either out of the anger of what had happened to her. Once he survived her punch she didn't feel vengeful enough to kill him. They hadn't waved her off or announced him as eliminated so she could have delivered another one to finish him if she wanted to.

So why didn't she? When the genjutsu on her was first canceled and she realized that Team 7 had made her live her nightmare turned reality she was angry enough to kill them, it even got worse when she was burned. While she didn't go out of her way to keep them alive she didn't kill them when she could have.

"_You're not a monster."_

'I am a monster.' Fuu thought to herself, 'If that's what you're treated like, and that's what people see you as then that's what you are… like it or not.'

"_Will you stop saying you're a monster!"_

'Kid…' Fuu thought as she limped towards the entrance tunnel, 'I'm only saying what everyone else around me has said… I'm stuck with the Nanabi. It's the thing that's defined me for the last ten years, ever since I was six and they stuck me with it when I entered the Academy. If you've got one in you too then why would you tell me not to think of myself as a monster?'

"_Because if that stupid thing inside of you makes you a monster that means I'm one too!"_

Growling to herself, Fuu was wondering why that little punk was stuck in her head. Maybe because he was the only person that ever went out of their way to talk to her. He did it only because he wanted to… at least that's what he would have said. But there was something else he said that wasn't even directed at her. That something just stuck with her. Something he said while he had been fighting Neji

"_And you're okay with that?"_

'…No. No, I'm not okay with that. I was never okay with it.' Fuu's footsteps echoed through the entrance tunnel as she decided to go to the medical bay. She could bandage and treat her own burns, because those doctors weren't going to touch her. She wouldn't allow it, 'I just-… It doesn't matter. I am what I am Uzumaki Naruto… and next round I'm going to show you just what that is.'

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuuinjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Chakra Seals: The Vindictive Bitch of Fuuinjutsu

The reason good, useful chakra seals are really high level is because it's really fucking hard to properly seal away an enemy's chakra. The arrays are complicated and have to be _perfect_… no mistakes. A single mistake will mean that you aren't sealing a single damn thing, all you did was make a pretty pattern that looks like dyslexic kanji. Even worse, if you screw it up you could be messing with your own chakra, and that's worst case scenario.

Even then, a lot of seals can be broken. An opponent with an intense enough chakra can overpower your seal with pure will and chakra strength. That's a terrible situation. Hope that you never fight someone with chakra that strong. It usually happens like that when your opponent has chakra that is as strong as your own or stronger so be careful with that.

Now back to designing your seals. The reason it is so precise is because chakra itself is the most important thing in your body. Without chakra you are dead… which is why sealing off chakra for good is impossible, because a body needs chakra to circulate. To do that would kill. It's like a law against nature that you can't do that. People have tried. For as long as fuuinjutsu has existed people have tried, and there is indeed a way to do so… but guess what the price is.

**YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL!**

So yeah… be careful with that.

* * *

Jutsu List

Ourora no Jozan (Aurora Divide). C-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. Similar to Genshi Kujo (Atomic Extermination) the user will grab a hold of the opponent aggressively around their waist and will quickly lift them off of the ground before bridging their body back and slamming them on their head and neck, using the weight of the enemy and the user to cause damage that could be nigh fatal. The only thing keeping this technique from being rated higher like Genshi Kujo is the fact that this move is performed from the front as opposed to the back, making it more dangerous to attempt than the other.

Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-range. Using a rapidly swinging object that can be used for chakra flow techniques as a medium, the user will flow wind chakra through the proper item while blowing into the spinning object. The wind chakra circulating through the weapon will be forced forward through the chakra sent out from the user's mouth during his blowing and will be sent towards the enemy in a single direction, direct cylindrical fashion. Anything hit with this jutsu will not really be forced back, the wind will push them back enough to make walking forward difficult enough to shove a man back a few steps, but not strong enough to knock a sturdy target down. Instead, the real damage comes from countless invisible blades that can cut into the opponent's body.

Konbijutsu: Katon: Fumetsu no Ryuusei (Collaboration Jutsu: Fire Release: Immortal Meteor). A-rank nintaijutsu, offensive, close-range. An original collaboration technique between Akimichi Chouji and Uchiha Sasuke. Combines the powerful rolling propelling force behind the Akimichi clan technique Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank), and the roaring damaging flames of Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu) to burn and smash through anything in its path. Chouji's very resilient jacket that he usually wears gives him time to complete the technique without suffering burns himself. The jacket along with the flames dissipate after it is burned through as a safety precaution, so there is only a small amount of time to use this technique before it just becomes the regular Nikudan Sensha.

Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow). C-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. This technique is merely Fuu delivering a punch to an enemy. What makes this jutsu potent is the combination of Fuu's use of Tekiousei-Tai (Adaptable Body) to condition her body and her wings of chakra granted to her in her jinchuuriki form, allowing her to deliver a dense, hard punch with the power and speed of flight behind it. It is capable of sending an enemy flying and killing a shinobi in one strike thus she is accustomed to only throwing one punch.

Keshi Gomu o Oshi (Eraser Press). B-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. Fuu takes a tight grip of her enemy so that they can't move and flies with them into the air before diving straight down and dropping them towards the ground to smash them. It is similar to the Omote Renge (Front Lotus) in base appearance, only Fuu holds the opponent from the front, she uses her pure strength to hold an enemy in place instead of binding them, and she lets go of them instead of crashing into the ground with them.

* * *

**Yeah! Chapter done son… or daughter.**

**The wind jutsu Naruto used was taught to him by Asuma a few chapters ago when he asked him for it. It was the one that stripped the parts of bark from the tree in the flashback in chapter 23.**

**Now for those of you that are probably (Inevitably) going to say why didn't Naruto smash Neji in six seconds… he would have had the fight not started on sand. And after that when he turned his Byakugan off, he doesn't need his Byakugan to really do things like dodge stuff he can see. Not having his Byakugan isn't going to make Neji automatically suck at life. He wasn't good at fighting just because he had the Byakugan, he was good anyway and the Byakugan made him able to do things like hit all of the tenketsu in someone's arm in the middle of a fight. **

**Not having the Byakugan meant that he couldn't seal off Naruto's chakra, he could still damage his organs, he could still use Kaiten, and he could still knock the shit out of him, because if you don't think a palm strike can knock you out as easily as a closed fist then you've never been hit with one by someone that knows what they're doing. Trust me, palm strikes are awesome (If you've never seen people break bricks then shame on you). **

**The only reason people don't do it in MMA is because a punch is easier to do and the gloves are pretty cumbersome to use with proper palm strikes.**

**Now it's Gaara's team's fight and the first day of fights will be complete. So that will happen and will go with the down time between the two days where I will be attempting some more development. **

**So I have something important to do tomorrow that I need to prepare for. I'll catch you all later I hope. Maybe Tuesday, because for some reason I'm on a roll with this crap.  
**

**Kenchi out.**


	28. The Artistic Pursuit of Being Yourself

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I still own absolutely nothing in this world worth mentioning. So give me some stuff… good stuff… stuffy stuff. Good stuff for bettering… stuff.

Or you could buy me a ton of gas.

…Just walk away from the gasoline.

**Chapter 28: The Artistic Pursuit of Being Yourself**

* * *

The competitor's balcony was thinning out in a hurry. Team 7, Team 8, the Iwa team, the team from Otogakure, Team Samui, the Kiri team, and the completely obliterated team from Ame… they had all fallen to the wayside along with Team Gai, the only one of them still healthy enough to walk around being Tenten at the moment.

The only ones left in the competitors box for the last fight between the Suna team and the team consisting of Kabuto and his partners happened to be Naruto, Ino, Shikamaru, and Tenten who had decided to sit through the rest of the day's fights to see what she could. Sakura could have been there as well, but she went with her team to the medical bay after the brutal loss at the hands of Fuu, who despite being victorious went there as well to patch up her own wounds along with her teammate that had been beaten into sweet unconsciousness by Chouji.

Tenten shook her head, reiterating a previous point that at this juncture in time couldn't be stressed enough if it hadn't gotten itself across by now, "The chunin exams are _really_ violent." She had to thank her lucky stars that nothing like the brutal defeats and deaths some had suffered wound up happening to her. Naruto fought her entire team to immobilize, and while the methods used varied, the fact that she could still walk in a straight line was much better than could be said for some.

"That was…" Ino said, still staring at the horribly damaged bridge that had seen most of the direct fighting from the last battle, "Wow." She didn't know quite what to say, "Chouji, Forehead, and Sasuke-kun lost." It had been impressive and scary all at the same time to watch Fuu's unique abilities come into use during that fight, "They lost _bad_." At least they were still alive, especially Chouji who had fallen all the way from the ceiling which now had a hole smashed in it from where his Nikudan Sensha had hit it due to Fuu punching him up there. Snow was steadily falling and drifting into the building from that one particular spot.

At least they could take solace in the fact that tomorrow it would be three-on-two… and Fuu's teammate Houki damn sure wasn't going to be 100 percent going into that one. He had been getting his ass kicked since round one. Repeatedly, 'I can knock that guy out by myself. Shikamaru and Naruto can work together to try and stop Fuu. That's all I've got now though.'

Sasuke was just as fast as Naruto at first glance, and Fuu's flight ability made him look two steps behind. And the heightened speed he needed and showed off for the Chidori to be effective, the jutsu that killed Dorobou, it wasn't enough to move faster than Fuu and her wings. Speaking of which, that certainly put a whole new scope over the situation. She could fly. That was… kind of terrifying. Ino just didn't know what to think.

On the other hand, Naruto was thinking about it as well. Fuu's jinchuuriki form was different than his, but it would have been stupid to think that they would all be the same just because they all had something in them. There were too many factors to make them all different; village sealing styles, different monsters in them, yeah of course they wouldn't have the same abilities.

Her eyes changed more dramatically than his, and the wings were a nice touch, totally unexpected though. While her visible chakra was a slight green glow his was a raging orange, like a fire with chakra. He didn't know just what the limits of his own jinchuuriki powers were since he hadn't particularly used them in an actual fight (he did wish he could fly though, but he knew that he couldn't for certain), but if he was going to win against Fuu he was going to have to find out just what those limits were.

Trial by fire was not his perfect scenario for figuring out how to work with the tainted chakra inside of his body so he had to get that brain cranking to remember what he could from the only time he had actually fought someone using it.

As he remembered from his thrashing of Haku in Nami no Kuni he got faster, fast enough to catch up to the speedy Haku almost effortlessly in a forest when she had a head start. He was strong enough to tear apart a tree with a single punch, but he wasn't sure if that could match Fuu after what she did. But the healing had to be the best thing. His normally heightened ability to patch himself up was increased to an absurd degree. The damage Haku had done to slow him down and deal him damage with the liberal use of senbon on pressure points disappeared as if he were fresh as a daisy after he accessed the Kyuubi's chakra.

So what if Fuu could fly with her powers and take pretty much any kind of physical damage without an outward scratch on her? He could take an asskicking and keep getting up. And that didn't really sound as cool to him as he first thought it did when he started thinking about it.

Shikamaru was silent as he observed the aftermath of the battle and as Kabuto's team walked out onto the field. He had seen Fuu. He was confident that there was something they could do about that, but the Suna team were still something of wild cards.

With what he knew though, Shikamaru could say that there was no chance that the last Konoha team standing besides Team 10 themselves were winning this series, 'There's no way they win this fight.' He thought to himself, 'From what we saw in the first fight the other two don't really have skills that can match up with what little we saw from that girl with the fan, Temari. They all fight close range while she can just blow them away. I wouldn't be surprised if that thing the Kankuro guy carries on his back is another ranged weapon like Gaara's sand or Temari's fan.'

He had all night to try and come up with a decent base plan, but he needed to see more. He really didn't believe that he'd get it from this fight though.

XxX

"That was a tough crop of genin to put down Hokage-dono." Mifune commented on the last fight, "I like the Uchiha child's fighting spirit. And the teamwork was certainly there was it not?"

A nod came from Hiruzen, but then he frowned, "It was not particularly chunin advancement worthy though." He admitted, able to recognize if the others up there with him saw it as well, "While it was admirable to protect his teammate that was rather common sense to do so if one had the ability. Other than that it was just a showcase for Sasuke and young Chouji's powerful techniques. The situation with Fuu could have been handled much better."

Of course he was concerned with the well-being of the fallen Konoha Team 7, Kakashi had immediately left to find the medic bay to meet his students out of concern over their injuries, but he had to call it down the middle. He felt it could have been handled better.

"Is that not harsh Hiruzen?" The Kazekage said with the usual stern look on his face, only there was a frown evident, "Taki sent a ringer team. Their Nanabi jinchuuriki and a user of the dangerous Jiongu kinjutsu; the traditional guardian jutsu of the Taki jinchuuriki."

A seemed to understand, in his own way at least, "A kinjutsu and a demon in one's body does not make one unbeatable. There is a way to defeat anyone, and that Konoha team most certainly went about the attempt the wrong way. But that's not to say that anyone on the Taki team has shown any reason to be promoted either. Fuu is a bulldozer, you don't need a higher station in your village to be used as one of those."

"I believe we will have to promote Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro in the field off of sheer merit at some point in the future." The Kazekage said rather grudgingly, not seeing the point in bringing them back to the exams if this was what would occur, "Gaara is too strong, and he won't lose but he won't show any leadership qualities whatsoever in this exam. No genin will be able to defeat him. Aside from that, Temari and Kankuro are more concerned with staying out of his way than trying to work with him and show their own abilities. Judges will not be kind towards them for that."

"I actually liked the way your child fought Kazekage-dono." A admitted, "It was rather brutal, that is a given, but it was effective. I won't say that the team with the Uchiha and the Akimichi boy, nor the team from Taki are untalented. It was a very impressive battle, as was the series that preceded it." He had actually gotten rather fired up when Lee started using the infamous Eight Gates, it was his absolute favorite part… and A had been very disappointed when it wound up being shut down without an attack even launched. Still he couldn't hold that against Team 10, that was a fantastic tactic to win without injury dealt.

Onoki let out a chuckle, "Of course, it was a very wily performance. That blonde boy is just as tricky as someone else… who was it? Oop." He shrugged haplessly, "I had the name for a moment but it just disappeared… like a flash." He said as a method of razzing Hiruzen, "You know what I'm saying Raikage-dono?"

"Not really." A replied dryly with his eyes on the field in preparation for the next fight, getting more chuckles out of Onoki as Hiruzen glared at him. Luckily the man was more concerned with watching good fight than with trying to put together pieces from his own past with what was in front of him.

XxX

(On the Field)

The look on Kabuto's face was clearly nervous as he, Yoroi, and Misumi faced the emotionless stare of Gaara. It was like they weren't even being registered as a concern to him, and that attitude seemed to fade over to Temari and Kankuro.

This time they weren't stupid after having seen the last battle Gaara had been in, they were far away from the Zen-garden. Instead both teams stood across either side of the stream/moat. If Gaara's sand couldn't touch them then there was nothing he could do to them.

Jei stood on the ruined bridge, looking out ahead to the two teams standing across from each other. He wasn't getting anywhere near Gaara if he didn't have to, "Quarterfinal match, the last bout of the day, one team battle only! Sabaku no Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari of Suna vs. Yakushi Kabuto, Akadou Yoroi, and Tsurugi Misumi of Konoha! Begin!"

Before anything else, the cork on Gaara's gourd popped off and sand began billowing out, "Just die and get out of my way already." Gaara said coldly as he instantly sent it out at Kabuto's team.

Kabuto saw the wave of sand coming at them and jumped back out of the way immediately, leaving his two teammates forward, "I'm just the support! I already used most of my chakra healing them between fights last round!"

With a scoff, Yoroi stood his ground as a blue glow surrounded his hands, "I'm not dying here, I've been a genin for long enough thank you." Misumi jumped out to the side of his partner and in a swift feat shot his right arm out across the stream in an effort to grab at Temari, smirking behind his veil when Gaara's sand didn't try to intercept.

"Idiot." Temari muttered as she unfurled her fan and took a great swing of the weapon to kick up a strong wind that pushed back against Misumi's arm, "Kamataichi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)! You'll never touch me with that!"

The wind managed to cut into his arm in multiple areas, getting Misumi to retract his arm in pain, "Gah! Bitch!" He stretched his torso and arms over towards the bridge and grabbed a hold of it before wrapping himself around a pillar, "Kabuto! Get over here and heal me!"

"I'm on it!" The amateur medic genin said, racing over to his partner in an effort to assist him.

Meanwhile, Yoroi was still dealing with the sand of Gaara's swimming around him, "I'm not out of this yet." He said as he made a single hand-seal, "Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu (Water Clone Jutsu)!" Two water clones sprang from the moat between Gaara and Yoroi as the older leaf genin prepared to dodge the sand to the damndest of his ability.

The two clones made their way out of the moat and went directly at Gaara, intent on attacking him up close. This was prevented when Gaara's sand came right back in an instant to protect him, smashing into the water clones to crush them in place, turning them back into the liquid that they had been created from. He then sent it back out at Yoroi who was running towards the bridge near his other teammates.

XxX

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed once he saw Gaara's sand destroy Yoroi's clones. After the water touched the sand it seemed to slow down enough so that Gaara kept it back, choosing not to use it to attack and instead sent out more dry sand to take its place, "Naruto." Shikamaru said, getting the blonde's attention, "I need to borrow one of your storage scrolls for something later."

XxX

The sand grabbed Yoroi around his lower body and tripped him up, dragging him back from where he had been running. He knew what would come next if he dawdled and was already prepared. His glowing blue hands touched the sand surrounding his lower body and he seemed to push the sand off of himself as if he were merely buried at the beach. Once he had freed himself to satisfaction he got back up and kept running.

As he did so, a rather intimidating figure leapt out of the moat, chattering and clicking audibly. It was a human looking thing with three eyes, four arms, jagged teeth, spiky brown hair, and a tattered black cloak.

"What the hell?" Yoroi said as it came right towards him, firing several kunai from its mouth at him. They missed, and it was a good thing they had. The poison was dripping off of the blades for all to see once they impaled the ground. A scratch would have been fatal. A growl came from Yoroi as the strange thing came directly at him with blades extending from its wrists.

"Run all you want to." Kankuro said with a smirk as his fingers were controlling the actions of the attacks from a distance, "My puppet Karasu can hunt you down, and eventually he'll get you."

"A puppeteer?" Yoroi said as he dodged the attack of Karasu and ran right past it between the puppet and Kankuro with his hand outstretched, "Thanks for the free chakra! I didn't even have to go over there to touch you. Now I can use my most powerful jutsu with all of the extra energy!" Yoroi's chakra-draining abilities disrupted Kankuro's control over his puppet, forcing it to drop lifelessly to the ground, "And now it's time for you to-!" Before Yoroi could even begin making hand-seals, sand grabbed him around the arms, steadily clumping on and taking great care to avoid his hands as they were forced to move outward, away from each other, "What the-?"

"You're annoying me." Gaara said coldly with his hand outstretched towards Yoroi, "Sabaku Sousou (Sand Waterfall Funeral)." He tightly clenched his hand shut and the sand responded in kind, crushing Yoroi's arms. As the member of the oldest genin team in the final rounds screamed in agony at the loss of his most effective weapons… and very important limbs, Gaara's sand crept over his entire body now that there was nothing to drain the chakra from his sand, "Sabaku Sousou (Sand Waterfall Funeral)."

And that was the end of Yoroi.

Kankuro simply turned away and ignored Gaara's finishing jutsu, instead choosing to get his connection with Karasu back up to bring the puppet back over to himself. He looked over to the bridge where Misumi had wrapped himself around a pillar to wait for Kabuto to heal him and smirked at what he saw.

Misumi on the ground covered in cuts and breathing shallowly while Kabuto sat nearby, cuts all over his body as well, "I give up okay?" Kabuto said shakily. He had seen Gaara obliterate Yoroi, and it wasn't like he or Misumi had been doing too hot against Temari. Neither of them could even get close enough to her, instead being held back easily by her ranged wind attack, "Just don't kill me."

A frown came across Temari's face as she put her fan up, "That's not really up to me as much as you'd like to think." With that, Gaara walked over and stared at the downed forms of Kabuto and the badly wounded Misumi. His sand began to creep towards them until a voice stopped its movement.

"That's enough. This fight is over." Jei said, trying to keep some semblance of control over the competition. There was already a rather considerable finals body count. It didn't need to climb any higher needlessly, "One of them can't fight anymore and the other one just gave up. If you continue to attack them then your team will be disqualified."

Kankuro and Temari were perfectly alright with the battle being over. The problem was Gaara. He stared down at Kabuto as if the next few seconds would decide whether or not he would be dying miserably. Eventually Gaara blinked and his sand flew back into the gourd. He turned around and began to walk away, "Fine."

Kabuto looked utterly relieved that the fight was over and he hadn't been killed like Yoroi had been.

With the catastrophe averted, Jei projected his voice to announce the result, "The winners, and advancing to the final round with their bye as winners of bracket three: Sabaku no Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari of Suna! The matches will be suspended until tomorrow ladies and gentlemen!"

Sighing in relief at Gaara not trying to kill Kabuto or Misumi after the fight was called, something that would blow all of their chances at getting promoted, Kankuro and Temari headed out to find a way to spend the rest of the day before the match tomorrow they were scheduled to fight in.

XxX

As the crowd began to let out applause and clear out for the rest of the day, Tsunade was still sitting in the stands ripping up a mess of betting stubs with an angry look on her face, "Damn it! That brat cost me money! I'll squash him like a grape!"

'_You_ cost us the money.' Shizune thought to herself with a deadpan look on her face as Tsunade threw a mini-tantrum, 'You made bad bets. You bet on things poorly.' She took the remaining empty stubs from Tsunade's hand, "And you'll be doing no such thing."

"He won three back-to-back fights after it only took one of that team with the Hyuuga and the kid in green to get his other teammates out of there." Tsunade said to her first apprentice who was standing up, situating the pet pig in her arms comfortably, "This is totally rigged."

"Were you even paying attention to the fights?" Shizune asked with a raised eyebrow as they filtered on out of the arena with the crowd, "I think that strategy was beautiful." She especially enjoyed the part where Ino poisoned Lee with her paralysis serum despite the vicious mismatch and her crushing defeat, something more subtle than the usual kinds that would just kill enemies in varying amounts of times for blackmail purposes. She didn't even use any fatal poisons the entire time, "That Lee was fighting like a monster."

"Yeah… he'll be paying for that though." Tsunade said, referring to his use of the Eight Gates, "If he can even sit up straight again before tomorrow I'd be shocked." She pulled out a stub and smirked, "I guess I'll have all my money back tomorrow."

'Oh no.' Shizune thought, "How are you going to be money that we don't even have?"

"There's got to be something I can use as collateral… besides the necklace." Tsunade thought out loud, confident that the winners of the tournament would be clear-cut for tomorrow after today's events, "Or I can get a line of credit. I mean, who wouldn't give me credit?"

"Everyone that knows that you run out on your debts when you can't pay…" Shizune deadpanned with Tonton oinking in agreement for effect.

Tsunade deflated visibly at Shizune's point being made, but she perked back up when she came to a conclusion on that herself, "…But no one here knows that. Ninjas aren't that famous in Tetsu no Kuni, this is a samurai state. And I don't ever come here either so no one knows that I lose that much. I've got one more wager to win back everything!"

Shizune sighed and slumped her shoulders as she followed her master out in a disinterested fashion, "Or lose us even more…" She looked down at the small pig in her arms, "I wonder if the samurai will chase after us once we start running away for not paying the debts."

XxX

(Hours Later – Nearby Hospital)

The medics in Tetsu no Kuni were very skilled at their practice, they had to be with the very physical nature of the samurai that defended their lands liberally, but their medicine while very good was also slower to work than the ninjutsu-based treatments given by the medic-ninja from the hidden villages.

As far as the medic-nin supply went, Sekka of Sunagakure was more or less the only one on hand for all of the villages, thus the more heavily wounded genin were left with being treated by the samurai who were more concerned with safety and developed techniques for long-term effectiveness than with speed of treatment.

Team 10 wound up going to the hospital for the injuries that Naruto and Ino had suffered during their matches, though only Ino actually wound up being treated. Much like he had been saying, Naruto was pretty much as good as he was going to get by the time that they arrived. All he wound up receiving ended up being a few bandages to cover his no longer bleeding gashes on his face and a few bruises on his body from Neji's Kaiten. Ino received short treatment for the beating she had gotten from Lee, she would be fine by nightfall. Shikamaru only needed a bit of rest from using so much chakra in overloading his jutsu trying to hold back Lee.

Speaking of other competitors, out of Team 8 only Shino was completely unharmed. Hinata had suffered a beating similar to the one Ino had received from Fuu in their first round encounter only somewhat worse, but she would be fine in a day's time. Kiba had taken the full unprotected measure of Fuu's wrath and had fractured his skull from her kick as well as suffered a broken collarbone and two broken ribs. His treatment had been completed, but he hadn't woken up yet.

Team Gai had Tenten in very good condition as she was trapped instead of battered into defeat. Lee had torn many of his muscles due to his use of the Eight Gates. Ino's paralysis poison had left his system safely, but he had a broken nose from Naruto's final attack that put him down. Neji had taken a bit of a beating, but his real damage came from the cuts Naruto's wind jutsu had dealt him.

Kabuto's team, aside from the one fatality of Akadou Yoroi, had both Kabuto and Tsurugi Misumi suffering cuts from Temari's ranged wind assault. The 20+ year old genin Misumi had tried a last ditch attack to attack Temari and he had paid for it dearly prior to his defeat, ending up hurt far worse than Kabuto was. His loss of blood actually required a transfusion unlike the silver-haired medic who was able to treat most of his own damage before his arrival. Though his own admitted faults at medical ninjutsu made it so that seeing the doctors of the samurai still seemed like the best course of action.

The Kumo team had taken a bit of a beating from Lee and Neji. Karui had a broken arm and a few cracked ribs, Samui had taken some internal damage from Neji's victory over her, and Omoi needed to rest to have his tenketsu reopened later.

No one knew what had happened to the living remnants of the Otogakure team as they had disappeared from the medical bay before they could be sent over to the hospital in Zaku's case or released in Kin's case.

After arriving at the hospital though, the discovery had been made that of the Iwa team that Team 10 had fought in round one, Hisashi had wound up dying from the blood loss generated by the extremely deep cut made by Naruto's machete being thrown through his barrier, the move that had ended the fight. The gash had been extremely difficult to close up due to the abnormal wounding pattern made by the weapon and Naruto had wound up nicking an artery in the arm he had wounded.

It was kind of weird hearing that he had done that after the fact, but it was what it was. Naruto had killed one of their opponents in the exams, even if it had been inadvertent.

The worst of the injuries suffered by those that were still among the living had been endured by Team 7 though. Sakura had a few bumps and bruises from her two battles from the day, but she was more or less fine. Chouji had broken his tailbone, right arm, and broken five ribs from his fall from the ceiling in his expanded form. Even with the sand, had he not been using his clan technique he would have died on impact. Sasuke didn't fall from nearly as high, but he didn't have any of Chouji's built-in natural padding either. Luckily the trees were thick enough to break the scariest part of his fall. His arms and legs were toast though, and his back was several different kinds of busted up.

Even as night fell, Kakashi was allowed to sit in with his injured students. They had been worked on by doctors for hours respectively before being placed in the same room to recover. Sakura had managed to fall asleep in a chair after the very long day that she and the others had.

'They did well.' Kakashi thought to himself as the lights were off in the room for the comfort of the genin. He wasn't reading at this point in time, he was watching over the students set to be under his care, 'I'm very proud of them… but this was just too much.' Hopefully Asuma's kids would have the chops to overcome that Fuu girl tomorrow. She was beatable for certain, there was no one in the world that was undefeatable, but a 16 year old jinchuuriki with the abilities Fuu had would be a tough mountain to climb.

'And then the winner has to fight the team from Suna later in the day.' That was the real kicker. There was no way that the winner of the previous match would be able to succeed in that encounter. They had all been told beforehand that fair play wasn't exactly a concern when the brackets were set up, but it was hard to believe that such a discrepancy between competitors on one end of the setup would occur, 'That won't end well for whoever ends up there.'

XxX

(Elsewhere in the Hospital)

Misumi's body was racked with pain. Temari's wind attacks cut him deeply, 'Vengeful bitch…' He thought to himself. He couldn't really move or else his wounds would reopen, and this wasn't something that was particularly welcome to a person that stretched and contorted their body as their main fighting style.

Now Yoroi was dead as well. Misumi didn't know why their leader had insisted on them fighting that battle. There was no particular reason to do so. Hell, Kabuto didn't even break his cover so it wasn't like they were even really going for the win. There didn't seem to be much of a purpose behind it other than doing it just to do so.

And he was still stuck as a genin to boot. Granted, it was an undercover position, but who wants to be an undercover grunt? He never saw why Kabuto figured it was such a good stance to have. Being seen as useless was useful as a spy and all at some points, but there was only so much you could rightly do.

At that moment he saw a movement from the shadows of his room. It had better not be Kabuto there to gloat. The bastard really was insufferable when there weren't any others he needed to keep his cover around.

But as the shadowy figure made itself known to him he then wished that it really had been Kabuto… Kami, how he wished it had been Kabuto.

"What are you doing here?" Misumi asked in a frantic raised voice until his mouth was covered with sand to muffle him. His attempts to yell were not heard at all and he desperately started to thrash in his bed to no avail as sand was already moving over his body.

"Mother I know you're tired of the blood of weaklings… but just one more… you only have to suffer through one more weak one." He thought as his sand started to force its way down Misumi's mouth and throat instead of crushing him the way it usually did, "Tomorrow we can kill Uzumaki or the Nanabi girl. We can take their blood… and it will be the sweetest moment."

The sand that had piled into his mouth cut off Misumi's breathing. There was no noise coming from him other than the sound of choking. He couldn't even thrash his body about to make any desperate noise to get anyone's attention. As if anyone that would hear him could possibly help. Even his useless 'sensei' wouldn't be a match for Gaara alone.

"So just for tonight…" Gaara said as Misumi's movement finally slowed and came to a stop, his eyes frozen in horror, "Just for tonight… this will have to do. I promise you'll get more soon, just be patient. Please." The sand slowly crept out of Misumi's mouth, not leaving a single grain behind anywhere as it flowed back into the gourd it had originally come from. With that, Gaara looked out of the window at the full moon, the very rarely seen moon with the country's usually cloudy weather, with his dead looking eyes, "I'll get all the blood you want mother. All for you… all to validate my existence."

XxX

On the roof of the hospital, Kabuto stood nearby a water tower, leaning against it, covered in bandages. He suddenly smirked and tilted his glasses up on his face, "Well it certainly took you longer than I thought it would to get away. Is there trouble on the homefront Orochimaru-sama?"

Sitting on the top of the water tower was a man with extremely pale-skin to the point of it being white. He wore a grey garb that went down almost like an apron with a thick purple rope tied in a large knot behind his back as well as tight black sleeves sticking out from the arms and black pants. He had long waist-length black hair, yellow eyes with slitted pupils, purple markings around the outsides of his eyes and a smirk on his face

"Oh there's no trouble at all Kabuto. Nothing more than the usual problems that come with running one's own village. Dealing with the arrangements with our new 'partner'." The man said in a very sly sounding manner, "It's a shame about your team. What a significant loss." He didn't seem sincere in the least in that regard.

Kabuto let out a laugh at that, "Better them than me. There's no way I'm sticking around while Gaara is on his little bloodthirsty rampage. I feel sorry for the last Konoha team left in the exams. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place." He shook his head in amusement, just thinking of what watching that desperate little struggle would be like, "So speaking of our partner, how livid is Gato right now anyway? I think he was really counting on that team you sent to kill Sasuke."

"As if I would kill such a specimen simply because of that little toad's grudge." Orochimaru said in a derisive manner, "I simply said that they would to get him to agree to funding our village. A team of their level could only be used as a means to a test… a test Sasuke-kun passed with flying colors." He then began to laugh slightly, "I only wished I could have seen it."

Kabuto held up a series of Ninja Info Cards, one with Sasuke's picture and statistics that Kabuto picked up from his battles, the others with actual information on the battles themselves, "It was a good show. The only thing that seemed able to stop him was Takigakure's Nanabi jinchuuriki. Hatake Kakashi is watching over him right now. We could possibly take him now."

"We could…" Orochimaru said in a manner showing that he had already considered this possibility on the way there, "I believe that you would be more than enough to keep Kakashi at bay if not kill him in battle, but that would call down the full force of the samurai of this country. I am not foolish enough to cause a stir in Tetsu no Kuni. Despite their neutrality towards affairs in the ninja world there is reason that trouble isn't caused within their borders. Do not think for a moment that they won't chase us south into Oto no Kuni. Not even taking into account the multitude of shinobi here as well willing to retaliate against me. I haven't made many friends Kabuto."

"So what's making a few more enemies?" Kabuto joked as he got the Ninja Info Cards up to Orochimaru, "Still, I see your point. Is there anything that you _do_ want me to do?"

Orochimaru accepted the cards and looked at the first one detailing Sasuke's skill with a smile that could kill a puppy, "Yes. I want you to keep an eye on Sasuke-kun. A close eye. At the nearest opportunity I'll be looking to mark him. A promotion in these exams would have only made that easier in the future, and I'd rather not raise the alarm so to speak once I do so."

Kabuto nodded but felt he had to ask a question, "So is there another reason that you don't want him now?" The opening was very good. Sasuke couldn't fight it, only Kakashi really would be able to at the time and with the two of them there would be no problems… at least that was Kabuto's reasoning.

"I want to give him time to grow." Orochimaru admitted, "Best case scenario would have me obtaining him once his body has adequately grown. Even then if I desired to twist and bend him to my liking there would be a magnificent base to do it from."

"I see." Kabuto said, looking up at the moon with a smirk on his face, "So you're going to have Konoha do the grunt work and then you're going to reap the rewards at the nearest opportunity. How spiteful Orochimaru-sama."

Orochimaru let out a laugh, "Yes, well it is all that rat's nest is useful to me for in this instance… for taking good care of my future. But in the meantime we will need to further consolidate our place as a rising hidden village."

"Gato seemed quite ecstatic to put some money towards that cause." Kabuto mentioned, "I think he believes that dipping his fingers into the ninja business is like any other business venture he's expanded to in the past. I'm sure somewhere down the line he'll find it a little more… how should I say, cutthroat?"

Once again, Orochimaru seemed amused by Kabuto's choice of wording, "Kukukukuku… indeed."

XxX

(Elsewhere – Konoha Competitors' Hotel)

On the way back to the hotel, Team 10 found that they were the only ones from Konoha to do so with their entire squad intact what with the multitude of hospitalized genin. There was a begrudging silence between them as none of them particularly had anything to say. What was there to say? They all knew what the score would be the next day when the fights started up again.

No one knew more than Naruto did.

So after Asuma had taken them to get something to eat he had dropped them back at their hotel suite, as not only did the sensei get better rooms to themselves this time the competitors received a two room suite to themselves for getting to the finals. They were all assured that he was nothing but proud of their performance in the tournament and the overall exam and told them that whatever they decided to do tomorrow would be the right thing.

He then proceeded to leave them for the night to allow them to get their rest for the next day.

And as the silence settled between them as they all tried to find something to do to in order to quell any nerves or misgivings, Naruto figured then was as good a time as any to let them know just where they stood in the whole scheme of the jinchuuriki thing.

_(Flashback – Team 10 Hotel Suite – Early Nightfall)_

_Naruto was laying out on a couch in the main room covered with extra blankets and pillows that were shoved off to the side due to there being no use for them at the moment. There were still bandages on his face and parts of his body from his visit to the hospital though he wouldn't need them by tomorrow._

_Over at a table by the window showing the darkness outside and the moonlight, Ino sat with her travel pack out as she began replacing her own poison supply for tomorrow. She had one bandage on her cheek from the bruises that Lee gave her, and with the bandages that usually covered her body one couldn't tell where else she had been hurt. Her neck had a rather angry red mark on it from where Lee slammed her into the water but she didn't seem to be complaining at the moment._

_For once Shikamaru wasn't sleeping with the down time granted to him, he was making a house of cards on the floor although his concentration seemed to be elsewhere._

_Abruptly, Naruto sat up straight on the couch, getting the attention of both Shikamaru and Ino, showing that they were just as on edge as he was. Though their reasons for such were grossly different._

_Naruto released a sigh and took a deep breath before speaking, "I have something I've got to tell you guys. It's not really something I want to say, but I'd have to eventually… and now's kind of the best time for it."_

"_What are you talking about Naruto?" Shikamaru asked, not caring that his house of cards fell. It was just meant to keep him occupied, he didn't care about it. But he couldn't see the use of Naruto telling them something important right before such a serious encounter that was going to occur the next day, "Why now?"_

"_Because it has to do with who we're fighting tomorrow." Naruto said, watching Ino walk over to them to get a better spot to listen from, "You guys know how Fuu and Gaara are both jinchuuriki right?" He said, trying to ease into the topic the best way he could._

_Ino took a seat next to Shikamaru on the floor since Naruto was the main one speaking and explaining, "Yeah. But they don't really seem that much alike. Fuu and Gaara do different things in fights, and I'd much rather have to face her than Gaara." She let off a shiver, "At least Fuu won't flat out kill you when you can't fight anymore."_

_A nod came from Shikamaru at Ino's statement, "Gaara's infinitely creepier than Fuu. She just seems angry, Gaara doesn't seem mad when he fights… ever, but it's like he just kills like nothing as if it were second nature."_

_Naruto had to agree with that. As far as the danger scale of jinchuuriki went in his head it ranged from docile, i.e. him, to intermediately threatening given certain circumstances, or like Fuu, and then there was Gaara who would kill you if you sneezed ten feet away from him. It was a rather extreme contrast, one that would make the coming news that much more difficult for some to process._

_Still, he had to know more about what they thought on it, "So since you guys have seen them up close and personal for a bit, what do you think about jinchuuriki? We spent the entire day like twenty feet away from them."_

"_Is it the fact that the biju are inside of them?" Ino asked with a tilt of her head. She didn't figure Naruto knew that much more than them, but he seemed to have a handle on the obscure things that they didn't understand so why not just ask him? It couldn't hurt since he seemed to be in control of the conversation anyway, "You know, that makes them act that way?"_

_In response to her question, Naruto shook his head in the negative, "I think I already said it. Just having one of the demons inside of you doesn't make you super unstable or unpleasant. The people around them did that to them. Fuu kind of let slip to me the way she was treated in her village to make her the way she is, and I don't even want to think about what happened to Gaara in the past." Whatever screwed that guy up had to be heavier than Naruto could imagine._

_Ino's blue eyes blinked, "Why would anyone treat something they know could be dangerous badly, are they crazy?"_

"_Fear." Shikamaru said, trying to list reasons to her as to why people would do such a thing, "Maybe just hate. I can't imagine that getting one of those things inside a person would be easy. Maybe it killed tons of people before that and the people just project the hate onto the jinchuuriki instead of the monster. It makes sense to me. It isn't right, but it makes sense."_

'_So he can put that much together, but he isn't going to get this without me telling him more.' Naruto thought. There just wasn't enough from his explanation to link the word 'jinchuuriki' to him, "People will treat them as sub-humans or weapons. They'll keep away from them and make sure no one goes near them just because they're scared. There's all kinds of things that happen to jinchuuriki."_

_Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at the mournful way Naruto was speaking on the subject, "Why are you telling us all of this stuff Naruto?"_

"_It's kind of obvious by now isn't it?" Naruto said with a humorless smile as Shikamaru's eyes widened in realization, "But just let me ask one question before I say anything else. Does it really matter to you?"_

_Getting over his shock at more or less cracking the code, Shikamaru realized that Naruto was waiting on an answer, and Ino was confused over what he was talking about, "Honestly? If I knew before I got to know you it probably would… but there's no way it would bother me now. You may be a troublesome bastard, but you're nowhere near as much of a drag as a demon or anything."_

"_Good." Naruto said with a relieved look on his face before turning to the still lost Ino._

"_I don't know what's going on anymore." Ino said, scratching at her temple as she knew something had gone over her head and had been lost in translation somewhere, "Why'd we switch to talking about Goldie-kun and about something mattering?"_

_Oh well, if it came to an end after all of this and she didn't want to team with him anymore at least they took it all the way to the chunin exams beforehand. It was a good six months to say the very least, "Ino-chan… I'm a jinchuuriki too."_

_Even though Shikamaru had picked up on it moments ago, hearing him openly admit it was something that still hit him right in the stomach. Ino on the other hand was just staring at him with her mouth hanging open, "Y-You? You've got a monster stuck inside of you like Fuu or Gaara?" A sad nod was the answer, "But how? Why? And which one?" _

"_I already know which one…" Shikamaru said with a groan and a hand over his face, "There's only one that makes any kind of sense… and the only one any person our age knows anything about at all. Damn Naruto, how did you end up with that thing in you?"_

"_I say the same thing all the time…" Naruto returned dryly._

"_Stop talking like I know what's going on!" Ino suddenly exclaimed, waving her fists. It was like being a child stuck in the middle of an adult conversation. You can hear everything but you can't really contribute, "What's in him?" She demanded._

"_Kyuubi." Naruto and Shikamaru said at the exact same time, looking at each other to make sure that they were on the same page in this instance._

"_Bullshit." Ino said flippantly, "The Yondaime Hokage beat it way back in the day remember? Why is it stuck in Naruto? How on earth would it have gotten there?"_

_In response, Naruto with a deadpan look on his face held up an empty sealing scroll from his supply and a folded fuuma shuriken. He used the wicked blade to destroy the scroll before pulling out another one and unfurling it, proceeding to seal the weapon away inside of it, "Does that explain it well enough or do I actually need to use words?" Ino just sat there staring at him with a blank expression on her face._

_Shikamaru sighed and chose to actually use words instead of a crappy visual aid to explain, "The Kyuubi is the shuriken. The first scroll that Naruto cut up represents the people that the Kyuubi killed as a way of explaining that it was the Kyuubi. The second scroll is him. The Yondaime beat the Kyuubi by sealing it into Naruto with fuuinjutsu like Naruto sealed the shuriken away."_

"_He couldn't kill it so that's what he did with it." Naruto said with a shrug._

_Ino was starting to get the picture, "Why you though?"_

"_I say that same thing all the time…" Naruto once again returned dryly to his fellow blonde, "I guess I'm just the closest kid he could pick up in time for it. Either my parents were killed in the attack or they dumped me after they realized I was stuck with the Kyuubi for life. That's the best explanation I could come up with as to why I don't have family when I'm supposed to be in a clan."_

"_That's terrible." Ino said, "I don't think your parents would ever do anything like that." The other alternative theory on his parents' fate was the original one, that they were dead… and it was still a crappy substitute for being abandoned, "You can't use any attacks like what Fuu can do or Gaara."_

_Naruto shook his head, "You've just never seen me do it. In Nami no Kuni when I thought you guys were dead, that was the first time I ever did anything… it was out of anger so I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing and I didn't know it until I found out that I was a jinchuuriki. I never knew… but every adult in Konoha did."_

_As far as things went for Shikamaru, it was pretty simple after the fact that Naruto had the Kyuubi inside of him. Was he a dangerous person? Other than the obvious fact that he was a ninja, no, he wasn't dangerous or unstable. And he was a buddy. A good friend. So things were a-ok with Shikamaru._

_Ino on the other hand had to take a moment to think. In school she had heard others say that their parents told them to stay away from Naruto, that he was a bad person. She had never even bothered to ask why, she had just gone along with it until it had become second nature to see Naruto as nothing. If it had happened like that with her then how many others were told the same? How many of the adults in the village hated Naruto vicariously through their kids? Sure he was kind of annoying in school, and he was loud, but he wasn't any brasher than Kiba had been._

_There was just so much to put together. Naruto, the same person she had lived, eaten with, fought alongside, all of that… he somehow had within him the beast that nearly destroyed their entire village._

"_I… I think I'm going to get ready for bed." Ino said, getting up demurely, greatly out of her character as she walked towards one of the two rooms slated as hers, "Goodnight Shikamaru… Naruto." She sounded a little shaken up by the whole thing when she had spoken to them._

_Shikamaru looked at Ino as she walked to her room, a frown evident on his face. The door to the room shut and he turned towards Naruto who was looking the same way as well, "Hey Naruto are you going to be alright after telling us-?"_

_Naruto nodded quietly before speaking up to his genius partner, "I think she's scared of me." He admitted quietly, "I kind of thought that it would happen, but it still sucks you know?" _

_Shikamaru wound up walking over to Naruto and putting a hand on his shoulder before speaking, "Hey, just give her a little time. I don't think she hates you or blames you or even thinks that you're the demon at all. Nothing like that. It _is _pretty shocking stuff."_

_Yeah, but he saw into her eyes before she left, and he knew what fear looked like when someone looked at him, "I think I'm going to go to bed too… I'll see you tomorrow Shikamaru." He said, getting Shikamaru to head towards the room that was his own while he started gathering together the bedding on the couch._

(End Flashback)

So with that, the young genin team broke off for the night and split up in their suite. The way Ino had her own room Shikamaru had his own as well. Naruto and Shikamaru would have been rooming together, but sleeping in the same tent or room and the same bed with another person were completely different things. Not particularly because it was strange or anything, but because Naruto would rather hit the couch than share such a close proximity with someone else as he was far too used being all alone at night. Shikamaru simply rolled with it since he seemed so sure about it, and Naruto slept out on the couch for the first night they had been there before the tournament and that night as well.

He tried to sleep, but it was just a semi-aware hazy state where he was trying to sleep but just couldn't take that last step to actually get there, either because something in his own head wouldn't let him or for whatever reason. Still, the fact that he was awake meant that he could feel the door to one of the rooms open up and could feel the presence of someone exiting the room. A burst of his sonar jutsu had him sensing Ino as she walked out.

The blonde girl had her long hair down instead of up in her usual ponytail and she had on a light purple set of pajamas as she drifted barefoot through the room. She walked in front of the couch that Naruto was sleeping on and seemed to look at him as best as she could in the low light. Naruto wished that he could make out facial expressions with his sonar jutsu, but he still had trouble distinguishing exact figures with it. He knew it was Ino from the room she had exited from and because of the feel of her chakra itself.

"Are you awake?" Ino finally asked quietly, getting no response from Naruto who was trying to fake it, "I know you are. If you were actually asleep then you'd be all sprawled out on the couch and snoring a bit. It was so cute back in Nami no Kuni when you-."

"Okay… I'm awake Ino-chan." Naruto said, cutting her off from going into any more detail about his sleeping habits and getting a giggle from her, "So why are you up?"

Ino crouched down from her distance to him as if to get closer to eye level with the resting jinchuuriki, "I couldn't sleep. I tried for hours but I just couldn't do it. Using my sleep toxin to put myself to sleep is a really bad idea too… even if I wasn't immune to it in the first place." Her eyes turned away from Naruto before she spoke again, "I guess I'm kind of scared."

"I'm sorry." Naruto said before he could stop himself. Ino blinked in surprise of hearing him cut her off in such a manner, "I should have waited before saying something about the Kyuubi… and I kept wondering if I even should have said anything at all. But you deserved to know, especially with what's going on tomorrow and who we're facing. I'm sorry I scared you."

Ino kept silent until he was done speaking before crawling over to him to sit on her knees in front of him, pulling his strange animal sleeping cap off and flicking him on the forehead, eliciting a yipe of pain from him, "I'm not scared of you stupid. I could never be scared of you. Goldie-kun is too much of a sweetie to ever be scared of, Kyuubi or not. You might as well not even have it for as much influence as it has over you." She didn't know how much it meant to him to hear that come from her, "It's Gaara and Fuu, even though I'm less scared of one than the other."

'It's not me…' Naruto thought to himself in relief. He didn't know how tightly he had been holding his breath in his chest since Ino had walked away that night.

"It's just…" Ino kept explaining, wringing her hands in a nervous motion, "I look at them and I look at you… and how could anyone ever be scared of you? You never even get mad and even then I don't remember ever hearing about you doing anything to make anyone scared of you. But with them it's clear why they're dangerous, and they're so strong. And even if we somehow get past Fuu and her teammate without getting turned into paste then we have to fight Gaara, and if we lose before we get to him then he'll kill us all for sure, and _you_, he's already said that no matter what he's going to kill you! Naruto he's going to kill-!"

Sensing that Ino was starting to panic, Naruto sat up from his place on the couch and quickly reached out for Ino, pulling her towards him. The side of her head and face impacted off of his chest and at the very least the surprise of him doing such a thing got her to stop before she started getting out of hand. During her rant in the moonlight he could see the liquid beginning to well up in her eyes and once he heard her voice start to break that was all he could take. As had been expressed in his opinion before, such a painfully pretty face should never have to cry.

Ino for her part was mostly just surprised, "G-Goldie-ku-… Naruto." In the past she had freely taken it upon herself to grab him and wantonly hug him tightly either as a method to tease him or as a legitimate show of affection for someone that she quickly learned hadn't received much of it at all. This was a direct opposite of anything that he had ever done to her. He'd play with her back, but this seemed far more serious, "W-What are you doing?"

"Tell me what you hear right now Ino-chan." Naruto said quietly, seemingly trying to calm her down. It seemed to work as her breathing had slowed down from borderline hyperventilation levels to a more normal and serene one.

In Ino's ears she listened and tried to pick up on what he was talking about. She couldn't hear anything much other than the wind blowing outside and barely at that. She shut her eyes to try and focus before she realized exactly what he might have been implying. Her ear was right up against it, "I can hear your heartbeat." It was really strong. She couldn't feel anything erratic about its rhythm at all and it kind of annoyed her that he could hold her that close and not even be nervous about it… but that wasn't important, "Is that what you're talking about?"

"Yeah." Naruto said before holding her away from him to look directly at her, "Listen to me. I promise, I won't let anything happen to you. You and Shikamaru are my best friends. I'm not going to let you two die or get maimed because Gaara wants to fight me. Either way, win or lose to Fuu or not I'll solve this myself."

Ino raised an eyebrow, "Solve it yourself? Naruto, tell Asuma-sensei. At dinner you didn't say anything about it at all, and you pretty much mad-dogged me and Shikamaru into keeping our mouths shut. Why?"

"I want to see if I can prove something…" Naruto said, frowning deeply as he thought about getting Asuma to fight his own battle and pick up his own mess like the man had done in Nami no Kuni, "If I can't handle this myself…" He didn't know exactly what to say to explain his reasoning, "I'm supposed to be like Gaara or Fuu Ino-chan. You think that I was never angry enough to want to kill anyone? When I was little I used to feel like that all the time. I hated that no one ever really looked at me, that they ignored me like I didn't exist, and I didn't know why people treated me like that. I didn't know why people seemed to want me to just disappear and I just wanted them all to die. If I stayed like that, who knew how I would have turned out?"

Maybe spiteful of the people around himself like Fuu to the point where he would lash out freely, or just crazy enough to act on his impulses to kill the way that Gaara did. Either way wasn't exactly a comforting thought.

"Am I weak because I'm not like that?" Naruto kept on speaking, now as if he were talking to himself instead of just her, "Gaara and Fuu seem out of this world strong. Are they strong because of the way they are? I don't understand. Gaara fights and kills for himself because he thinks it makes his existence. Fuu fights for herself so that people will leave her alone the way she wants to be left." He was wondering if he could really overcome his enemies without a flat out killer instinct the way they seemed to have. He couldn't help but care about others even while he was fighting. If he could win without killing that was always his first choice.

"Are they happy?"

Naruto looked at Ino in confusion, "What?"

"Are they happy?" She said, repeating herself, "Yeah, they're really strong. But they don't have a dream like you have. They don't have a goal to reach other than what you said, to prove their existence by killing or to just be left alone. I've never seen either one of them happy, even when they won. Each time they succeed they don't even care. It's like you're reaching for a goal and they're trying to just hold their ground… does that make sense?"

"I don't know… kind of?" Naruto said, squinting his eyes in heavy thought trying to comprehend what Ino was saying, "But I feel like I have to deal with this one way or another. I don't even think it's about the exams anymore."

Ino just stared at him after he finished speaking, "Do you think you can win?"

It took him a moment to think about it, but not too long for Naruto's eyes to grow serious with a nod of determination, "Yeah. I can win, because it's not just me tomorrow. _We_ can win. And none of us are going to die okay? I already dodged that bullet once, I don't feel like thinking one of you died for real this time." Ino looked away from him with some nerves still evident in her eyes before she turned back to him and nodded with a smile, "Good. Now I'm going to try and go to sleep. I couldn't really do it either." With that, he lay back down on the couch and threw the loose beddings over himself once his head hit the pillow.

Still sitting there on her knees was Ino though. The look on her face was one of discomfort for some reason and if there had been any light to do so he would have seen how red her cheeks were. Eventually she got up the nerve to ask her question, "Um Naruto… I'm still kind of scared. I don't feel like sleeping alone tonight, so if it isn't too weird to ask would you sleep in my bed tonight?" She saw his eyes snap open and look at her in sheer surprise, "If you want to… I mean, I'm just asking! You don't have to say yes. It's not a big problem."

The entire reason he was sleeping on the couch in the first place was because he was totally uncomfortable with the idea of sharing a bed with anyone else… so Ino's request caught him totally off-guard. Awkward didn't even begin to describe how he felt at the moment, but Ino was fidgeting, and if it would help her then why not? He would have liked to believe she would have done it for him if he had asked her to… if there was a way to ever do it that didn't make him feel like or look like Jiraiya.

"I'll do it." Naruto said, not able to meet her eyes much the same way she was unable to do the same with him, "It's not a big deal or a problem at all Ino-chan. Honest." That was a blunt and blatant lie, it was a big deal and the potential for a problem was quite high. But he pretty much went along with it when Ino stood up and grabbed his hands to get him off of his former sleeping space to lead him along.

"You shouldn't be sleeping on the couch anyway." Ino said as she moved into the room that had been hers, "You should have at least made Shikamaru trade off with you tonight instead of you just taking the couch again. You're too much of a softie." She got into the bed and pat the spot next to her for Naruto to get in, "That's why we like you though. How could you ever think I was scared of you?" Naruto hesitated at first to get in, but relented when he saw Ino frown, "It seems like you're more scared of me than I am of you."

As Naruto got into the bed and set his head down on a pillow he was surprised when Ino got close enough to set her head on his chest, similar to the way she had been when he pulled her towards him on the couch. Almost as a reflex he put his arms around her in turn and when she didn't call him out on it he realized that it felt pretty nice, "It's not my fault Ino-chan. Girls are scary. Sakura-chan gets mad and beats things up, you yell at people, poison them, and do stuff to their minds, Tenten throws tons of metal things. Why shouldn't I be scared of you?"

"Don't push it, you're ruining the moment." Ino said, though there wasn't any irritation in her voice as she got herself comfortable, 'Kami he's solid.' She thought to herself as her cheeks reddened again, 'This is good. He's super-warm. I don't think that's the Kyuubi either, I think it's just him.' Why was she blushing so much? It was completely out of character, and he wasn't even doing anything that really made it appropriate, he was just being himself, 'Oh no, I think I might be-. No. Don't think it. He's your teammate, you just know him really well. But we had to mean something to him if he told us that the Kyuubi was in him. Gah, what's wrong with me? I need to get my head in the game! I can't be thinking about personal crap with Goldie-kun before tomorrow!'

It didn't escape the notice of either that it was far more comfortable with the other in the room than not, but it was forgotten just as quickly with the speed the two nodded off with. They had work to do tomorrow. It was undoubtedly going to be a very, very long day.

In the dark of the living room of the suite however, none of them saw a single eye that had been looking at them and their moment with the help of the moonlight. After they had gotten up to head to Ino's room it merely turned into sand particles that floated away.

XxX

Outside of the building, across at another hotel building there was one person in the village that just couldn't sleep. He merely stood on the roof of his lodgings and stared out at the opposite one with a hand over his eye, through the window. He had been there long enough to use his spying jutsu, clearly able to see as Naruto pulled Ino into a hug, and later as Ino pulled Naruto into her room.

Seeing the contact that one jinchuuriki was having with a normal person struck a chord with Gaara, seemingly making his head hurt as his hand pressed against his forehead and he was visibly seen struggling to keep himself in check, straining and groaning as his hand reached higher and clutched his messy red hair, "Tomorrow one way or the other you'll give me what I want Uzumaki. You'll prove my existence and give me the fight of my life… because it will be for yours." His hand dragged down his forehead and exposed the red kanji for love on his head as the full moon shone down on him. The sound of the wind made a howling noise in the village that stood at the top of the Three Wolves Mountains.

"Fight me with all of your strength. Do it so I can crush you and show you that your ridiculous need to be accepted by weaklings like that girl brings you nothing, and your promise to protect her means even less. Only fighting for yourself makes you strong, and your blood will make me stronger than I've ever been."

* * *

**Okay, so if you haven't picked up on it by now, I'm going to be updating this until I end the chunin exams… because I am for some reason on a mental roll with putting coherent thought onto keyboard with this story. I've got a ton of things I have in mind for afterwards and another reason for the back-to-backs is so that I can get to them faster. To anyone that may be upset with this due to my lack of updating other stories, hey… sometimes when you're rolling on forward it would be stupid to stop your momentum, who knows what it would take to build it back up again? And in my defense I have done this at least once (As in updated 7 or more straight chapters for one story) for everything I've ever written before.**

**But enough about that, let's talk about **_**me**_** and how much of a bonafide bad motherfucker I am. I am officially the problem solver! I solved my college issues and am currently in there like swimwear. It took all of Monday to work out, I don't think I ate or slept for 24 to 36 hours, I **_**still**_** have a 45 minute commute to deal with daily, and I think I somehow kneed myself in the face during fighting practice in the meantime… but that doesn't matter because when life gives you lemons you paint that shit gold!**

**I'm going to calm down now and let you all get on with your lives. I hope you enjoyed and will continue to do so.**

**Next chapter is the Team 10/Team Taki fight. I hope it does not disappoint.**

**Until next time friends; same Kenchi channel, same Eastern Standard Kenchi time (Who knows when the hell that could be? Oh well, it'll be within a day or two.)**

**Errm… Kenchi out.**


	29. The Perks of the Job

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do however own the concept of Eastern Standard Kenchi Time. It begins whenever I first wake up and resets whenever I go to sleep at any time in the day. If it were the standard for time around the world then the deadlines for things would be WAY longer if they even existed at all because days could last either 48 hours or more… or could last two hours depending on how up and at 'em I feel after waking up. It's a working man's system.

**Chapter 29: The "Perks" of the Job**

* * *

Blue eyes opened up once the first dregs of sunlight hit Ino's face, stirring her from her rest. Underneath her was Naruto… right where she left him, only now she had gotten closer to his shoulder than his chest and he now had a pillow stuck over his face as it was turned to the side, still sound asleep, "I hope I'm not the reason that's there." She said while removing said pillow from his face lest he actually wind up smothered for real.

Hey, while accidentally killing her teammate by way of pillow was worst case scenario it wasn't her fault that a pillow just felt cumbersome while she was sleeping on his chest. That heartbeat was comforting.

She was obviously more comfortable than she thought because she had managed to intertwine her legs with his. He was never to know that, and it was lucky that he slept so heavily as she freed herself from him and got up out of bed… because what was she possibly going to say, something even more awkward than the practice of getting him in there last night in the first place?

They still had hours before their fight so instead of kicking Naruto awake as was her first instinct she yawned and opened the blinds. That would eventually get him up… and if he wasn't up in thirty minutes or an hour then she'd do something about it.

Looking back at Naruto as the sun hit his face, Ino smiled when he cringed at the sunlight and turned over in the bed to shield his face, "At least you got over how weird it was sleeping with me fast enough." She then did a slightly provocative pose, not that he was even awake to see it, "But then again why wouldn't you enjoy it? I was there after all." She stopped her pose to hold her torso slightly. The day-after lag of taking an injury was there in full force and she could feel the dull throb of the hurt that Lee had put on her.

With that, she opened the door to the room and walked out to find a fully dressed and ready Shikamaru sitting on the couch where Naruto was supposed to be sleeping, at least to the best of his memory, "Hey." Shikamaru greeted, surprising Ino that he was actually awake at a very un-Shikamaru-like hour, "I think Naruto ditched us for a bit because I didn't see him or any sign of him when I got up this morning."

"Oh he's in there." Ino said, pointing her thumb behind herself into her room with quite the pleased look on her face, "He spent the night with his beloved Ino-chan… one wonderful night he'll never forget." She let out a satisfied sigh as she plopped down on the couch next to Shikamaru, "He just couldn't keep his hands off of me."

Red quickly sprang to Shikamaru's face as his mind dropped to the gutter almost immediately upon Ino's utterance of her statement, "A-Are you serious?" His head slowly turned towards Ino's room where the door was open and he could see a lump that was still in the bed… obviously Naruto, "You can't be serious."

Ino gave him a dry look while inwardly she was laughing, "Well… look around. Goldie-kun's in there, I came out of there just now, there's no way I'm ever sleeping on a couch unless the couch is the best option available. Put the pieces together Shikamaru." She then added something in an attempt to go for the proverbial knockout, "He was a complete gentleman if it makes you feel better. He didn't do anything I didn't want him to do and he didn't force anything on me." That was true… however it still sounded wrong. And that was Ino's intention all along, because it was still about to get worse, "It was actually more comfortable than I thought it would be. I don't know what people talk about saying that the first time sleeping with someone hurts. It was like we were a perfect fit."

And that was all Shikamaru could take before he collapsed on the arm of the couch with blood dripping from his nose.

Nodding to herself for a job well done, a cat-like smirk on her face, she got up and headed for the bathroom to get ready for the day. She'd wake both Naruto and Shikamaru up after she was done.

As she walked back into the bedroom and grabbed her toiletries she wondered how well the same trick would work on Asuma.

XxX

The final day of the exams had come and many vendors and merchants were up bright and early to pack up their things, prepared to leave immediately to return home once the event came to an end. Until then those that had tickets once again packed the arena prepared to watch the last matches up close and personal. Those without once again crowded the main plaza of the village outside of the arena to watch on the screen out there as well.

"There's no way I'm losing today's wager!" Tsunade chirped brightly as she and Shizune made their way back into the arena they had just been in the day before, "It's so easy. All I had to do was heap the cash on the dark horse team. It'll make back what I lost and then some!"

Shizune was surprised at hearing that from her master, "That means you're betting on the Konoha team with Uzumaki Naruto on it? Wow Tsunade-sama, I thought you didn't believe in him to win."

"Oh I don't." Tsunade said matter-of-factly, getting Shizune to sigh at her lack of logic in this situation. Why bet on someone you don't believe can win? That's asinine, "But we're already in the red anyway, so if he loses we'll just be further in debt. If that team wins the whole thing though then consider our debts cleared with a nice little chunk to go into our pockets as well. The sucker's bet isn't such a sucker move this time."

Shizune merely smiled as they made their way to their seats through the rows, "I'd like to think they can win. It would be nice for a change wouldn't it? I thought they were good kids and they seem to be rather good shinobi as well."

In response to her assistant's thoughts and hopes on the matter, Tsunade frowned heavily, "It doesn't matter how 'good' they are or how 'nice' it would be for them to win Shizune. That's not the way things work in this world. The odds are against them here. Even if they win the first one then what will they do with the second fight? You saw that team."

"It isn't a bad thing to hope for good things to happen." Shizune said. Tsunade had been like this ever since she had left Konoha with her all those years ago. It was really depressing most of the time to hear how she didn't think anyone with an actual goal could do it, or if anyone felt that they could do something impossible she would just cut into them, "There's always a chance." Not hearing anything out of Tsunade it was evident that the conversation was over, eliciting a sigh from the dark-haired woman.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Aside from the wanton violence from Gaara on Akadou Yoroi that had ended yesterday's viewing experience the stadium was buzzing over the possibility of if the last remaining Konoha team could win. The seats were filled again with even more people down on the field itself with blankets and the like spread out so that they could sit on the ground and watch.

Hanabi was barely able to hide how excited she was as she was nearly bouncing in her seat waiting on the fight, "Father, do you know anything about Naruto-oniisama?" She looked around and thought of something from yesterday, "A lot of people seem to know who he is, more than they did Neji." A frown then came over her young face, "But they don't really seem to like him either."

At least not until the fight started. Her ears weren't terrible in place of her eyes being so good. Yesterday Hanabi was able to decipher quite a bit of the conversations going on around her even though there was nothing really definite in what was said. There were more than a few mean-spirited tones of voice though. Naruto's performance in the comeback was impressive enough to win a good deal of spectators over by the end however.

Hiashi would have to later ask his daughter about how _she_ knew Naruto, and what necessarily he had done to get her buzzing about him so much. Until yesterday Hiashi hadn't even been aware that Hanabi even had any friends outside of the clan, and even they couldn't really be classified as her friends. Yet she somehow ran smack into Uzumaki Naruto out of the blue and cheered for him over her own blood, albeit Neji wasn't necessarily close to her. Still, she brought up a point that was a sore subject for many. Not necessarily him in particular, but among many others in the clan; why did people inherently dislike Naruto? This was her question, and he couldn't answer it.

"It… is not my place to say." Hiashi responded to the little girl with a serious expression, "It is something of a personal secret that very few are privy to." Very few her age at least. Every adult within a 50 mile radius of Konoha seemed to know about it, "It seems as if he is changing the opinion of many though. The people don't seem to despise Uzumaki Naruto as much any longer."

"Who hates the Boss?"

A bratty male voice said, and… wait did his daughter just growl? She definitely activated her Byakugan on reflex, that much was clear for him to see. They had been sitting by the aisle, and Hanabi hopped right out of her seat, turning up the steps and pointing her little finger at the one that had spoken, "What are you doing here Kono-baka?" Hanabi asked, and indeed it was Konohamaru with Moegi and Udon in tow, "Don't tell me you skipped school and snuck in here! And you call yourself Naruto-oniisama's number two, he'd never excuse that!"

Oh, if only she knew just what Naruto was willing to excuse and condone. Someone had a little bit more to learn.

But Konohamaru jumped to take the bait, "I came here because I heard that Boss kicked so much ass yesterday he was going to do it again today!" He took on a victorious look and rubbed his nose, "Heh. It wasn't really that hard to convince Iruka-sensei that it was a good idea to come and watch today."

Moegi got close to Konohamaru's ear to whisper to him, "But Konohamaru, yesterday at the end of class you held onto Iruka-sensei's leg and almost started crying in the middle of class to get him to take us all out here for the end of the contest."

Konohamaru sputtered and was only thankful that Moegi had been quiet enough to keep Hanabi from hearing that… and then he saw her smirk… because her Byakugan was on and she could clearly read lips.

"Who is this girl Konohamaru?" Udon asked, pointing at Hanabi who had turned her Byakugan off due to just wasting chakra at that point.

"A scoundrel apprentice of the Boss!" Konohamaru shouted, stepping forward and shaking a fist at Hanabi, "She doesn't even know any of the Boss's secret techniques or anything and she thinks that she's his number two!"

At this point Hiashi could only raise an eyebrow at Hanabi's ongoing interaction with these random kids. Once again he had to wonder how on earth she managed to meet them, or at least how did she meet Konohamaru since he was the one she was arguing with.

"I am not a scoundrel apprentice." Hanabi replied haughtily, "And you say Naruto-oniisama has taught you his secret techniques, he obviously hasn't taught you the good one." Her eyes filled with admiration as she remembered the force of Naruto's jutsu that hurt her eyes and how Konohamaru most definitely didn't know how to do it. Yes, he was most certainly magnanimous to keep such a jutsu out of the hands of those that would abuse its awesome power, "He has more wisdom than to teach such a powerful jutsu to an oaf that would use it in the street to harm innocent bystanders."

"I am not an oaf!" Konohamaru disputed, "Take that back!" He made to walk down the steps but missed the placement of his foot. He would have fallen down the stairs had he not been grabbed by the back of his scarf and lifted into the air. He breathed a sigh of relief, but paled when he realized who was holding on to him.

"You thought it was okay to just run off from the classes Konohamaru?" Iruka said, holding the boy up with a look on his face that promised that repercussions were going to be paid soon, "You can't run up into the stands and bother others. You're representing the class and the Academy when you pull stunts like that." He rubbed the bridge of his nose as a stress reliever, "Honestly, I didn't figure I'd have anyone near as troublesome again after-."

"-After Naruto graduated?" Konohamaru offered up hopefully, getting nods from Moegi and Udon who had also heard Naruto tell them of the things he had gotten up to when he was their age.

Iruka gave Konohamaru a shake and a stern look, "I brought you here so that you would all pay attention and watch what could be you one day if you work hard enough. These are genin out there fighting. That's what you'll be once you graduate too, and if you're talented enough you could be the next rookies to make it in the exams. Now back to the field with the rest of the class and if I have to look for you again you don't want to know what I'll have you do."

Despite the speech, Iruka was pretty much going to take his class anyway as a surprise because he had really wanted to see Naruto on the first day. Scheduling wouldn't allow him to do so, and then when Konohamaru started the desperate begging yesterday the other teachers thought it would be a good idea to tag along and take their classes too… all of them. So the entire Academy was out on the field watching the exam conclusion.

It was going to be hell keeping watch over those little bastards for too long if the matches didn't start soon. Ahh, the _joys_ of teaching.

"Excuse me."

Iruka's attention turned towards Hiashi as the man remained in his seat, unaffected by the argument between the kids. Iruka looked towards him as Hanabi sat back in her seat next to her father, "Yes Hyuuga-san, I apologize. Konohamaru is a little something of a troublemaker." He cleared his throat before speaking again, "I hope he didn't cause too much trouble."

"It's fine." Hiashi said, looking at Hanabi, "I believe it was just as much Hanabi here as much as your student." Hanabi had to fight the urge to pout at getting in trouble because of Konohamaru, "I believe it's about time she enrolls in the Ninja Academy so that she can learn to interact better with others."

Hanabi stared wide-eyed at her father. Was he really going to finally put her in the Academy? That would have been great. She wondered why it had taken so long in the first place. She could have been enrolled at the end of the last semester.

Iruka nodded and looked down at Hanabi, giving the little girl a smile as he kept speaking to Hiashi, "Of course, I don't think that would be any trouble at all. If you don't mind stopping by the Academy after the exams are over we can get most of her paperwork and things handled then. I hope you're in my class." He finished to Hanabi before excusing himself to make sure Konohamaru was heading back down to the field and not bothering anyone else in the crowd.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena – Private VIP Box)

Gato didn't even know why he was still in Tetsu no Kuni. The hits he had put out on Team 10 hadn't ended with some of those little bastards dying miserably, and the Oto genin team that had fought Team 7 failed. Still, watching Fuu smash the Uchiha and the Akimichi into paste was satisfying. So maybe the fact that the second Konoha team was fighting against that girl and her single remaining teammate that day kept him around? And hey, if they won that match too then they would just get squashed by the homicidal kid with the sand in the finals. So either way he'd get a touch of fulfillment out of the day's proceedings.

"You have company Gato-sama." One of his masked Otogakure bodyguards said, knocking on the door from outside, "It's an important guest."

"I'll be the judge of that!" Gato said as he gripped the cane he possessed with a hidden sword inside in preparation for the door to open, "Let whoever it is in already!" Having already dodged death from Kakashi and his brats once before he now had a mixture of bravery in the face of frontline odds and a newfound cowardice for unknowns. It was strange, but at least the squads of Oto shinobi that Orochimaru gave him to command as a gesture of good faith were efficient guards. Good at dirty work too.

"Now, now Gato… that's not a very hospitable attitude for one to have." That voice made Gato's blood turn somewhat cold at the sound of it… and this was supposed to be his business partner.

"Ah!" Gato jumped up from his cushy chair and ran to the door to find Orochimaru already inside with the door closed behind him, "Orochimaru, what brings you here to the exams? I thought you were busy budgeting the funds I fronted you."

Orochimaru moved past Gato, delighting in the cowardice of the man once he realized he was in the presence of his undisputed better, money or not… and it wasn't like Orochimaru himself had a shortage of it. He commandeered Gato's chair, taking a seat where the man once sat without even asking. What was he really going to do about it? Nothing at all, "What can I say Gato? It was far easier to appropriate the needs than I thought it would be, and I do love a good show. Why? Are you not happy to see me here?" His tone was pleasant enough, but like everything else he said there was an air of danger to it.

"That's not it at all, I was just under the impression that we weren't going to meet up and speak again until your other business had been squared away." Gato said, not really caring about the loss of his seat now that one of the most dangerous men that had ever lived happened to be right there in front of him, "Aren't you worried about the samurai or any of the other ninja getting wind of you being here?"

A laugh came from Orochimaru, "Aside from you there is only one other person aside from the guard outside that even knows I'm in this country, and it should stay that way. This is a private box isn't it?" Gato moved into his field of vision nodding furiously, "Then there isn't a problem at all. I'll merely slip out with the crowd after everything is over."

Well it wasn't like they were looking for him anyway, just trouble in general. And with all of the people moving about the village it wasn't like it would be hard for him to hide if he really wanted or needed to.

Attempting to regain his composure, Gato adjusted his tie and went over to the bar section of his box to get himself and Orochimaru something to drink, "Well it's good that you're here anyway. I've come across some opportunities for your village to get a lot more work. It's something I thought you'd be interested in. So I figured, why not bring it up the next time we saw each other?"

"Do tell." Orochimaru said. Despite his sarcastic, apathetic response it couldn't be said that Gato didn't know his way around a deal… and if he was stupid enough to double-cross him it wasn't like Orochimaru was going to venture out for anything other than his own direct interests, the man would be dead before all of the chips even fell. Gato had little to nothing on Otogakure anyway. No info on any bases or anything.

"The Mizukage's manpower is starting to run dry." Gato said as he brought Orochimaru the glass that he had been pouring over at the bar, "His little civil war is costing him way more than he's gaining by trying to kill bloodline users. They're picking him apart from the shadows since open war would still be outright suicide. It seems he's looking to outsource since the losses are starting to pile up. There are so many islands in Mizu no Kuni they're difficult to find."

'Bloodline users…' Orochimaru thought with a shine in his eye that Gato couldn't see, "I'll take that into consideration Gato. Thank you for the input." If he found a way to get the Mizukage to allow him to lend assistance then he would have free reign to capture any bloodline users his forces wound up coming across in Mizu no Kuni. Maybe he could even find another gem like Kimimaro.

The possibilities for advancement in this situation were massive. It wasn't just something that he could ignore. And aside from that he needed allies and pawns… the Kazekage wouldn't even let him close enough to hear him out.

XxX

(Competitor's Box)

"Stop doing sit-ups and calm down Naruto." Shikamaru said from his place on the bench as Naruto was banging out said exercises nonstop for no apparent reason. It was as close to having a strategic conversation with Rock Lee as Shikamaru figured he would have anytime soon, "I never thought I'd ever say this, but I don't think you have the room to be wasting your energy today."

The second his eyes opened and his foot hit the floor that morning Naruto was on and buzzing. It wasn't a panicked or nervous thing; it was like time was rolling by too slowly for him so he made up for it by keeping himself busy with random things. And while the fallout from Ino's joke on Shikamaru slowed him down for ten minutes so that he could clear his name and explain, something that became way easier when Ino's laughter could be heard from the bathroom, he had pretty much been like that all morning.

"I'm warming up." Naruto said, refusing to stop.

"I think you're about as warm as you're going to get." Shikamaru quipped in return before holding his hand out, "Did you do what I asked you to yesterday?" Instead of getting a verbal answer, Naruto tossed a scroll from his windbreaker pocket at Shikamaru, "Excellent. But we've got to get far enough in this for me to actually think of using it."

Naruto stopped doing sit-ups and turned to face his lazy friend, "Hey, why are you still with us in going on in this thing?" He asked, "I mean, isn't it too much trouble in your mind to keep fighting even though you know who we're facing?" Shikamaru was watching the same matches that Naruto saw. He more or less figured that he would have opted out of fighting at all or tried to convince one of them that they didn't need to go any further.

"You'd normally be right…" Shikamaru admitted as he shoved the scroll from Naruto into a pocket, "But I heard what Gaara said to you, and if he was going to come at us anyway if you dropped out or lost, just to get back at you, then we'd might as well just go and face him and Fuu anyway." Beating Fuu would all depend on the match type that wound up happening. If it was a team battle then it was as good as over, even though she still had one teammate to assist her. If she won the coin toss and if she picked one-on-one matches then things would get way more difficult to secure a Team 10 victory.

Naruto smiled from his place on the ground at Shikamaru, "Thanks. And I promise everything will be fine. There's no way we can lose, and I won't let either of you two get hurt out there." In his mind it was still his job to keep them safe. It would probably always be that way to him.

"Oh shut up and worry about yourself." Shikamaru remarked gesturing his head over to the other side of the room where the Suna team stood, "I'm not the one being threatened with a sandy death over here, it's you. I'll manage." He then frowned thoughtfully about something, "Just remember what I said yesterday. Don't be stupid, and if you get stuck somewhere that you can't get out of just surrender."

"Fine." Naruto grumbled. Promising to surrender implied that they would lose. They were not going to lose, thus Shikamaru's request held no weight or importance. At least that was the way Naruto was looking at it.

"He'd better surrender now then."

Fuu appeared in the doorway of the room, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed over her chest. Her hands were still bandaged from the burns she had suffered yesterday, but at least outwardly it didn't appear to bother her any, "…Because otherwise he isn't going to be able to get out of getting himself hurt… by me."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at her, "I thought you said you didn't want to fight in this thing in the first place. Why are you still going now that what's-his-face is dead?" Maybe if he could get her to quit without ever even fighting her things would be way easier. An unmotivated opponent was an easy one to overcome.

"Because even if he's dead or not…" Fuu stated in return, "It doesn't matter. People are still watching me, and if I stop fighting now I'll be in major trouble with the village. It's my job… the only job they want me for, to beat everything in Takigakure's path. So sorry about your luck, but me quitting without fighting to win first isn't an option." She then turned to head down to the field when a comment stopped her.

"Good luck."

She turned around to see Naruto extending his hand from the ground towards her, "You really don't seem as bad as you try to make yourself out to be, so just good luck. Hopefully some of us get promoted from this." Honestly, he'd settle for all of them not being dead at the end of it. That would be great for him.

Fuu just stared at the outstretched hand before shaking her head, "You really want me to break that hand don't you?" She then returned to walking back towards the stairwell to head to the field.

Naruto sighed as he reeled his hand back. He figured it wouldn't be as easy as just trying to assure someone like her that not everyone was out to get her the way she seemed to believe they were. And the fact that they were about to fight didn't make it any better either. It was almost like Haku and Zabuza all over again except this time it wasn't an ambush that they would be getting in return.

"Come on." Shikamaru said as he got up from the bench, "Let's go wait for Ino by the bathroom and get this over with." Naruto got up from his place on the ground to follow.

XxX

"Are you nervous Hiruzen?" Onoki asked the Hokage as they were once again taking their seats in their own section to watch, "Your kids have big trouble coming their way you know. They might just end up like your other rookie teams that had to fight the girl from Taki." If he was being sniping about it was probably because the news broke that Naruto had wound up killing one of Iwa's genin in the first round.

Excuse him if he was a little sore at the loss of a genin that had made it so far in the exams.

"That team is full of more surprises than you know Onoki." Hiruzen replied cryptically with an even expression on his face, "If I were you I wouldn't bet against them just because of the girl's past performances. None of the teams Konoha managed to get to the finals are the same."

"Still… same or not Taki has more or less smashed them all." A commented, scratching his chin, "For being so young their jinchuuriki is a very talented fighter." She wasn't as strong as him, but that wasn't a good comparison. He had decades to get himself to the peak of physical strength the hard way, she did not. And being the Nanabi jinchuuriki took one very important thing away from her growth and development as a direct fighter, something needed to become a truly elite hand-to-hand combatant.

"It doesn't matter in the end though." The Kazekage said, sounding rather pleased with the ending turn of events, "No matter who reaches the final match of the tournament they will be unable to overcome Gaara. He's Sunagakure's prize shinobi… our secret weapon."

Yeah, they could all tell that resources were pumped into making Gaara powerful. By 'resources' it was more accurate to say 'Ichibi no Shukaku'.

If Suna didn't have a boost of business after this exam was over then there was something wrong with those watching.

"What in the world did you do to that boy?" Onoki asked with a raised eyebrow.

"What I felt was needed." Was the simply reply from the Kazekage, "The bastard daimyo wants to budget cut our village… he'll come crawling back after the victory today." He looked towards Hiruzen, "I sincerely hope your Konoha team wins so the final victory comes over the village he outsourced work to. That is the outcome that I would prefer."

Hiruzen knew that was directed at him. But when work was sent your way would you turn it down just because another village would have been more convenient to take it instead? He had a village's well-being to look out for as well. But this was why the unified chunin exams existed, to vent issues between villages and to attract attention from all possible clients.

In other words the entire spectacle was one big international pissing contest.

Hiruzen wouldn't even bring up the fact that Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari had the inarguably easiest route to the finals period. It would make it that much better if (when) Team 10 found a way to win.

Hey, even though he was a wise old man that wished to end conflicts without bloodshed he still had his pride and pride in his ninja, and this was a rather controlled environment for settling issues. He'd get diplomatic over the whole outsourcing issue later.

"If that's the matchup that you desire Kazekage-dono then I'm certain my genin won't disappoint you." Hiruzen said, putting his pipe to his lips before lighting it, "If your children are really that talented that you are certain of them then you'll understand if I feel the same about my own young shinobi to overcome these odds."

XxX

(On the Field)

"Taki team picks the coin toss. Heads or tails?" Sekka asked, holding said coin out, prepared to flip it in the air.

"Tails." Fuu said, watching intently as the coin was tossed into the air. A smirk came across her face as it hit the ground, tails up, "One-on-one matches." That way she could pick them off one at a time. With Dorobou being gone she couldn't sit back any longer and let him fight to cover up her disenchantment. Even if she didn't feel like it she would have to or else.

"I'm first."

All eyes suddenly turned to Houki, still bandaged up from the beating injuries he had suffered from Chouji just yesterday. He had a stern look on his face, his visage set in determination as he stared down Team 10, "I want to fight first Fuu." He looked at her, choking back his fear at the jinchuuriki girl, "Can I fight?"

Her orange eyes just stared back at him before she shrugged and started walking towards the competitor's box, "If that's what you want I don't care. I'm in no hurry. Just don't embarrass yourself again cannon fodder. Everyone can see you and pay attention one-on-one."

Before anyone could say anything else, Shikamaru grabbed both Ino and Naruto's shoulders and pushed them back while simultaneously walking forward, "I guess I'll fight you then." Shikamaru said, rubbing the side of his neck. Houki nodded and set himself in a ready position while Shikamaru stood there with his hands in his pockets, while looking casual he was still more than ready to go.

'If it's one-on-one then there's no reason for Naruto to waste a single bit of chakra until Fuu fights.' Shikamaru thought to himself as Naruto and Ino gave him pats on the shoulder for support, 'Ino's still hurting from yesterday so there's no way either of us would let her fight anyone one-on-one in her condition. She's definitely not 100%.'

Even though one couldn't see through the bandages that she kept on her body, the way Ino moved around in the morning showed that she was still hurt even if she was able to effectively hide it in public. It was why she had been in the bathroom for so long when they had been in the competitor's box, so that she could double or triple-wrap her body. Anyone paying attention that was accustomed to Ino's normal style of dress could see how thick the wrappings were from normal.

Sekka stood between the two of them, Shikamaru stood a distance further than normal from Houki, but the Taki genin didn't seem to care one way or another, "Are you both ready?" Sekka asked, getting a pair of nods from both genin, "Semifinal round matchup, fight one: Nara Shikamaru of Konoha vs. Houki of Taki! Begin!"

For a moment the two just stared at each other. Shikamaru was doing so in an effort to size the seemingly underwhelming Taki ninja up, but he couldn't find anything really threatening about him. He was just a normal genin.

As the match began in the Zen-garden, Houki immediately made his way to the top of one of the rocks and looked down on Shikamaru. Instead of taking Shikamaru's lazy outlook the way he should have taken it, as Shikamaru just being Shikamaru, he took it as Shikamaru's opinion on his performance in the finals taking physical form in his expression, "I know I'm not the strongest guy around… I'm not even close to being the strongest genin in Takigakure… but I'm sick of looking pathetic. I'm not going to make our village look pathetic anymore."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow as from his jacket and shirt Houki pulled out a filled vial with some kind of liquid, "Um… what exactly is that?"

Houki had a nervous smile on his face as he held the vial up, "I heard that this stuff will kill you if you take it, but the power boost is amazing. You'll lose your lifespan equal to the amount you take to go with the boost of power you get."

'Not good.' Shikamaru thought, palming his face as he knew there was some kind of catch to fighting this guy, 'Why me?' He tried to stop him in some way by throwing a kunai at Houki to get him to drop the vial, but all he did in return was drink the water just as Shikamaru threw his weapon, "Fuck…" He then proceeded to tactically retreat because after dealing with Lee's Eight Gates and seeing Fuu's power-up he didn't particularly want to see just what whatever Houki took would do to him.

Chances were it would most certainly not be in the best interest of his personal wellbeing.

Once Shikamaru's kunai flew at Houki, he downed the entire vial of fluid in one gulp and his chakra seemed to explode and cloak his body, protecting him from the lazily thrown weapon, "You might actually be a better ninja than me in reality… but with this water it won't matter! If I can win at least one fight then I can save some face here!" He knew that Shikamaru had run away and jumped from his rock in the direction that Shikamaru had gone, landing on the ground and running towards Shikamaru who had made surprising ground on running towards the barren section of the field.

Houki seemed three times as fast as before as he tried to close the distance on Shikamaru before stopping and realizing something once he got close enough to see, 'It's just a clone.' He turned around to find Shikamaru's shadow barreling across the sand at him. In response he leapt to the side and evaded the jutsu to the best of his ability, 'Come on! I don't have the time to play hide-and-seek with this kid.' When his power ran out he would fall hard, thus he needed to eliminate Shikamaru in a hurry.

The shadow recoiled back into the depths of the Zen-garden and Houki realized that the shadow did nothing but trail along the ground. It was the only way he had ever seen the jutsu land. He jumped up onto the nearest rock in an effort to stave off Shikamaru's shadow until he could locate the younger ninja to defeat him.

In reality though, Shikamaru had pulled a Naruto and took to hiding under the sand. He had made a regular clone as a feint to occupy Houki's attention and then carved himself a hole underground to hide in like a sand rat, burrowing around to keep tabs on his powered up opponent and test for openings, 'I hate my job…' He thought to himself as the sand in his mouth continued to annoy him. He had eyes on Houki though, and that was what mattered, 'Does he only think my shadow works on the ground?'

There wouldn't be any other reason that he was standing up on the top of that rock as if it were a buoy in the middle of the ocean.

"Come on out and fight me!" Houki said as he formed three hand seals before a whip of water formed in his hand, "I'll make you come out if you still want to hide!" He cracked the water whip against another rock, leaving a deep gash in it where it had hit. Yeah, because that was going to make Shikamaru want to stop hiding; the knowledge that he was going to get hit with a whip that could leave a scar in rock once he came out.

'I don't think I will.' Shikamaru thought to himself from under the hiding spot in the sand as he manipulated his shadow into stretching towards Houki once again. The young man saw it coming right towards him, but noticed it stop the moment that it hit the bottom of the rock he was standing on.

A smirk came to Houki's face at the sight of the stopped shadow and it got even bigger once he realized that it was connected to Shikamaru himself, hence he could use it to find him directly. He could see where it had emerged from the sand and raised his water whip to give Shikamaru a lash with the chakra-constructed weapon. He froze in mid-swing however for absolutely no reason that he could think of.

"A lot of good that big power-up did you if you don't even have anything to back it up with." Shikamaru said, standing up out of his spot in the sand, the shadow sent that Houki could see taking a hold of him. In order to let Houki see the way that he caught him, Shikamaru turned his head to allow him to see that Shikamaru had stretched a shadow back around the width of the Zen-garden's rocks, "You totally blew your wad before there was even a reason to. I don't even think you're strong enough to break this jutsu."

'Damn it!' Houki thought as he couldn't budge an inch no matter how hard he struggled, 'Even after that it was still child's play for this guy to catch me! Was he even trying?'

"Maybe if you had crazy Rock Lee physical skills to begin with you could break this…" Shikamaru continued, scratching his head, "But you aren't anywhere near as good or as fast or as strong as he is… so whatever you drank to make you stronger is pretty useless in the end. Maybe I should have let Naruto fight you instead? Or Ino. Either one of them could have beaten you too, probably faster than I did."

Like fading adrenaline, Houki's power boost from his water eventually died down and the only thing keeping him on his feet was Shikamaru's shadow. Shikamaru bounced on the balls of his feet, forcing Houki to do the same on the top of the rock he was standing on. He then proceeded to jump directly up into the air as high as he could before dropping facedown into the sand. Houki was not as lucky to hit sand, instead smashing his face against the rock.

Shikamaru retracted his shadow and pulled himself out of the body-sized sand angel he had made for himself, sputtering and spitting grains, "Bleh, troublesome." He could see Houki laying facedown on the rock bleeding from the head, motionless, "He isn't dead is he?" They did jump pretty high and he did smash his noggin like a coconut on that rock.

Sekka rushed over to the downed Houki and decided to call it off, "Houki is unable to continue. The winner of match one is Nara Shikamaru of Konoha!"

Turning around to walk back to the competitor's box, Shikamaru spared a glance at Houki, "Steroid-water or not that was still easy." His eyes then turned up to where the others were waiting and saw Fuu already moving to head down, "…That won't be."

XxX

Once Fuu moved to take the place of her once again defeated teammate, Naruto wordlessly stood up to relieve Shikamaru. Ino kept her seat but watched as the two of them walked through the doorway heading for the stairs, "Good luck Goldie-kun." She said mostly to herself.

"You should hope he loses." Temari said, leaning against the wall near her bench, "You should get your other teammate to give up and you should too. If you don't fight Gaara it's better for you. Let that Fuu girl do it." She didn't know how set on killing just Naruto that Gaara was. Maybe if Fuu could get a good fight out of him it could get him to forget? Two jinchuuriki fighting each other would have had to be an intense encounter.

"I'm getting really tired of you saying that he should just give up." Ino said to the older blonde, "Maybe you should be telling Gaara to give up? Maybe you should give up? If we win this match you'll be in more trouble than you think you are."

Temari frowned but got up off of the wall and walked away, "I was trying to help you out, but if that's what you think…" If this girl was really dumb enough to think that they had a chance against Gaara then it would be her funeral.

XxX

"I thought you'd kill me if I got close to you." Naruto said as he and Fuu descended the stairs to head towards the entrance tunnel. He was lagging a few steps behind her as she was in the lead on the way out.

"We're heading out to the field to fight." Fuu returned evenly, "If you're that eager to get a beatdown then it'll happen soon enough. We'll see if you're still smiling and hugging on your little blonde girlfriend after you're paralyzed."

"Ino-chan's not my girlfriend, she's just a friend." Naruto said, glad that Fuu's back was to him so that she didn't see the blush that formed on his face at the thought, "And you'd really paralyze me on purpose?"

She nodded stiffly as they got off the stairs and started walking down the tunnel, "That way you can't ever hurt me again. You'd never be a threat. I could just kill you like I was going to originally if you don't want to live like that though." The way she spoke it was like she thought she was doing him a favor by giving him a choice in the matter. As if paralyzing him needlessly for just getting near her was a form of mercy on her part, "If you just surrender and go away I won't have to do either."

"That's not going to happen." Naruto said with a determined lift in his voice, "If I give up just because of fighting you I would give up whenever people that needed me were in trouble."

"Then do it for yourself." Fuu said as if it were obvious, "If you're really like me and you really have a biju inside of you, then the people around you don't know. I can tell. They don't look at you like they look at me or even at the Gaara kid. Once they find out and it's in the open you'll see where all of that helping people in need will get you. They'll turn on you just like that." She said with a snap, "I thought I had people that cared too. The Nanabi got rid of that. Our kind are destined to live like sub-humans. The only contact with others we'll ever get is when someone wishes to harm us. So get used to it." She said as they started walking out from the tunnel onto the battlefield.

As they walked out, Shikamaru and Naruto stopped in front of each other, "So…" Shikamaru said in greeting, "You sure you want to fight her?"

"Do you want to do it instead?" Naruto replied glibly.

"I'd rather not honestly." Was Shikamaru's honest answer. He didn't even want Naruto to do it. But it wasn't like Naruto or Ino would just quit, especially Naruto, "If you're going to go ahead and do this, remember what I said."

Naruto nodded and walked on ahead, rolling out his shoulder as a method of stretching out, "I won't forget." Shikamaru watched him take a few steps out onto the field before turning his own attention to getting back up to the competitor's box.

XxX

In the crowd, Asuma was steadily chain smoking to calm himself down somewhat. One-on-one matches didn't bode well for the health of whoever was going to fight Fuu, and he wasn't fool enough to think that it would be anyone other than Naruto. The kid seemed to have a self-destructive sense of honor that was hard to break. He was proven correct when he saw Shikamaru and Naruto switch out.

A sigh came from the man as he placed another cigarette in his mouth, prepared to light up when it was snatched from his mouth. He turned to the side to see Kurenai taking the seat next to him along with her students, including Kiba, though his head was thoroughly wrapped in bandages, "Hey. Kiba's up and about after just yesterday?"

"He was stubborn about it saying that he wasn't going to miss those lazy idiots of yours fighting in the semifinals." Kurenai said with a frown directed at her canine-compatible student who just grinned at her. She looked down and saw the cigarette butts littering the floor, "Stressed?"

"Nope. Just have a nasty craving." Asuma said dryly as Naruto marched over towards Fuu on the field to meet on the still ruined bridge that had been torn up yesterday, "Where's Kakashi and Gai?"

Kurenai noticed how Fuu noticeably tensed up the closer Naruto got as she answered Asuma's question, "Neji's awake and doing well, but Lee's muscles still need time to heal and treatment before he can think about moving around. Chouji's awake and eating, but Sasuke's still being kept under because of the pain he would be in if he were awake. Both of them are with their students."

Asuma let out a noise of understanding, "I rather like being the only Konoha jounin without a brat stuck in the hospital for something. I hope it stays that way today." He tried to place another cigarette into his mouth only to get it taken away again, "Oi!" He stopped his attempt to argue when he saw the stern look in Kurenai's lovely red eyes.

"Kiba is sensitive to smells, and I'd rather you didn't give him a headache with your lung poison while he's recovering from a head injury." Kurenai said, crushing the cigarette in her hand to get a furious set of nods from Asuma. The verbalization of a whip cracking from Kiba got both Asuma and Kurenai to glare at him to more or less tell him to mind his business.

Hinata turned her Byakugan on to get a better look at Fuu. She wondered if what she saw yesterday was really true. As her advanced eyes stared at the jinchuuriki girl on the field, Hinata could honestly say that her eyes weren't playing tricks on her yesterday during her match. In addition to the more intense than normal chakra Fuu had running through her system it seemed to permeate every inch of her being, not just through her chakra pathways. Turning her eyes to Naruto with a small blush on her face she let out a small gasp, "N-Naruto-kun has more chakra than anyone I've ever seen before." She had never actually tried to look at his chakra with her Byakugan before. She just rarely used it to get closer looks at him from further distances or to try and see him through objects in the couple of times she had observed him in the past, "Is that normal Kurenai-sensei? It can't be can it?" She asked as she turned her doujutsu off.

"It's normal for him." Kurenai tried to explain away without issue for the sake of Naruto's privacy. It wasn't much of an explanation, but with the fight about to begin it would probably do for the time being. Hopefully she would forget about it.

"Naruto himself ain't normal though." Kiba said, getting a bark from Akamaru in his lap, "…But if he gets tagged by that Fuu girl when she decides to get serious he should just lay over and stay down… one punch is all it would take." He had heard what had happened to Team 7 and counted himself lucky that he had actually lost quickly.

XxX

(On the Field)

"Ready to face the music?" Fuu asked, standing at the ready to defend herself. She was there to make Taki look good. Any less than actual effort and she would wind up paying for it later once it was time to leave. A part of her wanted to show Naruto just why her belief in herself as a jinchuuriki was better than his. The way hers was set up she would never get hurt again, because no one would ever get close enough to do it without paying the price first. He was setting himself up to be hurt intentionally, the fool, "Pray to Kami that you wake up again after I'm done, and if you do that it's with all of your body parts operating correctly."

Naruto didn't say anything as he looked towards Genma and nodded that he was ready.

'Good luck Naruto, you're going to need it.' The Konoha proctor thought to himself, "Semifinal matchup, fight two: Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha vs. Fuu of Taki. Begin!" And with that he got himself out of dodge.

Naruto immediately drew a kunai and threw it at Fuu, however all she did was let it bounce off of herself without even moving, "Hm. You're stronger than I thought you'd be. A little harder and that might have even hurt." After speaking her peace, Fuu grabbed a large chunk of concrete from the ruined bridge and chucked it at Naruto.

'Why did that look so easy?' Naruto thought to himself frantically as he jumped to the side to dodge it. It plowed into the ground preceding Fuu moving at him to deliver a haymaker of a punch. Naruto ducked it and felt the wind from the heavy blow pass over his head. Almost as a reflexive retaliation, Naruto returned immediate fire with a punch at Fuu's stomach, only to find that his fist didn't sink into her torso like it did for pretty much every other person he had ever hit in his entire life.

"Still didn't hurt." Fuu taunted before grabbing Naruto by the back of his windbreaker and lifting him over her head, choosing to throw him off to the side, tossing his body against the railing of the bridge that wasn't ruined. The grunt of pain that came from the boy once he hit the rail prompted her to attack again.

Naruto saw her coming at him and moved just as she punched the concrete rail. Instead of obliterating the whole thing the way Naruto had been led to believe she would Fuu simply cracked the concrete with the force of her fist. That was weird. He thought that she would hit harder than that. What she did to Chouji and Kiba pretty much made him think so.

He quickly got himself a few feet of distance from Fuu, sick of trying to do her any damage with taijutsu. It just wasn't going to be that easy for him. Not with her.

A growl came from Naruto's mouth at the somewhat smug look on her face. So there was no such thing as a feeling out process when it came to her. Even if she wasn't as strong as he thought she was at first, a punch from her was a showstopper to say the least. No fancy tricks today. If Fuu retaliated while he had a hold of her he was going to lose something important.

Fine, enough messing around.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

In the blink of an eye the bridge filled with clones of Naruto on both sides of the bridge surrounding Fuu from the front and the back. He noticed that her eyes widened to an almost alarmingly dangerous extent and thought that he might have made a mistake.

"Get away from me!" Fuu yelled angrily as her first instinct was to mercilessly batter the first thing she could reach, not stopping for a moment as she smashed her way through Kage Bunshin after Kage Bunshin.

When Fuu started violently lashing out at his clones, beginning to defeat them brutally by the droves with nothing more than her hands and feet without even being attacked first, he knew for certain that he had made a mistake. Naruto's Kage Bunshin began fighting back after initially being overwhelmed by Fuu's sudden outburst. No one he had fought before had ever just begun to attack his clones after he had created them. Assaulting them right off the bat was definitely something new and she definitely managed to rid herself of a good drove of them before they got with the program.

Even then though, each hit they landed did nothing but seemingly make her madder. The original drifted in with his clones and eventually maneuvered close enough to deliver a hard jumping ax kick that planted itself right on Fuu's shoulder and collarbone. That was a fight-stopping move, yet it did nothing to her and he was lucky that one of his clones were aware enough to Kawarimi with him before she backhand swiped at him to rid herself of the pest.

It was like she was swatting flies… and that just made Naruto as mad as Fuu seemed to be with dealing with the clones in the first place. He made his hand-seal again and created dozens more to take the place of the ones he had lost. They charged right into battle against Fuu and began to slowly mob her until she wound up buried under a multitude of clone bodies that seemed to pin her beneath them in a random dogpile.

As the original Naruto ran up to the pile it was revealed that it wasn't so random when he reached into it and grabbed the legs of one of his clones. Snorting like a bull he forcefully yanked that one clone out of the pile, only that clone was connected to another one, and vice-versa, and so on, until all of the clones were revealed to be holding on to the legs of another.

The momentum that Naruto had managed to generate dragging all of his clones out of the pile-up assisted him when he spun around in a direct 360, managing to spin the entire mass of clones like a huge whip, "You had those wings last round, well let's see how much your ass really knows about flying!" He yelled as the 'whip' of clones went end up into the air, holding on to the ankles of Fuu, "Bunshin Kusari no Karada Gachan (Clone Chain Body Slam)!"

Naruto wound up slamming his entire mass of clones along with Fuu off of the bridge and into the moat, dispelling them all and sending her in with a resounding crash that sent water flying high into the air. "Yeah, dattebayo!" Naruto shouted as the water from the crash fell all around, "Did you feel _that_ _one_ or what?" He then collapsed against the railing and shouted at the effort it actually took to haul those damned clones into the air, "Kami, that fucking hurt!" His arms felt like they were on fire.

XxX

The Raikage could only blink at the form of attack he had just seen from Naruto on the field, "Well that was… unique?" He wasn't going to say that he liked it out loud… even though he did. Honestly, if he had access to clones like that he probably would have thought about stealing that move for himself. Maybe he and his brother could work out some form of that move that worked.

Hiruzen let out a chuckle, even in the serious atmosphere of the battle currently underway, "He's a rather unique shinobi Raikage-dono."

XxX

Naruto ripped the sleeves off of his blue long-sleeve undershirt to rub his arms in order to get the burning feeling out of his muscles, "I think I've got a hernia… what's a hernia?" He mused to himself absently. His 'intelligent' thoughts were cut off when from the water behind the railing he was sitting against it flew up in the form of a mini-tornado that quickly dispersed, "Oh crap… here we go."

Naruto jumped back to his feet and turned around to see Fuu slowly floating up to eye-level. Obviously her chakra wings were sticking out of her red cylinder on her back, and to go along with them her thin green aura of chakra was visible, "That actually hurt." She said, her now glowing green eyes staring at him in a glare.

"Um… sorry?" Naruto said, standing in a retaliatory stance with a look of confusion on his face.

"You will be." Fuu said before swiftly flying forward, delivering a punch that Naruto barely got his arms up to block to the best of his ability, "Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow)!" The only thing that saved his arms from being shattered on impact was the fact that in an effort to avoid full contact he jumped back. Instead of taking the piston motion of her timed punch moving forward he merely wound up taking the extended fist, but that was still enough to send him flying off of the other side of the bridge, skipping his body off of the surface of the moat like a stone.

He rolled on the surface of the water and stood up on it to try and mount a counteroffensive, but Fuu was already flying at him again. A quickly formed clone proceeded to shove Naruto directly under the water just before Fuu could slam into him, taking the heavy shot for its creator.

Fuu flew into the air and made a few diving passes like a hawk trying to catch a fish, but she hit nothing. Naruto had tried to dive too far down in order to escape her. That was fine though. She would wait him out for the time being. He had to come up to breathe sometime. And when he did she would finish him.

She believed that right up until Naruto rocketed out of the water like a missile aimed directly at her holding onto his machete. She didn't know if her emotionally dependant defense could stand up to a blade coated in wind chakra and she didn't want to find out as she dodged the flying Naruto. Shortly thereafter, more and more Narutos started flying out of the water in the same manner right at her, and like a good moving target, Fuu evaded the bladed clones to the best of her ability.

That wasn't the end of the attack though, because all of those clones had to come down. The original clone came down trying to slash at her and missed, landing back against the water, dispelling on impact. This was just a feint however, as all of the aerial clones began spinning their machetes by the chains, aiming directly at Fuu with the fan-like motion, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!"

The wind blade cyclones spun towards Fuu, too close to run from and too near each other to evade with tactical dodging. Thus she crossed her arms in front of her body and face and took the attack. Her clothes started to show the damage, getting cut up by the blades of the jutsu, but her actual skin received no significant cuts. The worst she received turned out to be light abrasions.

However, it wasn't over yet. While Naruto thought the last attack would send her further down to the water it didn't matter in the end, because tons of clones pounced from the water and latched onto her tightly.

"Let go!" Fuu yelled, thrashing about as more and more clones grabbed onto her, starting to weigh her down, "I said let go of me now! I'll kill you do you hear me?" She shouted frantically as her wings couldn't support the weight anymore and began dragging her into the water, causing her to panic even more. Eventually she was submerged completely and bubbles floated to the surface before no motion was seen at all.

The water was still for a few moments before another swift tornado of water formed from the surface and Fuu flew back up with a shout of anger. Her drenched form flew high into the air, making a massive amount of hand-seals before dropping back down to the surface of the water, "Die! Suiton: Daibakufu no Jutsu (Water Release: Great Waterfall Jutsu)!" The water from the moat began to surge up in the form of a hard wave that lifted up and slammed into the bridge, breaking even more chunks away from it than yesterday.

And along with the wave that hit the stone bridge there was also the body of Naruto that did so before dropping to the water. Laying on his back he gasped desperately at the force he had just slammed into pure stone with, back and skull first. Naruto shakily dragged himself up to his feet on the surface of the water once again, slowly bending himself up straight, audibly cracking his back as he did so.

Fuu flew down at him forcing him to jump back and dodge her dive-bomb, but from the spray of water that resulted from her crash, she came out at Naruto attacking hand-to-hand again. Despite the pain running through his back, Naruto reached for his machete, but Fuu stopped him from even drawing it by holding his wrist. In response Naruto gave her a headbutt, but it wound up hurting him more than it hurt her.

An offended look due to his brazen attempt to harm her quickly gave way to a smirk on Fuu's face as Naruto staggered back, stunned at the solid bash of his head against her harder one.

"Ugh." Naruto shook the cobwebs off and placed the bottoms of his palms together to prepare for an attack he hadn't attempted to launch yet. He charged back forward at Fuu, but in her jinchuuriki form she was faster than him and smashed him hard to the side, sending him into the wall of the moat. He dropped from the wall onto his face on the water and floated there for a moment, 'If she won't even let me touch her then I can't hit Giga Shint-.'

There was no rest for the weary though, as Fuu grabbed him by one of his ankles and held him upside down in front of herself. A sneer broke out on her face and she slammed him against the moat wall, cracking it with the force she did so with.

Fuu placed her forearm underneath Naruto's chin, pinning him there by his throat so that she could get a good look at him. He tried to pry her arm from his throat, but she was still strong enough to hold him in place. She held him there in order to systematically deliver her punishment to him, starting off with a hard punch to the body that immediately had him coughing blood, "Still want to be close?" She asked rhetorically before slapping him hard enough to actually draw blood as it echoed out around the arena, "Still think I'm not a bad person?"

Naruto's eyes were starting to flutter, Fuu was steadily choking him in addition to the slow little amounts of spirit (and body) breaking abuse she seemed to be putting on him. Before his eyes could shut completely, Fuu grabbed his goggles and pulled them out, snapping them back on his forehead and slamming the back of his head off of the wall.

"Wake up." She said with a snarl, "I didn't say I was done yet did I? You were doing so well with your little tricks and surprise attacks. Don't you have anything else? Fight me like you mean it damn it! Fight me like a monster!" Fuu demanded angrily, "Prove what you said to me is true and that you're not just some lying, loudmouth faker!" She punched him, causing the crack in the wall to spider-web further.

XxX

Shikamaru wasn't looking directly at her, but in his peripheral vision he could see Ino's hands gripping the rail in time with every punch that Fuu hit Naruto with. He couldn't say that he blamed her either. He had already been hit more than anyone else they had seen her fight before and it didn't necessarily appear as if she was going to stop anytime soon.

Neither of them said a word to each other as they continued to watch, 'Come on Naruto.' Shikamaru thought to himself, 'I never thought this was something I'd ever have to hope for, but if you've really got the Kyuubi in you then now would be a great time to call it out the way Fuu is with hers.'

XxX

"Don't let her pummel you like that you little quitter!" Asuma yelled as he jumped to his feet, "Don't just sit there, get your ass free already!" He was about to jump down there himself, 'Naruto might be a jinchuuriki too, but he doesn't have a good handle on the Kyuubi's chakra. He hasn't had any time to even learn anything about it.' As far as he knew, Naruto didn't even know how to control it, 'You screwed up hard dad… what did you expect? He'd never end up having to use it?'

Hinata couldn't watch Naruto take the abuse from Fuu anymore and turned towards Kurenai to take her eyes off of the fight, Fuu had pummeled her in the first round so she had no idea how Naruto was taking it. Shino didn't visibly react, but he also had no idea of what it felt like to get beaten up like that.

Kiba though, was watching intently before Akamaru whimpered in his lap, "What's wrong boy?" Akamaru whimpered out a response to his master that got Kiba to widen his eyes, "Really?" The boy turned towards everyone else to relay the message, "Akamaru says he feels a smells a really nasty chakra. Something that isn't normal, and it's really strong… it's not Fuu either."

Asuma and Kurenai's eyes widened at the feeling coming from the battlefield. Compared to the original feeling it was muffled and muted beyond all reasonable comprehension so it wasn't nearly as oppressive and paralyzing as the original feeling. Still though, it was clear to them what the power was. Kurenai turned to Asuma with a questioning look as if to ask, 'Is that what I think it is?'

Asuma gave her a firm nod in return and turned his attention back to the fight, "Come on kid. Kick her ass already."

XxX

"Fight!"

CRACK

"Fight!"

CRACK

"Fight me you little bastard!" Fuu was about to punch him again when she saw an orange aura start to emerge from his body and she let her arm go limp to speculate until she realized what it was. She let out a satisfied chuckle before cocking her hand back to punch him again, "Now that's more like it…" She said before attempting to punch him again.

Said punch never found any contact with Naruto since he caught it in his hand that seemed to have the fingernails grow right before her eyes. A growl vibrated the forearm she held against his throat and she looked into his face to see that his eyes were red, his whisker-marks were thicker than they were previously, and his canines grew sharper as he growled at her, "Ero-sensei hits harder than you do."

Naruto's feet planted themselves against Fuu's torso before he pushed off hard, kicking her into the other wall hard enough to crack that one as well. Fuu glared at the growling Naruto and the two rushed at each other, delivering punches to each other that sent them flying back into the walls again.

Fuu was surprised due to the fact that she actually knew that an attack from Naruto in his current state would hurt, this would make her natural defense tougher… and it still hurt. The bruise on her cheek was evidence enough of that, "You… you hurt me again." She said in disbelief before gritting her teeth in anger, "You hurt me _again_!" No one had ever harmed her more than once, she never allowed it. Naruto had done it twice.

"And I'll do it again!" Naruto said, rushing at Fuu to deliver a punch. Fuu flew back out of its range, but a shockwave from the attack flew towards her and shoved her backwards again as if she had actually been hit. She saw him coming to attack again and this time her defenses were tough enough to walk through the shockwave, allowing her to grab a hold of his fist. With a firm hold of Naruto's hand, Fuu took off into the air before simply throwing him away from herself, sending him careening into the forested section of the field.

Fuu landed on the ground and began to walk through the forest to the spot where she had thrown Naruto, "You did it twice. No one's ever done it more than once." She said, almost trying to convince herself that it had happened, "Taki doesn't really have anyone strong enough to hurt me… not anymore. Those weak bastards can't do it. Heh, our village leader is a damn chunin-level ninja to boot. You know that water that Houki drank? That's their trump. It's more useful when the person that drinks it is strong… but without it they can't stack up to other real hidden villages."

A swift motion from her side gave way to Naruto leaping out to deliver a punch to her again. This time Fuu again caught it in her hand, "Nice story Fuu…" Naruto said, struggling against her rather crushing grip, "Does it have a point?"

"It does." Fuu said before she grabbed Naruto by his face and shoved/threw him backwards into a tree hard enough to crack it, "The point is that genin or not I'm technically one of the strongest ninja in my village. Period!"

Naruto let out a gravelly chuckle as he leaned against the tree, "That wasn't as hard as the other throw that you just did." His eyes looked up at Fuu, shining with mischief, "Your powers drift back and forth don't they? Between really strong and barely existent." He pulled himself off of the tree as the chakra blazed around his body like fire, "If you're in control of a fight you get weaker. That's why you didn't kill me when you had me caught, because you couldn't."

A frown came over Fuu's face at hearing Naruto try to break down her abilities. He wasn't that far off at all, "If I'm in control of the fight I don't need the extra power do I?" Another chuckle from Naruto didn't improve her mood, "What's so funny kid? Powers or not you're not on my level."

"Who says you're winning though?"

Several machetes flew from a formation all surrounding Fuu. She gasped at the sight of the flying melee weapons and tried to cover up like before when his clones assaulted her with their combined ninjutsu, but this time the steel plus the wind was something she didn't have the time to react to, and they cut her thoroughly in the places where they made contact.

Fuu stood in place, still covering up and shaking in place. The wounds on her body began to bleed, but if one were paying attention the injuries she received were nowhere near as bad as the one single gash that ended up taking Hisashi's life on the first day of the tournament.

Naruto and his clones dashed at her in an effort to try and take advantage of her momentary shock, seemingly from getting caught off-guard. But the reason Fuu stood in place without moving wasn't merely because of that, 'Again! He did it again! This is three times already! He keeps getting to me! All those years, no one ever even touched me and this brat keeps on hurting me! If even now, after everything I did to be tough, to keep everyone away from me… why does it keep happening?'

As the Kyuubi-enhanced Naruto clones closed in on her, Fuu threw one punch at the Naruto that she knew was the original and hit him flush, sending him rocketing through the woods a distance away. Fortunately his body avoided hitting any trees because he would have crashed right through it if he had. He felt nothing but fire in his chest as he could feel his ribs healing in a hurry. He tried to tell her before but she didn't believe him; he could recover from anything other than a fatal wound and in his current state that time of recovery became nothing short of unthinkable.

Getting up to his feet he staggered lightly as the sound of Fuu trying to decimate his clones rang out freely through his ears elsewhere in the forested section of the field. He could feel the last of his doppelgangers dispel and in time with that Fuu yelled again that she would definitely hurt him worse than he hurt her once she found him, "You coward!" She accentuated her insult with the angry uprooting of a tree that was chucked into the air.

But healing or not he was still losing a head-on fight and he wasn't dumb enough to believe that he wasn't. He just couldn't dole out enough punishment to bring her down. She was getting madder and madder, and she seemed to be getting stronger as she did. With that in mind he sat down on the ground and took a deep breath. It was simple. She just had more experience with her jinchuuriki form than he had with his. This was his first time ever being aware while using any of the Kyuubi's chakra in combat, the ease with which she slipped into her own free use of the Nanabi's chakra showed experience in doing so.

"I see you Uzumaki."

Naruto looked up to see Fuu looking down at him from above the trees surrounding him. Naruto quickly moved as Fuu dropped to the ground and smashed it with the impact of her body. Once she realized she missed she flew back up to catch up to him and try again, "You can't hide in this place for long, Konoha ninja or not!"

She was right and he knew it. The trees weren't as big of a tactical advantage against people from most villages over others, but he wasn't planning on hiding for long. He just needed to stay away from her long enough, 'This can work. But it's only going to work once. At least no one can really see well into the woods to find out what I'm doing.' He fished a single scroll out from his windbreaker and slammed it on the ground straight ways before beginning to run in a very wide circle. After going a good distance he slammed another scroll down the same way, 'I'm not going to win a shootout with demonic chakra.'

It didn't take Fuu very long to pick up Naruto's trail just as he slammed the second scroll down. He felt her buzz past him, narrowly missing him with a flying attack. Unfettered by her missed attempt to attack him, he was free to move along to one last spot where he slammed a scroll down prior to Fuu barreling into him with her entire body, lifting him off of the ground.

He wasn't dumb, he was well aware that this was exactly what had happened to Sasuke just before Fuu finished him in the last round. Much like Sasuke he could barely move his arms at all, but he was still able to struggle unlike Sasuke yesterday. Fuu was strong, absurdly so, but she was also confident that he was trapped. With that she flew directly up into the air, also just like yesterday, "I'm going to give you the same fair chance to live that I gave the other kid. You're supposed to be _tough_ aren't you? You can take it." With that, Fuu turned them upside down and let them fall down towards the tops of the trees before letting Naruto go, "Keshi Gomu o Oshi (Eraser Press)!"

There was one move that Naruto knew he could do, and hopefully it was enough to keep from dying namelessly on an arena floor in a samurai country. A loud roar came from Naruto's throat and formed a wave of pressure that softened his landing more than considerably. He still hit the ground harshly after being cut with branches and debris marring his face and marking him up, but better to hurt than to die.

He could hear the hum of Fuu's chakra wings over the sound of the crowd wondering if he died on impact and decided that this was the best opening to finish he was going to get. He flipped over from his belly onto his back and sat up with a groan. Cracking his neck unhealthily to the side, he doggedly spit the blood filling his mouth due to lagging internal injuries and placed his hands together.

"Tora, Mi, Inu, Saru, Ushi." Naruto said in time with the hand-seals. Making the hand-seals was more of a cumbersome exercise with the claws hindering what he was used to. Brute force was definitely what he was meant for when using the Kyuubi's chakra but it was too late to switch up then. At that moment he saw a glow from the forest and saw Fuu walking towards him slowly, "Damn it…"

With nothing more than the formation of the ram seal, the green chakra around Fuu's body turned into a translucent shell that covered her body, "You're tough… but you aren't going to be getting back up after this." Her wings fired up one more time and seemed to be building power behind them to charge into Naruto with her intense green chakra shell, "You're fast, but you can't beat the speed of flight."

From three minutes to fifteen seconds… and Fuu had given him the fifteen seconds he needed to charge the jutsu, "Yeah, well you can't beat the speed of seal! Chakura Mukou Fuuin (Chakra Disabling Seal)!"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

"Fifteen seconds!" Jiraiya exclaimed suddenly, alerting Homura and Koharu from their nearby seats in the balcony, "The little bastard got it down to fifteen seconds already? He never told me that! Hah! I knew I was an awesome instructor!" He bragged to the Konoha elders.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

Under the cover of the trees of the forest the sealing array spread out over the 50 yard circumference directed for the jutsu. As soon as it took hold and the pattern momentarily formed on Fuu's body, so fast that she didn't see it, Fuu's attempt to build up chakra to rush Naruto in a show of blinding speed and crushing force came to an abrupt end as the chakra exuding from her person just gave out and she fell from her hover onto the ground.

Part of her wondered what had just happened to all of her power. She was about to turn him into a smear on the forest floor, but she lost it all in a heartbeat. Then she realized that she had actually felt the fall. The little miniscule three foot fall to the ground had hurt.

That little revelation caused her to abruptly jump right back up to her feet and look at her scuffed knees, 'I don't get little baby injuries like that! What the hell did he do?' She looked at Naruto with a glare as he got up from his seated position, Kyuubi chakra no longer rolling off of him either, "What did you do?"

"No chakra." Naruto said plainly, "There's no more chakra for either of us to use to fight. All of it is just rolling through our pathways, that's it. It isn't doing anything else."

Fuu bit back a gasp. That meant that the coating of chakra that covered her body normally as the Nanabi's natural method of empowering her was null and void, "You can't do that! How are you going to fight me without any chakra?"

"I don't need chakra to fight." Naruto said with a shrug. It was true. None of his physical training really involved chakra so all of his strength was his own. Fuu couldn't say as much at all. But the lack of chakra also stopped Naruto's healing, and he was fighting the urge to hold his torso at the moment because he hadn't had enough time to recover from Fuu's crushing bearhug grab from moments before on an area that had been taking Fuu's full measure of offense all fight long.

Naruto started walking towards Fuu who was trying to get the normal feeling of her chakra back flowing through her skin to feel safe. Almost in a panic she was trying to draw upon any dredge of chakra she could find at all. Sadly she was getting nothing. Not having her special jutsu up to protect her was something she hadn't felt in over ten years. By then she noticed that Naruto was within five feet of her, "Get away from me!" She shouted as she threw a punch that hit Naruto right in the jaw. She smirked at getting such a clean hit until she realized that he had only taken one step backwards.

He had allowed her to hit him, mostly due to the fact that he really wanted to see if he had been right about turning the chakra use between them off. Without chakra on, Fuu didn't even hit harder than Ino did, 'She never had a choice but to train with her biju's technique on. There was never an option of even fighting without it.' A red bruise formed on his cheek that was going to stay there for a while, but he kept walking towards Fuu as she started backing off, "You're powerless aren't you? You can't fight like this."

"I said get away!" Fuu punched him again, and it snapped his head back, but just like that he looked right at her again, 'I can't even hurt him?' Having the shoe on the other foot was a very unnerving experience. Still though, she tried to throw one more punch that wound up being blocked.

Naruto sniffed slightly before blood started dripping from his nose, "Do you really think I'm going to kill you now when you can't even fight back?" He didn't come off as that sort of person, did he? Fuu didn't even carry weapons with her. She just fought using her body and her jutsu to turn her nearly invulnerable.

"Yes!" Fuu exclaimed, still looking like she was ready to do what she could to defend herself, "I'm not like you! I'm a jinchuuriki! You just want to be one of them don't you? If you kill me they'll cheer, and you'll be one of them until they find out what you are too… but they'll turn on you too in the end. We don't get peace, we don't get real care, all we ever get are people that want to use us and hurt us."

He could have killed her or knocked her out. He probably should have. Anyone else would have without even thinking about it.

But it had been said before, last night even; he wasn't fighting about the exams at this point. He was trying to prove a point, and he knew what he was trying to prove at last.

And so before Fuu's slowed reaction time could take notice he grabbed the older girl and hugged her tightly, ignoring her best attempts to overpower him and free herself, "W-What are you doing?" She said lowly, more in shock than anything else, "What, do you have a knife to my back? Are you holding me for one of your clones to kill? What are you going to do?"

"Nothing." Naruto said, holding back the blood welling up inside. Man he was never taking the Kyuubi's healing factor for granted again after this, "It's just a hug. I'm not going to hurt you anymore. There's no reason to. You can't beat me the way you are."

"You're lying!" Fuu yelled at him, shaking her head desperately, "There's no such thing! I'm not normal, I don't…" She stopped struggling and started shaking in his grasp, "Why won't you just kill me? That's what's supposed to happen. That's what they always said would happen if I was ever caught off-guard again. You're from an entirely different village! You're supposed to be my enemy more than anyone else! So why… why are you even doing this?"

"I don't know much about how they treated you in Taki… but you're not a bad person." Naruto said confidently as he could feel all of the fight leave her body, "You're just scared. But not everyone in the world wants to hurt you. Give someone a chance and you might be surprised." The way he was speaking was earnest as he tried to steady his own standing body with hers, "I know I was."

"Stupid kid…" Fuu muttered without much malice in her voice at all even though she tried to dress it up as such, "I'm not weak… I don't need anyone. Being alone made me strong." She said as if it were a repeated and practiced statement.

"Did it make you happy though?" Naruto could feel Fuu stiffen showing that what he said struck a chord, "When was the last time you actually felt happy? I don't think it was when you were by yourself."

Tears came to Fuu's eyes simply thinking about it, "Just shut up already. Shut up and go away…" She finally managed to push Naruto away once he let go, "What would you know about it?" She slumped against a tree and sank to the ground, hiding her face in her hands.

Holding his ribs, Naruto took a breath to bite back the pain rolling through him, "I know that it sucks being by yourself. And for a long time it'll be hard trying to find someone that you can trust… but when you do I promise it makes everything better. Just… don't give up alright? You're better than that. I promise that it'll be worth it in the end if you can find someone like that." He wasn't going to hit her again, not now. That would be needlessly adding injury to insult once he actually heard her sniffle.

"…Go away…"

She wasn't getting up, and there was no threat behind her words. He didn't have anything more to say either so he just started walking away as she requested. At that time Genma walked through the forest towards them and saw Fuu on the ground and Naruto standing and walking away, "What's going on? Are you quitting?"

Naruto looked at the proctor and shook his head, "If she wants to keep fighting I'll do it, but I'm not kicking her while she's down. Not right now." He didn't want to say that she was powerless. He just wanted to get out of the range of his seal array before he blacked out from internal bleeding so that the Kyuubi in him could get to work healing him.

Genma just looked at Naruto walk away and went over to Fuu, staying out of the range where she felt comfortable, "Are you going to fight or are you just going to sit there? Uzumaki said he's still ready to roll." Genma wasn't stupid and could tell that Naruto was most certainly not ready to roll, but he hadn't quit fighting. Despite being healthier, Fuu looked worse off than he did, "If you want to keep going you've got to show me something here."

Fuu just kept silent before looking up at Genma with puffy eyes, tear-stains on her cheeks, "I'm done." Her drive to fight was always shaky at best. Now she was powerless and the person that had the clearest opening to cut her to ribbons, clearer than anyone ever had, turned down the choice to actually do it when anyone in Taki would have jumped at the chance.

"Are you sure?" Genma asked again. He couldn't feel a scrap of that overbearing power she had before so the kid must have turned it off somehow. However Fuu never responded to his question, giving him all the answer he needed in this instance. One-sided inaction was grounds for surrender and she had refrained from continuing on. Thus he turned and left Fuu in the forest area as he headed back out into the open where everyone could see clearly, beginning his announcement of the fight before he reached the edge of the woods, "Fuu has chosen to surrender. The winner of match two is Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha! The winners of the semifinal round and advancing to the finals are Uzumaki Naruto, Nara Shikamaru, and Yamanaka Ino!"

After the announcement he wondered why the crowd wasn't cheering, jeering, something. Then he heard a dull impact off of the ground. As he made it outside he saw Naruto laying facedown in the dirt and understood why, "Oh… well that sucks. You alright kid?"

No response.

"Yeah… you're not alright." Genma said, the toothpick rolling in his mouth as he waved the medics over.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Live like a winner

There are two _excellent_ ways to get yourself hurt on the battlefield. The first way is to step into a fight thinking that you're definitely going to get hurt. This mindset, which for easy reference we will call the pussy mindset, is usually due to a severe lack of confidence, and although I don't exactly know why, your prophecy will usually become a reality.

The second way to go into a fight is thinking that there is no possible way in hell that you can get hurt. This mindset, which for reference's sake we will call the king-of-crazy-oh-my-Kami-what's-wrong-with-this-idiot mindset, is usually a by-product of a bloated confidence, and personally I've seen too many of these overconfident idiots get toted away in bodybags. No matter how good you _think_ you are there is always someone out there that can kill you.

As a ninja, for the sake of your longevity in the career, try to be somewhere in the middle. Realize that there is always obvious danger in what you do and map out the quickest route to a hospital with a medic named Tsunade… or really any doctor not named Jiraiya, or invest in some basic field medicine skills.

Don't dwell on it though. Dwelling on it is a sign that you need to rethink your job. Until you start puking your guts out before any important mission or battle it's not really a big deal to have some butterflies in your stomach, it's completely normal.

* * *

Jutsu List

Bunshin Kusari no Karada Gachan (Clone Chain Body Slam). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive. Naruto creates a huge amount of Kage Bunshin with the clones piling on the opponent. He then grabs one of the clones and pulls them out one by one. The clones proceed to latch onto each other to form a chain whip in order to slam the opponent down on the ground.

* * *

**Oh no! Man down! What a terrible turn of events! Who knew getting punched repeatedly by someone that can pulverize rock with their best shot would do such terrible things to your insides? What is they gon' do? I don't know why I'm asking these questions because I obviously already know… but **_**you**_** should totally be asking those questions unless of course you have Professor Charles Xavier powers and can read my mind with Cerebro from hundreds of miles away… but none of you can do that right?**

**Quick! What am I thinking right now?**

**(Beef jerky and cherry coke) Bastards, that was an easy one. That doesn't count.**

**Anyway. Until next time everyone. I hope it satisfied for the most part.**

**Kenchi out.**


	30. Winning Time

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If Kishimoto has a daughter I will marry her in an attempt to get a hold on the kingdom so to speak.

…Actually I won't do that. In hindsight that is firmly against my own personal code of conduct (est. 2004). I am a gentleman and while I believe love is just a very intense form of attachment I would never do such a thing to an innocent maiden's heart. I have more honor than that. Now if it happened naturally by the grace of God winding up with me meeting her in real life and we hit it off and she was cool and we legitimately ended up digging each other… maybe. There's always a possibility you know?

But my Japanese would probably drive her away… my Spanish might win her over though. I'm decent at that. And the English? Pssht… a win all across the board.

People learn English all the time, it aren't that hard.

**Chapter 30: Winning Time**

* * *

"Damn it!" Shikamaru said as Ino held her hands to her mouth once Naruto emerged from the wood section of the battlefield and fell out on his face with blood trailing from his mouth. Both of them suddenly ran for the steps to make their way down to the field, "Naruto doesn't get taken away on stretchers! That's not how he does things!"

"He's unconscious Shika." Ino said, trying to defend why he would be doing so, "But he's never that hurt though… ever." They had seen him take some blows. When that big muscle-mass increasing missing-nin smashed him back during their last C-rank he got up, "What happened in that forest after he used the seal? Did Fuu hurt him in that fight?" They didn't really get a good look deep past the trees so it wasn't clear to them what happened.

Shikamaru then suddenly stopped on the steps as he had a thought on something, "Fuu had powers… Gaara had powers… Naruto didn't have any obvious stuff like theirs though. He said his ability was his healing. He used that seal and then the fight ended so he turned off Fuu's natural ability to win somehow… which meant he turned off his own healing!" His own injuries either weren't finished healing and got worse after the sudden loss of Kyuubi's influence, or he was hurt worse after turning the healing off and couldn't recover until he walked out of the effect range of his own seal.

"Did he know that would happen when he used it?" Ino asked in alarm. Naruto's healing along his massive amounts of chakra were the bread and butter of his fighting ability. Shrugging off hits that would cause a normal genin to give up were part of what made Naruto special. He wasn't supposed to actually get hurt. He was always supposed to just get up and walk it off, at least that was how he had molded his image to be seen by them.

Shikamaru shook his head before he and Ino started running down the stairs again, "No… I don't think he did. He just knew that it negated all chakra use. He was never beaten up while it was on. How would he know?"

As they reached the bottom of the stairs they saw the medics carting Naruto back to the medic bay. His eyes were still closed due to his state of unconsciousness when his teammates got to him, "How is he?" Shikamaru asked Sekka as the Suna proctor/medic-nin had his hands glowing with chakra as a diagnosis, "He's not going to die is he?"

"I think you'd have to decapitate this boy to kill him." Sekka said earnestly as he turned off his diagnosis jutsu, "He's stable for some weird reason. His ribs are already knitting themselves back together. No damage to his lungs thank Kami. I don't think he'll be fighting next round though. Samurai medicine is notoriously slower to take hold even though for the long term he'll be as right as rain. As a proctor it would be a conflict of interest for me to try and heal him as long as your team is in the competition. The predetermined doctors have to do it, and either way he'll get fixed up just fine." His gaze turned rather serious, "I'd worry about yourselves right now if I were you."

Shikamaru and Ino stopped following as they went into the medical area, shutting a large pair of doors to leave them behind in the entrance tunnel. Both genin looked at each other at the same time, "At least he'll be alright." Ino said with a sigh of relief, "I'll kill him for being so stupid and getting messed up like that."

Shikamaru was thinking about something else though, "Didn't the Gaara guy say that if Naruto didn't fight he was going to just kill him anyway… and us?"

That thought sobered Ino up and brought her right back to the point of desperation, "He did… he said it more than once." She looked at Shikamaru in worry, "Do you think he can heal in three hours? Enough to at least defend himself or run?" Three hours would be when the last match happened, "I don't think we can just cut out and leave the exams can we?" Ino asked.

In theory they could… but not only would everyone see them quit in the arena, anyone watching anywhere else in the world would see Konoha quit without even trying to fight. All of the fights it took to build up the village's profile throughout the exam could be cut down if they did so. Even to save face for the village running wasn't an option.

"Is Uzumaki going to fight or what?"

Both Ino and Shikamaru turned down the tunnel to see Gaara staring at both of them in his blank manner, but both could feel the bloodlust radiating off of him. Both of them involuntarily shifted into reactionary positions in case Gaara tried anything, "Why does it matter?" Ino said, trying to put up a brave face, "You saw him win just now didn't you? That means that our team is in the finals."

"I also saw him fall on his face like a weakling." Gaara said coldly, "Mother and I saw his blood when they moved him. He is injured isn't he? So will he fight? Because if he isn't I'll simply put him out of his misery now for wasting my time."

The pop of the cork coming off of his sand sent a shiver down the two remaining Team 10 member's spines. He was dead serious. He would go right in there and kill Naruto in front of the medics and everyone. And if they tried to stop him he'd kill them too. They would never even get past him to begin trying to find Asuma before Gaara got to Naruto.

"I told him I would kill you both too." Gaara informed them, his sand starting to hover in front of them, "If he didn't fight I said that I would definitely kill the two of you." It started moving towards them.

Thinking fast on his feet, Shikamaru had one choice to make to give them all a chance. It wasn't good but it was the only shot they had at the moment to buy some time, "It's a good thing he'll be front and center come show time then huh?" He said, putting a bluff of a smirk on his face. Ino looked at him in shock, hearing what he was going to say, "Do you really think someone like Naruto won't be up in three hours? He'd only need half of that if the rules said so."

'He's bluffing.' Ino finally realized. There was no way to say when Naruto would be up, if it would even be today, nothing like that. Gaara didn't know that though, and the confident way Shikamaru was talking was enough to convince Gaara who seemed desperate to fight a true battle against Naruto.

"If you kill us then you'd really be jumping the gun." Shikamaru continued with a shrug, "It's not really up to anyone but you if Naruto fights you. He just got through fighting one jinchuuriki so of course he's going to need a bit to rest."

Gaara just stared blankly at the fast talking Nara before turning around and walking away, "Now or later I guess it doesn't really matter when I kill him. I will hold you to that however. Both of you are going to die regardless if he doesn't show up. I'll see to it myself. And I _will_ get him anyway."

The echo of Gaara's footsteps in the tunnel left their ears, getting Ino to lean against the medical bay doors and slide to the ground, "That was close…" She said, wiping a cold sweat away from her brow.

"So we can't quit without a fight or else we look like cowards and Konoha's going to end up paying for it later." Shikamaru said, explaining their choices, "If Naruto doesn't show and isn't ready for action by fight time that guy's going to crush us before we can even scream. And even if he _is_ ready… is his healing really that good that he'd help us put up a fight?"

Ino held her head in her hands and shook it around, "I should have just stayed in bed this morning. It was nice in bed… all warm, and I didn't even care about fighting anyone or getting killed or anything." She pulled her knees to her chest as Shikamaru took a seat next to her on the ground, "What are we going to do Shika?"

"Even if the village's reputation wasn't in the equation, even if we did quit once the fights began and we threw the whole thing to save ourselves he'd get to Naruto before we could stop him." Shikamaru said with a sigh as he thumped the back of his head off of the door one time to show his stress, "It's not just about us Ino. But Naruto always had our backs whether we wanted it or not."

Ino nodded before the two just sat in silence, not caring about moving for the time being, "So… we're fighting to try and stop that guy aren't we?"

"Yep."

"Do you have an idea?"

"I've got bits and pieces worked out here and there. Most of the final ones I come up with suck though."

"Beautiful… and how long do we have again?"

"…Less than three hours."

XxX

(2 Hours, 41 minutes until the Final Match)

"What do you mean I can't see my brats?" Asuma said to the head samurai that seemed to be separating the spectator section from the area of the arena where the competitors dwelled, "I've got one that got carted off to the medical bay and I can't even go back there?"

The five samurai watching over the area stood fast though, even in the face of the perturbed jounin, "Our orders were that the genin still in competition could receive no counsel with their jounin. The chance of you slipping them advice of some sort is too high and this is meant to test their capacity as shinobi. The reason your companion was allowed back last time to see her squad was because they were already defeated. Whether or not one of your students is in the medic bay he is still in the competition. He is fine though, we can assure you that he is not in danger."

That wasn't necessarily good enough for Sarutobi Asuma. The only thing keeping him from making a scene was the combination of spectators taking the three hours to wander about getting a good look at him, the fact that Kurenai's team was there and he was supposed to be an example, and the fact that Kurenai herself was there with a hand on his shoulder as a method of trying to keep him calm.

Asuma stood there with his fists clenched before turning around and walking away into the crowd of people that cleared out of the way of the perturbed jounin, "Asuma wait!" Kurenai said as she and her genin walked to catch up with him, "Calm down okay. Just take a few deep breaths."

He stopped trying to leave them in the dust and stopped before pacing about, "Fine… just… give me a minute." Man, having a team to worry about was taking all of his cool away and making him age faster than those damned cigarettes were.

"Well if it isn't Sarutobi-sensei's little brat."

Asuma, Kurenai, and Team 8 saw a blonde woman with a sizeable chest area coming towards them with a pig following behind, "Tsunade-hime?" Asuma and Kurenai said simultaneously.

Tsunade nodded at being recognized by the younger pair of jounin before she turned to Asuma, "So I'll go out on a limb after hearing and seeing you just now and I'll say that those brats that just won are yours."

"Yes…" Kurenai said, speaking for Asuma who in turn just glared back at the samurai set up on guard, "The little blonde one that fought last, Naruto, he's kind of worried about him. Plus with the team that they're supposed to fight later today…" She just left it at that. Everyone had seen what Gaara could do, and Temari and Kankuro knew how to handle themselves as well to say the least.

"Well… I can't believe I'm saying this, but I honestly wish I could help the runt out." Tsunade said matter-of-factly, getting a set of surprised looks from everyone she was speaking to, "I have a load of money on the team he's on, and if they can do it again and win I'm free and clear of my debts… in this country anyway."

Asuma gave her a deadpan stare. He thought his old man was just exaggerating when he said that she sucked at gambling, "Uh, thanks I guess." He blinked and looked around realizing that something was off, or missing, or something, "Wait, where's Shizune? The last time I saw her she was back for the chunin exam where we got promoted."

Kurenai's eyes widened in realization. She remembered that. Shizune was pretty much in their generation and they knew she had left and had been travelling with Tsunade, "Where _is_ Shizune?"

Tsunade looked around once she realized her rather meek assistant wasn't with her, "I don't know. She was just with me." This was the second time this had happened in three days, "She must have gotten separated in the crowd somehow…" Tsunade said with a frown on her face.

XxX

(2 Hours, 15 Minutes until the Final Match – Depths of the Arena – Medical Bay)

"Ow…" Naruto groaned weakly as his eyes cracked open, "Stupid lazy fuzzy bastard…" Naruto muttered in reference to the Kyuubi. The stupid thing had taunted him and chewed him out while he had been unconscious about turning the healing ability off without realizing what he had done, "Can't a guy make a mistake… a painful mistake?"

His vision stopped swimming long enough to notice one of the helmeted and lower facemask wearing samurai medics with glowing green hands standing over his body. He was sans shirt to reveal the large and nasty deep bruising on so many parts of his body that showed just how bad his injuries from Fuu had been. Naruto knew enough about medical ninjutsu to refrain from moving to allow the person healing him to work without problems.

Wait.

Glowing green hands? Medical _ninjutsu_? Samurai medics didn't use medical ninjutsu… they didn't have ninjutsu, they had their own treatments that involved chakra but he had already seen more than enough to know that this damn sure wasn't what they used. Ever.

"Who are you?" Naruto managed to get out before the strange samurai medic put a finger to his lips to silence him.

"Be quiet Naruto-kun." A familiar female voice said that immediately triggered his memory to two days ago. Seeing his eyes widen in realization of who was helping him, Naruto tried to talk, but the inability to move his mouth the right way sort of muffled him, "Yes. It's me. Just be calm and let me heal you, alright?"

Naruto did as was asked and let himself relax, figuring if he was being targeted to die he could have been killed while he had been out cold, "Shizune… I don't think this is allowed." He said, still rather quietly from his wounds draining him.

The samurai medic disguised Shizune let out an amused giggle that allowed Naruto to see an eyesmile from the only part of her that was visible, her eyes of course, "Do you really care if it's legal or not?" She asked dryly.

Aside from the chance of getting caught and kicked out of the final match Naruto found that he really didn't care that she was helping him, probably against the rules to boot. And she seemed to know what she was doing so he trusted her judgment and skill in this instance. He always had plausible deniability if it came to that as well, "Well, not really." He finally admitted.

"Good!" Shizune chirped brightly before running a glowing hand over his forehead, putting him back to sleep before he even knew what had happened, "Now stay asleep until I'm done. No offense Naruto-kun, you're a sweet kid, but you don't seem like the patient kind of patient. I should be done by the time your final series rolls around though." She said to the unconscious blonde, "Maybe you can show Tsunade-sama that having a little hope isn't a bad thing huh?" And with that she dutifully got back to work on trying to patch him up further.

XxX

(1 Hour, 47 Minutes until the Final Match – Kage's Box)

"It looks like Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro are going to walk away as the victors without much of a fight." The Kazekage said confidently. The improbable and partially unseen victory over Fuu notwithstanding, the girl that emerged and walked to the back didn't seem the same as the one that had tossed Naruto in there to begin with. It was as if he had broken her resolve, but that wouldn't happen with Gaara, especially with the condition the boy was in at the battle's conclusion, "Unfortunately I don't see any way for your rookie team to defeat my children."

Onoki let out a grunt, "Normally I'd be one to disagree just to ruffle some feathers, but Kazekage-dono might have a point Sarutobi. Those kids of his are stone cold." But then again they had been surprising everyone since the first round, "Personally though, the death of my genin aside, I like the blonde brat and the Nara with the shadows." He admitted, "The blonde punk has some backbone and balls the size of boulders. He has some nice dirty tricks too, but nothing like the other one on his team. I laughed from a good healthy place last round when he surrendered and made the kid in the jumpsuit screw the pooch. He hasn't even taken a hit all tournament long."

A didn't know why personally, but he didn't dig Team 10. Maybe because the way they fought went against his own personal preference towards combat, "I don't like them that much. Only one of them has any outright knockout power and he fights like the other two, as if he changed his style to a trickster to accommodate them." Dragging his opponents off of the battlefield into different areas to throw them off seemed to be his go-to for dealing with foes he had an inherent disadvantage against. Once that was done he had a myriad of indirect ways to fight, including the seal that he used and pretty much no one saw due to a distinct lack of x-ray vision from the masses. They mostly only heard him call for it.

"I assume you're referring to Naruto-kun." Hiruzen said, getting a nod from the Raikage, "I see nothing wrong with that. While plowing ahead has seemed to be his style in his single battles there is something to be said for learning to adapt to a different style of fighting for the benefit of your squad. And it has even given him some tactical knowhow for when he needed it if you pay attention. You can't always smash through everything in your way Raikage-dono."

"Says who?" A returned with a smirk.

"Let's take a count." Onoki said in a teasing manner, "How about the time around 50 years ago when Kumo cornered old Saru's squad and when your entire Kinkaku Force tried to take them down you only managed to jump on the Nidaime Hokage. A major blow for certain… if Saru here hadn't had the title of Hokage bestowed upon him right before Tobirama ran himself out into the open as _bait_! And he still killed over half of them by himself." Onoki said, carrying on now that he knew he had A's attention, "Or what about the time you tried to take that other Uzumaki girl from Konoha, and guess who showed up and killed every last one of the capture squad that took her? And then when you yourself went after him, what happened when you and your brother tried to beat him? And then the several times after that you tried to fight him?"

"I get your point _Tsuchikage-dono_." A said, gritting his teeth to hold back his anger as the oldest Kage amongst them poked fun at him and his village, "Wait. Uzumaki. Is that boy related to them?" He asked Hiruzen, getting dry looks from every other kage in the box as well as Mifune to boot, "Is that strange chakra that he used in battle like the kind that the woman we tried to abduct had?"

Hiruzen just stared at A before blinking and returning his attention to his pipe, "Yes. Let's go with that." It wasn't necessarily a lie, but the entire story wasn't known by him and it didn't need to be said aloud to anyone other than the person that it directly related to. Things were already being pushed with Onoki knowing about a little yellow secret.

XxX

(34 Minutes until the Final Match – Depths of the Arena – Medical Bay)

Shizune was in abject awe of how well Naruto was recovering. It was so fast. Faster than it should have been with the complicated nature that internal bleeding had and the problems such injuries presented. The extra blood rolling through places where it shouldn't have been had been extracted, the hardest part, and a quick plasma pill she forced him to swallow gave him right back what he lost. From there it had merely come down to working on his injuries themselves.

It took a hell of a lot of chakra to get that far with it though.

"You should be just fine in no time…" Shizune said, still speaking to her unconscious patient as her green hands ran over his torso. Her chakra-coated hands ran over his navel area and a strange pattern appeared on the bruised flesh causing her to stop and stare for a moment, "Whoa… that's not a tattoo. Naruto-kun are you a-?" Well it more than made sense after the last fight, "To think, this is the same poor kid that the Yondaime Hokage stuck the Kyuubi with." Shaking her head with a modicum of pity, Shizune returned to healing his wounds.

"Hmm. I thought the samurai had done all the treatment they could here to keep him stable until the end of the competition."

Shizune froze and held back the urge to let out a squeak at the sound of Sekka's voice as he walked up behind her, apparently looking over her shoulder before she let her jutsu drop, "That looks a lot like Shousen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Jutsu)… in my own experience with it anyway." He said, commenting on the jutsu he already saw her using.

'Oh no… I'm so dead.' Shizune thought to herself while standing frozen, 'I wonder… I could probably knock him out and hide him until the tournament was over. But then he'd still wake up and get free before the results were all in for the promotions and he would still tell that I did this. Naruto-kun's team would get busted anyway and blacklisted.' She definitely wasn't going to kill the guy. Then she and Tsunade really would find it to be hell making it out of the country.

A nod of Sekka's head preceded him clapping samurai medic-disguised Shizune on the shoulder and turning to leave, "I'm glad to see that the samurai are working to develop more fast-acting techniques to heal patients in real-time for future battles. It's about time they broke that. Carry on." He said as he walked away.

Shizune could only blink behind her partial facemask that she had not been exposed for healing Naruto. She was clearly using ninjutsu, something no samurai, even a medic, would do. But not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when she was still on the clock to finish, Shizune got back to work, 'Even if I finish, if he gets up and leaves it'll only be enough to hold him together until he can get some actual rest. Once he goes out and fights it'll be a patch job to keep him in one piece to get anything done at best.'

But it was most certainly better than nothing in any case. Thus she continued dutifully repairing Naruto's body with her chakra.

Walking along just outside of the medical bay was Sekka. As the main medic of the exams he had to ensure that Naruto wasn't going to die before the end of the exam altogether even if he himself wasn't allowed to treat him out of a conflict of interest.

The samurai had already lain the groundwork for his body to begin healing, but the problem for a shinobi in this exam was that it was such a slow process he would never be ready in time. However rules didn't say that a medic-nin couldn't treat injured fighters, just that as a proctor he couldn't and the thing was that there weren't any other medic-ninja in the village if not the entire country at the moment. Medic-ninja were important assets to shinobi villages, so having them gallivant all across the continent to the ass end of the north for an exam wasn't really prudent practice.

So either Konoha brought a ringer in the form of a medic-ninja, which was next to unforeseeable because no other country had the foresight or the mind to do so what with Tetsu no Kuni providing the default medical treatment anyway and was improbable or they would have been using her from the start, or this woman wasn't really aligned with Konoha in that manner, she just wanted to help the kid out, and she disguised herself in order to try and do so more easily without being caught.

And there wasn't a rule against that… it just wasn't done really, as something of an unspoken rule. There was no openly expressed rule that said medics can't fix competitors. Most just relied on the locals to do so until the patients could be shipped back home if the injury was severe enough simply just because.

The reason he didn't tell her it was technically legal was because it was just too entertaining watching her try to sneak around _his_ medical bay to fix Naruto up. Hey, sometimes you've got to make your own entertainment. He had time to fill before the last fight.

XxX

(23 Minutes until the Final Match – Entrance Tunnel)

Ino let out a humorless chuckle as she and Shikamaru hadn't really moved from their seated spots to walk around the area provided for competitors, not even once since sitting down against the doors to the medic bay, "That idea… really sucks. You were right."

"I told you." Shikamaru said in an agreeing manner, "But like I said, it's the best shot we've got to have a chance here. Do you think we can do it?"

"Not really." Ino responded in a deadpan voice as she turned her head towards him, "But you seem to think it'll work so either you know something I don't or you've been eating way too many paint chips." She took on a thoughtful look, "Your fighting style was tailor-made to stall, but this is ridiculous."

Shikamaru gave her a glare with no real intensity behind it, "If you've got a better idea I'd absolutely love to hear it. Otherwise please put a sock in it Ino. Battlefield etiquette says you can't judge a battle plan while the fight is in session, you have to wait until it's over first. We haven't even started, and you didn't even come up with anything."

Instead of rising to the accusation, Ino got up and started to stretch herself out, having not moved for over two hours, "You know how they say too many cooks spoil the dish? Well if the dish sucks in the first place then why make it worse?"

"Troublesome woman." Shikamaru said, still sitting down and waiting for the time to come to face the Suna team.

"I'll remember you said that if I wind up having to save your ass somehow out there."

"Whatever."

XxX

(2 Minutes until the Final Match – In the Stands)

Tsunade had been unable to locate Shizune again, but her apprentice was a big girl and no trouble would start anywhere near this exam due to the massive amounts of samurai patrolling and in radio contact with each other, so instead of heading back to sit somewhere alone with Tonton she kept up with Asuma, Kurenai and Team 8, choosing to sit with them when the time for the final match came near. She sat on one side of Asuma while Kurenai sat on the other with Team 8 on her other side.

"You know I told your father that smoking would kill him one day." Tsunade remarked once she saw Asuma pull a pack of cigarettes out of a flak jacket pocket, "…Of course that would be the one thing that you'd have picked up from him."

Asuma rolled his eyes as Kurenai nodded her agreement to Tsunade's statement, "He keeps saying that he's not like Hokage-sama and yet he's just as stubborn about his tobacco. You have a nicotine addiction and what's worse is you passed it on to your student." She said in a scolding manner, "You know how impressionable young genin are."

Right now Asuma was quite certain that despite how beautiful the two women surrounding him were this was what it was like to be a rooster surrounded by two clucking hens… hens that could kick his ass if he decided to mouth off. He had to choose his words wisely, "Okay first of all Kurenai, I didn't influence jack. Naruto lied to you in a desperate and futile attempt to cover his own ass. I know for a fact he never had a single cigarette in his life until you made him chain smoke like fifty of them in a row. So it's your fault." Her red eyes widened at that and she turned away with a blush, "Second of all I am a grown-ass man... that is all. Third of all, the smoke doesn't get in my lungs because I coat my organs with a fine sheen of wind chakra… and even if I didn't dad's damn near 70 and we're ninja, so me dying isn't an issue here."

Tsunade just stared at him before turning back towards the field to wait, "Did it feel good to get all of that out?" Asuma nodded calmly, "Good. Now let all of that pent up tension build back up so you can freak out during your team's fight."

"Thanks for that reminder…" Asuma said, subconsciously opening his pack of cigarettes before he noticed Kurenai's eyes shift back on him like a hawk, forcing him to stash them before he lost those like the others. In response to this, Kiba once again made the whip sound with his mouth, "Shut up kid."

Kiba shrugged, "I wouldn't do it if it wasn't true. You're not setting a good example for being a positive male role model with a backbone Asuma-sensei."

"He is setting a good example for teaching us to keep our personal physical and mental health intact around women though." Shino chimed in, "I believe that is just as important in some cases."

Hinata didn't say anything, she was just splitting her attention between glaring at both Kurenai and Asuma, not really knowing who to blame for Naruto's smoking since while one was the cause the other damn sure cultivated the habit. It was okay though. Sweet girl or not, if properly motivated she still had enough Hyuuga-glare in her for the both of them in spades. She stopped though once movement made itself seen from the tunnel, "Look. It's starting." She said quietly even thought it still got their attention.

Once it was seen that Shikamaru and Ino were coming out alone Tsunade stared at her wager stub wistfully, "Well, there goes that chance…" She said to herself. Her eyes turned towards the nearby stairs at the sight of a dark figure's motion and once Tonton started oinking it really got her attention, "Shizune?"

"I've been looking everywhere for you Tsunade-sama." Shizune said as she moved past spectators to reach the seat that had been saved for her, "I'm sorry I got separated like that again." If anyone were paying attention they would have noticed that she was sweating slightly and seemed somewhat tired, but the spectacle of the final round captured attention more than her presence at the moment.

XxX

(On the Field)

Kankuro simply couldn't believe that those Konoha kids were still coming out to fight even after seeing all of Gaara's other matches. They were even down a man and they were still about to go through with it.

Gaara said that he would kill all of them if the blonde boy didn't show up to fight so maybe they were just facing the music head-on.

He wasn't going to stand there and pretend he knew what went through the minds of Konoha shinobi. They were a mess of brats too so there was always that to take into account. Maybe they thought they actually had a chance.

But when the two sides faced off on the barren portion of the field the lazy kid seemed to be as cool as a cucumber, even when the other girl looked apprehensive. But even with her she looked like she was ready, 'You stupid runts should have just quit…' Kankuro thought to himself. He was barely even paying attention for the coin toss that came up heads.

"Suna team gets to pick the terms." Jei said, looking to Gaara, Kankuro, and Temari as they had won the coin toss, "Team battle or one-on-one matches?"

From the way Gaara was looking at them no matter what he was going to try to fight first. Gaara took that moment to interject coldly as Temari and Kankuro weren't going to risk picking something instead of him and upsetting him, "It doesn't matter what we pick. Uzumaki isn't here, so they're all dead either way. Let's make this quick. Team battle."

'Well there goes the stalling idea.' Shikamaru thought to himself as Jei got himself some distance from the two teams, "I thought the doctors said that Naruto could enter the battle once they cleared him?" He asked to Jei. Ino fought the urge to give him a strange look once she realized he was again trying to bluff, "How long is that supposed to take? It's not his fault that they won't let him just cut and run up here."

Jei only stared at Shikamaru behind his sunglasses strangely, "I… don't know kid. I don't know anything about it."

"You're not screwing us here are you?" Shikamaru said, looking at Jei with a raised eyebrow. He was all in at this point, "We were sitting by the doctor place for the whole three hours just waiting on someone to tell us that." Half true. They were waiting there for news to see if Naruto somehow got over what was wrong with him, "Is there someone we can definitely talk to? Or someone that runs and oversees the whole exam?" He was scrounging hard for any way to stall.

"No…" Jei said, starting to get perturbed, "Look. If he shows up he's allowed to fight. The other team already picked team battle though, so if you lose before he gets here the match is over. Now stop yapping already kid."

'Crap.' Shikamaru thought to himself. So no actual stalling on the fight time to give Naruto time to heal, they were one down right from the start. And Gaara didn't look pleased at the absence of his intended target.

"He's not showing." The tone of Gaara was perfectly malicious in its own dry delivery, "So that means I'm coming to find him right after I go through you. Prepare to die."

One chance left to save their skins at this point, "If you just straight up kill us then the fight is over." Shikamaru argued back, "I already told you Naruto will be here, he's just getting held up by medics. He's going to be here. Fight him now instead of then when you'll get in trouble for it."

Temari glared at Shikamaru for trying to silver-tongue his way out of Team 10's predicament, 'Does he really think Gaara's not going to squash him like a-?'

"Fifteen minutes." Gaara said plainly, surprising both Temari and Kankuro, "If Uzumaki isn't here in fifteen minutes I'll kill you both. No more chances. No more stalling. Until then I don't care anymore." With that, Gaara disappeared from their presence in a Shunshin of sand.

"Gaara!" Kankuro shouted after his younger brother as Gaara reappeared standing atop a rock in the Zen-garden. Instead of even paying Kankuro any mind, Gaara was facing the far end of the field from his place dead-center, looking at the entrance tunnel and waiting patiently, "Damn it, can he do that?"

Temari took her fan from her back and held it at the ready, "The Fuu girl did it in round one until that dog kid was stupid enough to attack her. I don't think these two are that dumb though, so that means that it's up to us." A smirk came over her face, "Don't look at it like that. At least we finally get an actual shot at getting a promotion now."

After a moment of thought, Kankuro unwrapped Karasu from his back, "You have a point there sis. If all Gaara wants is Uzumaki then he won't mind a bit if we play around with these kids and show off right? Just as long as we don't let the fight end."

Shikamaru sighed, thinking that they would be scared enough of Gaara to leave them alone for him to stall for a true plan of action, "You know that plan works… unless we just surrender now. Then you end the tournament without ever getting to show anything at all other than how scared of Gaara you are."

Temari didn't take too much offense at the slight, "For a guy that acts so smart you're really stupid. Anyone with half a brain would be afraid of Gaara. But I guess I'll just have to make you afraid of me instead huh?" She said just as she took a massive swing of her war fan.

"I never said start!" Jei said, but the warning was really too late and unheeded as the massive wind came at the two Konoha genin from her fan.

Ino and Shikamaru covered their faces to avoid getting dust in their eyes as the wind lifted them off of the ground and threw them back across the barren portion of the field. Both landed hard on their backs with a thud, "Ugh… so now what? You bought us fifteen more minutes of precious life and then we're screwed for good." Ino asked as she looked over at Shikamaru.

His original answer was cut off by the chattering noise of Karasu coming at them, "We should worry about lasting the fifteen minutes first. Move!" Both of them got up immediately as the puppet tried to set itself upon them with its deadly poison blades. Both Shikamaru and Ino moved in opposite directions, splitting up to make for more difficult targets.

Ino took a look back to find that the strange weapon was choosing to pursue her instead of Shikamaru, "Why me damn it? Chase Shikamaru!" She yelled irritably at the Suna puppeteer, not exactly excited at being pursued by the creepy chattering humanoid ninja tool.

"Sorry." Kankuro said unapologetically as he followed at a distance to keep a good watch on Ino, "I'd rather chase the pretty girl. But look at it this way, you and I have so much in common. Too bad you're too young for me to actually care about."

The casual response from Ino was the pulling down of her eyelid as she stuck her tongue out at Kankuro, "Just because we both use a bit of poison doesn't mean we have much in common. I stopped playing with dolls a long time ago."

"Karasu is a puppet!" Kankuro yelled angrily at her as he forced his puppet to fire kunai at Ino, watching as she dodged them urgently, "I'll show you a doll you little Konoha brat!"

XxX

"Why couldn't Ino fight the woman?" Shikamaru wondered aloud as he stood behind one of the pillars of the stone bridge, thinking that he had gotten the worst draw out of the two of them. Keeping his cover behind the sturdy pillar was a necessity since Temari would periodically send a blast of wind his way. She certainly covered more ground with her jutsu than Naruto did with his wind jutsu, 'She's definitely long range.' He looked to the side to see Ino being pursued by Kankuro and Karasu, 'He is too.'

A short ways away off of the bridge, Temari was beginning to get impatient, "Is running away really all you're good at? Because it's the only thing I've seen you do in every single match you've had! Not this time, you're fighting today, so prepare to lose! Kamaitachi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!" Once again Temari tried to smoke him out from his cover.

Shikamaru didn't move though, he instead retaliated by trying to send his shadow out after Temari, but once she caught sight of it she moved to the side, attempting to get far enough over there to get a clear shot at Shikamaru's body. That was exactly what she got, but she also saw a second shadow trailing off of the side of the bridge, surprising her by creeping up the side of the moat and revealing itself to her, close enough to capture her.

This was far too close for Temari's own personal comfort and she instead sent a blast of wind at the ground to lift off, using her fan to glide across the moat to get herself more distance away from his shadow, "That lazy bastard actually almost got me." She said to herself, looking at the ground where the shadow had been to not find anything there. She looked back towards the bridge where the trail of shadow had come from originally only to find that he had taken the time Temari had used to take extraordinary efforts to avoid his shadow to leave the vicinity, "Bastard! All he can do is run!"

Before getting angry at being given the slip, Temari took a moment to stop and think as she landed back on the ground on the other side of the moat (forested), 'He's not that fast so he didn't get across the bridge without me seeing him.' She looked over on the other side of the bridge where the Zen-garden was only to see Gaara still staring at the entrance tunnel waiting, 'There's no way he's that suicidal though, so where is he now?'

In the middle of her attempts to think of where Shikamaru could be she turned around to see Ino rushing in her direction with Karasu still in chase mode. Deciding to focus on the target she could see she prepared to use the wind of her fan to cut her fellow blonde to ribbons.

"Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!" Ino was faster to finish building up her chakra than it took for Temari to do so and she breathed her poisonous fog, sending the red version of it at Temari.

"You think you can touch me with that?" Temari swung her fan at the poison from her adversary to blow the mist from the jutsu away, "You're a fool! What did you think would happen?"

Once the poison was blown back however, it was sent towards Karasu revealing that Ino had fired the cloud close enough to obscure her body. It was apparently a failed attempt to do so and escape however once it revealed Ino's body on the ground with cuts all through her clothing and body wrappings and blood surrounding her.

Temari smirked and moved towards the motionless kunoichi to confirm she was down and out. Karasu under Kankuro's direction moved towards the fallen Ino faster though due to the fact that as a puppet it didn't need to exercise caution. This was lucky for Temari because when Karasu got too close, Ino's 'body' exploded in a shower of senbon that Temari had to instantly react to and blow away with her fan.

"That was a nice trap." Temari said in a patronizing fashion after ridding herself of all of the senbon shot by the Ino trap dummy, "If I had been closer I wouldn't have been able to react in time." She tried to turn and search for the real Ino when she found herself frozen in place, "Oh no way… Kankuro?" She asked once she saw that the puppet wasn't moving either. A shadow on the ground was stretching between her and Karasu.

Hidden somewhere in the forested section of the field up on a branch to overlook things, Kankuro tried his best to manipulate his puppet but found that he couldn't budge it an inch. It was trapped just like Temari was, "Can he even do that? I thought that would only work on people." His thoughts on the matter came to an end when a salvo of senbon flew up at him, forcing him to jump down, "So here you are…" He said, facing down a drenched looking Ino.

"Yep." The unhappy sounding girl replied, moving her wet hair out of her face, "This is the second time I had to get into that stupid moat. The first time I've had to by choice though… so at least it's better that way"

"You don't say…" Kankuro said, still trying to move his fingers to move his puppet, failing to do so, "So how'd you pull that move on Temari?"

"I made that stupid dummy more than a month ago and didn't know how I was going to use it. It was just sealed away in a scroll Goldie-kun gave me so I could break it out one day." Ino then frowned, and not just because she was soaked to the bone, "But you can stop trying to stall just so you can figure out a way to move your puppet. As long as there's chakra in that thing then Shikamaru can hold onto it." With that being said, Ino spat a senbon from her mouth directly at the suna genin.

Seeing that there was no advantage to keeping one hand busy for contact with Karasu if he couldn't even move it, Kankuro relinquished control and broke his chakra strings to give him both hands to use against Ino since he figured he'd need them. And with that he dodged Ino's spat out senbon, 'Crap… this stupid girl has more tricks than a few.' And he didn't carry extra weapons on him other than Karasu, "Gaara's just going to kill you anyway after you run out of time! Just give up and run away while you still can!" He shouted as he retaliated and jumped at Ino to try his hand with taijutsu.

"Team 10 doesn't run away." Ino said, prepared to defend herself against Kankuro, "We just retreat tactically."

XxX

Shikamaru had finally moved from hiding to get close enough to Temari for her to see him. She had tossed the fan once Shikamaru had forced her to with the imitation part of his jutsu so now she was also unarmed. The two just stood staring at each other without moving before Shikamaru spoke up, "So are you going to give up already or do I have to do something to take you down?"

A scoff left Temari, "What are you going to do, knock me out the stupid way you did the other round to that Taki genin?" He didn't have the heart. They were both on actually solid ground this time. No nice soft land for him or a rock for her to crack her head open on.

"I don't really want to hurt a girl…" Shikamaru admitted before his eyes turned more serious than she expected from him given his attitude, "But this is more of a big deal than just trying to keep being chivalrous or anything stupid like that. In a few minutes we've got to deal with your brother. The one that doesn't wear makeup… and I already promised myself and my team that I would do what I have to back during the first time we all almost got killed." Shikamaru reached into his intentionally misplaced kunai pouch and drew one of the weapons.

Temari on the other hand drew no such thing. She had no kunai pouch in the strange place where Shikamaru drew his from so when he drew his arm back to throw she did the same with nothing but air, "Are you actually going to-?"

"I already told you." Shikamaru said gravely, "I'll do what I have to."

"Time's up."

Shikamaru turned his head to the side to see Gaara standing there as if he had been there all along. But he had been in the Zen-garden the entire time until right then. Could he really move like that without letting anyone know he was? That was crazy, "What?"

"I said that your time is up." Gaara's tone was just as unamused and as dry as ever, but his sand was out and poised at the ready as if it were alive and set to attack, "So now it's time to die." And without another word he set his sand off against Shikamaru who had to break his control over Temari to get a fighting chance at dodging.

Once he did, Shikamaru stared at Gaara with a glare because this was worst case scenario, "It hasn't been fifteen minutes yet!" He argued. All he needed was a little more time. He could go help Ino get Kankuro, and then they could try to defeat Gaara then, "What happened to the deal?"

Gaara didn't even blink as he responded, "I never agreed to wait the whole fifteen minutes. It's clear by now that he isn't coming. Feel free to fight in his place though… I want a warm up before I kill Uzumaki too." He finished as the sand started whirling about.

Shikamaru was prepared to do what he could. Temari was still without her weapon, just standing out of the way and watching so it was basically one-on-one. Not the best option, but it was better than the two-on-one alternative. Then he saw movement from the forest area and saw Kankuro emerge holding an unresponsive Ino over his shoulder, "Oh no…"

"Gaara." Kankuro said as he put Ino down on the ground and walked over to stand with said sand-manipulator and Temari who had taken to standing by Gaara in a flanking position, "Sick of just watching us smack these runts around huh?"

"Shut up." Gaara said as both of his siblings stood next to him now before turning his attention back to Shikamaru, "Now die." Before Gaara could even raise his hand to send sand after Shikamaru the sand rose up to block a kunai strike directed at the side of his neck from Kankuro. A momentarily wide-eyed Gaara turned his eyes towards Kankuro as the sand kept the weapon and the hand in place, "You're a fool."

Temari was utterly shocked and horrified. Not just because she was watching Kankuro attack Gaara, but because Kankuro seemed to have the balls to actually attack Gaara in the first place, "What are you doing?"

Kankuro didn't answer, but Gaara did instead, "He's about to pay for being stupid. That's what he's doing." Kankuro made a half-ram seal with his free hand, but whatever he was about to do was just a bit too late as the sand started to bind down slowly with crushing force.

Screaming out in pain at the punishment from Gaara, Kankuro still made the half-ram seal before shouting, "Kai (Release)!" His body then collapsed to the ground yelling in sudden anguish at his injury.

At that moment, Ino's body sat up with a gasp before shouting in pain, holding her smashed hand, "Kami! I can't even get him off-guard!" He never saw the attack coming, he never had a chance to counter, he wasn't even aware it was happening and it still didn't work. The stupid sand was totally automatic and that was just… unfair as far as Ino was concerned.

"Ino!" Shikamaru rushed over to her side to find that the bones in her right hand were just as crushed as Kankuro's. She had been in his body with her clan technique in order to get close enough to Gaara to attack him, thus she suffered the same injury that Kankuro had, "Damn it… that was a good try though." It really was. The defense was automatic if even an unseen sneak attack from point-blank range didn't touch him. How would they have known that it was completely automatic?

Ino glared at him momentarily before returning her full attention to her now useless right hand. She wasn't going to be making any more hand-seals for the foreseeable future, "To hell with a good try! I thought I had him, and now we're screwed!" Shikamaru helped her stand up as she fretted over her unbearably painful injury, "There is absolutely no way he saw that coming!"

Temari was trying to see to Kankuro and the injury Gaara carelessly inflicted on his formerly captured teammate and brother while Gaara himself simply ignored his yells and paid attention to the blood dripping on the ground from Ino's arm, staring at it before he felt something take hold of his body. He looked down and saw Shikamaru's shadow stretching over to him, "Just because I can't move doesn't mean my sand can't either." And with that, Gaara's sand went after both Shikamaru and the wounded Ino.

XxX

(Depths of the Arena – Medical Bay)

Naruto's eyes snapped open and he abruptly sat up, patting himself down to find himself covered in bandages on his body with a few on his face as well, one in particular spanning the bridge of his nose, "What the hell?" He grabbed his head before remembering why he was there, "Oh yeah. Fuu kicked the shit out of me and Shizune-chan healed me…" He didn't remember why he fell back asleep but that wasn't important.

"Well thanks." Naruto jumped out of his bed and ran over to the place right next to his, pulling back the curtain to find Fuu sitting in a chair touching up the wounds she had suffered earlier with healing ointment before redoing her bandages, "I hope I hit you hard enough to leave an impression. I almost cried in public you jerk. Thank Kami for the trees."

"Fuu?" Naruto said questioningly, getting a stiff nod from the girl, "What's going on?"

Fuu looked up to him with her orange eyes and stopped treating herself, "I'm resting down here because it's quiet and I'm tired, and I'm patching myself up because your stupid surprise machete attack got me good enough to draw blood. I'm not letting some random doctor do it." She narrowed her eyes when Naruto put his hands on his hips as if to chide her, "What? I don't know them and I'm never going to see them again after today. Why would I even try to trust them?"

A good enough point he assumed. She still seemed rather hostile, but he did just beat her moments before… wait, how long had it been since they had even fought in the first place?

"How long have I been out of it for?" Naruto asked spontaneously, not seeing a clock in the entire medical bay for reference on the time, "I remember falling out on the field, waking up, and then falling asleep again." He would leave the part about Shizune out for the time being. That was strictly need-to-know as far as he was concerned, "And where's my stuff?"

Fuu pointed over to a corner where in addition to Naruto's shirt, sandals, and gear her cylinder pack and arm warmers were. Trying to break down just what made this brat tick while she watched him rush to put on his shoes and his gear, Fuu decided to ask a question, "What you said to me when you had me beaten, you sound like you know something about it. Did it happen to you?"

"Yep." Naruto replied brightly, hooking his machete back onto his pants, "It was just one person at first, but now I've got my team and my sensei… all kinds of people now. It took a long time to find people that cared, but it wouldn't be the same if they weren't here. I don't know what I'd do. Maybe I'd be like Gaara… maybe like you. I'm not sure." He said with a shrug, "I don't know enough about you to say."

A frown came over Fuu's face, "I'll have to take your word for it then. I stopped trying to be around people after my powers manifested for the first time and I knew how they worked. It was just easier to be by myself when I realized that just not trusting everyone gave me a defense. I never had an actual sensei outside of the Academy, and Dorobou was my only perennial teammate… and he was a prick. Glad he's dead to be honest."

Naruto stopped putting his gear on and walked over to Fuu where she sat, noticing her tense up like she usually did, "Didn't we go through this already? I don't want to hurt you and I'm not going to. If you want to I could be friends with you." A grin broke out as he continued once he saw Fuu raise an eyebrow, "I'm younger than you and everything, and we're not really from the same village but so what?"

Fuu sighed, "The village thing really doesn't mean much to me right now, and the fact that you're younger than me doesn't mean much since I don't remember the last friend I had period." She shook her head and chuckled, "This is some kind of record low; the almighty Nanabi jinchuuriki cowing to a brat. I don't even feel like beating you up anymore."

"Thanks?" Naruto said as he looked at how bloody his blue undershirt was and chose to go without it, throwing it on the floor and putting his short-sleeved windbreaker on with nothing under it, "And you're not the oldest friend I have so I don't even want to hear that. Now where are my other friends? We have to get ready for the next match." At that utterance, Fuu's eyes widened, "What's the matter?"

She didn't know quite how to say it without just being blunt with it. A lack of social tact if you will, "That already started… like twenty minutes ago. You've been for more than three hours. You look like a mummy by the way." Fuu had to admit that she felt a little satisfaction at knocking the piss out of him for that long even in defeat. If they fought again she could probably beat him as long as he couldn't trick her again, "Your team had to start the fight without you."

That means that they were all alone with a three-on-two disadvantage, something that was bad even if one of the three didn't happen to be Gaara. In this case it most certainly was, "Fuck!" Naruto immediately shouted, alarming Fuu with a jolt. Naruto checked himself over to make sure he had all of his weapons on him before taking off for the first door at the end of the medical bay he could see, rushing through it to find his way to the battlefield.

Fuu just sat there wondering how after he looked right after their fight he could still move around like that, he was still just as fast as he was right at their fight's start. Then she looked at the other end of the medical bay and realized that he had never been taken there while conscious, and that the door he used wasn't the one that led to the entrance tunnel, it was the one that led back up towards the spectator's section, "Oh hell, he doesn't know where he's going…" She said to herself in exasperation as she got up to chase after her new… friend.

That was going to take some getting used to. Did friends normally try to beat each other to a pulp before becoming friends in the first place? That didn't seem normal, but then again what did she know about it?

XxX

(On the Field)

With Temari moving Kankuro out of the way now that his main hand for manipulating his puppet was busted up by Gaara's sand, this left Gaara alone against Shikamaru and Ino, but that wasn't as much of a disadvantage as it sounded. Ino was hurt in the same way that Kankuro was, and even when Shikamaru's shadow grabbed a hold of Gaara his sand was still able to run amok.

Ino was biting back the pain that came with every step that moved her hand involuntarily, but it was either suck it up or get more than just her hand crushed next time. A blast of sand separated them, forcing the teammates apart. Gaara seemed to be trying to get them both together to capture them at once. Still she didn't think it would matter too much to him if he only got one. Killing one of them would tide him over just fine until he could catch the other.

"Ino can your clan jutsu get him through his sand shield if it even goes up?" Shikamaru asked her as he threw a set of shuriken at Gaara to no avail, 'It's too fast for us like this to get past. If it was fast enough to stop Ino's attack from close range then we'll never get him from this distance with anything.'

"Even if I could I can't make the hand-seals to do it anymore Shika!" Ino yelled at him, trying to make a break for the moat, but Gaara's sand cut her off from making it there, "Does he really have that much sand in that stupid gourd?" She asked only to find a tendril of sand trying to wrap around her ankle, "Not cool!" Ino yanked her ankle free only for a violent wave of sand to batter against her and knock her back and to the ground.

'I can't just waste my move now!' Shikamaru thought in a panic as he ran to Ino and helped her up, seeing that Gaara's last attack drew more than a little blood from her face, 'It won't work twice!'

After being helped away from Gaara's assault, Ino looked at the jinchuuriki angrily and noticed that Temari was nowhere near them, still back at the bridge assisting Kankuro. Ino reached into her supply pouch with her good hand and picked up a smoke bomb between each finger before throwing them all at Gaara, exploding on him in a multicolored cloud of gases.

Shikamaru stood next to Ino, looking on desperate that the attack worked, 'Even if he can block anything he still has to breathe… good move Ino.' He thought this until enough poison had cleared out to reveal Gaara still standing there with a facemask of sand covering his nose and mouth while the rest of the sand was whipping around to disperse the poison into the air, "Oh come on! You've got to be kidding me!"

There was nothing for Ino to say about what she had just seen. Four poison bombs and he didn't inhale a smidge of it. How were they supposed to beat this guy again? She forgot exactly what the original plan was supposed to be, "Shika what are we going to do? Can't you just do that thing that you and Goldie-kun worked out?"

"Not until I know we have enough knockout power to do him some real damage." Shikamaru said, "It's only going to work once." He then leaned to the side as Ino whispered something into his ear, something that got him paying attention, "You what?" A cryptic nod from the injured girl was the response, "Are you sure it'll be-?" Another nod, "*sigh* Fine. Let's do it." With that, Shikamaru reached into his pocket while Ino pulled out another small bomb and held it at the ready.

Gaara's sand moved from his nose and mouth allowing him to take a breath at last, "You're annoying me. Just die already."

At the same time that Ino threw her smoke bomb at Gaara, Shikamaru revealed a scroll from his pocket and quickly unsealed what was within. With a hand-seal and a whip of the open scroll he sent a crashing wave of water flying at Gaara. Gaara's sand got up to protect him from it, but the sand was thoroughly drenched from the water. Ino's smoke bomb didn't release any smoke at all, as a matter of fact it didn't seem to release anything.

"You're dead now!" Ino yelled as she threw a prepared kunai with an explosive tag attached. Immediately after doing so both she and Shikamaru turned and dropped to cover up. The kunai sank into the wet sand shield deep enough for the tip of the blade to stick out through the other side.

The resulting explosion was larger than a single explosive tag should have created, engulfing all of Gaara and his sand shield in a single fireball that rocked the entire battlefield and sent Ino and Shikamaru flying away from it despite dropping down and covering up.

XxX

"Gaara!" Temari shouted once she saw the explosion. How did those two runt Konoha rookies make an explosion that big? She set Kankuro against the railing of the bridge to rest and went to look for her fan that Shikamaru had forced her to throw into the moat. As impossible as it was to say, Gaara might have needed her help.

XxX

Shikamaru coughed at all of the smoke covering the immediate area as he and Ino both sat up covered in soot and scuffs, "Where the hell did you get a methane bomb?" He felt the need to ask as Ino cradled her injured hand to her chest.

"I made it after that mission to the ranch." Ino said, in obvious pain and bad condition, "We grow a lot of plants in the flower shop and we use a lot of manure… that's all I'm going to say about where the idea came from. It took forever just to make one though, and that was the only one I had. It totally worked though." She said, sounding somewhat satisfied at her little test.

"You didn't know if it would work?" Shikamaru said incredulously as he got up and began to help Ino stand as well, "Well now's a hell of a time to test something isn't it?"

"Chill out already. I blew him away didn't I?" Ino argued back until they could hear the sound of ragged breathing off where Gaara had been. Both of them ran past the point where the ground showed the obvious effects of taking the explosion, "No way… there's just no way he walked away from that."

After running a ways past the site of the explosion they found Gaara laying on the ground, his body covered in scorch marks. The thing about it though, was that his skin seemed to be cracked and flaking off in plates. Underneath the top layer it was revealed once enough bits fell away that it was sand covering him and that Gaara's actual body was unscathed underneath.

"He had another layer of defense!" Shikamaru couldn't believe it, but it made sense if nothing else. Why put all of your eggs in one basket and believe that nothing could get past your sand wall? Even the wet, weak, easily penetratable sand wall gave enough protection for Gaara's sand armor to keep him from taking much more damage than getting the wind knocked clean out of him. Some concussive damage from the explosion itself was the worst thing that he took.

Narrowing her eyes at Gaara, Ino drew a senbon and threw it at the downed Gaara only for his original sand shield to intercept it out of the air. Out of options in her mind she dropped to the ground on her knees, "I can't believe it. Who on earth gets up from something like that? We still didn't scratch him…" She was never going to muster an explosion that big. The only reason for the first one was the chemical reaction.

Gaara slowly stood back up, staring murderously at Shikamaru and Ino, "You…" He lifted a hand to muster a mass of sand that he then sent flying at them both, "Die already!"

Ino was about to make a break for it but realized that the sand from the site of the explosion, though charred from the attack attempt, was still active as it boxed them in, "Shika!"

"Stay still!" Shikamaru said as he pulled out another scroll and spread it out on the ground underneath them. He made two hand-seals and stepped on the center of the scroll, forcing a large amount of water out that covered both him and Ino as the sand tried to capture them both, 'I only have five of these! They were all the spare scrolls Naruto had left! Using them just to survive isn't a part of the plan!' The force of the water defense was beginning to fade over time and both Ino and Shikamaru were forced to abandon it lest they wind up trapped within by sand. Both of them were able to force their way out of the sand that had been crashing around the water defense.

"I'm tired of your tricks!" Gaara shouted as he used his wet sand to clod together underneath Ino and Shikamaru's feet. Shikamaru was able to keep his footing, but the soles of Ino's sandals thoroughly caked with wet sand, forcing her to slip up a step, allowing the full measure of Gaara's slower sand an opportunity to close in on her as the sand around her sandals began binding her and squeezing, "The only thing I want this sand wet with is your blood!"

Before it could take hold of her though, it suddenly tried to make it back to Gaara, but failed as two blurs flew at the conflict. One grabbed Ino once the sand started to move in confusion over what to focus on and the other blur slammed into Gaara's head hard, sending the Suna jinchuuriki flying as his sand desperately tried to catch him so that he didn't hurt himself against the ground.

The sand managed to get back to Gaara in time to cushion his fall. As he sat in his cloud of sand, Gaara looked at the figure that had struck him with a glare as more of his restored sand armor chipped from his head like layers from a statue, a huge smash mark on the side of his head and face where Naruto's knee had hit him, "Uzumaki… you're late." As he said that, the Naruto that had hit him dispelled in a puff of smoke. The sand seemed to be angry as Gaara started whipping it around his body as a method of defense and as a way to try and dry it out.

The original Naruto had created a clone to attack Gaara while he tried to get to Ino before anything could happen to her, grabbing her out of Gaara's wet sand and moving her in a hurry, "Sorry." Naruto said, panting slightly from running around half of the arena hallways. He had actually even wound up outside before Fuu caught him and told him how lost he was prior to pointing him in the fastest direction to get to the field… right through the crowd, "I was just lost on the road of life."

XxX

Asuma's excitement at seeing Naruto come flying out of the stands to fight gave out once he heard Naruto's line of greeting, "I'm going to punch Kakashi in the stomach the next time I see him…"

Kurenai smiled wryly at the bearded jounin, "Not very punctual is he? He can make an entrance though, but isn't he still hurt? Three hours isn't enough time of healing for him to suck up injuries like what had happened to him. You don't gut something like that out." 'Even with the Kyuubi.'

"Okay…" Kiba said as if he were admitting some kind of defeat, "That was actually pretty cool. I didn't even know he could run that fast. I mean you couldn't see anything but those orange monstrosities he calls clothes fly down the stairs like a blur? How much momentum did he have? That was awesome."

That put a grin back on Asuma's face, "Yeah, he was kind of rolling down those stairs wasn't he?" At least he didn't slip and fall or anything. Then it wouldn't have been half as cool as it appeared to be from their point of view.

Shino raised an eyebrow at the sudden entrance, "Is that legal? To enter the match after it has already begun I mean? They have not called it off so I assume it is allowed."

"N-Naruto-kun still looks so hurt." Hinata observed now that Naruto wasn't flying down the stands like a bat out of hell and was standing still, "It looks like he ran there straight from the medical bay."

Not only did he look way better off than he did three hours ago, despite the fact that he still looked like hell, Tsunade saw the bandages on Naruto's person and noticed the particular pattern that they were done in before turning to Shizune who had a sheepish look on her face, "Did you-?"

"He's sure a resilient one isn't he Tsunade-sama?" Shizune said, rubbing the back of her neck, nervously laughing at the same time.

XxX

Ino, still being held up in Naruto's arms, blinked in response to what he had just said, mouthing the words he had uttered upon his arrival before giving up trying to make sense of why he had said such a thing, "Goldie-kun that whole 'road of life' thing totally wasn't cool." If he hadn't said anything it would have been something straight out of a movie, making his appearance twice as cool in her mind.

Naruto looked at the fellow blonde in his arms in surprise, "Really? I thought it was alright. Kakashi-sensei says that all the time and he's cool isn't he?" He said, ignoring the fact that they were in a fight until he noticed the very poor condition of Ino's right hand, the blood on her face, and the singe marks all over her person. Looking over he saw that Shikamaru wasn't exactly in tip-top shape either, "Are you guys alright?"

"Well we're not dead." Shikamaru said, never so happy to see such a beaten up Naruto before in his life, "So I guess things are as good as they can be at the moment. Uh, how are you walking and not puking blood right now? Last time we saw you-."

"-You looked like a big bruised orange." Ino finished for Shikamaru before looking Naruto over, seeing the bandages covering him under the windbreaker, on his arms, and on his face, "Now you look like a big orange mummy." She stood up on her own feet once Naruto set her down, "You hit him. You actually hit Gaara."

"Yeah I did. I know; I'm awesome." Naruto said, sounding pleased with himself before realizing something important. That he had actually hit Gaara… actually his clone had hit Gaara, but it was still technically him. He had hit Gaara, clean. No sand in the way. And while it didn't look like he had felt it that wasn't the important thing to take away from the accomplishment, "Wait, how'd I hit Gaara? Last month thirty clones couldn't hit Gaara with explosive tags."

Shikamaru had the obvious answer for that, "You remember what I made you do last night?"

Naruto turned towards him and nodded, "Yeah, you made me put my last five empty scrolls in the tub and fill it with water so I could seal the water away you son of a-." He then stopped to think, "Holy shit that half-assed idea actually worked?"

"You just kicked him in the side of the head didn't you?" Shikamaru replied, answering the question with one of his own while pulling out three more scrolls before tossing them to Naruto, "Go nuts."

Naruto caught the scrolls and looked over at Gaara. If those were really the key to getting hits on Gaara and keeping his sand from being fully effective wouldn't it have been more appropriate to share? "Are you sure? You guys don't want one? There's one for each of us if we need them."

Shikamaru shook his head, "Ino can't make hand-seals to use the scrolls Naruto. I don't have anything to hit Gaara with once I actually _do_ use the scrolls. Ino used her best shot and we still didn't get him. All we could do was hold him back."

"And you're sure that _I_ can hit him? What makes you think I can hit him?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow, getting a dry look from Shikamaru as if he had just asked a stupid question. Even Naruto had to admit that it kind of was, "Fine… if we live through this I swear you need to get some more knockout power."

"Noted." Shikamaru said as Gaara's sand started showing that it was nearly dry again, "Now kick his ass. He's been waiting just for you all day."

The fact that Gaara's sand seemed to be just as fast as ever while whipping around him meant that he had finally dried enough of it out to use again in battle. Naruto placed the scrolls into the pockets of his windbreaker and patted them as he set himself at the ready to fight for the second time that day, "Wow… I feel so special."

At least he had help this time.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Happiness is a warm pocket full of explosive tags... insert innuendo here (that's what she said)

There is no such thing as too many explosives. This is the main message you should take from this. Half of the reason you learned how to make seals in the first place was so that you could learn how to make your own endless supply of paper bombs so you'd better not ever run out of them. EVER. There's simply no excuse.

Nothing brings more unanimous joy to a real man's heart than the sight of something blowing up (almost nothing I should say), and the bigger the better. As a little boy (or girl, because let's be honest you don't exactly hate explosions either), the first time you ever saw one go off and learned how easy they were to activate you probably jizzed your pants. This is why the supply and demand for explosive tags are so high… and with inflation the price will only climb higher over time, another good reason that you learned how to make them.

If you need to use explosive notes then chances are you don't particularly care about the well-being of your target, or the immediate surrounding area. So go for broke.

Remember, if an explosion doesn't solve the problem then you clearly aren't using enough explosives.

* * *

**Alright, we're reaching the climax of this whole thing and I hope it rules or at least semi-imposes its will over your psyche. So later peeps, nothing much to add or really say at the moment.**

**Kenchi out.**


	31. Shakedown

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do however own an immunity to pepper spray. Don't ask.

**Chapter 31: Shakedown**

* * *

Gaara stared at Naruto with him impassive, intimidating stare, "I thought you were too broken to come out and fight me Uzumaki. I was about to kill your friends and then come looking for you." He said coldly.

Naruto drew his machete, not knowing how much good it would do but ready to use it if he had an opening. It hadn't done him much good a month ago, but a month ago he didn't have a way to hit Gaara either, "Well I'm right here… or am I?" Gaara sent a wave of sand at Naruto that he jumped back out of the way of, "Okay! I'm here! No clone! Now let's do this already!"

"Kick his ass Goldie-kun!"

"I'm gonna, just hold on a minute!" Naruto shouted as he ran in at Gaara, dodging the second attack of the wave of sand that had been sent at him by jumping clear over it with a boost from a clone that ate the attack in his place and was destroyed. After the clone was destroyed and the sand tried to engulf Naruto from the air, Naruto created two more clones right underneath him that he used as a springboard in mid-air. While Naruto jumped higher in the air his clones underneath him tried to bat away the sand with their wind jutsu, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!"

Like a fan, the jutsu blew the grains of sand away, boosting the clones into the air while the original fell to the ground and ran through the sand that was being suppressed to the ground by his clones. Once the clones dispelled after their purpose had been served, the sand rushed back to chase after and attack Naruto who was rushing towards Gaara. Naruto got close to Gaara and let loose a slash of the machete, but the sand beat him back to Gaara and ran interference in the form of a sand clone.

The wind charged machete cleaved through the neck of the clone before the sand that comprised the head of the construct rushed at Naruto's arm in an attempt to trap it. The sand was about to grab Naruto when he yanked his hand back sharply and formed a long-practiced single hand-seal with his machete in hand, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A tightly packed mass of twenty Naruto clones formed immediately around Naruto and desperately started hacking away at the sand to buy Naruto room to maneuver out of harm's way and head back towards Gaara who was merely a stride away.

As his clones bit the dust, or the sand so to speak, some of the sand barred his path to Gaara as well, but Naruto smirked as he created another two clone in the immediate area inside of Gaara's area of defense past the shield of sand, much to the alarm of Gaara as he wound up taking a hard punch to the face from one of Naruto's clones while another grabbed his arm to keep him from stumbling out of range. The sand was quick to act, moving on the clones and destroying them mercilessly, but in doing this it was still too late, as the clone that had grabbed Gaara's arm threw him back towards the original's direction and Naruto was able to unseal a scroll in direct close range to Gaara, thoroughly drenching his sand armor and any sand in the immediate vicinity trying to react.

Gaara's eyes widened at someone getting that close to him, slipping through his defenses when he was fully aware of them. Naruto wasn't faster than the sand, but with the multitude of clones that he spammed gratuitously Gaara's sand didn't know who to focus on. Attacking the wrong Naruto would end with whichever one was left cutting through the little sand spared to defend against the others with that machete that turned his shield to grains before it could harden to a level that could stop the blade well enough. The wind chakra was formidable.

Naruto's machete was drawn back ready to swing at the vulnerable Gaara when the wet sand smacked against his face and blinded him, forcing him to miss his swing by inches before more wet sand slapped against him, pushing him back with the force of the wet globs hitting him bluntly like beanbags. Gaara couldn't get his weak control over the soaked sand to bind against Naruto to capture him, but he was dealing his damage anyway as a shiner showed itself on Naruto's face where he was hit. With a grunt of effort needed to move the heavy and hard to control sand, Gaara shoved as much as he could at Naruto in one wave, hitting him and knocking him to the ground, burying him as if he were in a sandbox on a rainy day.

The wet slabs of the sand armor dropped from Gaara's face as it was taking too much chakra to keep the sand in shape on his body, even more than usual due to it being wet. Even moving his normal sand was like the chakra control equivalent of trying to lift weights, and with Naruto's constant attacks until Gaara's counter he hadn't had time to dry it out like the last two times something similar had happened.

"I'll crush you with what I have then…" Gaara muttered to himself as he held his hand out to direct his sand to try and squash Naruto, "Is this all your strength? Is this all that you have?" He then felt the pull of Shikamaru's shadow on his body again, "I'm getting tired of you."

"I don't really care." Shikamaru said, holding his rat seal, "Heads up by the way."

Gaara turned his attention to Naruto only to find that he was no longer laying down in the sand. Gaara was actually surrounded on most sides by a dozen clones with their machetes drawn, "Let's try it again!" They all cried in unison before spinning their weapons by the chain on the end, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!"

Gaara's sand put up the currently clumsy yet still complete defense around his entire body to block the slicing cyclones coming at him. He was mostly unable to see any of the attack until a pair of kunai stuck into the shield prior to exploding, blasting the shield away and revealing a Naruto fist that hit him right in the mouth, knocking him backwards. A smirk from Naruto gave way to the sand, ironically dried out from the wind jutsu that Naruto had been using to chip away at Gaara's shield of sand, grabbing the blonde around his leg before whipping him harshly away from Gaara to allow the rest of the sand time to finish drying again.

Shikamaru had let go of his shadow control over Gaara once Naruto had punched him in the face and watched along with Ino as Gaara's sand mercilessly threw Naruto over the moat into the Zen-garden. That was worst case scenario, "Naruto!" They tried to move to get over to him, but a blast of wind from Temari knocked both Shikamaru and Ino back as she floated out of the moat and landed in front of them barring their path, "Get out of the way already you troublesome woman!" He yelled as he ignored the few cuts he received while standing up.

"So sorry, but that's not happening bum." Temari said, holding her retrieved fan at the ready, "You two aren't going any further over there. Your friend is screwed."

Ino growled at the Suna kunoichi, "Why are you still fighting us for him, this stupid exam? He keeps threatening to kill you and he just crushed your teammate's hand, why are you protecting him?"

"Because he's my little brother!" Temari shouted as she swung her fan, "Kamaitachi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!" Both Ino and Shikamaru avoided the rather wide berth of her ranged attack. She seemed angry at them, especially Ino in particular. Probably because it was Ino's fault that Kankuro's hand was injured, "Now back off!"

XxX

Naruto sat up from where he landed in the sand, his still very sore body exceedingly grateful that he missed all of the rocks populating the garden before he realized that he had nothing to be grateful for based on where he was. Naruto quickly tried to jump up on one of the rocks to avoid being completely done in by his field positioning, but a tendril of sand caught his leg and pulled him back down to the ground before swatting him against a rock.

Blood from Naruto's head stained the rock as he regained enough of his bearings to slash at the tendril with his machete to free himself. Immediately making more clones to cover himself in a defensive posture due to the lack of knowledge of Gaara's position, he learned that such a plan wasn't such a hot idea either as his clones began to get sucked into the sand. Before they were forced to submerge beneath the sand they all grabbed the original and chucked him directly upward into the air.

The original Naruto started swinging his machete by its chain and blew himself out of the garden with the push of one blast from his fan-like jutsu. He wound up landing hard on his back in the barren area, not doing any favors to his body, but it was better than being choked and crushed in sand like his clones.

Naruto stood back up and looked at the sand of the Zen-garden only to drop his jaw at the sight of seeing a wave of sand rush his way, "Son of a bitch!" Naruto instantly created around forty clones that all pulled out one of their remaining water scrolls, all using them in the manner that Shikamaru did earlier with a pair of simultaneous hand-seals that sent the water up in a reactionary manner around themselves.

This inexplicably created a semi-controlled wall of water due to all of the water abruptly released. It crashed against Gaara's wave of sand and the two moves cancelled each other out. Still, the sand wave had enough force behind it to knock the original Naruto backwards and along with that rid the area of his clones. It was a very small price to pay though to get himself some distance away from the Zen-garden where Gaara could control more dry sand whenever he needed to instead of having to constantly air out his own to retain better control.

Standing atop a rock in the Zen-garden that allowed him a good point of view of Naruto running into the barren mountainous area, Gaara simply narrowed his eyes at his intended adversary. He seemed to have an answer for everything that was sent his way, and his methods of countering were strange but seemed to work despite the inherent danger in each brazen attempt he made to attack. He hadn't even resorted to using the power-up from the demon within him the way he needed to in order to keep pace with Fuu.

"I was right." Gaara said as he formed a hand-seal that kicked up sand all around him, starting to force it to solidify in a thick protective orb around his body, "You will prove my existence… now let me show you my true power…" He said as he closed himself off from the outside world inside of his little ball.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

"He made a ball of sand…" Konohamaru said, very unimpressed by Gaara's new tactic in fighting against Naruto. The little boy had until that point been watching unflinchingly wondering where Naruto was and if his boss was too hurt from the last battle to compete. When he appeared it picked him right up and with his spirits the enthusiasm of the entire class went with it. Now he was sitting on his hands again as the camera shots were split between Gaara's orb of sand, Naruto's expression as he thought about what to do about the orb, and Temari's angry attempts to cut Ino and Shikamaru up with her wind.

"Boss had a lot of trouble getting through the other sand." Udon said having observed the fight thus far. The water was enough to make the sand's reaction sluggish and lessened its ability to defend as well as weakened Gaara's overall control over it. Naruto showed the ability to cut clean through the shield of sand once it was damp, but Gaara's new form of defense looked far more durable and it was dry as well, "How would he punch through that?"

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena – Kage's Box)

The Kazekage shut his eyes and shook his head as he saw Gaara's move to conceal himself in his orb of sand, 'He's willing to do that here?' Well it wasn't illegal, but he would have to interfere himself once Gaara's actions were complete to subdue him. He was just trying to judge the height of the arena's ceiling so he could guess if Gaara would take the whole thing off once he was done preparing his next move.

How would the rest of his peers take that though? How would Mifune and the samurai take it if Gaara transformed?

XxX

(On the Field)

Naruto pulled out three scrolls with a similar labeling as the ones that he had set up against Fuu and prepared to charge Gaara's rock to set them in place, 'I could set these up and turn Gaara's chakra off, but…' He looked above the orb of sand and saw an eye looking directly at him as all of the sand in the Zen-garden waved about threateningly, as if it was waiting to devour him, 'I'd have to charge the Zen-garden.'

He believed in his speed, he truly did. He had worked hard to get faster and faster since the day he had graduated and was proud to be able to use his clones to get Gaara second-guessing long enough to take shots at him. But now Gaara had an entire circular area larger than fifty rounded yards of sand to use to keep himself safe. And getting too close would end with the sand attacking him.

He could avoid the sand long enough to plant the scrolls on rocks surrounding Gaara's particular one in the center of the garden, but the sand could just disrupt his formation before he finished. Water wouldn't stop the sand from moving completely so his seal was out.

Well that left getting to Gaara himself. But he wasn't sure he could get through that orb to injure him.

XxX

Temari had forced Ino and Shikamaru to retreat towards the wooded area with the intensity of her wind attacks, getting a sneer out of her from their hiding once again. She wasn't doing anything but wasting her chakra swinging at shadows… sometimes literally, in an effort to flush them out. At least as long as they were in there they couldn't interfere with Gaara's fight against Naruto. The two of them dealt Gaara their own fair enough share of trouble without the actual person Gaara felt like fighting adding to the equation. All three of them together against Gaara would have more than a fair shake at something serious happening.

Gaara fought better alone. In addition to that, Temari was the kind of opponent that could fend off multiple opponents at once with the range and breadth of her jutsu. Even with Kankuro down she was still more than dangerous to them.

But it was also a good thing that Kankuro wasn't down for the count either.

XxX

"I'm so sick of that stupid fan." Ino said to herself as she and Shikamaru hid in the trees deep inside of the forest area near the back wall on that side of the arena, "If we get close enough again I'm going to knock that thing right out of her hand and shove it right up her-."

"There's a chance she'd like that." Shikamaru said with a smirk on his smudgy and dried blood stained face before frowning, "Ugh. Naruto's teacher is rubbing off on me by contact with the troublesome jerk he's teaching, "Okay. We've got to get a handle on this so we can cross the damn moat already. We're separated by that Temari chick and if she wanted to she could just turn and attack Naruto once she thinks we're not coming back out without a strategy."

Hearing that not only would Naruto have to deal with Gaara but also possibly Temari by himself if they didn't hurry up and defeat her, Ino grabbed Shikamaru and placed him in a crouch before grabbing his hands and setting them in a particular position against each other, commonly referred to as his thinking pose, "Come up with something that will work and do it now damn it. I'll keep her from leaving for as long as I can."

Shikamaru looked at Ino strangely, "Nothing you do can reach her right now. She'll just blow it away." He then stopped talking as he could swear that he heard something moving around and then he realized that if Ino could still fight with her injury there was someone else that could as well, "Crap."

Both Ino and Shikamaru jumped out of the tree they were in and landed on the ground just as a poison bomb exploded off of where they had just been. Karasu landed right on the branch they had been standing on, operating once again.

Ino just stared up at the puppet before growling, "I already beat you jerk! I took your body, I made you attack your brother, and I swear I booby-trapped that stupid thing before I made you go over to Gaara! How bad do I have to kick your ass or inadvertently get your hand crushed to make you quit?"

"You did do all of those things." Kankuro admitted, projecting his voice over the woods so that no one could find his location, "Thanks for the Gaara thing by the way. I just love controlling my puppet with my non-dominant hand." He said sarcastically, "But the match isn't over yet and I didn't get my pound of flesh back for that stunt you tried to pull blondie!" Karasu started clicking as blades emerged from the arms and a set of scythe blades emerged from its chest.

"How did you diffuse the trap?" Ino asked him, getting a chuckle in response.

"I didn't. It went off, but we use the same lethal poison that you trapped Karasu with."

"Oh…" Ino said, making a vacant popping noise with her lips, "Guess I shouldn't have been going to kill with that one…"

"Nope."

"Well in that case-." Ino suddenly shoved Shikamaru hard away from herself as Karasu shot another poison smoke bomb at them. Shikamaru made it out of the way, but Ino found herself stuck in the poison cloud, "Wow *cough*. This is more annoying than I thought it would be."

Shikamaru looked at the cloud trying to make out if his teammate was okay, "Ino are you alright?"

"Oh yeah. I'm fine." Ino assured him, coughing again before she walked out of the cloud, "I'm immune to that. It's my own poison Shikamaru. It's one of the four that I can breathe for an attack." She turned to yell at the puppet as if it were really Kankuro himself, "You hear that you doll-using bastard? I can breathe that crap like it's air!" She said before rethinking her statement, "…But not really because it isn't oxygen and I can still die from oxygen deprivation, so bite me!" She finished her brazen statement with a scream of fear as Karasu jumped down from the tree with her in its sights.

Before it could reach her to attack though, it turned around and suddenly fired a poison coated kunai at Shikamaru, forcing him to dodge and abort his second attempt to successfully take over the puppet's body.

With the opportunity to finally get some distance away from the puppet due to Shikamaru's interference, Ino took the time to head through the forest looking for where Kankuro actually was in order to try and put a stop to him. This led to her scaling a tree hoping to get a better vantage point to search for him from. She eventually reached the very top of a tree to look around the immediate area, only to see Kankuro sticking up on the side of the wall overseeing a massive amount of the arena, especially the forest that the fight was currently taking place in.

Kankuro looked down at her and smirked before waving at her with his busted hand. He then did what Ino guessed was a point behind her because that was what she did only to see Temari standing on the top of a tree much in a similar manner as herself, with her fan out and a smirk on her face as well.

Before Ino could beat a hasty retreat back through the canopy, Temari swung her fan and released a blast of wind at her that sent her flying off of the treetop she had been on to slam against the far wall of the battlefield that Kankuro was sticking to far higher up.

She let out a sharp gasp of air as she smacked against the wall and stuck her feet against it to keep from falling, though her knees shook against each other. The beating she had taken from Lee the day before hadn't left her body in the best condition. Earlier she said that Naruto had looked like one big bruise after his fight with Fuu, well if she were to remove her bandages she could swear that she would be able to give him a run for his money in that department.

Turning around towards Kankuro who was above her on the wall, Ino found out that he had tried to drop down on her with a kick. She crossed her arms to block it, but the weight of the older male genin still was enough to free her grip on the wall with her chakra, sending her falling down off of it to the trees below.

Kankuro smirked as he retook his own feet's grip on the wall all the while watching Ino fall down through the leaves, "Consider the favor returned bitch." He said victoriously. That would be at least a fifty foot fall.

His feeling of victory disappeared as he saw a shadow fly up the wall emerging from a close area to where Ino vanished in the canopy. Kankuro grit his teeth before choosing to jump far out from the wall, preferring that fate to being stuck to Shikamaru's shadow especially since he had an out, "Temari!"

At her brother's behest, Temari used her fan to kick up a strong draft beneath him that carried him from the wall to a nearby tree keeping him from potentially going splat on the ground. Both siblings looked satisfied as Shikamaru's shadow retracted back from the wall and Kankuro turned his attention back to working his puppet to kill Shikamaru.

He looked down through the trees only to find Shikamaru running away from the edge of the battlefield where they had been fighting back closer to the center, Ino held fireman's style over his back as he was set in an all-out retreat, "Heh… I guess you were right after all Temari. All those guys are good at is running away."

There was something wrong though. A guy like Shikamaru wouldn't just cut and run without something in mind. He wasn't really fast enough to outrun them even without Ino over his back so how was he expecting to get away? She looked her hardest through the leaves and saw multiple explosive tags set at the base of a dozen trees, all burning down.

Before the blast and before Temari even finished thinking of a way to get both herself and Kankuro out of trouble she had a useless thought run through her head just out of pure curiosity, "Where in the hell do they keep coming up with these explosions from?"

BOOM

XxX

"Way to clear a forest Shika. You should be a logger." Ino joked weakly from her place on Shikamaru's back as he ran away from the site of the explosion. Even after bouncing off of branches and tree trunks all the way to the ground she seemed to have a sense of humor, "You know you used all of the tags that Goldie-kun gave you on that stunt right?"

"He can make more whenever he wants." Shikamaru disputed, not looking back as he ran his way for the moat to get to the other side of the field, "Now shut up and rest for a minute. We need to get over there."

Ino coughed blood on the back of Shikamaru's shoulder and touched at the blood from past wounds staining her face with a trail of red, "Do you think that got them?"

"Hell no." Shikamaru said without a second thought, "We got the stupid puppet though." And if Ino had beaten Kankuro and had taken over his body on her own after leaving her alone beforehand that meant that he couldn't fight without it. Getting rid of Karasu was a critical blow to their combat effort.

"I don't even think you got the puppet." Ino responded with even more certainty, now looking back in the direction they were running from due to the fact that she had no choice but to from the position over Shikamaru's shoulders.

"Why do you think I didn't?" Shikamaru's tone was a little irritated. How on earth didn't he get the puppet? It was more or less at the epicenter of the entire blast. And then as he thought that a dismembered hand of Karasu that had turned into a blade stabbed itself in a nearby tree as they kept moving.

"Well…" Ino trailed off, looking at the five floating and bladed dissected body parts of Karasu seemingly in hot pursuit of them from behind despite the ends of them looking like they had been blown apart from the body, "You _kind_ _of_ did… but not really if you can get the gist of what I'm trying to say. Don't turn around by the way, just keep running… faster."

That was a rather gentle way of saying they were being chased, "Ugh. You're heavy." Suffering a weak knock to the head for his remark, Shikamaru grunted as he tried to pick up the pace any further if it were possible, "If we live through this somehow then you're still going to swear I'm dead after we're done because that's what I'll be sleeping like."

XxX

"Thanks for the ride Temari." Kankuro said from his place on Temari's fan as they floated high in the air. Both siblings were covered in grime, light burns, and smudged from the residue generated by the explosion that had taken out the forest area, engulfing it in flames. All of the fingers on his good hand were working to manipulate the parts of Karasu that he could save from the blast. If he had the use of both hands then there would be ten pieces of the puppet chasing the Konoha genin down below.

While her brother was looking down at Ino and Shikamaru, guiding the blades after them, Temari was busy trying to keep the fan in the air to allow him to do so freely, "You're just lucky that the blast and the updraft from the fire got us enough elevation to get us both out of that."

"Love you too sis." Kankuro said dryly as he continued to focus on impaling Ino and Shikamaru down below. They had a great bird's eye view of the entire battlefield from that high in the air.

From her position on the fan overseeing the entire arena, Temari's eyes couldn't help but pan over to the other side of the moat since that's where they were headed. She got a glimpse at the Zen-garden and saw Naruto still trying to fight Gaara's orb of sand, "Idiot. He's actually going near that thing? He doesn't know what's going on in there or else he'd run his ass out of the arena and keep on going."

"Gaara's doing _that_ here?" Kankuro asked in shock, "Is he crazy? And don't answer that please."

"The Fuu girl did it." Temari said, "Just because Gaara's is more… unstable? That doesn't mean he can't use it either." It was a double standard if Fuu could transform and Gaara couldn't. So she didn't turn inherently even more psychotic the way Gaara would. That shouldn't have mattered.

"AAAAHHH!"

A scream of horror erupted and sounded out all over the arena stemming right from the middle of it in the Zen-garden. But it wasn't in Naruto's voice due to him being crushed by Gaara, instead it was Gaara's voice screaming at the top of his lungs. A normally bloodcurdling sound was intensified for those of Suna origin due to the fact that Gaara simply didn't ever make a noise like that. Ever.

"Gaara!" Temari shouted as she maneuvered the fan over in that direction.

XxX

(Moments Earlier)

Naruto stood outside of the Zen-garden flexing his fingers out before unsealing a fuuma shuriken with explosive tags attached to each blade. He hurled the projectile at Gaara's orb of sand only for the sand in the garden to reach up and grab it tightly, stopping its movement long enough for the weapon to detonate away from Gaara safely.

A growl slipped from Naruto's throat as he didn't really expect the shuriken to get close, but it didn't even get twenty yards in before getting yanked out of the sky. And the pure mass of sand that grabbed it down didn't make him think that more clones would help in that regard either.

"There has got to be some way in there." Naruto thought as he backed away a little further from the garden to keep the sand from trying to lash out at him. There was no need to get close to the danger when he didn't even have a plan of action. He looked around and eventually saw Temari's fan gliding high above one part of the battlefield, "Showoff…"

This did give him an idea though.

A terrible idea.

In fact future observation years from that moment would say that it would probably go down as one of the worst ideas in recorded history… especially since it would be captured by camera for the world to see and for posterity in Konoha since they would definitely be taping it somehow. Good thing only people that went to the archive library and had proper clearance to get access to it would be able to see it.

Shiho would either call him a moron or a genius once she was able to get a glimpse of it. Probably a healthy balance between both if he had to guess correctly.

"I don't know how many it's going to take to make this work so… Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Fifty Kage Bunshin popped into existence holding their machetes, "If this doesn't work it was great working with you guys since graduation night. You're all awesome and this is the best jutsu in the world." In his own unbiased opinion at least.

"Thanks Boss." One of the clones said, expressing the thoughts of the rest as they all looked at the original sadly, "We'd also like to say thank you for not making one of us do this ourselves." The other clones unanimously sounded off in agreement with their speaker brother.

"You're welcome, but don't look too much into it." Naruto said, sheathing his own machete before stripping off his windbreaker so that now nothing other than his copious amount of bandages shielded his upper body and parts of his arms from the elements, "I'm going instead of one of you because even if this works there's no way one of you would make it even halfway there. You guys are too fragile." He let out a sigh or resignation. This was going to be a lot of discomfort and a lot of chakra that he wasn't going to be getting back and it wasn't like he was operating at 100% capacity to begin with.

"Godspeed Boss." The speaker clone saluted before running up to Naruto in time to grab his foot and assist him with jumping high into the air, "Do it now!" The clone shouted as the others began spinning their machetes by the chain, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!" The forty-nine other Kage Bunshin channeled their blasts into one large fan blowing directly underneath Naruto.

The airborne Naruto held onto his windbreaker with both hands to form a makeshift and let the wind send him up into the air, complete with the painful wind blade portion cutting into his back and legs like razors, "Ow! Ow! Fuck! This idea is terrible! Iruka-sensei was right, my mind is seriously scary!"

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Iruka palmed his face as the camera managed to pick up Naruto's dialogue all the while the cuts were racking up all over his back. Still, the sand below him wasn't even licking at his heels despite the best attempts of the Zen-garden to drag him down, "Well… at least he kept the ad-libbed lesson. That's all I can ask for I guess."

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

"Ow! Ow!" Naruto kept shouting as gashes kept popping up on his body before looking up at his windbreaker to see that the tough material was finally beginning to give out and cuts were forming in it, "No…" He decided to let go to free up his hands sooner than later since he was going to fall at that moment anyway.

The drop was sudden, but the momentum of being blown that far into the garden already would carry him the rest of the way to Gaara's orb. Too bad the sand realized that as well and was prepared to catch him right out of the sky. Naruto's clones with their weapons had served their purpose and dispelled, leaving the original all alone to deal with his incoming problem. Alone for the time being anyway.

"I am not dying like this!" He shouted right in the face of the sand bearing down on him. Seemingly getting his second wind for the third time today (at least), a boost of chakra preceded Naruto forming his clone hand-seal, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A wave of orange formed in midair as an entire rain of Narutos fell towards the massive amount of sand.

All of the Narutos pulled out one of the water scrolls left in their supply and unsealed it, meeting the sand with a considerable amount of water as well before the masses of humanity hit the sand and dispelled on contact, except for the original that punched his way through the wet sand with the assistance of his giving clones and another physical sacrifice of his own, "Ow!" But he finally got close enough to Gaara's sand orb in the middle of the Zen-garden, now all he had to do was find a way to get through it.

The eye watching the outside of the orb for Gaara saw Naruto falling towards him, thus the sand that the orb was made of shifted into spikes meant to impale the foolish attacker that was falling right for them.

And now Naruto had to make a choice. Take his chances with either the entire Zen-garden worth of sand or fall towards the spikes jutting out from the protective orb.

Gritting his teeth in anticipation he unsealed another of his only two remaining water scrolls. The fluid hit the sandy spikes, softening them just before Naruto's body smacked off of them, dulling the ends of them for a safer landing, but not by much as instead of being impaled he was smashed against them.

After hitting the orb, Naruto just lay there for a second wondering if the impact killed him until he could feel the sand beneath him shifting, to move the wet sand out of the way for the dry sand to properly stab through him. Naruto pushed his body up and in slow motion could see the spikes beginning to form, 'No! I came all of this way and did all of this stuff just so I could get to Gaara!'

Now in addition to the orb itself about to retaliate for his attempt to attack Gaara, the sand of the Zen-garden all converged on the rock the orb sat on as a method of a double attack. There was no escape.

But escape wasn't necessarily his plan of action as Naruto pressed his hands against sand as hard as he could and channeled wind chakra through them, as much as he could until he could feel the sand underneath his hands begin to vibrate. As the spikes began to expand up in order to impale Naruto he twisted his hands while stuck in the sand and pulled back as hard as he could while jumping away, narrowly avoiding a spiky death, but also finishing a jutsu that he wasn't sure would work let alone how it would work, "Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"

As Naruto jumped away from the orb of sand it then did its best impression of a hard-boiled egg shell as the jutsu suddenly sucked the inside of it from Naruto's point of contact with his hands. A dull 'whump' sound was what emitted from the sand that imploded on itself suddenly and violently on all sides producing instant deep cracks on all sides, with a rippling implosion mark where Naruto's hands had pulled away from.

Naruto fell backwards off of the orb and the rock, shutting his eyes as he expected to be caught in the welcoming/crushing embrace of the sand, however once Naruto's attack had landed the sand of the Zen-garden dropped back down to the ground harmlessly as he fell into it.

The fact that he wasn't instantly set upon by the sand like a swarm of locusts got Naruto to crack an eye in curiosity and sit up, shaking the sand out of his hair. His eyes went up to the rock he had just jumped away from to activate the finish of his jutsu and he saw the crumbled orb of sand fall apart.

"…This feeling. What is it? I don't know…" Naruto could hear Gaara mumbling to himself, sounding like he was beside himself, "My body… I don't like this. I can see blood… I can see blood…" His voice got shakier and shakier, "I can see blood! It's my blood!" Gaara then let out a horrifying scream that rang through the arena and pummeled Naruto's ear drums, "AAAAHHH!"

The sight of Gaara stumbling forward on the top of the rock was quite one to behold. The messy red hair of the jinchuuriki ran down to the red of the blood on his forehead staining most of his face, neck, and a lot of his clothing. His eyes looked wild as he stared at his hands covered in his own blood. He tried to let out another yell but instead of noise coming from his mouth, blood fell freely. Kind of ironic that his blood was what stained the sand for once instead of his enemy's.

Gaara looked like he had been thrown from a mountainside just from being inside of the orb when Naruto's jutsu formed the vacuum inside of it that destroyed it. If he could have reached Gaara directly he wondered exactly what would have happened to him then.

All in all he looked like a mess. But the way he was freaking out over what had happened to him was embarrassing from Naruto's point of view.

XxX

(Kage's Box)

"He stopped Gaara's transformation…" The Kazekage said, looking at the condition that Gaara was in. He had never seen his youngest son like that in his entire life, "A mere genin did that to Gaara? An average child."

"There's nothing average about that child." Hiruzen said with a satisfied look on his face, "You should have figured that out by now."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Exhibition Stadium)

Hanabi jumped out of her seat when the full scope of Gaara's injuries came to the forefront, "Yes! Naruto-oniisama got him! I knew he could!" She didn't even bother trying to hide being happy this time, "Kono-baka probably thought he was going to die or something."

This brought along Hiashi's immediate reflexive instinct to cut down and point out any and all mistakes made by his children, "I seem to recall you covering your eyes, shaking your head and calling Uzumaki-san a 'complete moron' when he began to float." Hanabi had the good grace to blush and sit back down once she was called on her 'unflinching faith' in Uzumaki Naruto.

XxX

(Tetsu no Kuni – Chunin Exams Arena)

The hurt Gaara stumbled and fell off of the rock he was standing on and pulled himself up against said rock, still muttering, "It hurts… mother it hurts… how could someone do this to me? How could Uzumaki Naruto hurt me? He's weak!"

Gaara rambled on loudly about being hurt and it almost made Naruto feel bad about getting up off of the ground as he prepared to go in and end the fight… almost. He would be glad when the fight was over. And with that in mind he drew his machete and began walking steadily over to Gaara, still wary of anymore surprises from the boy.

"Gaara!" The voice of the female Suna ninja sounded out before she dropped to the ground and kicked up a sandstorm forcing Naruto to cover his eyes as she stood between him and Gaara. She looked at her injured little brother and seeing him in such a poor condition, one she had never thought in her wildest dreams would be seen on him, put a white-hot protective anger into her eyes and she looked back at Naruto. His team had been the cause of so much harm to her family and it was hard to be professional in a situation like that, "You bastard, you won't kill him! Daikamaitachi no Jutsu (Great Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!"

A more powerful version of Temari's wind attack flew at Naruto who lifted his machete and channeled wind through it as a method of defense. It was a flimsy one at best as Temari's jutsu formed blades with the air currents that mostly slashed around the weapon that only covered what Naruto perceived to be his vital areas. Still, he received powerful cuts across his body that sent blood flying through the air with the help of the wind as he flew backwards at a fast rate with the machete knocked from his hands, eventually smashing his body off of a rock that ricocheted him slightly before sending him to the ground as he slid a trail through the sand and wound up outside of the Zen-garden again, this time back towards the moat.

Temari had used way too much chakra during this battle, that much was evident as she panted after her attack, but Naruto was still alive and as long as he was still moving and was a threat to her brother she would put him down. He wasn't moving to stand, but his hands were moving as if he were trying to pull himself up. That was enough for her to register him as a threat. He wasn't going to quit.

"Your brat teammate almost got Gaara to kill Kankuro… then you almost killed Gaara yourself." Temari wasn't about to waste chakra that she didn't necessarily have to use freely, thus she lifted her closed giant iron fan over her head prepared to club him in his, "I told you it was just better to surrender. He might be a killer, and he may hate us, but he's still our brother. You tried to kill him, now I'll kill you."

Before she could swing down she saw Shikamaru's shadow move towards her again and she jumped away to avoid it. From across the moat, Shikamaru threw a kunai at her that she blocked with her closed fan.

"Don't touch him bitch!"

As she deflected the kunai, Temari found herself eating a punch directly to the face from Ino's good hand that knocked her to the ground. She sat up and glared hatefully at Ino as blood seeped from her lip from the hit, "So the little play kunoichi thinks she can fight?" Across the moat Shikamaru was engaged in combat with Kankuro's puppet segments as he dropped off to fight directly once Temari rushed over to Gaara, "You done running away?"

Ino didn't verbally respond, she merely spat a senbon at Temari, getting her to block with her closed fan. Having finally caught a break she was within striking distance of Temari without her fan being open. She was still fast though, and very dangerous as she rushed Ino and swung her fan much in the same manner she was about to at Naruto's head before she was stopped by Shikamaru and Ino.

How much strength did it take to hold that thing up like it weighed nothing? The force she could put behind it clearly wouldn't be too nice whatsoever if she managed to hit Ino with it.

XxX

Across the moat, after throwing the kunai at Temari, Shikamaru had to switch to the defensive to avoid Karasu's head from stabbing through him with the giant needle sticking out of its mouth dripping with poison. The good news was that he had worked out something of a plan as he immediately stabbed a scroll onto the ground long ways up before moving along into the forest and driving another one into the ground, trying to hide it so that Kankuro wouldn't know where it was.

The immediate reaction of Kankuro was to get his puppets to knock the first scroll away and get it far away, having one of Karasu's hands throw it away into the moat. But once he got near the second one to knock away with a part of his puppet he was in for a surprise when Shikamaru appeared before him and sank a fist into his belly, driving the air and spit out of him as he found himself frozen immediately after taking the punch, "What? How?"

"There's only so many places you can see me plant the second and third scrolls from inside the forest. We blew up a good chunk of it not too long ago so there's nowhere to hide there. Those scrolls were just so I could see how your puppets moved to triangulate where you were." Shikamaru explained before holding up his right arm, getting Kankuro to do the same, "Now give up."

Kankuro let out a laugh, "Sorry punk. A Suna shinobi doesn't surrender that easily." He then let out a scream of pain as Shikamaru forced him to make a tight fist with his injured hand before seemingly wiggling all of his fingers on both hands to torture him.

"Alright, I'm done being nice about this whole thing." Shikamaru said in an uncharacteristically impatient manner before lifting his other hand and moving one of his fingers around in an experimental way before his eyes lit up in apparent satisfaction.

"Oh, and what are you going to do? Punch yourself hoping I knock myself out before you do?" Kankuro taunted from his position being held by Shikamaru's shadow as the boy forced his right hand to keep moving, "Or maybe you'll get me to bang my head against a tree until I knock myself out?" Shikamaru stayed silent as he was apparently concentrating hard working out moving that one finger, angering Kankuro that he was being ignored, "Hey! What are you going to do punk, I'm talking to you!" Shikamaru's eyes turned to Kankuro's and before the puppeteer could say anything else he felt something press up against his back, "What?"

On Kankuro's back sat one explosive note, set there by the dismembered hand of Karasu.

"You use one finger per puppet piece that you were sending at us. I know there were more than five, and more would have been after us if Ino hadn't gotten your other hand crushed." Shikamaru said quietly as Kankuro paled in fear as he realized what Shikamaru had been doing wiggling the fingers on his left hand at first instead of just the right, "You're so used to working with your puppets that you never broke your own chakra flow controlling them after I caught you."

Despite how complex a puppet's mechanisms are and how hard it would be to learn to properly control a good one that was intricate like Karasu, Shikamaru only had to get Kankuro to move one body part with a finger once he worked out which one the hand was controlled by. Not that difficult in comparison.

As the puppet piece fell to the ground once Kankuro let his own chakra strings drop, he still realized that Shikamaru had him, "I give up…" Kankuro said, in the hopes that Shikamaru wouldn't detonate the explosive tag on his back remotely due to his own stubbornness.

"Good." Shikamaru said, letting his control over Kankuro's shadow fade. He was almost out of chakra anyway and would have detonated that tag if he had to.

"By way of verbal surrender, Kankuro is eliminated!"

XxX

Ino was running out of options at this point. She had an injured right hand that wouldn't let her make hand-seals, and she was running out of senbon to throw. Not only that, but with one hand to use in throwing them her rate of fire was sorely decreased to the point where it didn't seem difficult for Temari to block them with her fan.

As she threw another set at the fan-wielding kunoichi, Temari stabbed the bottom of the iron fan into the ground and spread the ran out, opening it and blocking Ino's projectiles simultaneously. But before Temari could yank it out and blow Ino away with a jutsu, the younger girl got around the fan with her body and delivered a kick that Temari blocked, but had to let go of the fan to do so.

"You're a mess, and you're not that much of a threat!" Temari said as she returned with her own kick that knocked Ino down away from her, "Maybe if you had both hands and could rely on more than tools right now I'd think of you as one." She said as she held her fan, prepared to bash the downed Ino once she got close.

Ino simply looked up from her place on the ground and smirked, forming a half-tiger seal with her only good hand, "I don't need two hands to blow you up, do I?"

This prompted Temari to look at her fan to find an explosive tag slapped on the side of the black metal portion. Temari threw the fan away into the moat before Ino could trigger the explosion, but it still went off regardless and the shockwave from the blast still caught Temari anyway.

The very beaten up Ino tried very slowly to get back up, but stumbled each time as her legs kept giving out. She let out a heavy breath and kept trying only to see Temari doing the same after getting up from the blast she had been hit with. She had still thrown the fan far enough away to keep her body parts all intact, much to Ino's misfortune.

Still, she was disarmed, and from the looks of her if she was in any better shape than Ino was at the moment she'd swear that the girl had the Kyuubi in her instead of it being in Naruto.

"What is it…" Temari started to say, gritting her teeth at the burns from the explosion, "What is it with your team and explosions?" She had never seen such gratuitous use of explosive tags in her entire life, even from the outset of the tournament. Anyone would have run out after round one. Ino still had tags left in the finals since she managed to tag her fan with one. Good thing it was way tougher on the edges and happened to be shut at the time.

"UZUMAKI!"

XxX

In the crowd, Kiba jumped up from his seat out of shock at Gaara's appearance, "What the hell? Is that even still a person? There's no way! Akamaru said his chakra was funky, but I didn't know _that_ was what he meant!"

"His chakra is terrible…" Hinata said, her Byakugan active as she stared at Gaara with fear in her eyes, "It doesn't even look like it belongs to a person anymore… and it's getting worse."

'Should I pull them out?' Asuma thought to himself, arguing with his instinct to go down and get them out of there. They had done so well, gotten so far. They didn't need to prove anything else, 'Genin shouldn't be doing things like this. Chunin shouldn't even be touching this stuff.'

"Don't you dare get up and stop this."

All eyes turned to Tsunade who wasn't even looking at Asuma, just at the field. The stern look on her face said that if he didn't listen and decided to go down there anyway he'd pay for it in one way or another. Kurenai looked at Tsunade, "Why are you saying that? Is this still about this stupid bet?"

"If you want to hear a rational reason for why then you can use that." Tsunade said in a serious voice without really explaining anything, "But let's just say I want to see something. So if any of you jump up and try to interfere with that fight I'll put you in the hospital and I _won't_ heal you afterwards. It's not nearly as hopeless as it looks."

XxX

Both girls turned towards the Zen-garden a few dozen yards away and saw Gaara walking out of it, only not the same as when Temari had left him. The gourd that had been on his back seemed to be breaking down, covering his right arm in the form of a massive clawed arm and the right side of his face, giving it strange tanuki features as well as producing a large tail from his back. He stepped out of the sandy area gritting his newly sharpened teeth and looking around rapidly with his warped eyes, now being yellow. The changed parts of his body had blue vein-like markings over them

"G-Gaara?" Temari asked him, taking a step away from him.

Ino did the same in the taking a step away regards to Gaara, "That's Gaara? Why did he change his appearance like that?"

"Where is Uzumaki?" Gaara asked in a manner that demanded a response from someone or else.

Hearing that he still demanded Naruto's blood seemingly more than ever now, Ino yelled at him, "You still want to kill him?" Everyone turned to where Naruto was, still laying on the ground bleeding from Temari's attack as he tried clawing his way back to his feet once more, "This stupid exam isn't worth fighting to the death for! Stay down already Naruto, I don't care about winning anymore!"

"I don't care about the exam!" Gaara shouted, lunging at Ino before taking a swing at her with his massive claw. Ino was surprised by his boost in speed and agility and narrowly escaped getting slashed with the claw, but she was unable to escape the tail of Gaara that smashed into her and sent her flying, "Do I look like I possibly care at all about your stupid exam? This isn't what this is about! Someone like Uzumaki… someone like him is willing to deny my existence! Trying to put an end to me! I'll kill him here and show what will happen to anyone that tries to do the same!"

Naruto saw him hit Ino and saw that she wasn't moving after the attack. Still trying to get up, he could only feel the blood underneath himself from Temari's wind attack. His vision had been getting spotty ever since he had been damaged.

"**Get up weakling."** Naruto heard from inside of his head, speaking to him as clear as day, **"You really are this pathetic that you need me twice in one day aren't you? But I won't just let you lay there and die no matter how much I despise you."**

'Oh shut up and give me your chakra.' Naruto thought, wondering if the Kyuubi could even hear his thoughts like that, 'Time to get back up I guess… I won't let him just do what he wants. He's not hurting Ino anymore.' Feeling a swelling of power inside of him that filled his muscles and started knitting the graphic slashes on his chest back together, he began to stand back up, "Hey… leave her alone and mess with me. We're not done yet." He said, his voice sounding stronger than he thought it would.

Gaara just turned towards him and cackled, "So you were going to stay down, but you'll get up to die just because I harm your teammate! You're a fool! You get your energy merely to come to her aid?" He lifted his tail up over Ino and prepared to drill it down on top of her, "Well let's see just how much more chakra you have to give if that's what inspires you!"

Before he could drill down, Naruto vanished from his sight with a burst and blur of orange chakra emitting from him and reappeared, holding onto his tail tightly. Orange chakra blazed off of Naruto's body as he dug his feet into the ground and hurled Gaara by his tail towards the moat.

Gaara's arm stretched out and grabbed onto the wall of the moat to keep from falling into the water and jumped back up to land on the other side, "You shouldn't think the end will come that easily Uzumaki!"

Naruto growled as he walked over to Ino, flashing a glare of a look at Temari, getting her to step back away from him as he kept walking over to his female teammate. He kneeled down by her to find that she was still conscious, "Ino-chan."

"So this is what your special chakra feels like? I told you I couldn't ever be scared of you." Ino coughed and lifted her arm to weakly slap his face, "I'm fine Goldie-kun. Just really, really tired. I don't have to get up to save your ass again do I?"

Naruto just shook his head before looking around for a proctor, "Hey! She's not fighting anymore!" He said, gesturing to Ino, "Someone needs to get her out of here right now!" He wasn't dumb enough to think that fighting Gaara was going to be simple the way he was.

Genma appeared by the two Konoha ninja in a Shunshin and kneeled down by Ino as well, "Are you saying she's out?" He said, trying to ignore the feeling he was getting from Naruto. He still seemed to be in control. Yet there was still the part of Genma that was skeptical, "I feel as if I should stop this whole thing altogether, but Sekka's being a pussy and getting far, far away from Gaara and Jei is making sure Kankuro leaves."

"No way I'm losing just because you're scared of me and Gaara." Naruto replied with a low growl in his voice as he stood up and looked over at Gaara only to be taken back when he saw that Gaara's entire torso was covered in sand that gave him the full appearance of a small Shukaku, "You can try to stop him if you want to though."

"Nevermind, I'll just get the Yamanaka girl out of the way..." Genma said, picking Ino up to evacuate the area, "Yamanaka Ino is eliminated!" If it wasn't illegal to be partial he would have spared Naruto a good luck before leaving.

Once Genma got out of the way, Naruto turned towards Temari and flexed his hand, revealing his elongated nails before making a fist and rushing towards her. While before he had already been faster than her, it wasn't even a contest anymore. Her lack of fan gave her no way to defend against the sudden attack from Naruto as he gave her one good right hand to the face that sent her flying.

He stood with his fist still outstretched as he watched Temari's body flail off along the ground in the distance from the hit. He stretched his fingers and heard them crack in a satisfying manner. Would it be wrong to say that the punch made him feel much better? Temari did try to cut him into at least two bits with a wind jutsu not too long ago… but maybe the chakra running through him made him feel a bit more vengeful than normal.

Sekka rushed over to Temari once it was clear that she wasn't going to be moving again, at least hoping that the kid that clearly had some malevolent powers of his was more stable than Gaara to the extent that he wouldn't attack him for evacuating a disabled competitor, "Temari is unable to continue. She is eliminated!"

"Stop wasting my time Uzumaki!" Gaara roared at him in his bestial form before leaping back across the moat to attack him. He swung one of his massive clawed arms at Naruto releasing dozens of projectiles, "Suna Shuriken (Sand Shuriken)!"

"Stop wasting mine!" Naruto yelled back as he started charging through the uninterrupted barrage of sand weapons to get close to Gaara again. Apparently his sand defenses were gone because he didn't use any, instead deciding to lunge at Naruto and rely on his size to dominate. Naruto delivered a violent punch directly to Gaara's head that pulverized part of his sand face and knocked him backwards, but Gaara just jumped right back up and laughed, "What's so funny?" Naruto growled to him, feeling like he had just punched slowly drying cement.

Gaara stopped laughing and snarled at Naruto again, "I'll tell you! It's your pathetic attempts to get through to me! You can't hurt me Uzumaki! You aren't strong enough, you're weak! Do you know why you're weak?"

"I don't care!" Naruto yelled, shutting Gaara up as the Kyuubi's chakra fueled him. It was one of the best feelings he had ever had in his life, being fully aware of just how strong he was for once. He knew he was strong, and one way or another he was going to make Gaara feel it. The desire to beat Gaara senseless was overriding any strategic thought he had. He was about to rush Gaara again and beat on him for as long as it took to put him down until Shikamaru's voice called out to him.

"Naruto stop!" the pineapple-haired genius ran up to Naruto from behind, "Is that stuff messing with your head or what? Quit being stupid and wait! Stop attacking blindly and start thinking!" Naruto turned towards Shikamaru with a glare, getting him to wriggle slightly at that overwhelming aura being directed at him before he got himself together, "You just hit him with your best shot didn't you? You hit Fuu like that too and she barely budged just like now, so how did you win?"

Naruto paused in his intention to assault Gaara to take what Shikamaru said to mind. Though now it was clear that his fight with Gaara was more level than his fight with Fuu as she was better with slowly imposing her will with her powers in a battle of attrition. While Fuu tried to evade him once she knew he had gotten stronger, Gaara would just try to hit you or goad you to attack him and you would trade back and forth. He wasn't as fast as Fuu with her wings… he wasn't even as fast as Naruto was with the Kyuubi's chakra active.

He didn't defeat Fuu by beating his head against the proverbial brick wall until it crumbled, he beat her with outright trickery.

"That's why you're weak right there!" Gaara roared at Naruto, glaring threateningly at Shikamaru, "You're going to listen to him? You're going to stop fighting the way you want to, you're going to stop doing what you want just because he says something to you! For what? Live for yourself! Love only yourself and you will always be the strongest because you're the only one that matters!"

Naruto looked between Gaara and Shikamaru repeatedly as the Kyuubi's chakra still rolled off of his body.

Gaara lunged at Naruto and Shikamaru once he got sick of the posturing from the pair of Konoha genin, "If you won't fight then you'll just have to die!" Naruto moved in front of Gaara to get between him and Shikamaru only for Shikamaru's shadow to roll around his body and get a hold of Gaara's. He simply couldn't hold Gaara still due to the pure brute force provided by his current form, "I'll kill you first for interrupting our fight! You're ruining everything!" He did what could be best described as a shoulder-check that bullied Naruto to the ground and out of the way as he moved towards Shikamaru.

'He's obsessed with fighting Naruto, but why?' Before Gaara could hit Shikamaru a puff of smoke engulfed him and he was replaced with Naruto's presence who immediately lunged at Gaara and forcefully tackled him mid-swing. Gaara and Naruto rolled on the ground before Gaara's tail pried Naruto off and left him open enough for Gaara to slash him across the body. Before anything else could be done, Shikamaru kicked Gaara in the side of the head, directing his attention again, 'Oh great idea Shikamaru. Pick a fight with the scary sand monster.'

Before Shikamaru could pay for his useless interference, Naruto punched Gaara in the head three times, turning it to mush and freeing himself from the grip of Gaara. Before the head could reform, Naruto took up a position behind him grabbing around Gaara's tail, "You're not too big to get tossed around!" Naruto took to slamming Gaara about on the ground repeatedly, trying to smash open that monstrous shell of his with pure blunt damage due to the absence of his machete.

Gaara dug his claws into the ground to keep Naruto from doing it again and used his new anchor point to lift Naruto off of the ground with his tail, throwing him at Shikamaru and hitting him, sending them both to the ground in a heap, "Troublesome…" Shikamaru groaned as they removed themselves from the tangled situation, "Are you going to try and actually think of something now? Use a scroll."

"I only had one left and it's with the vest that I can't find anymore." Naruto informed him, spitting more of the leftover blood from Temari's deep wind slash on him out onto the ground, "I don't know where the machete is either." It was kind of redundant as well because he had nails that could be claws… even though the machete was undoubtedly stronger.

At that point a multitude of mouths appeared on Gaara's body and began inhaling deeply, something that neither of them liked too much once they saw his belly begin to expand. Shikamaru ran as far to the side out of his blast range as he could and Naruto ran directly at the still preparing Gaara before slamming a fist directly into his stomach to disrupt whatever he was planning.

Gaara violently exhaled due to the punch and the wind that he sucked in released in a sudden explosion that both he and Naruto got caught up in.

"Naruto!" Shikamaru ran back over to his friend that slid along the ground after being forced away by Gaara's backfiring attack, "Stop going head-to-head!" He urged more intensely this time. He was tired of watching his teammate get kicked around, and he knew that he was just in the way, but Naruto was making this fight something that it didn't have to be, 'Is it the Kyuubi making him fight so aggressively?' Over the last few months Naruto stopped just running futilely at his enemies and usually took a second to feel them out. But he stopped doing that when he used the Kyuubi's chakra against Fuu right up until the end, "This is what he wants! Stop fighting his fight!"

Naruto got back up and growled at getting blown away by the backlash from Gaara's attempted jutsu. Over with Gaara he could see that his sand was quickly regenerating what little damage his form had taken. Hitting him head on was like trying to punch through that stupid orb of sand from earlier. He was about to march back over to Gaara to keep fighting when Shikamaru grabbed his arm.

"Listen to me you idiot." Once Naruto turned to glare at him again for stopping him, Shikamaru returned it as best he could, exhausted from using so much chakra during the battle, "Live with it. You're going to be 'idiot' as long as you keep fighting like one now listen up. Where is he not covered in sand?" Both of them looked at Gaara's sand-covered frame and could clearly see that his little human legs didn't match up to the rest of his appearance. Seeing that Naruto was focusing in on that fact, Shikamaru decided to force it to sink in, "You don't have to bust through that sand to beat him."

A nod came from the Kyuubi-charged Naruto as he set himself ready to face off with Gaara again. The monster Gaara seemed to lick his lips right before they charged each other again. Instead of trying to outquick Gaara and knock his block off again, Naruto formed dozens of Kage Bunshin in a massive puff of smoke, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Gaara stopped in his tracks and the mouths appeared on his body again, inhaling deeply as the Naruto clones charged him, "Numbers don't mean anything to me Uzumaki! Fuuton: Mugen Saijin Daitoppa (Wind Release: Infinite Sand Cloud Great Breakthrough)!" Gaara exhaled through his mouth, producing a wide and powerful sandy burst of wind that easily sent them flying back and dispelling from the force of the wind.

Naruto however, wasn't among the clones that got blown away. Having left under the cover of the cloud that had created them, Naruto appeared at Gaara's side alerting the jinchuuriki to his presence and well-being after avoiding the attack. Maybe if they hadn't been fighting on flat ground it would have been so easy to outflank Gaara, but that was neither here nor there. Before Gaara could swat Naruto away with his sizeable tail, Naruto already had his fist cocked back.

Instead of punching at the head or body like he had been, he found a much more readily available target presenting itself in the form of two limbs wearing brown pants not covered by protective sand like the rest of Gaara's body.

One haymaker of a punch from Naruto directly at the joint of Gaara's left knee brought him to said knee. Gaara's mini-demon form let out a horrible cry of agony from the punch as he found himself unable to stand back up due to injury.

Shikamaru nodded to himself as he watched Naruto dance back out of the danger area of getting hit by Gaara's stretching limbs and tail that tried to desperately get revenge. Whenever Gaara missed, Naruto would just get behind him out of his field of sight and blast him with a kick to the back of the head that sent Gaara flying forward, 'If he can't move then he can be as big and ugly as he wants to be. All that power doesn't mean a thing if he can't touch Naruto.'

Getting punched and kicked around back and forth by Naruto was setting Gaara off even further. A basic divergence from the repeated clashes of force between the two crippled Gaara to a point where he was at a distinct disadvantage. Even if Naruto still couldn't get through his sand to get him, he was in a far better situation at this point. All because he had listened. He had listened to his friend that was there to help him.

His friend.

Why did Naruto have someone that was clearly okay with his demon sealed within him, willing to help him and even step into a fight between the two of them, when Gaara himself didn't have that? Even then as Naruto kept himself out of the way of his attacks and made his way back to Shikamaru to ensure that Gaara didn't try any dirty hostage technique (something he was admittedly thinking of doing at this point), Shikamaru was right there with him as they conversed over the next move when Shikamaru placed something into his hand… whatever it was it put a massive grin on Naruto's face, rather intimidating with the red eyes, deeper whisker-marks, and sharper canines.

"Do you remember what you did when we first met Gaara?" Naruto asked him, speaking up loud enough to be heard from the distance away that they were, "You just grabbed a bunch of my clones in the tunnels and crushed them… and then they did the suicide tag move. Yeah, I named it… and there's more than 25 of them this time." With that, he formed a countless number of clones that all held up what Shikamaru had given the original Naruto, an explosive tag.

Gaara's eyes widened as Naruto slapped his own explosive tag on the back of one of the clones and proceeded to have it begin burning down, giving the signal for them to all rush towards Gaara.

"That isn't good enough Uzumaki!" Gaara roared as the mouths appeared on his body, inhaling air for his wind attack again, "Fuuton: Mugen Saijin Daitoppa (Wind Release: Infinite Sand Cloud Great Breakthrough)!" He only managed to get a quarter of them from the immediate burst because they scattered like roaches when they saw him exhale. With his lack of mobility Gaara couldn't turn to get them all and they closed in around him on the sides he couldn't face from.

"Bunshin Jibaku Danmaku (Clone Suicide Barrage)!" The clone with the burning tag on its back was the first to explode, setting off a chain reaction of the well more than one hundred remaining Naruto clones blowing up engulfing Gaara once again in a mirror of what happened one month prior. Only these explosions were far closer to Gaara himself than the others were last time around.

The blasts rocked the entire arena with deafening noise and both Shikamaru and Naruto looked towards it, with Naruto panting at the effort it took to get that much up against Gaara, "Do you think that did it?" Shikamaru asked, feeling déjà vu due to Ino asking him the same question before, only about far less explosive tags.

"I just blew up 250 clones all around that son of a bitch again and again and again…" Naruto said, "If he gets up from _that_… I don't know what else to do. I really don't."

"If he gets up from that I'm getting the hell out of here. Are you out of chakra?" Turning towards him, Shikamaru had to bring up the point that was actually plaguing him at the moment. He was personally out of chakra to use for fighting, even if his shadow could hold Gaara back which he was most definitely sure could do no such thing even if he had a full amount of chakra to use.

"Kyuubi doesn't run out of chakra…" Naruto said, looking at the massive amount of smoke in the aftermath of the explosion. After saying such though, the chakra faded and he fell down to his knees, "Hah… furry bastard…" Naruto said, referring to the Kyuubi as he breathed heavily.

In the smoke from the explosion, Gaara lay face down in a pile of sand that used to be his Shukaku form. His body was covered in burns due to the overheating of the sand that surrounded him and caused the marks. He had not felt physical pain like that in his entire life. His backside had taken more damage than his front, and he found that he couldn't move, 'Am I… Am I out of chakra?' His head was absolutely ringing as he could make out Shikamaru throwing Naruto's arm over his shoulder in the distance to help him stand, 'Why? How could this happen?'

Genma and Jei could see that Gaara wasn't going to get back up under his own power. Even if he hadn't been out of energy, Naruto broke his leg, "Okay. I'm calling it before someone ends up a quadriplegic…" Jei said, rubbing his head as he finally realized he had been sweating just from watching the battle. Genma nodded and even Sekka did so, "Gaara is unable to continue under his own power! Therefore the winners of the match and the chunin exam tournament are Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Uzumaki Naruto of Konoha!"

"Nooooo!" From his position on the ground Gaara yelled his dispute at the decision even though he couldn't move a muscle to prove it was an unfounded call, "There's no way a guy like that can beat me! He can't even stand up on his own!" Gaara was one to talk…

Genma rolled his senbon around in his mouth, looking at the beaten down jinchuuriki, "He doesn't need to be able to stand on his own. He still has his teammate. You're beaten kid. It's over."

"It's not over!" Gaara shouted as sand began flying up around his body in a wide berth, beginning to form a massive construct with blue vein-like markings on it. It looked like a larger, titanic version of the creature Gaara had turned himself into, or it would have had the sand not been quelled back to the ground around Gaara by a massive amount of gold powder.

XxX

In the stands at the top of the stairs, leaning against a doorway heading out to the hallway, Fuu saw Gaara's attempt to transform into the full Shukaku and sneered, "And with guys like that Uzumaki wonders how I and other people could call us monsters… how stupid." She shook her head and walked away from observing the battle, "Who transforms in the middle of an arena in front of thousands of people? Psychopath…"

XxX

(Kage's Box)

The Kazekage's eyes had dark rings similar to Gaara's around them as he was standing out of his seat by the edge of the box, seemingly manipulating the powder of gold out on the field to keep Gaara's sand from rising up to create his massive Shukaku form, 'You are _not_ releasing that thing in here Gaara. This is not the place for a full possession.' He thought to himself as he focused to prevent Gaara from releasing his biju, "Mifune-dono. I believe it would be best to evacuate the stadium at this time. Gaara is done."

Hiruzen stood up by the Kazekage's side, looking down at what was going on, "So this is your Gold Dust that you use with your Jiton (Magnet Release). Do you require any help Kazekage-dono?"

"That's not necessary." Still keeping Gaara from creating the Shukaku, the Kazekage let out a grunt of effort, "It is Suna's responsibility to keep its jinchuuriki in check. He will not rampage, I can assure you of that. I know what I'm doing Hokage-dono." He had been doing it for decades by this point and was getting better at holding the beast down.

A made a humming noise as he oversaw the battlefield, "So I'll guess that you're using the gold to weigh down the sand and keep it from letting the demon take form. What an inventive taming method." He wasn't a stranger to the Kazekage's kekkei genkai, but he hadn't seen his own use of it in person. It reminded him of how Gaara seemed to normally fight, but with a more potent material to use.

"This is why we don't bring jinchuuriki to the exams…" Onoki stated dryly. In his opinion they were lucky that Fuu was seemingly more stable or had more sense than to release hers the way Gaara had just tried to, "It ruins things for everyone. I was having fun until now."

XxX

Naruto and Shikamaru just stood staring with their jaws dropped once Gaara seemed to release the Shukaku just to keep fighting a meaningless battle that they certainly weren't going to stick around to keep fighting since it was technically over.

They thought they were all about to die and that everyone in the arena was toast until gold started holding the sand down. But the sand wouldn't lay quietly and started trying to thrash under the weight of the Gold Dust, "Crap." Shikamaru said as he could see the sand that was about to try making the Shukaku stretch out in an outpouring wave along the ground.

"Run!" Sekka said, being followed by Genma and Jei off of the field.

"Run where?" Naruto shouted back, still being held over Shikamaru's shoulder. A large amount of the sand started crashing towards the proctors and the genin forcing them all to start running, with Genma helping Shikamaru carry Naruto's near dead weight.

They started running towards the entrance tunnel in an effort to get away and Genma had to make a comment allowing Naruto to hear it purposefully, "Kid I swear to Kami after seeing this, no one in Konoha better be stupid enough to think _you're_ dangerous ever again! I'll slap them myself if I ever hear anyone say so!"

"Thanks, but I'd really just be okay with _not dying_ right now!" Naruto yelled, looking over his shoulder as he tried to move his legs to not be such a burden on his helpers, "Door or stairs?"

"Stairs!" Shikamaru said as they entered the tunnel, the sand bearing down quickly. They weren't going to run further down the tunnel to reach the doors and then stop to open them up. That was stupid.

With that, all five of them rushed up the stairs as the sand came crashing through the tunnel, though they were firmly out of its reach by that time. Sekka let out a breath of relief, "Kazekage-sama kept Gaara's demon from taking over." He looked towards Naruto, "Nothing has pushed Gaara that far in six years."

Shikamaru and Naruto looked at each other before blinking, "Um… thanks?" Shikamaru said, speaking for his dumbfounded friend before speaking _to_ him in a curious whisper, "Can you do anything like that with the you-know-what?"

"How the hell should I know?" Naruto replied a little heatedly, "I just found out I had it a little over a month ago. What you saw was what I can do for right now." In the end it still beat Gaara's ass until he decided to get all genocidal and call the real Shukaku out in the middle of a crowded arena.

"Fine… I was just asking. Geez, bite my head off next time why don't you?" Shikamaru said as he sat down on the stairs, setting Naruto down as well.

Genma, thinking that having a seat wasn't such a bad idea, sat down on the stairs as well and had a thought, "You know, I wonder what that looked like on TV. I'll bet it was completely awesome with the huge-ass explosion and then with the demon stuff with the sand…"

"Meh." Jei said with a shrug of his shoulders, "Older people in Kumo know what biju attacks look like. They've seen their share. Aside from that, the cameras probably faded out to end the broadcast after we announced the end of the match."

That made Naruto realize something he had overlooked with the threat to his life looming overhead prior, "Wait, we won?" Jei nodded, expecting pure joy from the exuberant genin. All he got though was a sigh that confused everyone there, "You know what? I don't even care that much anymore… I need a cigarette. And where's my machete?"

Shikamaru could understand Naruto's not caring sentiment since he had been expressing himself as such since the exams began in the first place, "I think I've learned something from all of this. After everything that's happened over the last month and all of the things I've seen and heard I think I've really learned something here."

"Responsibility?" Genma wondered.

Jei tried to chime in with a guess next, "Grit, determination, and the will to succeed?"

"The dangers of the unknown?" Sekka asked.

"No." Shikamaru said, shooting them all down, "I learned that this job sucks. We don't get any perks, random dangerous stuff seems to happen for no reason at all, if we ever end up making any real money for what we do we'll probably be dead before we ever get a chance to use it, and even after all of this even if we get promoted I don't even feel like we won anything right now. I mean what did we just win? What was all of that for?" He looked at Naruto, "Do you feel like we just won anything?"

"I don't feel like we even won in the first place." Naruto admitted.

Hearing Shikamaru's griping, Genma chuckled, "Honestly? You probably just won the right to go off and do more dangerous missions more frequently. On the bright side you two are probably going to get one of our cool flak jackets though, so at least there's that."

"I learned that explosions and half-baked bullshit plans from Shikamaru solve a lot of life problems." Naruto commented glibly before getting a second though, "Wait, speaking of life problems are we even getting paid for being in this exam? I didn't pay my rent last month at all."

"We were on TV and this entire thing was all about us Naruto." Shikamaru said with some confidence, "We get licensing rights and all of that stuff so I'm sure we're getting paid. We're at least getting some of the gate for everyone that showed up and bought a ticket to watch us in person."

"Actually…" Genma said again, "You don't have any image licensing rights. Your personal image is the property of the Konohagakure no Sato shinobi program and can be used in whatever manner is seen fit. Sorry. You signed your image rights away when you joined the Academy."

Yep, the glory of 'victory'…

"…Just take me to the hospital already… I can't walk anymore."

* * *

Jutsu List

Giga Shintou (Giga Impact). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive. This jutsu requires the user to be able to manipulate wind element chakra and also have advanced skill with the tree-walking exercise, enough that they can use it on other parts of their body nearly flawlessly. The user will stick their hands to the target with wind chakra and will then suddenly and quickly twist and yank their hands away, still keeping the pull active. This will create a powerful vacuum effect inside of the target that will cause intense internal damage.

Bunshin Jibaku Danmaku (Clone Suicide Barrage). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive. The attack requires some sort of active, tangible clone jutsu and enough working explosive tags for the attack to be effective, the more the better. The clones will charge the target with the multitude of explosive tags and will all explode with the use of a single trigger explosion to begin the reaction. It can be avoided by outmaneuvering the clones and can be prevented altogether if one can decipher which clone holds the trigger and can destroy it before it gets too close and begins the barrage, but it is usually well protected. Can be very effective on an entrenched position or against a stronghold. Uses an extraordinary amount of chakra.

* * *

**Hi there everybody, I'll make this short. Reactions to what had just happened in the battlefield, exam fallout next chapter, and then we'll be moving right along. Things ain't going in a direction you can anticipate I surmise. If so then that's good, because I don't like people being able to call what happens next in my stories. I'd like to think that there's an air of unpredictability in my stuff more often than not… it makes things seem more interesting.**

**Now if you'll excuse me I've got to write up a TV production that I'll have to shoot in-studio next Tuesday as an assignment for one of my classes. This was some serious procrastination on my part.**

**Kenchi out.**


	32. Adrenaline Dump

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do own the ability to kill an average grown man in forty-five seconds or less with my bare hands though, so I share something _with_ the Naruto series though. That's a handy little trait to have once the shit goes down and the apocalypse comes.

**Chapter 32: Adrenaline Dump**

* * *

Hours after the chunin exam tournament came to a close… and everyone wound up at the hospital. By everyone, all of Team 10 and all of the Suna team wound up at the hospital. Ino, to go with her bruised ribs from the other day that had not been done any favors by the day's fighting also had a crushed right hand due to her connection to Kankuro and her failed sneak attack on Gaara in the boy's body. Shikamaru had chakra exhaustion, deep cuts all over his person, a busted eardrum, and torn muscles in both of his calves and thighs from complete overuse. Naruto had chakra exhaustion to an absurd degree due to how difficult it was to actually exhaust him, his broken ribs from earlier in the day were still on the mend, and his overall blood loss from the day was pretty high… not enough to need a transfusion to survive though. Not even close.

On the Suna side of things Kankuro's hand was crushed because of Ino and had burns all over. Temari had a fractured jaw, multiple first and second degree burns, a dislocated shoulder, and a concussion. Gaara had chakra exhaustion, massive burns, internal bleeding that had eventually given way to external bleeding on many areas of his body, and a torn ACL, MCL, and a dislocated patella.

It was kind of hard to tell who won if you had no idea the results of the fight.

"I'm bored…" Ino groaned while laying in a hospital bed, her hair down and dressed in a patient's gown with a few small bandages on her face, "I don't even know why I'm still here. You two are the ones that are messed up." She said, crossing her arms over her chest, her right one in a cast up her forearm.

Naruto was laying flat on his back in his bed, staring at the ceiling, "Ino-chan you can't even stand up without your knees buckling because you hurt so much." He turned his head towards Shikamaru's bed to see that he was asleep with a large protective cover over his ear, "See, Shikamaru has a good idea." He hadn't even tried to make conversation after they shoved him into bed. Shikamaru just went right to sleep and gleefully did so.

Ino rolled her eyes and lay back in her bed against the pillows with a sigh, "At least they stuck you all in here with me. It would suck to be alone right now." She admitted before turning her gaze towards Naruto, "So you kicked his ass like I told you to did you?" She said with a grin on her face.

"Right up until he tried turning into the full-on demon version of what he looked like when he hit you." Naruto said, moving his arms behind his head slowly due to the jelly feeling that they had, "I didn't know we could do that."

"We?" Ino said in a questioning voice as she raised a delicate eyebrow.

"Jinchuuriki." Naruto said, explaining in one word what he meant, "I just thought we got powers or something from the biju, I didn't know we could actually turn into them. How the hell did he do that? I want to do that."

"No you don't."

Ino and Naruto looked at the door to see Fuu standing there leaning against the frame looking at them both before she gave a slight wave, "Hi. I heard people came to visit other people in the hospital and my teammate is here too so I kind of had to show up anyway."

"Fuu!" Naruto said, actually excited to see her as he didn't know if the her helping him to the battlefield was a one-time thing, "I'd get up to hug you or something but I can't feel my legs… or my arms either really."

"What is with you and the hugs?" Fuu responded with a strange look on her face, "If you hug me again I'm still going to squish you just so you know. The last one was your only freebie."

"Freebie?" Naruto said, returning Fuu's look with one of his own, "I had to seal off your chakra to get a 'freebie' so it wasn't really that free… it sucked my chakra like a vacuum."

"Enough about that." Ino said, trying to direct the conversation back to what she was actually interested in, "Why would it be bad for Naruto to be able to turn into the Kyuubi like Gaara can with the Ichibi? He'd be huge and scary, and he'd have all of that chakra to use, and-."

"Because if his demon is anything like mine then it isn't easy." Fuu said, giving her own reasoning, "The Nanabi usually just ignores me until I start trying to pull its chakra out. It's a real piece of work… it insists that the Tekiousei-Tai (Adaptable Body) that it 'gifted' me with to keep me alive is all I need. Even when I use the chakra I feel different, I feel more paranoid than normal, even though I'm supposed to be stronger I feel more jittery and scared it's hard to really focus."

Naruto started getting what Fuu was talking about, "Fuzzbutt gives me chakra when it thinks I'm too weak to do any better… and then it'll tell me that I'm a weakling and that I'm pathetic. Then when I start fighting I get madder and madder and start focusing on nothing but what I'm supposed to be destroying." He stopped thinking when he started using the Kyuubi's chakra, content in trading blows with Gaara until Shikamaru got his head on straight.

A nod came from Fuu as if that was the answer she had expected from him, "The biju overwhelm our emotions over time and turn our personalities into what they want us to be… the people sure don't help either. The Nanabi is a surly bastard or bitch that tunes out the entire world around it until it needs to react to something, only giving me the chakra it feels that I need for my jutsu. I have to wake it up to get anything else from it and when I do all it wants me to do is to get away from anything around me, hence the wings. They're not intended to fight, they're meant to get me away from danger." Well that also explained why Fuu so readily went with her own personality traits.

"So Gaara's a crazy killer because of the Ichibi?" Ino questioned since Fuu was basically saying that some jinchuuriki were influenced by their biju, "What's the point of even doing something like that?"

"Control." Fuu said, "You can either give into the what the biju wants from you if it's not destructive like what mine wants, or you can fight against it and your will can try to exercise control… but they don't like that. So I just take what the Nanabi lets me have. I don't press for more because if I'm not as good as I think I am I can lose all control over myself. What I get is usually enough to win though."

Naruto was getting confused by what Fuu was telling him, he was still new at the whole jinchuuriki thing, "So you're saying that I should fight the way I feel when I use the chakra? That will make me stronger?" He had to admit that it felt more natural when he and Gaara were trying to straight up smack each other around. He had to force himself to deviate from that plan of action.

A look of deliberation came over Fuu as she tried to ponder and come up with a response, "No… you don't seem to be the type to take too well to the whole berserk massacring thing." Shocked expressions came over Naruto and Ino's faces, "What? You said that the emotions you feel when you use the Kyuubi's chakra are anger and destruction. Do you think that the feeling just gets weaker or stays the same when you draw on more of the power? It'll magnify… it's going to get stronger." She gave Naruto a look of disbelief, "Didn't anyone ever tell you this stuff before?"

Ino decided to answer for Naruto as he seemed to be deep in thought, "He didn't really find out he had anything in him in the first place until a month ago I think. Why?"

"Who's teaching you to use your chakra?" Fuu asked them, getting blank looks, "Nobody? Really? What the hell? Who doesn't teach their jinchuuriki how to use their biju? I was at least given a bit of instruction from what others knew." Then again who really taught Gaara how to do anything? Maybe that's why he was so imbalanced, "So what can you do with your biju?"

"Heal quicker… and I get faster and stronger." Naruto said with a serious face… although he tilted his head when Fuu looked as if she were waiting for him to continue, "Uh, that's it." Fuu then proceeded to palm her forehead, "What?"

"Aside from the healing quicker thing we can all do that rookie, weren't you paying attention when I was kicking your ass or when you and Gaara were smacking each other around?" Fuu said with an impatient tint in her voice. Impatient because he was more or less telling her that he didn't know how to do anything that wasn't instinctual and automatic. In the instance of a rematch there was no way she loses to this kid twice in her mind. No way. She wanted to fight him again to prove a point right then.

Naruto and Ino looked at each other blankly before looking back at Fuu and speaking simultaneously, "Well what else can I/he do?"

"How should I know?" Fuu said throwing her arms in the air wantonly, "I'm the Nanabi jinchuuriki not the Kyuubi jinchuuriki!"

Naruto wanted to jump out of bed and go after her if his body would have allowed it. Instead he simply fell out of bed on his attempt and landed on his head, "Gah! Well what am I supposed to do?"

"I don't freaking know, different demons in different bodies Uzumaki!" Fuu said again before opening the door to the room back up and exiting, "You figure it out! As far as I know friends don't give each other advice or anything so get off my back!" And with that she shut the door with authority, showing that she didn't necessarily have control over her powers at the moment when the glass shattered and the wood of the door cracked from the force.

The entire room was quiet with the exception of Shikamaru mumbling about how people needed to shut the hell up and let him sleep. Naruto blinked from his place on the ground before grinning, "Bye Fuu! Don't be a stranger!"

Ino just stared at the mostly broken door with a deadpan look on her face, "Well that wasn't really a pleasant visit. What was all of that talk about friends? That was kind of weird."

"Oh." Naruto said as if he had forgotten to lock his door or something, still stuck on the ground, "We're friends now I think. She still needs some work on the whole idea about it though. So can you help me up?"

Ino just looked over the side of her bed at him, "I would, but I can't pick you up on my own. If I got up to try it'd just end with both of us down there in a big mess. Sorry Goldie-kun." She said before laying back down properly on her pillow, "You can stay like that until a nurse checks in can't you? Does it hurt?"

"Just my pride… and my head, and neck, and ribs." Naruto said with a sigh as he slid down into a straight and more natural position on the ground.

At that moment the door opened and Asuma walked in followed by Kurenai and Team 8, "Good work you guys." Asuma said walking in first before stopping once he saw Naruto on the floor, "I want to ask how you got down there, but whatever you say is just going to make me second guess you so don't tell me how you fell." With that he walked over and picked up Naruto with much discomfort due to his injuries, "But anyway you did great out there."

Kiba jogged up to Naruto's bed and rapped him lightly on the shoulder, ignoring the glare from the blonde, "That was some scary shi-… stuff." He said, modifying his language once he saw Kurenai giving him a stern glance, getting a few mocking barks from Akamaru, "I would have made it look cooler than you, but good work anyway." He looked back at his team with a grin and pointed something out, "Whoa, who broke the door dude?"

Naruto accepted the praise from the usually brash dog-user until he thought about something, "Wait, how would you have made it look cooler than me? Did you see that explosion? It was huge!"

Shino adjusted his sunglasses on his face before responding, "How would it have been more astounding you ask? I believe that you were looking at the explosion when it went off." He saw Naruto's expression drop and saw Kiba nod in agreement with his statement, "Yes… I'm afraid you shouldn't have been looking at your explosion."

"That's day one stuff Naruto." Kiba said decisively.

"It's not my fault I keep forgetting…" Naruto disputed lamely, "I just know how awesome my explosions are so I _have_ to look at them." It was more of a need really. Apparently Shikamaru didn't have the same need to look at his own explosions to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. That guy was weird... or maybe it was just him? Hinata walked up to Naruto's bed, getting his attention of her presence as she seemed scared to even be there. She couldn't even look him in the eyes, "What's the matter Hinata?" He asked her.

Finally looking up to meet Naruto's curious gaze her already reddening face turned even redder as she couldn't bring out what she wanted to say. Kiba blocked snickers at her odd actions while Naruto's eyes just squinted at her trying to decipher what she needed.

Deciding to save the poor girl from passing out from anxiety, Kurenai rolled her red eyes and put a hand on Hinata's shoulder, getting her to take a few steps back. Apparently this was enough to get her to calm down. However instead of addressing merely Naruto as she looked like she was going to do at first, she spoke to everyone, "T-That was great! I can't believe that you all won!"

Naruto just rubbed the back of his head bashfully while Ino looked proud despite looking beaten up. Shikamaru just mumbled and turned over onto his side in his bed, scratching his bandaged ear irritably.

"So why are you guys still all not able to walk and stuff?" Kiba asked, "Didn't the blonde lady with the huge-?" Once again, Kurenai kept Kiba from uttering some blue comment with a stern look, "-The blonde lady with the pet pig… yeah. Anyway didn't she come heal you guys yet? Because she fixed my head right up hours ago." The two disgruntled looks from Naruto and Ino basically said that they hadn't been 'fixed up' the way he was saying.

A knock came on the wall at the doorway and everyone looked to see Shizune standing there with a clipboard in her hand and a smile on her face, "Sorry. Tsunade-sama and myself had to deal with injuries that were either worse than you all had suffered or were far simpler to handle. She should be here in a moment." She walked into the room and stood with everyone, waiting on Tsunade and deciding to talk about something, "Congratulations. I've never seen rookie teams get so far in the exams before let alone win, so all of you did wonderfully."

"Promotion wonderfully?" Kiba said hopefully. First round loss or not he still wanted to believe that he had a chance, slim though it may have been, "When are we supposed to know what happened?"

Kurenai personally didn't think she had the heart to tell him that he probably wasn't getting promoted at all from the experience, so she just decided to postpone the disappointment, "You'll find out when we head home Kiba. Just be patient." Be patient so that his griping could be dealt with by his mother or sister instead of her.

Shizune had moved over to Shikamaru and had begun to heal his ear due to how readily available it was in his sleep as the long day began dragging to a close outside.

XxX

Elsewhere in the hospital, Gaara's eyes snapped open abruptly to see Sekka standing over him healing his wounds. Upon noticing that Gaara was awake, the medic-nin backed away in case Gaara was offended to the point of trying to kill him. Even though he wouldn't be in any condition to do so even with the treatment given there was always some sort of possibility with him for violence.

Instead of trying to attack the insignificant medic, Gaara thought better of it. He had done his job and had actually made it so that he could get up and go finish off Uzumaki Naruto who was probably just as hurt as he was. He found that his complete lack of chakra made it hard to even sense where his sand was in the room, but even so if he could get up then it wouldn't matter.

"Stand down Gaara." The Kazekage had been sitting silently in a chair the entire time at the end of the room watching. As he said that, Temari and Kankuro popped up from their own beds to look towards the brother they thought had been unconscious, "You're not leaving this room without me and you're not being left alone after the little stunt you pulled in the arena." There were actually samurai guards outside to ensure that the very conflict-prone Gaara would not try to hunt down the team he had lost to, "A full possession? What on earth were you thinking? You had been expressing more control than that over the years."

"Let me go…" Gaara said, at that point noticing that he was surrounded by the Kazekage's Gold Dust, probably meant to hold him down if he tried to leave and continue where he left off, "It isn't over yet… I haven't killed Uzumaki, I haven't proven my existence."

"Your 'existence' isn't to kill some single Konoha brat!" The Kazekage snapped at Gaara, never understanding just what his son's issue happened to be with killing to prove anything about himself, "Your existence is supposed to be as Suna's trump, the example of the skill of our shinobi, not as some petty random killer! You're meant to be better than that!"

Gaara glared at the man, wishing he was strong enough to put him through what he had been put through by the Kazekage in the past, "Don't give me a useless lecture. The things that you say to me have very little meaning. I honestly couldn't care less of your opinion in me since it was clear from the start that I have no true value to any of you."

Temari and Kankuro looked at each other before the girl spoke up, "That's not true Gaara. Even if you hate us you're still our brother. We're on your side no matter what, we're your family." It was clear from the fact that he wasn't even looking at her that he wasn't listening, "That's why when I thought that you had been hurt so badly by that kid that he was about to finish you I just… I lost it. I almost killed him right then and there if it hadn't been for his team."

With that, Gaara's eye flickered over to hers, whether because she had admitted to trying to take his fight or because she had said she had attempted to strike someone down in vengeance for his own wounds she wasn't sure.

"_You_ were about to kill Uzumaki?" Gaara said, his voice lifting in a disbelieving fashion as he couldn't think that someone that was deathly afraid of him could stand up to Naruto, "You're actually capable of killing someone that powerful?"

Temari's face darkened as she remembered how she felt when she got a look at Gaara's blood-covered form, "If I had another second or two we wouldn't be having this conversation because he'd be dead and you'd know for certain." Her features softened again with an uncharacteristically worried look, "I don't care if you said he was your target Gaara, if he was going to do that to you and I had the power to stop him I would have done it. I'd try it again if I had to."

Gaara didn't know what he felt about hearing that. Temari had basically just said that his need to prove himself meant nothing as long as he was in danger, but in the same vein she had also said that she was willing to protect him, even against someone that had proven to be superior strength-wise. The angry red mark on her face, clearly the most blatant place where she had paid the price for attempting to do so spoke volumes to him.

"Why?" Gaara asked, narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously, "Why would you possibly subject yourself to something like that? You do not have the power inside of you that I have, that mother has given me to crush my enemies. You are far weaker than me, so why would you ever try to involve yourself in any battle of mine?"

Temari didn't know how to say it to him other than the blunt way, so Kankuro expressed it for her, "Because you're her brother Gaara." He said plainly, "Temari might be a frigid bitch-." This elicited a harsh glare from said frigid bitch, "-But we're still her brothers. We're supposed to look out for each other even if the other doesn't want us to."

Gaara's mind flashed back to how Shikamaru interjected himself into his fight with Naruto even when it was clear that he would more or less be useless and Naruto just wanted to get him out of the way. Still, Shikamaru did not leave. He stayed close until the end and even seemed to be helping the exhausted Naruto afterwards despite the fact that in Gaara's mind Naruto could have crushed Shikamaru for being insolent when it was clear that his presence kept Naruto from doing what he wanted to in the fight.

But he didn't. Naruto was supposed to be like him and there was someone that even at the risk of personal peril seemed to stand by him when it was clear he was under his demon's influence. He could also take things another way; for instance as long as Naruto had his team he would never get to battle against him without the fools interfering.

In response to Kankuro and Temari, Gaara still didn't say a thing. But if they were serious they would know that they would never get close enough to betray him, Kankuro's injuries were evidence of that. If they were earnest then at least in the occurrence of proving his existence against the one he needed to kill they would be useful, an extension of his 'absolute defense'. Was that what they were saying, about how a family was supposed to be? Even when he didn't desire his sand to come to his defense it did regardless. Was this something like that?

He would see. In his mind if they weren't true then there would be no real consequence. They all knew they couldn't lay a hand on him. They would be picked off sooner or later even if he didn't choose to do it himself. If they were useful then there was a far greater chance of him showing the world that he was there and that he existed. If they were fool enough to believe that he needed or wanted them around then that was their mistake.

So why did it feel so scary yet so good to hear Temari say what she did?

What was he thinking about it so hard for? It didn't matter in the end.

XxX

Night had fallen and Naruto lay in his bed with Tsunade standing over him healing his injuries. He swore she waited to work on him last just to get on his nerves. Maybe because he proved her wrong in the end and won the exams? He just wished he could see her face to see if his smirk was irking her. He couldn't see her face because of the fact that her bountiful chest was looming over his point of view. So in that case he couldn't necessarily say that his situation was bad at all.

Meanwhile from her bed, Ino was staring at him with an annoyed frown on her face because the mean lady from the other day with the massive boobs stood hovering over Naruto, and she figured his smirk was from him thoroughly enjoying it. It was kind of something that made her feel a little self-conscious until she realized she was just twelve years old, 'Wait, why the hell do I care about my chest size? What's wrong with me?'

Tsunade backed away from Naruto, deactivating her healing jutsu in order to give him a once over in case she missed anything and finally noticed his smirk, "What's with that look brat?"

If anything the smirk grew more pronounced at that, "You mean you don't have anything to say? You really don't have anything that you want to tell us, something about how we didn't have a chance in hell of winning or something like that."

Tsunade scoffed, "That was before I knew you were a jinchuuriki, that shouldn't count… and you made me lose so much money during this exam brat!" She said, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him furiously before letting the dizzy blonde go peacefully, leaving him with a pat him on the head, "But also thanks to you and your friends I'm back in the black due to the long-shot bet for the last two rounds. Thanks a lot for that."

Recovering from being lifted up and shaken like a burlap sack by the deceptively strong lady, Naruto swatted her hand away irritably, "Yeah? Well why are you even here healing us right now anyway? Shizune did it because she's nice, I don't know why you're doing it."

"I'm getting paid, that's why." Tsunade said, in a chipper mood for some reason. She seemed way happier than he had figured she would be after meeting her once, "You and a bunch of others just like you got beaten up pretty badly if you weren't paying attention. Instead of just relying on the samurai treatments to have them sitting around here for weeks before being able to leave with them safely Sarutobi-sensei hired me to patch you lot up enough to move out in a day or two." Oh, well that explained it. She was getting money for healing them.

"So everyone's okay now?" Shikamaru asked, showing some interest in what she had to say. Chouji had taken it kind of hard the day before. It was difficult to watch if Shikamaru were to tell the truth, "They're all fine right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Tsunade said, finishing her final check-through of Naruto, "The Lee kid's muscles were shredded like cheese but he'll be fine. Sore as hell for the next two weeks but he'll be able to walk with crutches tomorrow… probably without if he really wanted to. The Akimichi boy had some serious impact damage done to his back and spine, he'll be stiff for a week and won't be able to throw a punch that could even bust a grape for two. And the Uchiha kid was the worst off. He had to be kept sedated just to keep him from being in pain all the time. Way too many injuries for me to say here without the chart, but now he just needs rest. He's going to be one big ugly bruise for the time being though."

Hearing that made everyone in the room calm down. Even if they were on other teams in what was a competition they were still comrades, classmates, friends even in some cases. There was nothing good about watching them all get carted away at one point or another.

With that, Tsunade kept talking, "No one else really took any kind of injury that was too threatening... except for the older genin that was found dead this morning that seemed to just stop breathing during the night… now there was a team that took a beating. Kind of ironic that the only one of them to survive was a medic-nin." She mused off-handedly.

So Kabuto's team bit the dust. Naruto and Shikamaru really didn't like the older ninja for some reason that they didn't understand. Something about him just rubbed them the wrong way even if they had no logical reason to believe so. He didn't seem strong enough to be a threat and even early in the exams when he seemed to be playing some sort of angle nothing ever came of it.

It was still weird to hear, and more evidence that they were lucky to get out of their own battle with the Suna team all in one piece.

"So…" Naruto said, trying to change away from the morbid subject, "You're Hokage-jiji's student? Does that mean you worked with Ero-sensei before?" A questioning look from Tsunade made Naruto remember that his nickname for the pervert wasn't exactly worldly known, "I mean Jiraiya."

Tsunade's eyes widened in recognition, "You train with that goat of a pervert? Of course you do… you were staring at my chest for the entire time I was healing you." She said, placing a hand at her temple at having to deal with possibly the student of that lecher.

"That wasn't what I was doing!" Naruto snapped with red on his cheeks, "And yeah, I do train with him. He's kind of the whole reason I even know about the-." He stopped himself realizing that he wasn't talking to someone close to him.

"The Kyuubi." Tsunade finished for him, giving him a look that said 'I'm not blind kid', "I didn't think the container would grow up to be such a runt though, but the orange chakra is a dead giveaway for anyone that's even a little knowledgeable about it." She then noticed him and all of the genin in the room staring at her suspiciously, "*sigh* And I don't care that he has the damn thing… seriously. Or do you think I wasn't paying attention to the crazy jinchuuriki that was about to try and squash the entire arena just to keep fighting you for an exam? That one was seriously screwed in the head."

A dry look came over the face of Shikamaru, "I think I should start asking at this point; who didn't know that he had the Kyuubi sealed in him? People we've never even met know without even being told."

Naruto ignored that, not really caring at that moment, "So if you're Ero-sensei's teammate then why don't you stay in the village? You don't even wear the headband."

"Because Sarutobi-sensei let me leave." Tsunade said as a method of explaining, "What does he need me around for? There are tons of medics in Konoha these days and there's nothing that requires a ninja as powerful as me around. Jiraiya's never really there either. He left for years at a time, even back when he was your age. Hell when we were in the middle of a war he stayed back in Amegakure to watch over some orphans. I haven't even seen him in years… and don't even get me started on the other teammate of ours. You don't want to hear about any of that."

Ino blinked as she started putting things together, "So… you don't do anything? You just go from place to place just doing what? Do you get sent missions? Do you even stay in contact with the village?"

"Hell no." Tsunade said derisively, "If Sarutobi-sensei needs me… really needs my help then I'll come back for a little while and that's it. I'm not going back for anyone or anything. I don't have any reasons to stay there anymore. All I have is Shizune and she's with me all the time anyway."

Something about the way she said that made Naruto feel for her a bit, "So you're never going back to Konoha?"

"I kind of have to now." Tsunade said with a shrug, "Otherwise I can't get paid the necessary amount that it would take for the services greatest medic-ninja in the entire world. That old man really must think the world of you brats to hire me to kiss your boo-boos like this."

"Hey…" Naruto said defensively, "Hokage-jiji is totally awesome. How do you get off talking about him like that?"

Ino sighed and palmed her face, "Naruto you called Hokage-sama old man to his face forty-five times on the way up here from Konoha… why can't Tsunade-sama do it too?"

Tsunade looked at Ino, impressed at the girl referring to her in such a manner before turning back to Naruto with a haughty look, "It's nothing personal kid. It's just I think it was kind of dumb for him to take the seat back up at his age twelve years ago. He had already passed it off to the Yondaime Hokage, that Minato. It's not his responsibility to take back over once Minato went and got himself offed sealing the Kyuubi in you." Ino and Shikamaru saw Naruto visibly bristle at the remark, "And Jiraiya might be a few cards short of a deck, but at least he was never fool enough to take that job. What a waste of effort."

"And why's that?" Naruto suddenly said cantankerously, getting her attention, "Being Hokage is awesome! Being Hokage lets you protect the village! It means that you're the strongest, and people are supposed to look up to you and believe in you. Why's it stupid to want to do that with yourself?"

"Because every Hokage has died early." Tsunade said grimly, "Sarutobi-sensei is the only one that's made it to be as old as he is. He must be some kind of lucky. But all of the others wound up dying in the end. You might as well jump into a ditch and throw dirt on yourself now if that's what you really want to do because that's all it'll get you in the end."

That seemed to sober Naruto up before he shook his head, not willing to accept what Tsunade was saying, "That's what they all knew could happen. They're supposed to put the village and the villagers first. What was the Yondaime supposed to do, just run away and let the Kyuubi attack the village and kill everyone? No, he was the Hokage, he knew no one else could stop it and he did it himself… even if he did end up just sticking it in me. I'll bet all of the others died like that too; saving people and keeping the village safe."

A laugh came from Tsunade, "So you think you would be okay with that? You think you could just go and get yourself killed, knowing that you aren't going to survive just so that others won't die?"

Naruto looked at Ino and Shikamaru before turning back to Tsunade with a serious look, "I thought I'd watched them die in front of me before when I couldn't do anything about it. I thought I'd seen my old sensei die in front of me before and I thought there was nothing I could do about it. That feeling of being weak and useless… I can't live with it. So I told myself I'd get strong enough to make sure that would never happen for real, and that I'd die before letting it. If I'll do that for a handful of people then why wouldn't I do it for the whole village too? Being Hokage is my dream, even if I know what it really means."

Tsunade just stared at him and fought the urge to rub her eyes as if she were seeing someone else right in front of her. Shaking her head she turned her eyes down to the clipboard and started to walk out of the room, opening the door to leave, "Well you should all be able to get up and move around tomorrow just fine. I don't want you getting out of bed for anything until sunup… and who broke this door?" She asked no one in particular before shutting it behind her.

XxX

(Late Night Streets of the Village)

A pair of figures walked through the streets dressed in black robes emblazoned with red clouds, large straw hats sitting on the top of their heads, "So…" One of the figures started in a hard voice, "That was some crazy exam huh? Makes me wish they had international ones like this back when I was a genin. So many victims… you know what I'm saying Itachi-san?" Underneath the hat a grin with shark-like teeth could be seen.

"No names Kisame." Itachi said calmly, "You know that we are not to be discovered yet. This is too much of a hornet's nest to be caught up in. It is of great importance that we are not revealed as anything other than travelers at the moment. There are already eyes on our attire in the Five Nations, Luckily Tetsu no Kuni has little concern over shinobi affairs."

"Yeah, yeah I know." Kisame said dismissively, "I can't believe the Ichibi jinchuuriki tried to go off in the middle of the arena. That would have made my day for sure. Your brother didn't do too badly for being the baby Uchiha against a trained jinchuuriki either. Did you enjoy seeing him again?" He received no response from the quiet Itachi, "Well, I'm just glad that by now I don't need you to speak in order to have a conversation with you. Otherwise I'd be bored as hell all the time."

Itachi finally spoke up, but not about what Kisame had addressed him over, "We report back to Leader-sama over what we've seen from the capabilities of the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi, Nanabi, and Kyuubi. Let's go."

A chuckle came from Kisame, "So you're not going to stop by your brother's place in the hospital to say hello?" He said teasingly.

"…Who says that I didn't already?"

Hearing Itachi say that so calmly got Kisame to stop in his tracks as the cool, collected Itachi kept walking on ahead without missing a beat. Another grin slowly popped up on Kisame's face as he started walking again to catch up, "You're a sly devil Itachi-san… a real, bonafide scary person. I'm glad you're on my side."

XxX

(Nearby Hospital – Team 7's Room)

Kakashi peeked his head into the room to check over Sasuke and Chouji as the two slept. Once Tsunade had fixed them up Kakashi had finally been able to convince Sakura to head back to the hotel room to get some sleep now that they were assured to be fine so he was alone as he popped in on his two students.

Once he looked at the very calmly sleeping boys he found something sitting on Sasuke's chest while he slumbered. Walking into the room without a sound, Kakashi made his way to Sasuke and picked up a note off of his chest with a pen drawing of the Uchiha crest on it. Opening it up Kakashi simply read a small message.

"_Still not good enough little brother. Even after all of these years I am still waiting on you to obtain my eyes, my power. Until that point in time you will never finish me. Don't forget what you have to do, or choose to remain weak like the rest of our former clan."_

Kakashi immediately crushed the note in his hand and turned to leave the room, 'Itachi? He was in this country and he got to Sasuke without anyone being alerted…' All just to send the boy a message to taunt him, 'Why won't he just leave him alone?' Sasuke didn't need to see that. He was finally doing well without being solely driven by the need to butcher Itachi in cold blood. There was no need to take one step forward and then two right back.

As he left the room, if Kakashi had seen Sasuke's face he might have noticed the subtle twitches of a face experiencing something they had seen a thousand times before… but something that still got them to the bone every time.

Later that night Sasuke would wake up after experiencing the slaughter of his entire clan through his older brother's eyes again.

XxX

(Days Later – Ta no Kuni)

"Welcome back Orochimaru-sama." A young man with a dull look in his pale green eyes said. He had shoulder-length white hair, two red clan dots on his forehead, and wore a loose lavender shirt, black pants, and a purple belt tied similarly to his master around the back of his waist. A tattoo of three curved lines sat on his collarbone, "Things have been running well in your absence. I hope your trip was beneficial."

"Quite Kimimaro-kun." Orochimaru said as they both walked through the rather dimly lit hallways of one of Orochimaru's hideouts, "The exams were quite a rush to see in person, I really wish you could have come, you would have enjoyed it. So much prime talent. What was done with our representatives by the way?"

"They were given the proper punishment for the failure in the important mission requested by your partner Gato-san." Kimimaro said calmly, though it didn't sound like it was a mere slap on the wrist… unless simply being killed was a slap on the wrist in Otogakure, "Trash cannot be allowed to pollute the ranks."

Well, Orochimaru was going to let them live simply because he honestly had expected them to fail the entire time… it was actually intended for them to fail, hence why he signed off on the mission to kill Uchiha Sasuke in the first place. But it was of no consequence in the end. Kin and Zaku could be easily replaced just as Dosu could. They were just bodies in the grand scheme of things.

There were more important and fruitful endeavors to be had at the moment. That cockroach Gato was if nothing else useful for the things he picked up with his disgusting antennae, and he had actually given Orochimaru something good… aside from the steady funding of course, "Kimimaro I see a chance for great opportunity and gain. I believe I should contact the Mizukage about his problem with kekkei genkai. It's a problem that he can do without and that I can't get enough of. I don't think sending you for a meeting would be a good idea though."

"Orochimaru-sama?" Kimimaro said in confusion as to why he wouldn't be sent as the first choice to accomplish a mission seen as important for the man. He then remembered that the civil war raging in Kiri was over the 'taint' of those with bloodline limits. This made Kimimaro feel wanted as he was not to be sent and cast into the lands of those that would possibly kill him without a second thought. He was too valuable to be cast aside.

"I'll send a simple messenger in case Yagura's response is less than accepting of my gracious offer." Orochimaru said, "Maybe once the actual operation begins you can have your little homecoming."

XxX

(Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato)

The outgoing Konoha teams that were sent out to compete in the chunin exams walked back through the front gates to be applauded by tons of villagers that had been there specifically to wait for their return and for the return of their Hokage. They even got an extra treat in the rare sighting of Tsunade as well.

Most of the genin after being given a moment to soak up the accolades for a bit were immediately escorted to the hospital for a second look at their injuries to make sure they were alright.

Surprise was frozen on the face of Naruto as he was among the group walking through the village. He was unnerved at the cheering at first, thinking that he was just in the middle of what was mostly for the other genin on jobs well done until he noticed that many of the villagers were looking at him as well. Some actually calling out for him to look at them so he could specifically see them cheering him.

It was quite the 180 from what he had experienced before he ever even became a genin. The whole experience was overwhelming, and when he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see the Hokage looking down at him with a smile it had to be the best feeling of his life, and he soaked it all up, waving right back and putting on a show. Getting the accolades from actual Konoha villagers was something way better than getting it from the people that didn't know who he had been at first. If he had Jiraiya's stupid grandiose poses down then it would have been a good time for them.

Eventually the route wound up with the genin and their respective jounin sensei standing in front of Hiruzen's desk with the elders Koharu and Homura at his sides. The genin were arranged to stand in lines directly in front of their jounin as Hiruzen sat down and lit up his pipe before choosing to speak, "You all performed admirably during the exams to make it as far as you did. Even more impressive by the fact that most of you are so young. So now I will share with you the judges' ruling on your performances. On-site judges and the opinions of observing judges from Konoha are taken into account for the decisions and they are final, understood?"

"Yes Hokage-sama." All of the genin in attendance said as one.

A nod came from the old man as Homura handed him the rulings for the first team, "Due to the loss of his team in the exams will Yakushi Kabuto step forward first." Kabuto demurely did as asked and still looked rather shell-shocked from being the only one on his team that was left alive in the end. Hiruzen's face softened at the sight of the unfortunate young man, "How many times has it been Kabuto?" He asked, though not in a mocking fashion.

"Well this time would make it eight Hokage-sama." Kabuto said trying to make it sound funny, but failing due to apparent nerves.

"The loss of your team was a tragedy." Hiruzen said to the bespectacled medic, "But I still cannot pass you and promote you to chunin Kabuto, I'm sorry." Kabuto looked down at the ground in a dejected fashion, "Do not give up, a medic-nin is always a valuable commodity to any squad, a critical form of support. You're a smart boy. If your combat capabilities can be improved you will advance next time, of that I am sure. Your father should be proud of you."

Kabuto bowed slightly before stepping back, "Thank you Hokage-sama." He said as he fell back in line standing in front of his sensei. The consensus thought around the room was 'poor guy' as far as Kabuto was concerned. Lost his team and didn't even get promoted for the trouble. What a week for him.

"Maito Gai's Team Nine of the previous year's graduation class will you step forward next?"

Tenten, Neji, and Lee did as instructed and waited for the Hokage to read through the judging on them before he spoke again, "I'll begin with Neji. You show incredible talent in battle, clearly on par with a chunin's capabilities. On this merit alone you could be warranted promotion. However you showed that you are willing to settle with an aggressive reactionary pace in battle. You are willing to let an opponent dictate the pace of the battle due to a belief in your own superiority. I'm sure you realized how well that works for you when your enemy is able to match you." Neji frowned and flicked his eyes toward Naruto before frowning but nodded nonetheless, "You can be ruled by having emotion cloud your mindset in combat. We cannot promote you I am sorry."

Neji nodded and stepped back.

"Rock Lee."

Lee looked excited to see if he had gotten promoted or not until Hiruzen began to speak, "A ninja specializing in nothing more than taijutsu excelling as you have is remarkable, truly inspirational my boy." Lee was beaming by this point, "However despite your skill you are impulsive and too willing to show your hand unnecessarily. You informed an opponent that knew nothing about you of your deficiencies in nin and genjutsu, this led to your downfall against that opponent's teammate in the next fight. In the following round you activated multiple variations of the forbidden Eight Gates when there was no need to activate that many to defeat your opponent, this left you unable to put up a fight against your next enemy, and for nothing really. I am sorry but you cannot be promoted at this time."

Hearing how Neji and Lee weren't getting promoted didn't fill Tenten with much confidence of her own chances, but she stood ready for his critique regardless.

"Tenten."

"You only had one fight to comment on. Your battle was contested solely on your terms. From the outset the entire fight was done by way of how you chose to operate. Your opponent was forced to adapt to how you fought repeatedly, and when he did for most of it you were still able to impose your will and turn things to your favor. However you found yourself trapped at the end when you thought you had your opponent boxed in. It was not a flawless performance by any means… but there is still enough here to promote you." Tenten's eyes lit up, putting a smile on the old man's face as he added something else, "Your style is technically support though, so if you can manage to find a way to acclimate yourself more to direct battle as a leader you have incredible potential for further growth. Can you do this?"

Tenten nodded rapidly and almost teleported forward once the Konoha flak jacket was held up for her to accept. She had to bite back an excited squeal as she stepped back to her teammates and received applause from the Hokage, the jounin sensei, and the other genin there.

Seeing someone actually get promoted got the others still to be reviewed excited. That meant that there was always a chance, Tenten only fought once and lost in the end.

"Team 8, the genin squad under Yuhi Kurenai please step forward."

Hinata and Shino looked rather grim while Kiba still had a light of optimism in regards to their chances, until Hiruzen spoke, "In life sometimes there are just unlucky events. You were all forced to fight a team with an aspect that no normal genin should have had to face. Even though there were questionable actions taken by _someone_ in that match to prevent much from being seen of you, I cannot judge the performance that I have to deem incomplete. I cannot promote any of you I'm afraid."

Shino and Hinata nodded, expecting as much since they didn't get to really show any skills that would warrant such, but Kiba just stood frozen until Kurenai grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back, "There's always next time Kiba. You can try again in the next one. I can guarantee you that it won't be as difficult as this one was."

"Team 7 under Hatake Kakashi, step forward please."

Sasuke, Sakura, and Chouji all did as requested and waited patiently for him to speak.

Hiruzen had been informed by Kakashi of what had occurred with the message left the other night, but had told him he would handle it and that there was nothing to fear of the sort from Itachi. Still, this was about something completely different so that wasn't an issue at the time even though he was certain Kakashi would bring it up at the next opportunity.

"This team has a good mixture of someone with a good head on her shoulders in Sakura and a considerable amount of battle force in Chouji." He started, getting sad smiles from the two he mentioned because they could tell what was next, "But I cannot promote either of you due to what you both lack at the moment. Sakura you are very perceptive and intelligent, however you simply lack the overall combat prowess to lead a squad, against effective opposition you showed yourself to be something of a liability when left alone. On the opposite hand Chouji, you simply are not ready on the basis of maturity, motivation, and stratagem."

It hadn't escaped anyone's notice that he hadn't dismissed Sasuke at all yet.

"Out of the three of you I can see that one of you in fact has a firm grasp on what is required." Hiruzen looked towards Sasuke who tried to seem uninterested while failing miserably, "Sasuke you have the combat skill as has been expected of you by way of the gifts of your clan, but you also showed a way to manipulate the elements of a battlefield to your advantage right under an enemy's nose. You also showed natural leadership qualities taking charge of your team combat strategy in the quarterfinal round and something of a protective streak for a teammate in need. That is important as well as a leader, as well as showing that even when your comrade fell, instead of falling apart you continued forward with the battle. Sometimes that will be the result in a mission. When your friends are losing their heads around you, you still find a way to keep your own." He finished grimly before holding up a flak vest, "You are promoted to chunin my boy. Be proud of yourself."

Sasuke couldn't help but put on a smile as he walked forward to receive his prize for his performance. He couldn't even feel his nagging sore injuries at the moment. The feeling was euphoric when he walked back and got a pat on the shoulder and back from Kakashi and Chouji. He even let Sakura give him a hug… and he sincerely hoped that she didn't believe that gave her the right to do it again whenever she wanted. It was a one-time deal.

"Team 10 under Sarutobi Asuma please come forward."

Ino and Naruto almost tripped in their haste to step forward and get the whole thing over with. Shikamaru didn't seem to care one way or the other and in his head kind of hoped that they would fail… or at least he would fail. He wouldn't hold Ino and Naruto back just for him.

Hiruzen let out a chuckle at the fidgeting Ino and Naruto and the yawning Shikamaru, "This is the team that ran the gauntlet I see." He looked towards Asuma who just shrugged with a grin on his face, "Well Naruto I'll start with you."

Naruto snapped to immediate attention and could swear he was sweating bullets, 'Please be good news… come on…'

"It is quite clear, even to one that is blind that you have the combat skill needed without question." Hiruzen started as he stared down the young jinchuuriki, "But your judgment though… is based mostly on your own determination to not lose instead of what is appropriate to win with the least amount of loss." That didn't sound good, "Every strategy you wound up creating was done under duress with the exception of what was executed in your duel with Hyuuga Neji… however what you did come up with more than often worked and allowed you to overcome an opponent that otherwise would have defeated you based off of her experience and ability to match and outdo your power. Also you never endangered anyone other than yourself with any of your more impulsive plans of action. And I believe that Jiraiya and my son would attempt to kill me if I held you back."

Naruto's eyes widened, "You mean…"

"Yes my boy." Hiruzen said, holding up a vest, "Come and get your vest, you've been promoted. Keep up the good work."

Naruto refrained from jumping over the desk and tackling Hiruzen in a hug… he would do that later when he wouldn't get in trouble for it. In the meantime he ran forward and grabbed his flak jacket happily, immediately taking off his windbreaker and putting the well padded piece of tactical gear on in its place. It was a little rigid and needed to be broken in, but other than that it was great.

"Miss Yamanaka Ino." Hiruzen got her attention before any congratulations could be given, "You've taken a different development of your skill-set than most Yamanaka ninja would have taken." At that she pouted. It wasn't her fault if this would end up with her not getting promoted, her dad didn't want to teach her anything else, "The way you fought was a welcome surprise that your enemies didn't agree with. Even in defeat and with deep injuries you were able to effectively make your presence felt in your quarterfinal and final round matches to help your team succeed. Even without counting your poison skill you showed a tactical mastery with your Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu) that any Yamanaka would have been fooled by. Unforeseen circumstances kept that from ending the entire final round altogether. In all honesty it was a narrow decision, but you have been promoted as well my dear."

Ino let out a whoop before realizing that she had been the only one to have an outburst. Even Naruto didn't do anything embarrassing. When Hiruzen began to laugh and held up her vest she quickly walked forward and received it with a red face, mumbling a 'thank you Hokage-sama' before keeping her head down to avoid anyone looking at her.

"Nara Shikamaru." Shikamaru met Hiruzen's business-like look with a lazy one, just short of looking like his eyes were about to shut before the man began to speak, "While some would call it cowardice, the major sticking point of your result is what you did in the quarterfinal round against Rock Lee. It was the single most underhanded, conniving, abhorrent action many of the judges had ever seen done in an exam meant to test genin." Everyone figured he was about to be shut down by the Hokage at that point, but it was not to be, "It was a magnificent move. Fighting that battle would have done absolutely nothing for you but put you in a wheelchair, not only that but you turned the tables with merely surrendering by forcing your opponent to thoroughly exhaust himself without ever losing a thing other than a fight that you couldn't win in the first place."

'Number one team at hiding, running away, and stalling.' Asuma, Shikamaru, Ino, and Naruto all thought at the same time with deadpan looks on their faces.

"Aside from that one instance that more or less secured the decision for you…" Hiruzen continued, "Your ability to con any opponent into falling prey to your shadow, even when they had already seen it, had already been caught by it in some cases, and knew full well what was coming, is incredible. Each round you found a new way to use the same jutsu without fail. It simply cannot be ignored and overlooked. You are promoted."

Seeing the vest appear over the top of Hiruzen's desk, Shikamaru looked at it long and hard without walking forward, finally choosing to speak, "…Do I have to?" Asuma, Ino, and Naruto all slapped him across the back of the head, urging him forward, "Troublesome… ugh, fine. Thank you Hokage-sama."

Team 10 moved back into the original lineup all marveling at their flak jackets… with the exception of Shikamaru who looked at his and merely sighed in resignation to his fate. Asuma merely walked over to the door of the office and held out his hand with a satisfied look on his face, "Please pay on the way out if you don't mind." He said to Kurenai, Gai, and Kakashi.

XxX

"Oh man." Naruto said with a huge grin on his face as all of the genin walked down the street away from the Hokage Mansion. He was feeling on his flak jacket as if it were made of some miracle material that was made from dreams, "This thing can probably stop a kunai to the belly… quick someone punch me in the stomac-! Oof!" Naruto was doubled over with Kiba's fist buried in his stomach. Lee, Chouji, even Sasuke and Neji looked dejected that they didn't beat him to it since they all had their fists raised as well, "…Thanks." Naruto wheezed.

"You're welcome." Kiba said, getting some dark satisfaction out of that. Hey, _he_ didn't get promoted. It wasn't like he had to be the bigger man or anything when he was still a genin… and Naruto asked him to do it, "Did that hurt?"

"Nah…" Naruto said, sucking in a deep breath to keep his knees from shaking, "Not even a little."

Sakura shook her head and looked at the flak jacket that Sasuke was carrying, "I can't believe you guys got promotions. That's so cool! When was the last time anyone our age got promoted?" She wondered how cool Sasuke would look once he put his flak jacket on. Naruto necessarily didn't make it look bad at all so Sasuke would probably wear it like the devil himself once he chose to.

"It's not really that rare…" Tenten said wryly with a grin on her face as she too much like Naruto was taking the moment to break her flak jacket in early, "People younger than us got promoted before… but it's still so cool!" She spared a look towards her teammates, suddenly feeling like a jerk for being the only one of them to get promoted. She still couldn't believe it, "Sorry you guys."

Lee noticed the shift in her mood and gave her a thumbs up, "There is nothing to apologize for Tenten. I will simply have to work twice as hard next time to ensure my own success. And Neji as well! I'm certain that he feels the same."

A tense nod only came from Neji, nothing more nothing less, "Do you expect me to resent you for doing your best Tenten? I am not nearly that petty. Like Lee says, there is always the next time." He then decided to break off from the group and head home, "I believe I'll go and get some rest now. If I see Hiashi-sama I will inform him that you are still out Hinata-sama." Neji said, still not sparing the girl he was just speaking to a glance as he walked away.

The others were slightly put off by how he just left like that when it was a time to talk amongst themselves about the crazy stuff that had just happened to them over the past month or so. It was standard procedure that everyone that somehow shared a ridiculous life experience would then proceed to talk about said experience with those they had experienced it with, complete with gratuitous embellishments everyone knew were lies that would eventually be forgotten as false and would just become a part of the actual story as the annals of time erode the tale that would then be told hundreds of times for the rest of their lives. Neji obviously had no desire to partake in standard procedure.

The wind momentarily taken out of their sails by Neji's abrupt departure, Chouji tried picking things back up, "I can't believe Ino, Shikamaru, and Naruto all got promoted though. All three of you? That's crazy."

"Yes Chouji it's crazy." Shikamaru said, not seeming too stoked at all to be in his current situation, "It's crazy terrible. Now the safety net that is Asuma-sensei is gone. He doesn't have to be our jounin leader anymore. We're not his genin anymore, we're chunin now." That thought gave Ino and Naruto pause. They had never even thought about that, "And we could be split up and stuck on other teams now so we might not even get to have each other anymore. We're supposed to be able to lead teams now."

"It's not really going to be that easy to split us up, right?" Ino asked, actually expecting an answer from someone. And no one really had the answer, "Come on, they can't do that. We all got promoted at the same time, why can't we still be a team? It's the only reason we got this far."

She honestly loved being on that team. She wouldn't have traded it for anything. If she wasn't on that team would she have learned the techniques that she did? Would she have even learned what she did about Naruto, the thing with his clan and the more important thing about the Kyuubi within him? Would she have accepted it so readily? Would she even have gotten promoted if she hadn't been with them?

"There's no way they can just cut us apart like that!" Ino said, getting angrier at the thought of it, "Doesn't any of that crap we did mean anything? What was the point of doing all of that stuff for each other, just to say goodbye?" She wasn't going to accept that lying down if that was indeed the case, "Fuck that!" And with that, Ino stomped off on her own, trying not to wipe her eyes at the thought of it. It may have been impulsive, but she didn't care, even if it was paranoia on the cynical one Shikamaru's part that formed the theory. It was upsetting enough to bring tears to her eyes and no one was going to see her cry.

They all watched Ino stomp away before Naruto spoke up, "Hey… they really can't do that can they?" Asuma not being their sensei anymore he understood. He damn sure didn't like it and he would fight that, but he understood that they couldn't have a jounin locked down to them forever. He had to get on with his own career eventually and couldn't stick around until _they_ were jounin too. But splitting the team up? That was terrible, he just got them and he'd have to lose them like that?

And all of a sudden thinking about that didn't make Naruto feel so ecstatic to be a chunin anymore.

"I don't know what they can do dobe but I don't think they'll do that." Sasuke said, contemplating something similar. Were they going to yank him from Team 7 because they were still genin? Even Tenten was thinking about it at that point. As much as Sasuke would never admit it out loud he had grown accustomed to seeing them every day. It was something he could count on for better or worse, it was a sense of normality, something comfortable, "I just don't know… I guess we'll see." They might pick him off of Team 7 and he doubted they would even do that, but there was no feasible reason to break up Team 10 whatsoever.

The reassurance of the safety of the team brought his hope up a bit, but the mood was thoroughly killed. Naruto shoved his hands into his pants pockets and started to wander home, "I'll see you guys later alright? I need to go home and get my head bitten off by my landlord for not having the rent for so long. Maybe I can work something out."

Shikamaru palmed his face and sighed, "Great… me and my big mouth. Way to kill the feel-good Shikamaru."

"I don't think teams get broken up like that."

They all turned to see Kabuto standing there with a small smile on his face, "I mean your entire cell advanced. There's no way a combination like that will get broken up. I think your team is fine Shikamaru. And I believe they'll keep the ones of you that got promoted on your teams as well so that you can get some experience leading a team you know something about. They might make it so that you have to do missions with others so you get more experience, but you should be fine really."

Sakura felt relief at hearing that Sasuke wouldn't be plucked off of the team just like that. Not now when she was actually starting to improve herself, "Thank you for that Kabuto-san… but what are you doing here?" What would a 19 year old genin want to do hanging out with them?

"Well…" Kabuto seemed rather embarrassed at first before looking down sadly, "Aside from my team I don't really have any close friends. They either got promoted or quit or just fell out of contact. I like you guys… and if it's not too lame I was just wondering if I wouldn't be a third wheel or anything, well technically a tenth wheel in this case."

The guy had just watched his team die. Even if it was rather weird hearing that he didn't have a problem with twelve and thirteen year olds, there was still something rather sad about the lack of promotion for him and the loss of his entire squad. Pity was what they felt for the long-standing genin.

"We do not have a problem at all Kabuto-san." Lee said, giving him an exuberant pat on the back, "Feel free to join our most youthful tales of the chunin exam!"

Kabuto's face seemed to light up, brightening his previously dour mood, "Thank you. And I've got a few on that front… I've done I eight times after all." He said as he fell in step with the group, looking for a place to eat at Chouji's behest and their agreement. Eventually Kabuto made his way close enough to Sasuke to speak, "So chunin as a rookie huh? It's supposed to get more dangerous from here on out you know."

Sasuke spared him a glance before looking at his flak jacket and shrugging almost unnoticeably, "I know. But I'm sure I can handle it."

"I'm sure you can too Sasuke-kun." Kabuto said with a satisfied feeling in the back of his mind, "Everyone's watching you now."

XxX

Naruto wound up walking home after fifteen minutes of being greeted by almost everyone that got close to him on the street. Even the people that didn't talk to him were looking at him, something they had gone out of their way to not do before then. When they did look at him before then it was just to glare or sneer at him. His stomach fluttered all the way home. The people on the street had never seemed so nice before.

As he arrived to his home though he saw Jiraiya standing in front of his door speaking to a man dressed in a very ornate and well-to-do looking kimono, "So you will inform him of what I told you will you not Jiraiya-sama?"

"Yeah of course." Jiraiya said, waving off the concern of the high-class looking man, "When I see the kid he'll know right then and there. The message is secure with me. Now didn't you have somewhere else to be before sundown.

"Oh yes!" The noble-looking man said before hurriedly walking away, "I still have to deliver this message as well to someone else. The boy's teammate as a matter of fact." The man finished with a foppish laugh, "Thank you for the assistance Jiraiya-sama." As he left and went down the stairs he passed a large potted plant that he didn't remember being there, but he was too busy to really pay attention or care.

Once he left though, the plant turned into Naruto in a puff of smoke as he walked his way to his apartment door where Jiraiya was, "What are you doing here Ero-sensei, and what was that weird guy here to say to me?"

Jiraiya planted a hand on Naruto's shoulder as he looked down at him, "We'll get to that later, but for now how about you and I celebrate your new promotion kid? You definitely did me proud out there for certain. How about I take you to grab some ramen before the sun goes down?"

Naruto still wanted to know what the strange man had come to his house for, but for now he hadn't partaken in any ramen for over a week and a half and he was ready for the biggest bowl they had… or three, "Yeah, sure. Absolutely Ero-sensei, let's go."

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)

Mind without borders

Stimulate your mind. Expand your horizons. Half of sealing is using your imagination to think of something new you can bind away just for kicks. There's nothing wrong with trying new things… do whatever you'd like as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, and even if it does it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission so grow some stones and jump in the deep end once in a while. You might be pleasantly surprised by what the world can bring you.

Or then maybe you might not be, and you might see that the world is an ugly place where terrible things happen to undeserving people for no relatively proper reason at all. Either way, you need to see and realize that too. Just reading about it won't do a thing for you so don't sit there and expect me to put it into legible words for you to attempt to grasp. The world is bigger than what you see every day at the edge of your village. You know that, but if you're young then you really don't know that. You think you know, but you don't really know.

Get yourself some experience and a promotion and you'll see soon. Trust me. And if there's a war going on where you are when you read this you probably already know this and you don't need me to tell you a thing.

Either way the more you see and do, the further you'll grow. There's a joke in there somewhere but damn it I don't feel like going there today…

…And yes, that's what she said.

I couldn't help myself. I'm very disappointed with my endurance.

And that's also what she said.

* * *

**Hello everyone. Hey, have you ever sat around in a place that isn't home for seven hours doing absolutely nothing but waiting just so that you can go and get beaten up for an hour? Because I did. It's surprisingly tiring. Commuting sucks the life out of you. I haven't gotten a power nap in two weeks. I gots to get with the sleep. I need sleep more than I need food.**

**So this is the last one I'm doing back-to-back. I'm seriously lagging behind in a lot of my others due to not wanting to lose what was in my head for the exam and I feel a sense of responsibility for them. The tear is over for now, and I hope it was decent enough for the masses. I'm not Hemmingway, but I'd like to think I'm at least serviceable so… hopefully I made a few lives perk up after reading this.**

**Now… I'm going to go get my late Friday night on. You all can go do… whatever it is you plan on doing after reading this since it probably won't be Friday night when you get this.**

**Later. Kenchi out.**

**P.S. I did not create the Kazekage's jutsu since I've received reviews saying stuff about it. It's canon. Kishimoto made it and he used it in his very recent fight with Gaara in the manga. Come on guys, help me help you here. I don't pull stuff out of my ass unless I absolutely have to. I also am well aware that there was nothing about the previous sentence that sounded right… and I'm just okay with that.**

**Next chapter some Konoha interaction and perhaps the start of the next story arc.**


	33. Sober Up

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Maybe if I legally change my name to Kishimoto's legal name I can steal his identity?

…I am not serious about that by the way, that is completely uncool.

People monitoring the internet for potential criminal activity that are currently reading this, please don't arrest me. I'd really appreciate not getting a record for something so stupid that could put me away for so long. I mean there are plenty of other more blatant yet lesser illegal things that I've actually done over the last two years that would be far better suited to besmirching my good name.

**Chapter 33: Sober Up**

* * *

For some reason Shikamaru and Naruto had managed to make it to Team 10's training ground the day after their promotions and were both sitting under the large tree that marked the middle of their field. As they sat in the shade they both seemed to be basking in the silence with fully aware, yet stunned looks on their faces.

Both boys were wearing their flak jackets over their regular clothes and were patiently waiting for their third teammate and their sensei to arrive so that they could be given their marching orders for the coming days. They were in such a haze that they didn't care seem to know or care that not only did they not have a meeting that day they had been there for an hour already, having arrived too early that morning even if they had been scheduled to meet.

Apparently genin habits died hard. Chunin weren't required to meet everyday like that. Just another sign that their heads were too far away to deal with the protocol of their new military stations.

Eventually Shikamaru cleared his throat and decided to speak up as it was clear both he and Naruto were in the same state of mind over something that was probably similar, "So… I'm guessing that the guy showed up at your place too and told you what he told me." Naruto nodded without saying anything, "Yep… I thought so when he told me that you'd been asked too."

"Ero-sensei told me…" Naruto said, taking a gulp that could be seen as a sign of nerves, "You're talking about that noble looking guy that didn't seem to be from around here?" Shikamaru nodded in response to confirming the identity of the person that had relayed the message of the offer to him, "Yeah… so what are you going to do?" Naruto concluded curiously.

Shikamaru's eyes turned to Naruto after hearing the blonde newly minted chunin's question, "What am I going to do? What are _you_ going to do?" He asked in return, not answering the question himself, "It didn't exactly come off like it was supposed to be a package deal. They want both of us but we don't both have to go."

"Are you telling me to go, or are you saying that you want to go for yourself and you want me to stay?" Naruto wondered, squinting his eyes at Shikamaru in confusion over what his point was supposed to be.

"I'm not telling you to do anything knucklehead." Shikamaru said in exasperation, "I'm just saying that if you want to go you can go without me. Don't let me hold you back. They'd probably get sick of my attitude in a hurry anyway." He saw Naruto open his mouth to probably start an argument and cut that off at the pass before he could even get going, "We can talk about it later. We're supposed to have plenty of time to give our decisions anyway right?"

Naruto shut his trap and begrudgingly nodded before setting his back and his head against the tree to keep waiting for Ino and Asuma. He knew that Jiraiya would never spring for a meal of his without a reason behind it. Of course there would have been an issue other than a celebration when they went out to eat the previous night. There wouldn't have been any other way it could have happened.

_(Flashback – Last Night – Ichiraku Ramen Stand)_

_From the amount of food steadily being shoved down Naruto's mouth, Jiraiya was grateful that the kid's meal would be on the house because he wasn't sure he could pay that much without writing a check._

"_I was scared to death when they showed the end of the exam broadcast." Ayame said as she placed another bowl in front of Naruto that he immediately began to put away, "No one knew what happened when all of that sand started to billow up. Everyone thought something bad had happened. But it's good to see that you're fine and that you're as hungry as ever."_

_Jiraiya just shook his head at the sight of Naruto gorging himself on his favorite food before turning to the pretty young ramen waitress with a grin, "Well it was never in doubt for a second that he'd get out alright. After all, he's the disciple of one of the greatest men to ever live; I'm referring to myself of course, I taught him everything good that he pulled out in the tournament." He leaned on the counter closer to Ayame, "Of course I'd be more than glad to explain in depth the nuances of my teachings to you personally."_

_Naruto glared at Jiraiya out of the corner of his eye as he continued to eat, but said nothing, not feeling the need to get personally involved. If he was planning on hitting on Ayame he would have another thing coming. He was around thirty years too late to try that and succeed, and he was in the wrong place to try it._

_And right on cue the loud sound of chopping sounded out from behind them where Teuchi was cutting up more fresh ingredients, trying to purposefully be loud to attract attention, "I think I speak for everyone here when I say thanks for taking an interest Jiraiya-sama." Teuchi said, turning around with a deceptive smile on his face as he continued to chop loudly, "I'd be personally be happy to hear about how you trained Naruto. Why don't we go in the back with all of my other sharp cutlery so we can discuss that and other things as well?"_

_Jiraiya's face paled and he leaned away from Ayame, "I'd rather not thanks." Legendary status or not he didn't necessarily like his odds in that instance. He then decided to change the subject to restore some goodwill, "So why are you letting the brat eat you out of house and home for free again?" He said, pointing a thumb over at Naruto who was still steadily eating while getting patted on his head like a good boy by Ayame._

_Teuchi chuckled and went back to work, "Because he pretty much paid for himself in advance with all of the money I made off of him betting during the fights." He then backtracked a bit once he could feel Ayame's glare on his back, "Oh, and because he did such a good job and got himself promoted. How could I forget that part?"_

"_Yes he did." Ayame said in an encouraging manner, "He did very well. He went kind of overboard with all of the explosions, but those were pretty cool to see I admit."_

_Naruto stopped eating once his explosive tags were brought up and sighed, "I completely depleted my stores during the exams. I need to buy more sealing paper if I'm going to make that many again when I get some free time." His hunger sated for the time being, Naruto pat his belly and turned in his stool towards Jiraiya, "So Ero-sensei, what was that guy at my apartment looking at me for? He wasn't the landlord's collector looking for me was he? Because I told that guy when I got back that I'd pay the second I-."_

"_No he wasn't some debt collector Naruto." Jiraiya said with a roll of his eyes. Honestly, who freaked out over debt collectors after dealing with a pair of jinchuuriki in back-to-back fights._

_Taking a moment to finish off the broth left in his bowl, Naruto put it down and sighed contently before turning his attention back to Jiraiya, "Well then who was it?" A grin slowly started to spread over his face as his imagination began to run wild, "It was probably someone that wanted an autograph or something. Yeah, he thought I was so awesome, and he can see a future Hokage in the making so why wouldn't he try to get an autograph before my signature's hot?" Naruto then tapped his chin in thought, "Hmm, maybe I should start working on a signature."_

_Jiraiya had to take a second to wonder if this was what it was like to talk to himself sometimes before shaking that thought aside, "No kid, he didn't want an autograph! That guy was from the daimyo."_

_That got everyone's attention as Ayame and Teuchi froze where they were to listen in carefully. Sure it might not have been their business, but that was just one of the side perks of owning a place for the public to come and eat. Besides, they had some stock in that kid and his well-being was relatively significant to them._

"_The daimyo…" Naruto said, trying to roll the thought around in his head, "Wait, that's like the guy that runs the rest of the country isn't it? What does some bigwig like that want with me?" He asked curiously._

"_Congratulations." Jiraiya said, giving Naruto a hearty slap on the back, "You've finally got people realizing that you don't suck." A beaming grin found its way to Naruto's face. Even all the way to the ramen stand people had been congratulating him over his performance alongside his team during the televised exams, "In fact, you've got the daimyo thinking that you're quite good and that your teammate is quite smart and skilled."_

_Naruto at this point was nodding as if he knew what Jiraiya was going to say, "And now he wants to hire Team 10 for some cool job that only the best can handle." Maybe he'd finally get that mission to save a princess or take down an enemy fortress the way he always wanted and thought he'd get in spades as a ninja?_

"_Sort of…" Jiraiya said, rubbing the back of his spiky white mane as he thought of possible ways that Naruto would take the coming information, "He wants to hire you and Shikamaru. Just you two though. And it's not for your regular everyday mission. He wants you as his personal protectors. Bodyguards if you will."_

_Naruto just sat there and turned back towards the counter, looking down in thought as if he wanted to say something, "Um… why?" He wasn't even thirteen yet. He would be in a month or so, but why would the daimyo want a pair of kids as bodyguards? It was just weird to him, "Doesn't he have like a whole group of soldiers and stuff to do that for him?"_

_A chuckle left Jiraiya, "One genin is worth at least twenty average armed men when used correctly. And yes, nobles like that have their own forces, but they also seek out the very best for more direct reasons. He wants to set up a contract with you and Shikamaru to enlist your services as _his_ shinobi for a certain length of time. I believe the very best of them are called the Twelve Guardian Ninja… or they were."_

"_Were?" Naruto said with a raised eyebrow._

_Jiraiya shrugged, "If I were you I'd talk to Sarutobi-sensei's kid Asuma about it. He could tell you more than I ever could about this whole thing. But yeah, the daimyo wants you as one of his guards. That's what the guy at your apartment was there to tell you. And you've got six months to come up with an answer, he isn't expecting you to just pick up and leave at the drop of a hat, that would be totally unreasonable. This is a big decision."_

"_How is it a big decision?" Naruto asked, not seeing what the big deal was. It was a bodyguard job. A ninja was supposed to do bodyguard work, it was kind of their thing, "I'll just accept the mission, watch over him for whatever he's going to do, get paid tons of money, and come on home. Easy."_

"_The contract lasts years kid."_

_That got Naruto to pause in his good mood and confident state._

_Jiraiya looked at him with a serious expression as he proceeded to explain, "Yeah. You're not just popping away for a quick mission that'll take a week or a month even, you're going away for years. You'll be a live-in guard, basically shifting your services from Konoha to the daimyo directly instead of just by proxy."_

_Naruto just stared at Jiraiya with a slack-jawed expression before he finally found his voice, "Why the hell would I want to do something like that? I don't want to leave for real!"_

_Shaking his head, Jiraiya frowned at Naruto due to his outburst, "You idiot… it's not anything like that. What do you think, you'd be a deserter or something? Your sensei did the same thing, Tsunade travels around indefinitely, hell even I spent more than my fair share of years away from the village before I was even powerful or famous."_

_Grumbling at being called an idiot, Naruto glared slightly at Jiraiya, "So? What does any of that have to do with me?"_

"_I know you usually don't care what I think unless I'm teaching you how to fight, but I think it would be good for you." Jiraiya said confidently, "It would be a chance for you to go somewhere new, learn new skills, build up a body of work elsewhere… it would be great for a kid like you. And if you set yourself apart from the pack the way you should and the daimyo likes you then that'll be good enough for you to get his backing once you actually start going for Hokage when you get older."_

_He really meant that last part. For some reason the daimyo absolutely adored Jiraiya due to their meetings in the past and he still wished that Jiraiya had taken the seat of Hokage. Apparently he still brought it up to Hiruzen since his sensei would tell him about it often. Jiraiya had no desire to become Hokage however so it was sadly just wasted breath on him._

_Naruto's face showed a bunch of conflicting emotions over the matter though, "But… but I can't just leave. Everyone needs me here."_

"_Who?" Jiraiya said, legitimately questioning him on the matter, "I know you've got friends and I know that you're really excited about being a new chunin, but who _needs_ you here? Konoha won't just fall apart if you're not here kid. The friends you have aren't just going to keel over and kick the bucket because you're gone for a while… mine didn't and we were fighting a war at the time the second time I left. That's a really arrogant attitude to have, thinking that the thousands of shinobi here can't hold down the fort, but a rookie genin turned chunin is so integral to the foundation of everything."_

_Naruto looked down and continued to think. Was it really that wrong to think that way? He did have to admit that thinking of himself being more useful in the grand scheme of things than say Asuma or Kakashi was pretty unfounded, but he liked Team 10, he liked the other Konoha genin he had spent time with and fought during the exams and even before then. He liked the attention he was getting for winning the exams. He didn't want to leave now that things were looking up so much._

"_Just think about it." Jiraiya said in conclusion on his point to not just overlook and cast away the offer, "You're young. Before you actually get to a point where you _are_ a vital part of Konoha's military you should go out and get some different experiences. It'd do you a world of good."_

(End Flashback)

Naruto sat cross-legged and stared at the ground as he furrowed his brow, "Well what do you think we should do Shika? I mean, it sounds cool and who knows how strong we might get training with the best that are supposed to be able to guard the daimyo?" It certainly couldn't hurt to spend some time away if that were the case.

"I don't really care a bit about the whole 'getting stronger' thing." Shikamaru admitted with a hapless shrug, "I'm trying to shoot for average, remember? This is pretty much as far as I want to go in my career in case you forgot. Maybe jounin, but I'm not going to push it. If it happens it happens. I'm not really shooting for the stars here, I'll leave that to you."

Naruto just gave him a deadpan stare that was saying more or less, 'My ass you'll be getting off easy as long as I'm around.' The blonde chunin jumped up and poked him in the head as Shikamaru tried to ignore him, "You don't want to do it just because you're a lazy ass? What about the adventure or the challenge? Come on!"

Swatting Naruto's hand away, Shikamaru got up and walked out from beneath the tree to lie down in the grass and stare at the clouds, "With the stress of the exams you've obviously forgotten who you're talking to, so allow me to refresh your memory in the following manner." And with that he shut his eyes and didn't move again.

"Shikamaru." Naruto said, getting no response. He frowned and poked at Shikamaru with his foot, "Get up Shikamaru I know you're not asleep, that was only like fifteen seconds." Still, Shikamaru didn't move an inch, "Damn it Shikamaru, like it or not we are in the middle of a life-changing decision-making situation right now! Wake your ass up and help me solve the problem!"

Shikamaru cracked open one eye before turning over on his side away from Naruto with a grunt.

A growl came from Naruto's throat before he threw his hands up and walked away, "Fine! Sleep all damn day and see if I care! But if I have to find you again later and you're still here…" He let the threat hang in the air as he walked away from the field.

That was just fine with Shikamaru though. He'd just clear out in an hour or two and go home to ditch Naruto and his vengeful wrath of which in his heart of hearts he knew there was no escape from in the end.

Yep, running away from your problems and decisions until it was absolutely necessary was the manly way to handle things. Procrastination was the fuel that powered society. He would have thought that Naruto would have learned that by now after six months of hanging out with him.

XxX

(Hokage Tower)

Asuma stood in front of his father's desk staring wide-eyed at the man, "You're serious? Wow… I don't know if that's ironic or what? I mean what are the chances dad?"

Hiruzen didn't know whether to chuckle or what, because it wasn't lost on him at all, "If you're wondering, he asked whether you were coming back as well."

"The daimyo wants me back?" Asuma said with a quirk at his lips, "Well that's unfortunate, because he's not getting me back." The man had a fair shake at getting Shikamaru, Naruto, or both of them though if they decided to accept the offer either way though, "I don't think I should tell them what to do in this instance. You saw fit to promote them so they should be able to make their own decisions. I'm technically not their sensei anymore you know."

In response, Hiruzen shrugged, "Okay, if that's how you feel I'll reassign you right away. You did so well with this team that maybe I'll set you up with a new genin squad once the next batch graduates." He smirked when he saw Asuma glare heatedly at him, "That's what I thought." He leaned back in his chair and placed his pipe at his lips to light, "You're just as attached to those kids as I happened to be to my own team. No matter how far they go or how good they get you're going to feel some kind of responsibility over them."

Asuma scoffed at such a sappy thought, "I just want to make sure they've got all of their stuff in order that's all. They're still all just kids. The training wheels can't just come off without warning. I'll still be around for them to get advice from of course." He then turned away from Hiruzen and grabbed his own cigarette to light once he saw that his old man was smoking indoors, "Besides, I still owe Shikamaru a beatdown at shogi that's been a long time coming."

A nod that seemed rather happy came from Hiruzen, "I'm glad you came back Asuma, I just want you to know that. I really think that this team was what you needed to find something to take stock in the village again… aside from Kurenai of course."

Asuma turned back around to Hiruzen with a frown on his face, "You, the other jounin, even one of my brats are always referencing Kurenai. When have I ever given any kind of sign that we were in any sort of relationship, and how would you even have known? When would you have found the time to pick up any gossip?" Hiruzen then wordlessly pulled up his crystal ball, "Oh, duh. Wait, you really watch _me_ in that thing?"

Another shrug came from the old man, "Well the fact that you do a terrible job of hiding said relationship notwithstanding, you _are_ my son… and it gets very boring in here from time to time. Just be grateful I'm not Jiraiya and we'll leave it at that." Both Asuma and Hiruzen shivered and nodded, not bringing up the topic again.

XxX

(Konoha Archive Library)

"I really don't get why you're bringing this to me Uzumaki-kun." Shiho said as Naruto followed her around the building. He had arrived a little earlier, she had given him a hearty congratulations on a job well done in the exams, he had of course gleefully accepted, and then he brought the issue of his offer from the daimyo. It had clearly stunned her into silence, but other than saying that it was a big deal and an honor she didn't know what else to add.

From that point forward he had constantly been bringing it up while she was supposed to be busy at work making her rounds and making sure that everything was in order. And it did actually beg the question from her; why was he bringing the question to her? Wasn't it supposed to be his decision?

"Come on Shiho-chan." Naruto tried to plead while keeping his voice down. He didn't want to get her in trouble with her boss or catch a tongue-lashing of his own from the man, "You're like the smartest person I know, you should have some kind of advice for me."

"Not like this." She argued back making sure that every book and file on the shelves were in place with her checklist, "Uzumaki-kun I spend upwards of seven hours a day in here surrounded by concrete information of all sorts. Do you want me to give you basic specs of a new region you're about to get a mission into? I can do that. Do you want some historical perspective? I can do that too. Do you want advice on basic combat theory? You know I can give you that. But what do I know about personal dilemmas, especially a dilemma that isn't my own?"

Naruto felt like pulling his hair out at this point, "You're just like Shikamaru; all that smartness for no reason." He then found the clipboard she was holding slammed on the top of his head, "Didn't hurt."

Shiho pulled the clipboard off of his head with a huff. Of course she couldn't hit him hard enough to hurt him, the noise it would make would get them in trouble… oh, that and she would never hit hard enough to hurt a friend, "If you want to get logical over it then sit down and make a list about what you can get out of either staying or going, but make sure you have all of the facts first. If one side outweighs the other in benefits then take it. Other than that I don't know what to tell you. Either that or ask Shikamaru-kun."

"That bum is totally useless." Naruto grumbled, eyes scanning the books they were walking through in passing. Due to this he didn't notice Shiho's momentary glare cast upon him for his remark about Shikamaru, "I asked him what he was going to do about his own offer earlier and he just rolled over and went to sleep."

That was more or less Shikamaru's way of saying that he'd deal with it when it was actually a problem… or it was his subtle way of telling Naruto to fuck off. Either way, none of that was helpful at the moment.

But hearing about Shikamaru's offer got Shiho to freeze in the middle of what she was doing to face Naruto, "Wait, did you just say that Shikamaru-kun got an offer too?" She said, eyes seeming to try boring into Naruto's head for the answer.

It actually forced Naruto himself to back up a step for comfort and personal space purposes that were currently being violated by Shiho's close proximity, "Uh, yeah. Both me and him got the same deal to sign a contract to work for the daimyo for I think a few years. I thought I said that at the beginning."

"No you didn't!"

"**SHUSH!"**

The unanimous sign to stifle all loud conversation and actions got both youngsters' attentions. Naruto fanned his arms out in a belligerent manner as he whispered harshly, "Be quiet Shiho-chan, you're being too loud!" He then found himself forcefully jerked face-to-face with the bespectacled blonde girl by the collar of his brand spanking new flak jacket, "Meh?"

"What do you mean Shikamaru-kun got the same offer?" Shiho asked sharply, "Does that mean he's going?" Her tone seemed to be telling Naruto to answer correctly or suffer. Weird. She had never done that before, not even once. And only _now_ Shiho could be counted as being just like every other girl or woman Naruto had ever met.

The feeling of death seemed to be magnified by Shiho's glasses and Naruto didn't think that said girl could elicit such a feeling from him. She couldn't even fight so what was he scared of? He was asking himself that question and yet he still felt a sense of foreboding that he was not about to try testing by being a smart-ass. It was clearly not going to fly there and then.

"I don't know, I swear to Kami!" Naruto squeaked out in a high-pitched manner. He so wanted to pull his goggles that sat on his forehead down over his eyes to avoid eye contact but it was like he was paralyzed. Was this a jutsu? Did all girls learn it somehow? That was so unfair, "I told you I asked him this morning and he totally blew me off!"

Shiho sighed desperately and let Naruto go, allowing him to skulk back against a bookshelf with a thump to get away from her, "Well that's no good…" Her eyes then sharpened up on Naruto again, "But the second you find out if he's going or not you'd better tell me in a hurry, understood? You'd better tell me."

"I'll tell you whatever you want, just don't kill me." Naruto said fervently to try and calm Shiho down. Whatever set her off, he didn't feel like reaping the 'benefits' of such an attitude. And she was such a nice girl too.

Shiho wordlessly jerked her head towards the direction of the exit and Naruto took that as a sign to get the hell out of dodge as he did just that without a second thought. A rather desperate sigh came from the cryptography apprentice as she went back to her odd job that had been assigned to her.

That was certainly an embarrassing lack of composure. Luckily Naruto wasn't necessarily the kind of guy to look too far into behavioral patterns or he would have a chance to accidentally blow her shot with Shikamaru in the future. Speaking of the future if he left that would make things harder for her to get the guts to put herself out there after he would probably be exposed to women that were far better looking than her, but if he stayed then she'd just get used to him being around and would keep procrastinating on the whole thing until it was too late to really try to catch his attention.

Wow… when she put it like that she could kind of see why Naruto was wrestling with his decision.

XxX

(Team 10 Training Field)

Shikamaru was awakened to a darkened silhouette standing over him blocking the sky from his view and he almost panicked, his first thought being that it was Naruto there to make good on his promise to make Shikamaru pay if he returned to the field and caught him still sleeping there. Before Shikamaru could begin to formulate a way to talk himself out of immediate trouble, or at least to buy himself enough time to run for dear life back to a well populated area, the voice of the person standing over him spoke.

"Jeez Shikamaru I thought you had the day off." Shikamaru blinked as the voice sounding similar to his in the nonchalant content only with a more grizzled tint to it continued to talk to him, "Why are you all the way out here? Stupid kid, making me run around all over town just to find you… troublesome."

"Dad?" Shikamaru sat up and looked up to see his father Shikaku standing there just looking at him. The younger Nara rubbed his eyes and squinted at the light in them, "Why are you looking for me?"

Shikaku reached down and jerked his son up to his feet with surprising strength, at least as far as Shikamaru was concerned. Shikaku watched him stumble about jelly-legged for a moment before continuing to talk, "Well I meant to tell you this last night but what with the promotion, the daimyo's message being dropped off, and your mother preening over you I didn't get a moment to say this for myself." He cleared his throat and set a hand on Shikamaru's shoulder, "You're a chunin now-."

"Oh come on…" Shikamaru said, not really wanting to hear the whole rite of passage speech. It was just so lame, "Come on dad. I know already. Responsibility, leadership, all of that crap. Don't tell me you came all the way out here to waste time like that. Shouldn't you be overlooking the deer caretaking right now?"

Shikaku waved Shikamaru off, "Ensui's got the deer covered. And I wasn't going to give you that shit speech. I was going to say that you're a chunin now so it's time to teach you some more clan techniques. You did great during the exams and you never even bothered me to teach you anything." He narrowed his eyes somewhat in suspicion, "Funny thing that."

"Asking you would have been too troublesome." Shikamaru said, rubbing the back of his neck and yawning, "I had what I needed already, I just had to find ways to use it."

Shikaku just gave Shikamaru a deadpan stare, "Uh huh. Go ahead and use that excuse. You just didn't want to put in the actual work to learn a new jutsu. Well you're not ducking it anymore. Get ready to work."

A sigh came from Shikamaru as he followed his father back to their compound, 'Maybe I should take that offer to leave for a bit after all. It would get my troublesome family off my back for sure. Even mom wouldn't be able to bust my chops after I came back from it.' But then what if the daimyo had him doing even more irksome things as work? Wait, wasn't today supposed to be his day off?

XxX

Ino's fingertips drummed off of the countertop of her family's flower shop crossly as she waited on customers to peruse the store's selections and make decisions. She knew she was supposed to have a chipper attitude when working in the store but her own thoughts over yesterday were still keeping her in a less than good mood.

Her dad said that as a chunin she could be assigned to different teams at any time, but that wasn't necessarily what she wanted to hear. He hadn't even really gotten the chance to even say that as new chunin she, Shikamaru, and Naruto would more than likely be allowed to stick together to cut their teeth on progressively harder missions until they found their groove.

Ino let out a sigh as a chime signified that someone else had entered her shop, "Hello and welcome to Yamanaka Flowers." She stopped with her greeting when she noticed exactly who it was that entered, "Oh, what are you doing here Forehead?" She said rather vacantly despite the insult.

"Wow." Sakura said dryly as she walked in, looking at the abundance of flowers while moving towards the counter to talk to Ino, "If you're going to call me that you could at least put some effort behind it. That didn't even seem like you meant it." That managed to get a small smile out of Ino, "So how's life as a chunin treating you?"

Ino's lips quirked slightly, "Just great. Can't you see how dangerous and elite I am? It's like night and day from yesterday when I was just a genin." She said sarcastically before sighing, "I don't even know how I feel about it. My head is just swimming right now." If she had to admit it, Ino didn't feel very much like a chunin. After the high of actually getting promoted wore off she felt kind of lost.

_She_ could technically lead missions now? It was difficult to wrap her head around. More than ever she felt like she needed to be with her actual team to succeed. She was going to have to go to her dad and demand a new jutsu this time, not take no for an answer whatsoever. There was no more reason not to teach her another clan technique. She had done what she could with what she had thus far and it was enough to get her through the chunin exams. That had to be worth something.

"You know we never got to have our fight during the exams." Sakura remarked offhandedly, though it was clear that it was said to get Ino's full attention which it did, "It's kind of a shame if you ask me."

Ino smirked and sat her elbows on the counter as her chin rested in her hands, "It's a shame that you didn't catch a beatdown from little old me? Wow Sakura, I thought you would have been happy with not getting a hospital visit." The topic shifted on that note, "So how are Chouji and Sasuke?"

"Better." Sakura said, "Chouji's resting at home for the week and so is Sasuke-kun since Kakashi-sensei gave us the week off. Knowing Sasuke-kun though he's probably training or something right now instead. We had a short meeting today."

A frown came to Ino's face, "Asuma-sensei didn't tell us to meet. I don't think we were supposed to do anything today. Goldie-kun would have come to get me if I was a no-show for something. Or maybe they are breaking us up and they're just taking the time to reshuffle the teams?"

Sakura shook her head and placed her hands on her hips, "Are you really going to be this negative? All you've done since yesterday is whine over your team that _might_ be getting broken up. I didn't know you needed Shikamaru and Naruto as a crutch to do anything."

Ino slammed her hands on the counter in front of her, "That's not why it matters!" Her outburst got the attention of everyone else in the store but a glare from the diminutive blonde girl got them to mind their own business once again, allowing her to focus solely on Sakura, "They're my friends. We're not Ino-Shika-Cho like my dad and his friends are. We don't have that kind of thing going for us to stay together."

Palming her forehead, Sakura argued her case again, "Even if you guys are chunin you're still kids too. And we've only been out of the Academy for like six months. There's a curve, there has to be. You're getting worried over nothing. But wouldn't you rather the teams get reshuffled? I mean, then you'd have another chance to be on a team with Sasuke-kun possibly."

"I don't really care about that." Ino mumbled as she sank her head down on the counter.

Doing so forced her to miss the shocked look that appeared on Sakura's face, but she did not miss her follow-up comment, "You don't care? It's Sasuke-kun."

And if it had been months ago then it probably would have mattered to Ino, but now it really didn't. Not one bit. And she was okay with that, "I guess you can say that there are more important things then just being on the team with a hot guy. I mean, I haven't been trusting Sasuke with my life for the last three months. I didn't spend every day for the last few months with him. I don't know him well enough the way all of the girls in the Academy thought they did. As a matter of fact I know Goldie-kun more than I thought I knew Sasuke. Did you know he actually does have a clan?"

Still though, Sakura was stunned at the thought of one of the girls that had been enamored with Sasuke in school losing interest in him. Even the other girls that they hadn't had any contact with since graduation were still into him. As a matter of fact Sasuke arrived home after the exams to find his front door blocked off by get well soon gifts and other assorted gifts from said girls. It was kind of creepy actually. And Ino was neck and neck with Sakura as being one of Sasuke's most vocal admirers back in the day.

Maybe she did have a chunin's mindset after all.

In fact, she was so not worried about Sasuke that she didn't even let Sakura dwell on the topic any longer, "You know what?" Ino said with a bit of enthusiasm, "Even if they do wind up breaking us up as a team I can deal with it. Hokage-sama promoted all of us for a reason, not just Shika or Goldie-kun, but me too." She started sounding more and more confident as she continued to speak.

Sakura just blinked in surprise at the sudden upswing of self-esteem from Ino, "Wow. You really got over that quick."

"Not really." Ino said, deflating slightly, "I'm not really over the possibility yet. But I know what'll help." Sakura watched as Ino took a moment to run towards the back of the store to find someone, "Dad! Can I take the rest of the day off to go shopping with Sakura?"

The pink-haired kunoichi palmed her face and leaned up against the counter, shaking her head as Ino continued to plead her case to leave to her father.

"Oh come on! I won the chunin exams, don't I get any spending money for _that_? I haven't gotten my own paycheck for a mission in over a month! How did Goldie-kun pay his rent with no income?"

XxX

"Oh you've got to be kidding me!" Naruto said, trying his best to fit his key into the lock on his doorknob, failing miserably to do so all the while, "He changed the locks while I was gone this morning? What the hell happened to common courtesy? Don't I get a month's free rent or at least some kind of grace period on paying? I'm a champion!"

It was now officially hangover time from his weeklong 'celebration' in Tetsu no Kuni and round of kudos for the chunin exams because life was clearly back in session. With a desperate groan, Naruto pulled his useless key out and stomped over a few doors to knock on another apartment door.

The door opened a crack as a chain lock inside kept the full view of the person inside from view, "Yes Naruto? May I help you?" A voice said as if there was nothing wrong at all despite the quite miffed look on the young man's face. The landlord was something of a shut-in for the most part. Barely any tenants had ever really seen all of him at one time. For a civilian he had some serious ninja habits. Naruto had seen him of course, but he had been living there long enough to do so.

Naruto had to hold himself back from trying to kick his door off of the hinges from the nonchalant attitude of the landlord. The guy was usually pretty alright, he was just really strict with the whole paying on time thing and he was obsessed with keeping a respectable establishment running, "Alright look, I know you're kind of no-tolerance over the whole rent thing but seriously, I have an excuse. I was in the chunin exams. How was I supposed to get money for the last month? D-rank missions don't really leave you with savings."

"It's not just that Naruto, that much I understand." The landlord said, only one eye visible, "The fact that you'd been going out of your way to duck me when I tried to talk to you about it the week before you left is another thing. It was completely childish."

Naruto just stared at him with a raised eyebrow before pointing at himself, "Dude I'm twelve…"

The man's eye closed as he seemed to be shaking his head in a chiding manner, "A double standard? Such irresponsibility already in your chunin career. I thought you were better than that. All I wanted was to work out a deal with you over the matter. This didn't even have to be a problem." He said calmly.

"Deal?" Naruto squawked incredulously, "I've got a deal for you, just give me the key to open my door and I'll pay you after I get back from my next mission, how about that? Come on, I've never missed a payment before."

"Because Hokage-sama paid for you until you graduated." The landlord chimed in matter-of-factly, "You came close pretty much every month since then. You know my policy. I was very clear when you started paying for yourself. First missed payment you get two days to pay and then I change the locks until you can do so. You have a month to do that."

Naruto slapped his face to try and keep his composure. So he was forgetful trying to deal with his whirlwind ninja work. He was always on time. Well not this time of course, but all the other times he paid by noon on deadline day no matter what, even during the one time where he had to run over there and pay in the middle of a team training session. Asuma was really pissed about that one, "You're crazy old man. I really don't need this on top of all of the other stuff going on. Did you know the daimyo wants me to work for him and I have to make a decision on that?" Maybe name-dropping would grease the wheels?

"So take it." The man said with a shrug, "Maybe he'll pay you in advance and you can get back into your house?"

"Damn it, I will rain down hellfire and brimstone on you!"

"You can't prank me in my own complex kid, you've been trying it for years. Just get the money and you can get the key to your new lock. Borrow it from a friend or something until you can pay them back."

"…Can I get it from you… friend?"

"No."

And with that the door shut in Naruto's face, getting a growl out of him. He could just break in later and that could be that, at least for one night or until he got arrested for trespassing, but it was more along the lines of it being over his principles. Uzumaki Naruto was _not _a deadbeat.

"I need money…"

Who had money?

Lots of money that wouldn't mind parting with some of it for the time being.

Preferably someone that owed him dearly for services rendered in the past. Or maybe someone that just couldn't say no to him.

Jiraiya? No, the man hated springing for Naruto's meals. In what alternate dimension would he pay his rent?

Tsunade or Shizune? Maybe if he knew how to find them while they were still in town he had a shot, she said he had won her money during the exams after all. But if being in Konoha didn't make Tsunade any less crabbier then that idea was doomed to fail.

Asuma? What was he, his dad? He wasn't going to make Asuma give him a damn thing.

Wait, Sasuke was loaded wasn't he? But he'd probably just smirk at his misfortune and shut the door to his big fancy house right in Naruto's face before hobbling his injured ass back to bed or to a couch to keep healing. Were they even close enough for him to try that in the first place?

On second thought no one owed him a damn thing, and _everyone_ could say no to him for one reason or another. He wasn't about to run through the list of people he knew so he could get no told to him all day long. There was only one sure-fire solution to his current problem that would definitely solve it, like it or not.

"Damn it, I need to go do some D-ranks…" Naruto said to himself helplessly as he began to slink his way out of the apartment complex to head towards the mission assignment desk in the administration building, "Being a chunin sucks."

XxX

(One Hour Later – Konohagakure Ninja Academy)

"Being a chunin sucks." Naruto repeated under his breath as he stood with his arms crossed outside, "How is this a C-rank mission?" It sounded too good to be true. An in-village C-rank mission that wouldn't take more than a day to accomplish, and he wouldn't have to share the money. He jumped at it since he didn't feel like taking the full workload of a glorified house chore without his teammates around and he didn't want to feel like nothing had changed. Chunin didn't routinely take D-rank missions and he wasn't about to fall into a pattern like that.

This C-rank was not that much of a step up in his opinion.

Sure he technically got to fight, but he wasn't really fighting. He wasn't allowed to really fight back. He was more or less a moving training dummy.

Standing in the middle of a ring while an entire class of genin looked on, Naruto yawned while off to the side, Iruka was introducing the lesson, "Now in order to spice up the monotony of you all simply sparring against each other, today you get the treat of trying your hand against an actual Konoha chunin. Say hello to Uzumaki Naruto class." He finished, pointing at Naruto who was currently lazily scratching his belly underneath his flak jacket and regular clothing.

"Hello Uzumaki-san."

"Boss!"

"Naruto-oniisama!"

The class comprised the first one, the second one happened to be Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon, and the third one was Hanabi. Although Hanabi and Konohamaru took that moment to glare at each other heatedly, getting Naruto to raise an eyebrow at the two youngsters' attitudes after waving to the entire class.

"They've been like that since Hanabi joined the class this week." Iruka said with a deadpan look on his face, "At least they aren't yelling and arguing this time." He then got a little more serious, "You _do_ know what you can and can't do don't you?"

Naruto was still very uninspired to be there, "Yeah I know Iruka-sensei. Don't beat the crud out of the kids. I'm not that stupid." He said quietly enough to keep the others from hearing him.

One of the kids in the class raised his hand to ask a question, "If we're just fighting a chunin then why aren't you sparring with us Iruka-sensei? Why'd you get this kid?"

Iruka couldn't help but take that moment to pump himself up a bit, "Well I might be a little too advanced for all you kids for your first time fighting. Naruto here used to be a student of mine so some of my skills obviously rubbed off on him in passing." He gave Naruto a hearty pat on the back getting a grin out of Naruto despite himself, "Now I just want you to do your best against Naruto. I want to see what you all know and I'll give you critiques later." Another hand shot up out of the crowd, "Yes, Konohamaru."

"Is Boss going to use explosive tags or that cool machete he has with him?" The young boy asked excitedly, getting a few of the students to pale as they remembered watching some of what Naruto was capable of during the broadcast of the exams.

"No." Iruka said with a dry expression, "We're trying to make sure as many of you graduate as possible, not trying to weed you out and kill you in the second month. Any other questions?" A bunch of hands shot up, "Any questions _not_ pertaining to what Naruto's actually going to do to you when you try to fight him?" Every hand unanimously went down, "Good. Any volunteers?"

Before anyone could raise their hands, Hanabi and Konohamaru jumped up and more or less raced to the ring. As they both tried to climb up on the platform they were steadily trying to shove each other out of the way, fighting over who would actually get to fight.

Iruka palmed his face as the class began to clamor over the scuffling brats. He turned to Naruto who seemed to be getting into his role due to the amusement brought by the two kids, "I blame you for this partially. You created a monster out of Konohamaru."

"Just let both of them fight me." Naruto said, getting the entire class to freeze and look at him, even Konohamaru and Hanabi, "What? They can't fight me one-on-one, I could step on them and smush them." Out of the two of them Hanabi had the best chance from his personal experience, but it still wouldn't be a chore whatsoever to deal with her.

"Hey!" Both Hanabi and Konohamaru both said, breaking apart to hop in the ring glaring at Naruto in offense.

Iruka was about to talk to Naruto about how he was messing up his lesson when he saw something of an opportunity forming in front of his eyes to prove a bit of a point to two of his feuding students, "Actually yeah. If you want to go against them both then you can do that. Now make the seal of confrontation and begin."

Naruto just looked at Iruka with squinted eyes until he saw Hanabi and Konohamaru make a half-tiger seal as they faced him, 'Oh, that.' He thought to himself as he did the same.

"Right!" Konohamaru said as he immediately charged forward, "I'm finally going to kick his ass! Get ready Boss!" Leaving Hanabi behind, the small Sarutobi boy ran at Naruto with his tiny fists ready to pummel Naruto.

"What?" Hanabi, not wanting to be outdone by someone she knew she could beat, followed behind to try and beat Konohamaru to Naruto and be the one to defeat him herself.

Still Konohamaru would reach Naruto first as he dropped into his tight stance. A smirk crossed his face as he feigned attacking Konohamaru prematurely, scaring the boy out of his own attack and getting him to jump back in retreat in case Naruto was really going to go after him.

That action caused him to run into Hanabi and send both kids spilling to the ground in a heap. Seeing both kids on the ground without even doing anything, 'Wow, I didn't even have to dodge a punch.' Naruto stood up straight out of his stance and watched the scene unfold.

Hanabi jumped to her feet first and pointed down at Konohamaru, "You completely got in my way you clumsy oaf! What happened, did a butterfly get in front of you and scare you back?"

"Shut up!" Konohamaru heatedly shouted as he got up and in Hanabi's face, "It was an evasive movement! You were stepping all on my heels anyway. Why were you so close? Did you want to see how the real apprentice of the Boss fights? Just turn your Byaku-thingy on and stay out of the way."

"You are _not_ Naruto-oniisama's apprentice!" Hanabi angrily snapped on him, "Do I have to walk all over you in more than just classroom grades to get the point across?"

At this point Iruka decided to step in, "And that's enough." He said, getting the class to 'aww' in disappointment. There wasn't even a punch thrown, not much of a fight, "Sorry but this was kind of meant to prove a point to these two." He said, separating Hanabi and Konohamaru, "Naruto could have just went up to you two and knocked you both out. Look at him." Said chunin was just sitting cross-legged on the ground staring at them with a smirk still on his face.

Trying his best to glare at Hanabi and intimidate her, Konohamaru spoke to Iruka, "What point? This didn't prove anything except that Ghost-eyes here moves like a turtle."

"I'm faster than you Kono-baka! And don't talk about my kekkei genkai like that!" The insult about her eyes was nearly the last straw. Hanabi was about to paralyze Konohamaru from the waist down for a few hours to teach him some respect.

Before Konohamaru could press his advantage now that he had found something to hold over Hanabi's head, Naruto's fist bounced off of his, "Ow! Hey Boss, what was that for?" He gingerly held the spot on his head where Naruto hit him.

"Don't go making fun of Little Firecracker's eyes Konohamaru. That's really not right." Naruto said with a pronounced frown on his face. He looked at Hanabi and even though she was hiding it he could tell that the crack had almost made her cry, "I wish you two would stop fighting every time I see you, you never know if you two would end up on a team or something. Then what'll you do, just argue and try to beat each other up all the time? You'll get killed like that."

Iruka placed a hand on both Konohamaru and Hanabi's heads and kneeled down in front of them, "That was the point I was trying to make. I knew you two wouldn't fight together, trying to outdo the other, but I didn't think you'd actually stop the match just to bicker. Like it or not you two are comrades and you need to learn how to work together." He stood up and looked at the whole class, "That goes for all of you. As ninja we work in teams to cover individual weakness and to protect one another. You need to be able to rely on each other and now that's today's exercise. Three of you will try to go up against Naruto and myself and will practice cooperation."

A blank look came upon Naruto's face at the change in curriculum for the day, "Wait, I thought I was just supposed to run circles around these kids for the day one-by-one. Why are you changing the lesson plan Iruka-sensei?"

"I blame you." Iruka said with a shrug, "Now one more of you hop up here so we can actually get this started."

XxX

After school had let out that day Iruka went with Naruto to collect his pay for his day's work. He had never seen Naruto so happy to have money in his hands before, but he wasn't about to ask why, nor was he going to bring up the fact that the money that Naruto happened to be happily rubbing all over his face could have been anywhere before making its way to him.

He was going to let Naruto have his moment.

Either way, he chose to turn his attention to the subject that Naruto had brought up while they had been walking to the mission desk to report that Naruto had finished his job, "I wish I could say that I have some advice for you Naruto, but it's a decision you have to make on your own whether to stay or go."

Ending his torrid affair with his newly gained funds, Naruto shoved the money in his frog wallet and grumbled, "You're saying the same thing Shiho-chan said. Even Shikamaru blew me off and this is his problem too." He fished a coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air, "Maybe I should just flip for it…" He said absently before doing just that.

Iruka snatched the coin out of the air and rapped Naruto on the head, "Don't leave it to chance stupid! This is a serious decision you need to make!" He then blinked, "Wait, when do you need to make it?"

"Ero-sensei said I have half a year." Naruto said, remembering what Jiraiya had told him the night before.

"Then why are you thinking so hard about it now as if you only had until the end of the week?" Iruka wondered to the boy aloud, "Take your time and take in everything that matters about the decision. Don't decide rashly one way or the other." He punched Naruto lightly on the arm in a good-natured way, "For now just enjoy being a chunin like me huh?" He finished with a grin.

Being reminded of his current rank in the Konoha military system and all of the perks it _didn't_ bring, other than the prospect of doing what you want in the way of training of missions mostly, Naruto sighed and just kept walking with his old sensei towards the exit of the building, "Being a chunin sucks."

"You've been a chunin for all of one full day. Give it some time."

"…"

"You got kicked out of your house for not paying rent didn't you?"

"How'd you know?"

"It happened to me too."

And Naruto then laughed long and loud all the way outside of the building at Iruka's former expense. At least it wasn't just him that had a crappy first experience after his first promotion. Maybe being a rookie _orphan_ chunin was what sucked?

XxX

(Two Days Later)

Naruto was woken by a sharp banging on his front door. It wasn't exactly late, but maybe he was getting lazy because he was definitely sleeping in now. He pulled himself out of bed and ambled his way to the front door to open it and find Ino standing there with an upset look on her face, her foot tapping on the ground impatiently, "Ino-chan what are you doing here?"

Ino took a second to look over the appearance of the groggy Naruto in his pajamas and sleeping cap before getting to the point, "Get dressed."

The more tired pair of blue eyes just blinked repeatedly, trying to adjust to the morning sunlight. Naruto was trying to comprehend what was going on, "What?"

Ino turned Naruto around and kicked him in the butt to get him to walk back inside, "Get your ass dressed. We haven't done anything since we got promoted."

"Asuma-sensei didn't tell us to do anything." Naruto said with a yawn as he rubbed his backside and got back to the place where he slept to grab his clothes, "No team meetings or anything…" He then walked his way back through his house to get to the bathroom to get ready for the day

"Duh." Ino said as she shut the door to Naruto's bathroom after he got inside lest she see something that she wasn't meant to bear witness to, "We're not required to meet up anymore Naruto. We're not genin. It's up to us for all of that stuff now." She leaned against the door and raised her voice as she heard Naruto's water turn on, "I was really raging about this the other day until someone finally told me. Unless we're assigned certain members for certain missions we get to pick our own squads when we work." Her dad finally managed to get a hold of the fuming girl to inform her of these facts.

"WHOO!"

A small smile came to her face at that, "So unless you and Shikamaru have any other options or thoughts on the matter we're still a team."

The garbled sound of Naruto trying to talk through brushing his teeth got a laugh out of Ino until he spit and spoke with his mouth clear, "No way. But why didn't anyone tell us that from the start? You freaked out kind of hard on the first day."

"I don't know, hazing maybe? Older people are jerks." Ino said with a blush, remembering how she just stormed away from all of the others on the day they were promoted, "And that got me wondering, what else didn't anyone tell us? So that's why you're coming with me and we're getting all of this stuff cleared up once and for all. We'll find Asuma-sensei and kick his butt for just letting us go without knowing anything."

"What about Shikamaru?"

"Shika's busy training with his dad. I went to see him first." Ino remembered how Shikamaru tried to use her as an excuse to shirk his training for that day with his father until his mother dragged him back through the house and threw him out back to get started, "I kind of have to do the same thing later with _my_ dad, but for now I'm free. We can find Asuma-sensei, get some breakfast or whatever, *sigh* I just don't want this to fall apart. You're really important to me, you know?"

Wait, that came out wrong.

Or did it? She didn't even get to throw Shikamaru into that remark, or did she omit him intentionally?

Was a side-effect of being a chunin overthinking things? That had to be the case because Ino had been giving herself headaches for the last two days.

"Aw, thanks Ino-chan. You're important to me too." Well at least Naruto didn't pick up on the unintended connotation of Ino's last comment. Bless his heart, whoever wound up with him would have to shove the fact that they liked him right in his face to have the slightest chance of him picking up on it. You'd think that someone admittedly trained by a pervert would be better equipped for that sort of thing, "Look, go ahead and sit down somewhere in my house, I'm going to catch a quick shower okay?"

"Don't take all morning then." Ino said as she drifted away from the bathroom door, "I have to be home by noon no matter what it is we wind up doing. It's already around nine."

XxX

(Hokage Tower)

Asuma and Hiruzen's faces were twisted in frowns at the current information that had been provided by Jiraiya, "Why didn't you tell me this beforehand?" Asuma asked the toad summoner, "You know, before the exams would have been nice."

"Calm down." Jiraiya said, leaning against the window behind the Hokage's desk, "I would have if they were active, but I hadn't heard a peep from them in quite some time, since Orochimaru defected in fact. As a matter of fact he's the only member of them that I knew of."

Hiruzen leveled a gaze on his most loyal student before launching a question, "Yet you found it prudent to bring it up to me now instead of even later. Can you tell me why?"

Jiraiya could hear the tone in Hiruzen's voice and rubbed the back of his neck, "Jeez Sarutobi-sensei, I just wanted to make sure I had all of my facts on them straight and that it was a bigger deal than it was before I brought it to you. I brought it up because I had a source that said that a pair of figures wearing black cloaks with red clouds left Tetsu no Kuni right after the exams ended. That's the uniform of the group."

A group that wanted Naruto and possibly other jinchuuriki as well in the no-tolerance-for-shinobi-hijinks Tetsu no Kuni. They probably weren't there to take in the sights. They were that close, but didn't try anything on any of the clearly vulnerable jinchuuriki so they didn't wish to raise an alarm and have the entire country buzzing before they even got off of the mountain. With the multitude of powerful fighters there it wasn't a good idea at all to do so.

"So basically…" Asuma said again, "There's a group out there that wants Naruto's Kyuubi, and they're full of members that are strong enough to chase Orochimaru away." A stiff nod from Jiraiya was his answer, "We just promoted that kid in case you didn't know. That means that any day now he's going to be stomping in here demanding a mission to who knows where. We can't really keep eyes on him like that can we?"

"Yes we can." Hiruzen interjected, pointing at Asuma, "You are still the senior commander of the Team 10 cell until further notice."

Asuma didn't have any problems with that, but still he had to ask, "When do you think further notice will be, forever? Eventually when these guys make a move Naruto's going to know something's up and he won't let it die."

"I think it'll be until he takes the offer to work for the daimyo."

The eyes of the two Sarutobi gentlemen turned towards Jiraiya in surprise, "What?" Asuma said, "You know he's going to take it? How can you know he'd take it?" It didn't really seem to be Naruto's kind of speed to decide to leave his home so quickly.

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow, "You're saying you don't think you can convince him to? You have half a year to find a way to help him make his decision. I personally like it. He should go." By now due to witnessing the exams the group after Naruto would know he was a Konoha ninja and would know how to find him. If he were to become a guard in the employ of the daimyo that would give Naruto an extension on anonymity and it would allow him time to grow in strength and skill over time.

Aside from that he would be very easy to check in on and it would overall benefit his career to do so. There was also the fact that the daimyo wouldn't ask slouches to protect him. There was a chance that the bodyguard would have a hell of a list of bodyguards among the ranks.

Asuma grumbled to himself over the matter, "I might as well make Shikamaru go too if that's the case…"

"Good idea!" Jiraiya chirped cheerfully, "A friend would definitely make the experience better for him and from what I saw of the Nara kid Naruto seems to be able to kick his ass into gear. Go for it and get it done."

"Are you serious?" Asuma said, getting nods from Hiruzen and Jiraiya, "That's like trying to shove two stubborn mules up a hill. If they don't want to go there's no way you can actually make them. Shikamaru especially. Dad you make them go. Say it's an order or something."

Hiruzen gave his son an incredulous look, "Right, I'm going to make them go the same way I made you stay." He said sarcastically, "I can't order them to accept an offer. It's their own personal choice no matter how beneficial or not it may or may not be. Is there a reason you don't want them to join when you yourself did so? You were their age when you left."

"It's not that I have a reason for them to not join." Asuma said with an exasperated look on his face, "It's Ino. Inoichi told me she didn't take the whole 'breakup' of the team very well until he was able to explain things to her the right way. And now there's a chance they'll be gone for years?" If Naruto and Shikamaru left, or even one of them went, that was not a conversation or an explanation he wanted to be anywhere near. Talk about uncomfortable.

That little bit of reasoning put a dry look on Jiraiya's face, "So the reason you don't want two of your students, that are legally adults by way of their occupation, to try and go for a huge opportunity is because you're afraid of a twelve or thirteen year old, 4'8, 80 pound girl. Yeah, that's manly Asuma."

Instead of rising to the insult, Asuma just stared at him before responding, "And how old was Tsunade when she beat you nearly to death again? She won't touch me, it's Naruto and Shikamaru I'd be worried about in that scenario." Being a girl didn't disqualify Ino from being able to kick the crap out of Naruto and Shikamaru if she was distraught. He had more than enough experience with dangerous women to understand as much.

"I think you are underestimating your students for multiple reasons in this regard." Hiruzen said to Asuma, "But be that as it may there is plenty of time for this situation to flesh itself out. There's no sense of urgency for the deadline yet as long as it is decided within six months." He had given Ino her promotion not just because of her performance, but because he saw incredible potential for growth in her. That much was evident by the way she learned to fight that was completely unconventional for Yamanaka Clan ninja. She was strong, even if she didn't know it herself.

Back to the topic at hand though, Jiraiya nodded, knowing the deadline, "I'll do my best to steer him that way, but he might get belligerent if he really doesn't want to go. I know that much about the kid at least so I'm not going to hammer the point into his head, I'm not his father, I can't tell him to really do anything." He idly wondered what Naruto's father _would_ have done about it or how he would have felt in the first place upon hearing that his son had gotten an offer as a guard from the daimyo.

Heh, his mother's reaction would probably be far more amusing in contrast, rest their souls.

They would definitely be proud of him though, and that's what mattered.

"Likewise." Asuma said, crossing his arms over his chest as he stood idly, "If it happens it happens. If not, well whatever. If you really want me to then I'll keep supervising select Team 10 missions though. They might like that anyway." And he would like it too, though he would never say so aloud.

As a matter of fact, a part of him would think it was cool if he had students that followed in his footsteps (inadvertently though) and became guards to the daimyo. Maybe if the Twelve Guardian Ninja hadn't been disbanded they would have had a shot at making it there as well? One could always speculate. And speculate he would. He had six months to think about the what-ifs.

* * *

Hey You're Not a Genius. Who Cares? Read This and You Won't Suck at Fuunjutsu (by Jiraiya)

The makings of a kinjutsu

Since at this point you will very soon begin learning exactly what it takes to begin fashioning your own seals of a personal nature (a very long and arduous process I might add) I figured it would be prudent to enlighten the ignorant masses, i.e. you, on what a kinjutsu is since there is always a possibility that your tinkering with seals will end in the creation of one. Seals seem to have that kind of effect on people; coming up with asinine suicide ideas.

A kinjutsu is basically a forbidden technique. Using a kinjutsu is frowned upon and in some cases outright banned from being taught or used.

There are multiple reasons for banning a technique.

It could be too costly and run too high a risk of harming the user. A few of the higher level seals one could come into learning fall here such as the vaunted Shiki Fuujin (Dead Demon Consuming Seal) that will outright kill you. Another example of a kinjutsu of a self-harming nature would be the use of the Eight Gates, it destroys your body simply for unlocking them even though the temporary physical boost can be crushing.

So in order to figure out whether or not _you've_ invented a kinjutsu you should adhere to the following checklist.

-Does your jutsu cause extreme harm to yourself whenever you try to activate it, possibly to the point of long-standing or permanent damage, shortening of lifespan, or worst-case scenario death?

-Does knowledge of said jutsu give the user an ultimate ace-in-the-hole that would be rampantly unfair if too many knew it themselves. I mean the kind of jutsu that if it were common knowledge to all it would change the way the shinobi world operated altogether. That kind of unfair.

-Does your jutsu cause mass amounts of gratuitous destruction? Even more than the usual destruction wrought by many types of ninjutsu?

-Does your jutsu change the physical properties of things to something unnatural?

-Does your jutsu have the potential for misdeeds? All techniques have the potential for misdeeds given their usage, but I mean does your jutsu instantly do something deplorable that would cause a person to turn their head in horror, disgust, etc? _Besides_ the killing of your target of course.

-Does your jutsu violate the laws of nature? Like bringing back the dead to walk amongst the living kind of violate.

If you can emphatically answer yes to any one of these questions then congratulations, you've just created a kinjutsu! Well done on your achievement, I'm quite certain it was very difficult. Now prepare to lock that jutsu away in the confines of your mind never to be seen by anyone that could possibly utter a word of its existence forever more. The less people that know of your abomination to the arts passed down to us from the Rikudou Sennin the better, but the thing about forbidden techniques is that someone always finds out about them somehow.

When the news of your new deadly, deadly forbidden jutsu drops to your superiors just say it was an accident and you won't do it again. You're lying of course, and you're definitely going to do it again especially after seeing what it did firsthand, but they don't need to know that.

* * *

**Chapter complete. So yeah, that's what's going on. The underlying plot of the next story arc that will see experience being obtained is set. So enjoy that tension once Ino actually learns of such and such. Either way, it should be some fun stuff in addition to the upfront story stuff. Not fun for the characters involved, but they're fictional so too bad for them. They should have been real.**

**My head hurts, my right hand hurts, and I desperately want to go spar with someone despite my injuries, but I cannot until further notice. I guess I'll have to… *sigh* study.**

**Anyway, hope you enjoy, Kenchi out.**


	34. Growing Pains

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'm feeling alright right now. I feel like there's potential that everything'll be coming up 'Kenchi' rather soon if you know what I'm saying. This is the week I turn my luck around! Just wait and see! The world's gonna love me!

Because everybody loves Kenchi618!

…No they don't… but that's okay too, everyone has an opinion.

I forgot what the original point of this disclaimer was.

Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 34: Growing Pains**

* * *

A few miles outside of Konoha, on a day trip if you will, Naruto stood next to Jiraiya staring up at a very large cliff with a blank look on his face. Every so often he would blink, but other than that he did not move and he did not speak, seemingly stunned into silence by what Jiraiya was more or less telling him.

Eventually he turned his head to the side and Jiraiya stopped looking up the cliff as well to meet the diminutive chunin's gaze, "So you were joking about that new training exercise, right? You don't really expect me to do that."

"Not yet." Jiraiya admitted, "But eventually, and by eventually I mean within a year or so give or take a month or two, you will be pulling this off the way it was intended to be done. Ask me how I know." He knew, because he was going to make Naruto train his ass off to ensure that he could finish this exercise. He needed to get the brat ready to defend himself against tougher foes, even if he hadn't told Naruto what was to be coming yet, "It'll improve your strength and discipline. You have a good amount of one but you're sorely lacking in the other. Guess which."

Naruto gestured brazenly to the large cliff face, "You want me to climb this thing with one arm? What the hell do you think I'm made of Ero-sensei?"

"A lot of complaining bitch apparently…" Jiraiya muttered to himself before speaking up so that Naruto could clearly hear him, "I'm not saying that you have to do it now, but you're going to have to eventually, once per arm, so I'd find some way to practice safely until you get all of the scaredy-cat out of your system because I will be making you do this on _this_ cliff eventually."

"Who can climb this thing with one arm?" Naruto asked in a skeptical manner, wanting to see the person that could do such a thing.

At that moment, Kakashi dropped down from the cliff into Jiraiya and Naruto's view nearby from where he had been climbing, dusting his pants off with a relieved sigh before freeing the arm that had been tied behind his back. He saw Naruto and Jiraiya and waved at them as he walked over, "Oh hello Naruto, Jiraiya-sama. What are you two doing this far out of Konoha? I thought I was the only one that trained here like this… except for when Gai catches me on the way out of the village of course."

Training with Gai on the cliff was a total pain in the ass for Kakashi. Talk about going above and beyond what's required…

Naruto pointed lamely at the masked jounin, "Uh, did you just climb that cliff?" Kakashi nodded in confirmation, "One handed?" Another nod from Kakashi, "Huh…" He turned to Jiraiya who had a victorious look on his face and sighed, "Fine… give me some time to train for it." How long did he have to practice to learn how to climb a huge cliff with one hand? How did he even prepare for something like that?

"No." Jiraiya said sarcastically with a dry look on his face, "I wasn't going to let you actually train for this to get ready. I was just going to tie a hand behind your back, shove you up the cliff as far as you could go and wish you the best of luck before you fell hundreds of feet to your death." He began walking back towards Konoha, only taking Naruto out there in the first place to show him the site of his next big challenge from his teacher, "Stupid brat… acting like I don't know what I'm doing." He turned back to make sure Naruto heard his next words, "I've trained a Hokage brat! A Hokage!"

Taking offense to that, Naruto balled his fists at Jiraiya before turning to glare at the cliff. Kakashi kneeled down closer to Naruto's level getting the attention of the blonde young man, "What's up Kakashi-sensei?" He asked, as Kakashi had always been very cool to him.

"How's life as a chunin?" Kakashi asked with an eye-smile, "Sasuke's just chomping at the bit to get a tougher mission these days, he's going a little stir crazy, but he's almost done healing so I've thought about getting another mission soon. How are you doing?"

Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as he and Kakashi began walking back to Konoha since Jiraiya had seen fit to let Naruto head back with the sensei of Team 7, "Well Ino and Shikamaru have been training with their parents… a lot. We haven't really gone on any missions together since we got promoted." Naruto just kept busy with his own training and picking up solo D-ranks to stash some cash away for his rent, he wasn't going to get caught with his pants down on that front again.

"You don't have to wait for Shikamaru and Ino's schedules to clear up." Kakashi said matter-of-factly.

"I know." Naruto admitted as he fell into step comfortably with Kakashi. While he wasn't the man's student he felt comfortable around him for some reason. He had felt just that in Nami no Kuni, and at that moment he felt the same way, "But it's kind of personal you know? I want to try another C-rank mission but we started together, it would be weird if I took my first mission as a chunin without them. I bet that sounds pretty stupid doesn't it?"

"Not really." Kakashi said in a comforting manner, "It's actually kind of admirable. But you know that for all that's well and good with your team and your friends you each have to grow in your own way. It's insulting to yourselves and to each other to hang on too tightly, it's like you believe none of you can succeed without the other."

Looking up at Kakashi as he heard the man's words he frowned. It seemed like he was doing that more than smiling these days after receiving his promotion and it had only been a week going on two at that point, "That's not true. I know we're all strong."

"You're all responsible enough to be chunin apparently." Kakashi said with a shrug, "But going on at least your first few missions with your normal team would probably help you adjust so it's good foresight if nothing else. Don't worry too much about it." Even though he was not Naruto's assigned sensei he felt a sense of responsibility for him, and he'd be damned if he wouldn't give the boy some advice at least to nudge him along.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Konoha Cemetary)

Naruto had walked through the rows of simple graves with the names of those buried there and a smile came to his face as he located the single grave he had come to notice at heart whenever visiting. After the exams ended and things calmed down he decided to try and locate whatever he could of his clan. If he was in the village that meant that someone else had to be as well. He found an Uzumaki Mito in the section set aside for those of great importance in the past but after much painstaking searching he found the one he had originally intended to search for after finally hounding the name of his mother out of the Hokage.

He sat down cross-legged in front of the grave marked Uzumaki Kushina, his smile still pasted on his face. It wasn't exactly how he had always wished he'd meet her, but it was way better than his previous alternative of not knowing anything period, "Hi mom." He said, trying to speak to her as if she were there, "Sorry I didn't come here right after I found out your name and everything… I was kind of busy with the chunin exams and all of that. Heh, and I kicked some ass too. You'd have thought it was great, dattebayo!" He got a little excited before calming himself back down.

He had a name to put with a silhouette that he saw in his mind every so often when trying to think of his parents. If only he had a picture though, that would have been outstanding. Was his mom pretty? Was she a nice person? He bet she was probably a cool ninja. He had to get it from somewhere right? And their clan used to be famous so there was that too.

He didn't know how long he sat there, but he felt someone's presence walk up behind him, getting him to turn his head to see Tsunade standing there with a set of fresh flowers in hand, "Tsunade-baachan? What are you doing here?"

'Again with the grandma thing…' Tsunade thought to herself, fighting down some ire. The first time he said it, it was understandable due to the fact that she had been antagonizing him but now they were at the very least cordial. She had healed him, they had been peaceful all the way back to Konoha… what was with the nasty nickname? Stupid brat, "I can go anywhere I want brat. You're not the only person with people here to visit." Her eyes panned down to the name on the grave in front of him, "Your mother?"

Naruto nodded and stood up, not that it really hampered the fact that she still stood over him considerably. Was he really going to get an eyeful of cleavage every time he tried to look straight ahead at her up close? Meh, he needed to stop thinking about that crap. He wasn't Jiraiya after all so it was time to get back on topic, "Yeah. I never got to meet her or anything but I thought it wouldn't hurt to come out here, you know?"

A frown came over Tsunade's face, "Sorry brat. I don't think I ever met her before I left the village with Shizune. You could ask her about it but I think she was too young to remember someone older than her like your mother."

Oh well, eventually he'd find out something more about her, and his dad too. There was more hope of that now than ever before as far as Naruto was concerned. He looked at the flowers in Tsunade's hands and made an observation, "Are you here to visit a grave too?"

Tsunade nodded and looked over in the direction she had been heading in before she ran into Naruto, "Yes. I already visited two other graves before this, but I still have one more to see before I can leave." She let out a sigh and shook her head, "It's been a really long time."

"Well who'd you come to see?" Naruto asked bluntly.

Why was she about to tell this to some kid like Naruto? No, he wasn't just some kid. He was an Uzumaki so they were technically connected even if the lineage was murky. That was something… maybe, "I came to see the grave of my little brother Nawaki and a man named Dan. He was Shizune's uncle, and she's still with Tonton at his grave right now if you want to know where she is to say hello." She didn't really want to give Naruto exact specifics on what her relationship was with Dan, no way a kid needed to know anything like that.

Naruto nodded in understanding before turning his attention back to the flowers that Tsunade had, "But you still have one bouquet. Are you looking for someone else? Do you need some help?"

Tsunade blinked before smirking at Naruto and putting a hand on his head to ruffle his hair, "Nope, I know where I'm going kid. As a matter of fact I'm almost there too. You want to see?" Naruto looked around unsurely before nodding, "Well then come with me." She said, leading Naruto off a little bit further into section set aside for great village heroes and the like, "Uzumaki. You know your clan used to be the driving force of a whole village? They had half the ninja world shaking in their boots for a while."

"What happened exactly?" Naruto asked, not only trying to make small talk, but because he also had no idea what had happened.

Instead of a straight answer though, Tsunade shook her head, "Beats me. It went down during the Second Shinobi World War. They were helping us in our battles, opening a new front and sending ninja to prevent Kumo from sneaking in the back door while we were fighting all out against Suna and Iwa. It worked, but they were weakened and a sneak attack from the east by Kiri took them down."

Great, more cloak and dagger crap from twenty plus years ago. Maybe his mother had records in the library that he could look up? It couldn't hurt to try at some point since he wanted to know more about her anyway.

Naruto let out a grunt, acknowledging that he heard and understood before he realized that they hadn't travelled too terribly far from where his mother had been buried, but the grave of who Tsunade had come to see gave him some pause, "Senju Hashirama, The Shodai Hokage?"

"Yeah." Tsunade said nonchalantly as she lay the flowers she had down in front of the large and very beautiful grave, "What, you're saying I can't visit my grandfather's grave? Next you're going to tell me I can't visit Tobi-oojisan's grave because he was the Nidaime Hokage." She seemed to ignore Naruto's follow-up slack-jawed stare but wasn't above picking with him, "You should probably shut that unless you're practicing some kind of new beginner toad sage training… and you don't even summon Jiraiya's toads."

Naruto's mouth shut with a snap before he started pummeling himself in the head to clear his thoughts, 'Gah, this is just too weird? Why do I know so many important people? Ero-sensei's Sarutobi-jiji's student, Asuma-sensei is Sarutobi-jiji's son, Tsunade-baachan is Sarutobi-jiji's other student _and_ she's related to two of the other three Hokage we've had?'

An amused look came over Tsunade's face as she literally watched Naruto beat himself up before stopping him from bruising his poor face any longer, "I can't in good conscience let you beat yourself up like that, I'm a medic-nin after all." She said, grabbing one of his hands to prevent him from doing just that. Tsunade then looked at the grave of the Shodai Hokage again, "Hashi-Ojiisan and Tobi-oojisan both died in battle… my little brother did too… and so did Dan. All of them either wanted to be or actually were Hokage. That was why I said what I did to you. A kid like you doesn't need to go out on their shield like that."

Well at least she wasn't flat out cutting him down. Was she trying to advise him? In the hospital in Tetsu no Kuni after the exams she seemed way snippier about trying to get him to realize that being Hokage was a bum job. Maybe it was because it was just the two of them?

XxX

(A While Later – Village Streets)

After they had all finished up with their time at the graveyard, Naruto, Tsunade, and Shizune with Tonton in tow walked back through the village together since they were going the same way for the time being.

Naruto had to admit that Tsunade really wasn't that bad though, first impressions aside. She was just a little bitter and it seemed that being in the village again after so long was making her nicer and keeping her calm. She'd have never admitted it though… and even Shizune seemed happier to be back because she couldn't help but look absolutely radiant just to be walking around.

Speaking of which though…

"Hey Tsunade-baachan?" Naruto asked as he held his hands up behind his neck lazily, eyes squinting for no particular reason. He heard Tsunade grunt in response but was unable to see her steadily shaking fists at her sides as they continued to walk, "You said you were only coming back to get your money for healing us all after the exams, so why are you still here? It's been two weeks."

Tsunade, having long since fought down her urge to pick Naruto up by the collar of his flak jacket and chuck him through the front window display of a nearby store, merely sighed and wondered if he would ever stop calling her 'Tsunade-baachan'. It was going to wear on her last nerve sooner rather than later, "Sarutobi-sensei is sandbagging his shit with the pay… doing it in installments. He probably thinks that the longer I wait here the more I'll want to stay once he finishes paying me."

"Is it working?" Naruto asked with a grin. Shizune listened intently as well, interested in the answer for her own reasons.

"Hell no." Was the effortlessly uttered answer from Tsunade, "Sensei can play the little waiting game all he wants. When that last ryo drops into my hand I'll be out of here within two days. Mark my words."

Though she made certain not to let Tsunade see it, Shizune had a deadpan look on her face, 'Hokage-sama knows what he's doing more than he thinks. He's paying you in installments so that you can wear the money down before he gives you more. There's a good chance you'll splurge too much before he finishes paying you and we won't be able to leave… especially if you remember where the gambling places in town are.' Tsunade wasn't giving Hiruzen enough credit. For as nice as the old man usually was he could be downright devious if he felt the need, 'There's a reason I try to handle most of the money we come across Tsunade-sama.' She thought to herself.

She wasn't about to voice it out loud though. Shizune wanted to stay in Konoha for as long as possible. She had really been homesick and she hadn't realized it until they had returned and started staying in Tsunade's old clan home for the time being. The more time there the better as far as she was concerned, and as far as Tsunade went it was doing her good as well.

The group kept walking in silence until an ear-piercing scream broke through the tranquility, not only stopping them but alarming everyone else on the street at the high-pitched noise, "Oh my gosh I can't be that lucky! It's Tsunade-sama!"

Hearing the young feminine voice put Tsunade on guard as she started looking around rapidly, almost in fear, "No, no, no. Come on brat, Shizune, we need to get out of here now."

"Why?" Naruto said before releasing a pulse of his location jutsu and smiling at the person he sensed coming their way, "It's just Tenten." He then turned in the appropriate direction on the street and began waving, "Oi, over here Tenten! What's up?" Due to turning his back he missed Tsunade rapidly waving her arms as if to beg off from seeing Tenten.

The crowds in the street split as the bun-haired chunin kunoichi blazed right through them and stopped right in front of the pair of medics and her fellow chunin, "Naruto, hey. What are you doing with Tsunade-sama?"

A shrug was his answer, "Just walking back from somewhere. We just ran into each other. Where were you?"

"With Lee, Neji, and Gai-sensei." Tenten said, looking over her shoulder and wondering how far back she left them, "Oh, but I still have some things to talk to Tsunade-sama about. I'm glad I was able to find her again."

Tsunade on the other hand was not that pleased. On the way back from the chunin exam finals when Tenten had learned that Tsunade would be travelling with them to Konoha she didn't shut up for hours at a time, day after day, 'What could she possibly have to ask me now? For fuck's sake girl!' She took an involuntary step back when Tenten's eyes turned from Naruto to her. That shine simply could not be natural, "I just remembered… I had to meet with Sarutobi-sensei about something… secret sannin stuff. No kids allowed." She said, pointing towards the direction of the Hokage Tower, "So… sorry, maybe next time!" She said before running off and not turning back.

Shizune just stared at the place Tsunade had just been standing in and then at the direction she ran off towards, "…The tower isn't even in that direction." She muttered while Naruto and Tenten looked on in confusion, "Well kids, I have to go too. Places to go and people to see while I still can." Shizune finished with a smile before heading off to see if she could find anymore of her old friends. This return to Konoha was just great.

Tenten just turned towards Naruto who merely shrugged in response as to what had just happened.

XxX

(Konoha Hospital)

Training without Kakashi overseeing Team 7's every move went well… for a while. Then it went south rather quickly and all hell broke loose, leading to the obligatory visit to the hospital. And two of them had just been in the hospital not too long ago.

Sakura sat in a chair, waiting in a room set aside for her and her two teammates Chouji and Sasuke, "You two really should stop training the way you do." She chided at the two sitting and waiting with burns covering their bodies also with some covering her own, "You had the one jutsu that worked, and I swear I have no idea how you two managed to pull it off without roasting Chouji alive, but trying another one is really pushing it isn't it?"

"There's no such thing as pushing too far when it comes to training Sakura." Sasuke said in his own defense, "We're going to be going on harder and harder missions now because I got promoted." He'd be damned if he ever took another D-rank mission again. There was no way he'd get strong enough for his ambition if he was stuck doing odd jobs and chores, and damn it he was going to make sure that Sakura and Chouji wouldn't fall along the wayside on his way up. When Kakashi was gone he was in charge, and on those days when he was in charge of training it would be a hell day.

He would make sure they worked to the bone to improve, and Chouji had already made mammoth strides since they had become a team. He wasn't as lazy and as passive as he had first appeared. Chouji was still kind of soft but at the beginning he had been comparable to a wad of cookie dough, now he wasn't necessarily as hard as a diamond, but he had more than a little substance to him. He didn't even complain about or shirk away from the rough training Sasuke did anymore.

Sakura was still Sakura, but by now Sasuke had gotten used to her. Now, especially after the chunin exam she was more of a nag instead of a hanger-on, and in his opinion both were equally annoying. Still, she trained, she was effective now, and that was all he had asked for out of a team in the first place; people that wouldn't get in his way. It took nearly six months but it happened eventually.

Instead of just accepting Sasuke's previous explanation as to why the two young men were currently in the hospital, Sakura puffed her cheeks out and stood up with her hands on her hips, "You tried to use your fire jutsu with the wires to make a fire trap with Chouji as a boulder of death on the inside." It was either put Chouji and the wires out immediately or burn down their whole training ground and none of the three got away unscathed.

Chouji gingerly touched at one of the burns from said attempt at a new dual strategy before speaking up, "Hey, that could actually work Sakura… it went fine until I bounced off of the wires and set myself on fire."

Sakura palmed her face hard and sat back down in her chair, "Just be more careful. I'm not really a fan of hospital visits if you haven't noticed." On the inside she was thinking of something else entirely, **'I wonder if Ino-pig has to deal with this kind of crap on her team? Boys are such raging idiots! The dumbasses!'**

The door to the room opened up and in walked the medic-nin that was assigned to take care of their minor wounds, "Okay, it seems like you guys have a simple case of first degree burns. We can handle that quickly and you can be on your way."

"Kabuto-san." Sakura said, happy to see a familiar face in a place like the hospital, "What are you doing here? Are you our doctor?"

Kabuto looked up and smiled at seeing Team 7 as his patients, "Oh, hi there guys. Funny seeing you here. You all sure like playing with fire don't you?" He tried to joke before setting his clipboard aside and moving towards Chouji to inspect his injuries, "Yeah. I haven't really been assigned to a proper team. I guess I'll just be drifting around until further notice. In the meantime I decided I should try and take up some work in probably the only thing that I seemed to be good at."

'Being a medic-nin.' Sasuke thought to himself with a nod, and he had to admit that it was probably for the best that Kabuto was not a part of an active genin squad. He may have had his uses, but he showed that in a fight against a strong opponent he didn't have much to offer. He saw Kabuto fumble through the hand-seals for Shousen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Jutsu) and watched the jutsu activate, letting out a nearly silent grunt as he had neglected to turn his Sharingan on. It was just as well, he probably would have messed up the control aspect needed for the jutsu anyway. He wasn't a healer.

"Well it's good to be useful somehow." Sakura said, trying to be supportive even if she felt along the same lines as Sasuke, "Being a medic-nin is a good career to have."

Finishing his touch-up of Chouji's burns and letting the boy wrap his hands and arms back up, Kabuto turned to Sakura and began healing her with a smile, "That's the idea. If I can't fight then I might as well fix the ones that do. I don't think I'll go very far in this either though. My control is kind of good, but it's not _that_ good. I practiced my ass off just to get good enough to heal these kind of injuries. If I had better control I'd have tried to learn a genjutsu or two."

A soothing feeling spread over Sakura as Kabuto's healing jutsu took the sting out of her burns and made them almost nonexistent. She then remembered just how incredible it looked to see Tsunade and Shizune heal Sasuke and Chouji after the end of the exams, "Well medical ninjutsu is an amazing art in my opinion. Hey, have you ever thought of asking Tsunade-sama for lessons or something?"

"She's kind of hard to approach." Kabuto said sheepishly, ending his session with Sakura, "On the way back from Tetsu no Kuni I tried, but I couldn't get a word in edgewise because that Tenten girl was taking all of her time. Then when I did get a moment to talk to her she was so edgy I wussed out."

A bad excuse in Sasuke's opinion and he frowned at hearing that. Being arbitrarily unnerved by the mere presence of strong people was no way to improve. How else did anyone get stronger or better? By seeking out those perceived as being better than them and overcoming them or learning from them. If Sasuke had been in Kabuto's shoes he would have marched right up to Tsunade and asked what he needed of her, consequences be damned. He would do what he had to do.

But he wasn't about to spout off advice to a genin that was older than him. If he didn't get it by then and needed a rookie to point things like that out to him then Sasuke saying anything would change absolutely nothing about him.

Kabuto made sure Sakura was all set before nodding at his own handiwork and turning to Sasuke, "Okay Sasuke-kun, your turn." Sasuke let out a grunt and held out his arms for Kabuto to begin healing, "So when are you going to try and take your first mission as a chunin?" He asked, trying to make small talk.

'As soon as I'm sure Sakura and Chouji can totally handle it.' Sasuke thought to himself with a scowl before taking back his own thought, 'No, screw that, we're good as we are. We can take a mission now. All I need is Kakashi's permission.' With that in mind he spoke up to answer Kabuto's question, "The end of the week… if you guys are ready for it."

"It couldn't possibly go any worse than the mission with Tazuna…" Chouji mused before smiling, "I guess I'm in." Sakura nodded out her consent as well after hearing Chouji express his own.

"Good." Sasuke said, content with the reactions of his teammates. They'd finally be getting some activity and he was actually excited about it, "Let's talk to Kakashi about it after we see him tomorrow."

Kabuto only looked at the team as he finished up his work on Sasuke, "Well good luck to you guys when you set out. I'll be rooting for you."

XxX

(Five Days Later – Mission Assignment Desk)

"I'm glad you guys could finally had time to go get a mission with me. I was sick of doing solo D-ranks and I was this close to… ugh… looking for Sasuke to take a mission with." Naruto said, rather excited about the forthcoming work guaranteed for him as he was intentionally picking with Shikamaru and Ino. There was a grin on his face as they walked through the halls on the way to the assignment room to get some work, "This isn't messing up what you guys were working on is it?"

Shikamaru shook his head as he had his hands shoved into his pants pockets, "Actually when you sent your clone to look for me my mom was just looking for an excuse to kick me out of the house for a while." His training for the jutsu his father had given him wasn't exactly movement intensive, something that irked his mother to no end since the training had begun, "Troublesome woman…"

"She seemed nice enough to me." Naruto commented in response to the lazy chunin. Nara Yoshino was pretty nice to his clone that morning for having never personally met the woman himself. She even offered to feed the clone some breakfast, and if it hadn't been under strict orders to do its job and dispel it would have taken her up on that offer.

"Because you're not her kid." Shikamaru said, "That's another story though."

Ino chimed in at that point, bumping Shikamaru with her elbow, "Oh please. If you showed some initiative instead of being a lazy-ass all the time Yoshino would be sweet to you all the time. You'd think that by now you'd see how your dad gets by acting like you and you'd get your crap together."

"Too much work…" Was the immediate response from Shikamaru. Underachieving was his calling in life. It may have been easy work, but someone had to do it, and he was just the man for the job.

"You're hopeless…" Ino remarked with a shake of her head and ponytail, "Slacking your tail off isn't any way to get ahead… but you were promoted so I guess this will have to do for now." With that being said and the doorway to the assignment room being open, she pumped her fist excitedly, "Alright, let's get this show on the road! I'm so ready for the mission! No more crappy D-ranks-!"

"-Unless one of us is short on rent money for the month!" Naruto finished in her stead, stealing her thunder with a fist pump of his own before realizing that he had taken all of the air out of the moment, "…I'm just saying. But yeah, mission time. Let's roll, dattebayo!"

As they reached the desk, one of the attendants there to hand out missions had an amused smile on his face, "I heard you. So since you guys are 'above' D-ranks now which one do you want? C-rank or B-rank missions are your choices and we're pretty up on those missions for the time being."

"Ooh, ooh! B-rank!" Naruto said, and he would have raised his hand like he was in school had Ino grabbed his arm to keep him from doing so, "I want to try one of those!"

"Well it's a good thing I feel like going with you then isn't it?"

The trio of kids turned around to see Asuma standing there looking down at them, "Asuma-sensei?" Naruto and Ino said while Shikamaru just looked on in interest of their genin squad commander showing up before their mission.

"Yes, it is me. It is I." Asuma said, placing a cigarette into his mouth casually, "The honorable and superb standout Konoha jounin Sarutobi Asuma. But then again we've already met haven't we kids?" He finished with a grin, "Yo. Long time no see."

While Ino and Naruto just grinned at the turn of events, Shikamaru decided that he would have to be the one to speak for his excited blonde teammates, "So what's going on Asuma, what are you doing here? We thought that after we all got promoted that freed you back up from running our squad again."

"It did." Asuma admitted before lighting his cigarette, "And since I'm free, I'm free to take this mission… if you'll have me as your commander at least one more time."

"Hell yes we'll have you as our commander one last time." Naruto blurted out abruptly as Asuma walked forward to the assignment table and plucked up a B-rank scroll from what was shown to be available to Team 10. Having Asuma command the team also took out the awkward moment of deciding which of the three chunin would wind up running the show so to speak, so that was one bit of possible unpleasantness that could be put off until later in Shikamaru-like fashion.

Opening the scroll, Asuma read through the specifics of the mission they had just accepted before committing it to memory and passing it between Ino, Shikamaru, and Naruto, "Well it looks like we're heading to Cha no Kuni (Land of Tea) to meet up with our client. Do you have all of that down?" He asked after giving them time to read through the scroll themselves.

All three of the young chunin nodded in response.

"Which one of you doesn't know where we're going?"

Eyes turned to Naruto, getting him to glare at his teammates and team captain, "And just what does that mean? Of course I know where we're going. We're going west toward the sea." He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but by now he would have figured that if they knew something they could have bet on him knowing it too. Having it crammed into his head for a week straight did wonders for basic knowledge. Belatedly though because he then realized that the sea was _east_ from Konoha, not west, "…Oh you guys suck."

Asuma held his hands up defensively before grinning and turning to leave the room, getting the team to follow him out on the way to their next mission.

XxX

(Two Days Later – Ta no Kuni/Hi no Kuni Border Area)

"Come on you guys." Kakashi said in an almost chipper mood as he led the way through the forests of the area, Team 7 at his back, "A quick strafe of the border and we can start heading back to Konoha by tomorrow. In and out in a week. An easy observation mission."

While Sasuke remained silent, diligently keeping his eyes peeled in case of (in hope of) an enemy attack of some sort he voiced his thoughts on the mission, "Why are we even here Kakashi?" He asked the masked Sharingan-user, "Scouting out the border of a country I've never even tried to hear about?" The place was called Ta no Kuni (Land of Rice Fields)… that didn't really sound like any kind of place where all the action would be in Sasuke's opinion.

Apparently that was what they would get when Kakashi was allowed to select the mission; a trip to the ass end of nowhere to do a whole lot of nothing. If this was what Sasuke wanted to do then he would have thrown his name into the rotation for border patrol duty, as boring as that job was. Sakura and Chouji didn't seem to have any issues with the mission, but then again their blood didn't routinely cry out for battle the way Sasuke's did.

"I kind of want to know why this is a mission for us too Kakashi-sensei." Sakura said as Team 7 continued to make their ways through the branches of the woods, "I've never heard of, well… anything ever happening in this country."

"That's why it's only C-ranked Sakura." Kakashi attempted to explain, "There's a few rumblings of trouble going on from this country, rumors anyway, and there's also word that the entire country is going to change its name from Ta no Kuni to Oto no Kuni (Land of Sound).

Something about that piqued Chouji's attention, "You mean 'Oto', like that weird village Otogakure. We fought that one team from that village in the exams. Are we going to look for that village or something?"

Kakashi shook his head, "We don't know where it is, not even a general idea. No one does. No one even knows any ninja of note from the village, nor does anyone know who runs it… if it even has anyone running it at all. For all we know it could be anarchy ruling supreme above all else with them. But that's not the mission. We're just here to observe any possible trouble since the sudden changes this place seems to be taking are strange."

Searching for a hidden village was more than a rookie chunin and two rookie genin were meant to handle. Maybe if he was alone Kakashi could say that it was the mission, but he was with the kids, therefore this mission had parameters and looking around for a mystery village was not it. That was A-rank at least due to the total lack of any kind of information to go off of. Way too dangerous for any greenhorns, talented though they may be.

They were just meant to survey the countryside and that was it. A once-around of the border area and back, a trip that would take a day, and then they would head back home which would take another day. With the two days they had already been out the mission would wrap up within the week. Simple.

But he had seen Sasuke scowling every now and then, obviously bored and having expected more action for a mission that was intended to be C-rank. He needed to take a note from Chouji, perhaps the most chill person on the team aside from Kakashi himself. There wasn't always going to be a fight and there wasn't a need to be so bloodthirsty and wish to battle all the time. There was plenty of time for that and once it started it wasn't going to be stopping anytime soon. And here he thought he would have been the perfect teacher to show Sasuke how to take things easy.

Oh well. He couldn't afford to think about how to get Sasuke to mellow out more, there was still work to do. Even though things were quiet, borders were hotspots. They probably weren't the only ones scouting the other side. After the exams tons of villages probably figured that it would be worthwhile to check out the new village on the map, figuratively speaking of course. There was a chance of a run-in with any number of shinobi from other neighboring countries.

Not to mention the possibility of Otogakure having a few ninja of their own dispatched. There was always a chance of something hitting the fan at some point.

XxX

(Nightfall – With Team 10 – Cha no Kuni – Degarashi Port)

The contingent of Konoha ninja entered the bustling port town and immediately began seeking out their contact for the mission. Fortunately for them it was easy enough because upon getting a certain way into town the groups of toughs that populated the streets at the moment and had their eyes on them the entire time began to encircle them. The normal citizens moved right out of the way as this occurred, leaving Team 10 surrounded by dozens.

"So we got called here just to get trapped by some thugs?" Shikamaru said, already feeling annoyed by the mission.

Naruto on the other hand cracked his knuckles deviously, "Maybe this is the trouble that we're supposed to be handling? So… let's handle it." Before Naruto could make his Kage Bunshin hand-seal, Asuma kept him from jumping the gun and setting something off.

"No… These men work for our clients." Asuma said, letting Naruto go now that he had prevented him from beginning to lay down a clone-induced beating, "I guess in theory we _could_ beat them up and we could move along, but that wouldn't send the best first impression would it?"

Ino looked around at the glaring thugs and felt her own need to clear them out rise, "Maybe it would. If we beat them all senseless then that would show that we're the real deal. I vote for kicking the crap out of them if they don't get out of the way."

"What are ninja doing around these parts?" One of the thugs said, angry at Team 10's presence, "We don't need any around here so why don't you leave? We don't need any more of your destructive bullshit. You won't touch Boss Jirouchou's town!"

"It's Boss Kyuuroku's town, but I agree with ya otherwise you Wasabi bastard!"

A cheer went up among the men as they were determined to be good underlings to their respective superiors and stanch the ninja threat to the town until Asuma calmly spoke up again, "If you're talking about Wasabi Jirouchou and Wagarashi Kyuuroku then you should know that they're the ones that hired Konoha ninja for this mission."

The thugs seemed to calm down at that revelation as another one of them spoke up, "Uh, you guys are from Konoha?"

Naruto and Asuma flicked their headband's metal plates while Ino did the same with hers tied around her waist and Shikamaru did the same with his wrapped around his arm, making a 'pinging' noise.

And that got the masses to clear away from them with great haste. Asuma rolled his eyes and decided that enough was enough, "Listen! We're here and we're ready to get down to work! So if you want us to try and go out to solve whatever your problem is you need to take us to our clients!" The authority and aura coming from Asuma got many of them to pause and freeze in place until he barked loudly again, "Any time now would be great!"

With that they scattered and ran towards the direction that was figured to be where they would have to go to find the clients for their mission.

Ino stared at the panicked men running away and turned up to Asuma, "Wow sensei… I didn't think you had that in you. Who knew? Did they really make you that mad?"

"It wasn't really them that did it." Asuma admitted grumpily as he walked ahead, "I didn't restock my pockets with cigarettes before we left and I'm out… and Naruto's being stingy and not sharing his." Naruto stuck his tongue out at the back of Asuma's head but almost bit it when he felt the killing intent from his squad leader, "Being a chunin doesn't put you above an asskicking kid." He warned testily without turning back around.

"…Screw that, I only have the one pack… and it's not even full." Naruto said lowly as he and the others followed behind Asuma. He felt probably shouldn't try to smoke in Asuma's presence again until the man got his nicotine fix either way though.

XxX

The team wound up at a restaurant that had men from both the Wasabi and Wagarashi families outside just staring at each other in the form of a standoff of sorts, as if there was some kind of uneasy truce between enemies.

Once getting inside however, it was very much the same. Two long tables on two sides of the room with the men from one family sitting and the other family doing the same on the other side. It was silent as they all ate and glared at the other table, not taking their eyes off of the other side.

Asuma cleared his throat to get attention and all eyes turned towards Team 10. Ino backed up a step, moving behind both Naruto and Shikamaru as her human shields for the time being, "What's with this place? It looks like everyone's one step away from trying to kill each other."

"Welcome to Degarashi Port." The presumed leader of one side said as he stood up from his table. He seemed to be the leader because of the jacket he wore over his kimono attire. He had grey hair and a rather strong but kind appearance as compared to the man that looked to be the leader on the other side; a man with a spindly mustache, a wart above his left eye, a dark swindler-looking hairstyle, and a weasely look about him, "I am Wasabi Jirouchou of the Wasabi Family."

"And I am Wagarashi Kyuuroku of the Wagarashi Family." The weasely looking boss said, "The one who hired you." He finished with a grin that made the skin of the kids crawl.

Jirouchou shook his head at Kyuuroku's version of the introduction, "We both hired them together, because we realized that the problems going around the area were the concerns of both families."

Kyuuroku sat back on the cushion that was his seat with a sneer, "Yeah whatever. You simply know that your men weren't up to the task of actually handling the protection of Degarashi Port. I don't know why you still think you're in control of this town." He jabbed, getting his underlings to chuckle at the shot taken at their rivals.

"Yes…" Jirouchou said calmly with not a hint of anger in his voice, "Because your men were protecting your business interests so well, you didn't feel the need to hire a team from Konoha did you?" A wry grin then made its way to his face, "Oh wait, you did. As a matter of fact you were on the hook for half of the bill it took to hire this team."

In response to the dryly delivered comeback, Kyuuroku decided to take his attention off of the community leader and put it on the team that had come to accomplish the mission, "What is this? I paid good money and all that village could send me were a trio of screaming brats and their babysitter."

Ino, Naruto, and even Shikamaru took immediate offense to that before Asuma stepped in, "The vests that two of them are wearing indicate that they are chunin, advanced ninja. The girl isn't wearing hers but she's a chunin as well. They're actually qualified to take this mission on their own in all honesty. I'm just tagging along. I can assure you that we can get to the bottom of your issue."

"That's all I need to hear quite frankly." Jirouchou said amicably with a smile, "Since your other employer has not expressed any interest or confidence in your skill-set I believe that I will give you lodgings for the duration of your stay in our lands."

"Oh no you don't Wasabi!" Kyuuroku snapped suddenly, slamming his hands down on his table sharply, "Do you honestly think you can pull the wool over my eyes and get one over on me? You'll take the shinobi all for yourself and leave me defenseless to be killed the way you almost were the other night! I will not have it!"

Asuma could feel the tensions in the room rising as both sides seemed gearing up to fight for their family heads. It wouldn't do to have their clients kill each other on the first night, "It's fine. How about this? I'm a jounin so I myself will stay with Wagarashi-san. Anything that happens, I can handle it on my own. Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino are chunin and a well oiled unit as a team, so they will stick to Wasabi-san. Is this agreeable?"

Letting out a snort, Kyuuroku had to admit he felt like he had the better side of the deal. He would have a jounin to ensure that he was safe at all times while he could insist on Jirouchou letting one or two of the brats under his roof go search for the source of the region's trouble. And with one of the in his opinion lesser ninja guarding Jirouchou there was a better chance that in the case of an assassination attempt the attacker would succeed and thus wipe out his rival over control of Degarashi Port.

Yes, that arrangement would work out splendidly.

"It's fine with me." Kyuuroku said full of confidence.

Jirouchou nodded his consent and made a motion to one of the people at his table, "Yes, it works out just wonderfully. Jounin-san you can remain here with us and you may leave with Kyuuroku because he is so security conscious. Our young friends here will be seen to my home by Idate here."

Idate turned out to be a young man around Team 10's age with brown hair in a spiky ponytail and brown eyes. He wore a navy blue top with a high collar that had light blue long sleeves, navy blue shorts that were bandaged around his thighs, a yellow pack around his waist, and light blue leg warmers over his sandals.

Walking up to Team 10 with a displeased look on his face as he looked the lot of them over, he simply jerked his head and walked out with a click of his teeth, indicating that they were to follow him, "Blonde hottie and her two tagalongs…" He said, loosely addressing Ino, "Let's go."

Shikamaru sighed and rolled his eyes as they followed Idate out, 'Well isn't this mission starting out just swimmingly.'

XxX

Idate led Team 10 through the streets of Degarashi Port while they followed behind him, "Stupid Konoha ninja…" They heard him mutter to himself quietly, though it was obviously done loud enough to intentionally get their attention.

"Excuse me?" Ino said, stopping in her tracks and putting her hands on her hips with a glare on her face, "What the hell did we do to you to deserve that? We're here to try and help you? Hasn't your boss been getting attacked?"

"Yeah!" Idate said suddenly, rounding on the young chunin heatedly, "By ninja like you! I know how you operate, and those ambushes and all of the stuff that's been happening to the Wasabi Family at Degarashi Port is a ninja's work!"

Shikamaru didn't know what this guy's problem was, but it was killing the mellow vibe the rather calm night was giving him, "Listen up, I don't really care what your beef is, we're here to work and get out of your face. So why don't we all just let whatever issue this is drop?" Having Ino kill this kid in the street was not going to do anyone any favors.

"Wow…" Idate said snarkily, "What a _chunin_ thing to say. It looks like those vests aren't just something you two picked up at a novelty store. And what about you Sweetness?" He said to Ino with venom in his tone, "There a reason you don't prance around in your vest like the other two?"

Taking offense for Ino's sake, Naruto was about to knock Idate's block off. He really didn't like his damn attitude one bit and the way he was talking down an achievement that Naruto was extremely proud of wasn't helping matters either, "Well if you've got a problem with us then you can skulk around looking for someone else to kick the shit out of you… or you can keep running your mouth and I'll do it myself. Nobody talks about Ino-chan like that!"

Ino couldn't help but feel a smile come to her face at hearing Naruto defend her in his own blunt manner, 'Aw, Goldie-kun…'

"-Except for me, Sakura, and maybe Shikamaru if he feels like it!"

'Damn it Goldie-kun!' Ino thought to herself in a rather sour mood, pumping her fists heatedly out of sight of anyone else, 'It's always one step forward and another step back with you! And you were looking so cool for a minute there…'

Idate smirked at Naruto and opened his mouth again, but Shikamaru had been having a very long two day of travel, dealing with his two loudmouthed blonde friends, his nicotine-withdrawal enduring sensei, and a pace that he wasn't comfortable with because it involved him moving in a pace that was faster than a brisk walk. Some smart-mouthed attendant boy for some local town boss with a grudge against ninja and whose mouth wasn't as smart as he thought it was would wind up being the last straw for him.

"If you open your mouth and say one more stupid comment that we _didn't_ ask to hear from you I'll make you run headfirst into a brick wall until you forget your own name." Shikamaru said with an edge to his voice, "Now shut the hell up, take us to the house, and we'll never have to talk to each other again."

So now Idate had both Naruto and Shikamaru in the mood to stomp him out, and there was no one around on the street to help him if he kept spouting off. Feeling that discretion was the better part of valor, not that there was any to be had in this instance, he scoffed and turned to continue walking towards the Wasabi Family living area.

Shikamaru and Naruto simply stood in place, keeping glares trained on Idate's back until they were sure he wasn't going to spout off again. After both locking eyes for a moment and nodding to each other, they continued on and followed him.

That left Ino standing there blinking in a somewhat confused manner, "Wow… those two really got defensive over me." She'd probably clock them over their heads later and say that she didn't need them to defend her and she could have put Idate in check by herself, but for now it felt nice.

Continuing their walk through the night, Team 10 got a good look at the town that would be the center of their activities for the foreseeable future. A vacant lot with a rather large warehouse about to be constructed caught their eye for a moment but they turned away after observing the sight for a few seconds to take in the sight.

If there had been more light or if the moon had even been out that night then they would have been able to read the sign that was marking the site. And there were more than a few other signs like it in other areas of Degarashi Port where property was being bought out or being constructed.

"_Coming Soon: A Future Site of Gato Company."_

* * *

Omake: Training Day

"For the love of…" Kiba said, sitting on the forest floor with Akamaru in his lap as they both looked up at Naruto hanging from a tree branch, "Come on! You've been doing pull-ups for the last twenty minutes! Get your ass down here and spar with me and Akamaru already!"

Naruto didn't drop from the branch though, "I've got to climb a mountain one-handed! I'm not even able to do one-armed pull-ups yet!" He didn't even know how long he'd have to work to get that to happen.

"A mountain?" Kiba repeated incredulously while Akamaru whimpered accordingly, "Why the fuck are you going to climb a mountain? With one arm?"

"I don't know!" Naruto replied, struggling to pull himself up again, "But it's happening!"

"When?"

"I have no idea!"

"Dude, what?"

"That's the problem!" Naruto exclaimed loudly, finally losing his grip on the tree branch and dropping to the ground, "It could happen anytime. It could happen right now." He said, finishing his statement with a grave and serious tone.

"So why don't you just practice?"

That gave Naruto some pause for a moment as he stood and blinked at the dog-taming genin, "What? How? Anything high enough to practice on would kill me when I mess up."

Kiba just grinned in a confident manner and walked over to Naruto to give him a firm pat on the shoulder, "You just let me worry about that chum. Trust me, your old pal Kiba's got your back. I've got the perfect practice spot."

XxX

(A While Later – Hokage Monument)

"Fuck no I'm not climbing this!"

Kiba stared up from the bottom of the Hokage Monument as Naruto stood next to him glaring and growling at him angrily, "Hmm, maybe you're right. We'll hold off on this for now." They'd call this the intermediate course for right now. Definitely not for beginners.

"Damn right we'll hold off on it." Naruto seethed lowly. What was Kiba trying to do? This was still climbing a mountain for all intents and purposes and if he fell from high enough he'd still go splat on the ground below, "Can we work up to this somehow if we're going to be stupid?"

"You mean train doing something _less_ stupid?" Naruto nodded at Kiba's query to his point, "Yeah, okay. Give me a minute, I think I've got another idea. Come on."

XxX

(A While Later – Inuzuka Clan Compound)

"I hate you so much Kiba!" Naruto yelled as he hung off of the side of a rooftop with one arm tied behind his back. Below him there were dozens of Inuzuka dogs (Akamaru among them) barking and jumping up trying to reach him, "Oh man, why did this seem like a good idea when you were explaining it? Call them off already!"

Kiba stood off to the side holding a stopwatch, "It's only been five minutes! I think I could even do that! Tough it out for ten and tell me how you feel then!" He yelled out over the sound of the barking, "If it doesn't hurt then it's not good training!"

At Kiba's side stood a young woman with brown hair in a ponytail, Inuzuka Clan markings on her cheeks, a pair of tight shorts that reached her knees, a flower tattoo on her right arm, a Konoha flak jacket that had no front pockets and was unzipped to expose her bust. Much like her brother she was watching Naruto 'train' with a bemused look on her face as she shook her head, "I really don't know what to do. I'm kind of torn on stopping this."

She wondered what all of the ruckus was when she was sitting in the vet's office that sat on the clan grounds, and she didn't know if she was glad she came outside to see or not. It was a way to kill some time though, watching Inuzuka Kiba and Uzumaki Naruto be stupid had to be a pastime for someone somewhere.

Hearing the girl speak, Kiba gave her a confused look, "What? Hana why would you stop this? It's good training."

"It's dumb training." Hana said with a stern look to her little brother before turning back to Naruto hanging for dear life, "And I'm torn because part of me wants to see him fall for the shock and awe value, and the medic-nin part of me wants to pull his dumbass up before he hurts himself… I think it's in my code to make sure others don't get hurt or something."

"But sis, you're mostly a vet aren't you."

"Hmm…that's a good point Kiba."

Kiba grinned and showed off his sharp canines, "See, I'm not only a genius with training techniques, I'm good with other stuff too. Right Naruto?"

"When I get down from here I'm gonna kick you to sleep!" Naruto yelled out over the barking dogs beneath him before looking down at them, "Shut up already!"

Hana shook her head, wondering exactly why Naruto was a chunin like her. That quick wit he showed on the battlefield during the exams was not front and center here today on the Inuzuka grounds. With that in mind she turned to Kiba with one last thing to say, "You know that when he falls and the dogs turn him into a rawhide mom's going to kick your ass right?"

As a matter of fact, Kiba did not know that. He didn't even think of that. And his mom wasn't even out on a mission today which meant she'd be there any minute, "You're no fun sis." He said as he ambled off to climb the roof and pull Naruto up, "Alright Naruto, I'm getting you out of there…"

"Hurry up damn it!"

"Hey! Even if you did fall, sis is a medic-nin, she'd patch you right up!"

"I'm a vet though!" Hana yelled, cupping her hands to her mouth and grinning in a casual Inuzuka manner as she watched her little brother hoist Naruto up to safety. She let out a sigh when she saw an angry and shell-shocked Naruto start more or less wrestling with Kiba on the rooftop. Eventually they both rolled off of the roof and into the Inuzuka hounds waiting below that did not discriminate between Naruto and Kiba… even Akamaru, "…Looks like I'm patching them right up…" She said as she walked over, whistling sharply to get the dogs off of the two boys.

* * *

**Chapter complete.**

**It has been a week or two, but I had my own personal shit to deal with and I'm still kind of handling it. Either way, it's here now and I hope you enjoyed. Now if you'll excuse me it's time to get the day started.**

**It's Friday morning here so in case I don't update anything else that you read over the weekend I'll just say have a good weekend because I'll certainly be trying to. Maybe going to a party or something tonight would pull me up out of my mini-funk?**

**Anyway, until next time folks, Kenchi out.**


	35. Speed of Sound

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I challenge Masashi Kishimoto to an exhibition mixed martial arts fight held under the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts. That means no crazy diving foot stomps to the head of a grounded opponent you lunatic, or no soccer kicking my face while I'm on the ground. I know how you Japanese promotions dig that kind of shit.

It'll be an openweight fight since I don't know what you weigh and don't care, but to be fair I'll drop to 175 and not a pound lower. Shit, you can afford all of the muscle supplements, top of the line equipment, personal trainers, and anabolic steroids you want with your rich ass so you'd better be ready. No drug testing and no excuses! Old school style!

Winner takes Naruto and the pride of the other! Loser takes over my own crappy life and must take on my future college loan debts and fix my busted Ford Taurus with the shitty transmission! It's all or nothing Kishimoto, you've got nothing to gain and everything to lose! And doesn't that just make you want to fight?

Do you see? This is what you get when you push a man too far… he pushes right back!

(If I win I'll still have you on as lead artist… because I can't draw. And hey, even if the original manga is about to end, once it does I'll just pull a Yu-Gi-Oh and make like 67 different off-shoot anime series for it. I'll squeeze as much blood from that stone as I possibly can.)

BRING IT ON! I WILL DEVOUR YOUR WELL-NOTED ARTISTIC SOUL WITH A BENDY STRAW AND BATHE IN YOUR TEARS!

**Chapter 35: Speed of Sound**

* * *

The Wasabi Family house was huge and there was plenty of space for Team 10 as guests, especially since they were treated as guests of the boss himself. Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino were given a room to stay in with plenty of room for their bedrolls. Despite the rather unpleasant first impression that they had received upon entering Degarashi Port and from being led to the house in the first place by Idate, the trio of new chunin were up bright and early to get started on their assignment.

The only thing was, they needed to know where to start in the first place.

"So you were attacked a week before we got here?" Shikamaru said, trying to recap what he had been told of the trouble going on in the area, "Any idea who it was? Did someone hire an assassin to take you out?"

Jirouchou shook his head with a grave look on his face as he took a sip of his tea at the table for the morning meal, "At first I believed it was Kyuuroku and the Wagarashi Family…" He admitted before letting out a sigh, "But he had an attempt on his life as well with a similar attack style used against him. We believe it was the work of a ninja, so after some discussion we both agreed to hire a Konoha team to try and deal with the issue."

From getting up so early, Ino let out a yawn as she looked around the room, "Asuma-sensei is late getting here. Do you think one of us should pop over to the other place to go and get him?"

"About that…" Jirouchou said, referring to Asuma and Ino's comment on him being late, "A messenger from the Wagarashi has been sent to inform me that your sensei has been requested to stay with Kyuuroku as his bodyguard for the duration of your mission and the trouble plaguing Degarashi Port… in case of another attempt on him from the assassin from before. Your sensei assured us that you were all able to handle the active portion of the mission."

Well that certainly wasn't satisfactory… even with the shining, ringing endorsement from Asuma.

"You know, we can give you some protection too while we look for whatever's messing with things in your town. Do you want us to do that?" Shikamaru asked, mostly out of courtesy and so they could make sure one of their clients didn't die.

It wasn't exactly their preferred method of operation to split up so they probably weren't going to do that to keep one team member with Jirouchou at all times. Naruto could keep a mess of clones with him though. If those weren't enough to deter an attack on their own they could at least be the team's early-warning radar and buy some time for them to make it to the scene of the attack while they were searching around town.

From the comfortable smile on Jirouchou's face he seemed to like the idea of some protection being left for him as well. He had his men to keep him safe, but he wasn't daft enough to turn down any extra security. A nod gave the team their answer on the matter, "But I would like to extend as much assistance as I'm able to provide to help you out with your mission. I'll send a guide to see to it that you find your way around easily."

Ino frowned deeply as she had a bad, nagging feeling at what they were about to hear, "If this is who I think it is, I don't think I'm going to like this guide so much…"

XxX

(With Asuma)

While Asuma was the jounin that was really in charge of the mission, it was still Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino's show. This was why Asuma didn't really mind that much that one of the clients, the one whose home he happened to be in, was a sniveling rat of a man that requested (demanded) that he provide protection from assassination for him.

Not only was this a chance for the kids to show their stuff, in case of an assassin… well if Asuma was hypothetically slated to kill either Jirouchou or Kyuuroku he'd definitely kill the asshole first. If the assassin thought like him then Asuma would be the one to run into whoever it was anyway since Kyuuroku was far ahead in the asshole department.

Apparently the two of them were rivals for the control of Degarashi Port's affairs. Like the mayor, or pretty much the person that oversaw all interest involving the town which was a rather prosperous site of commerce and travel. Kyuuroku could see dollar signs in that kind of position, thus he endeavored to somehow wrest the position away from Jirouchou by gaining more influence in town than him, and after sticking around the man he seemed to want to take control by bullying the small business owners and undermining the Wasabi Family's way of handling day-to-day affairs in the town.

Yeah, in the case of an assassin that was slated to take out both of them he'd definitely be shooting for putting down Kyuuroku first… just out of general principle if nothing else.

Asuma was served towards trying to get as much dirt on the current state of affairs as he could for the sake of his team, thus he began questioning Kyuuroku while they were walking through town as he and a contingent of the man's underlings went about their daily rounds, "So did you see your attacker when it occurred?" Asuma asked, inquiring about the assassination attempt on Kyuuroku, "Did you see a certain insignia on the metal plates on their headbands like the ones we wear or anything?

"Attackers." Kyuuroku corrected as he saw kids clearing the street as he and his men walked. It was good to be a man in charge in his opinion, "There were more than one but they were wearing those stupid full-head facemasks so no one saw anything that really stood out about them. It was dark as well so if they had those metal plates none of us were paying attention to them."

So there wasn't enough info to identify a particular village, "How many attacked you?"

"Not sure." Kyuuroku said as they passed a fruit stand and he absent-mindedly snatched a piece of fruit without paying, "Like I said, it was dark and they stuck to the rooftops and shot bows at us… damn ninja. No offense." The vendor did nothing due to the copious amounts of armed men with him, but when he looked down at his stand again he found the proper amount of money laying there to pay.

"None taken." Asuma said dryly as he put his wallet back in his pocket unseen by anyone else after paying for the fruit that Kyuuroku swiped on a whim, "But bows… those are weird weapons for a ninja to use. That's more of a samurai thing… archers." Konoha sure didn't have anyone that used a bow.

"One of them guys didn't have a mask Boss Kyuuroku." One of the Wagarashi thugs said, trying to be helpful as the surrounding men had no choice but to eavesdrop on the conversation at hand, "Remember? The last one to leave."

"Oh yeah." Kyuuroku said as if his memory had been jogged by his henchman, "After the attack when we had finally gotten cover to hide from the arrows we looked out and saw one lady standing out in plain sight on one of the roofs, just looking at us.

"She was good looking too boss."

"Damn right she was." Kyuuroku said, scratching his chin, "If the bitch weren't trying to kill me and if we'd met somewhere else then I'd have probably been trying to make a pass or two at her if you know what I'm saying."

So they saw someone? Now they were getting somewhere with this whole thing. Maybe whoever it was and their affiliation could be identified in the Bingo Book if they had enough info on her, "So did you get a good enough look at that person to tell me what she looked like?" It was worth a shot to ask in case one of them had been able to.

XxX

(Degarashi Port – Shipping Area – Onboard a Transport Ship)

The town of Degarashi Port had a rather bustling trade as it sat at the tip of a peninsula that pointed southeast from the mainland. Thus they were able to get loads of business from maritime travelers of all sorts and were able to import various sundry goods and export their copious amounts of different teas to interested merchants, giving them a lucrative export.

This meant that the docks were always very busy, and with all of the ships in the area, checks were very lax with the lack of trouble the nation of Cha no Kuni saw. With no shinobi villages and a daimyo that did not engage in conflicts they saw no danger.

Which was why in the hold of one ship emblazoned with the Gato Company tag on the side a rather decent-sized force of shinobi sat around waiting for their next dispatch. At a table, men were betting their pay in games of poker, all of them wearing long grey tunics, grey belts, black pants, and black facemasks with the symbol of a musical note on the metal plate sitting on the masks' foreheads.

"The commander is coming!" A bald man said with authority in his voice as he walked into the room. He had a scar on his right eye, a grey sleeveless tunic, very long arms, and black pants. With him was a man wearing a long brown tunic with a high round collar and another man that was hunchbacked with matted brown hair and buckteeth wearing a dark blue cloak, "Present yourselves accordingly!"

The Otogakure shinobi did just that as they stood up at attention without a second thought.

Footsteps sounded out as another person walked into the room to oversee the ninja in attendance. A young woman with dark eyes, light blue hair kept in a high spiky ponytail with two long strands of hair framing her face, red lipstick, a green dress with one long sleeve and one short, underneath that she had a one piece red suit with short sleeves and a high neck that stopped at her thighs. On her feet were a pair of high, brown, boot-like sandals and on her hands were a pair of brown gloves.

The scowl on her face turned to a smirk as she looked around at the three men that had entered prior to her arrival, "You Fuuma Clan guys certainly do work well. Everything's going just fine at the moment."

"Why didn't we kill the two during the outright attack?" One of the Fuuma Clan men said, the one with the brown tunic and dark hair, "Wagarashi was especially a sitting duck."

The woman walked over to him and gave him several hard pats on the cheek, "Because if we killed Wagarashi or Wasabi their land wouldn't be up for open grabs. All of their assets would be requisitioned by Cha no Kuni's daimyo. That's not what Gato wanted. He wants the prices of this land driven down so that he can pick it up for the cheap. Of course we could have killed them whenever. That's not the point of the mission and it wouldn't help anything." The look on her face was pleasant, as was her tone, but there was an edge to her tone that was clear to all listening, "Any other questions on my directions Kamikiri?"

The man Kamikiri shook his head rapidly, "No Guren. That's all. I was just asking." He said a little fearfully, letting go of a breath once Guren ghosted past him, 'Damn… I can see why she was slated to lead this thing. Orochimaru-sama has some scary ninja on his side.'

The bald man with the scar spoke next, "Those two called for assistance from Konoha and got a team of chunin and a jounin to find us and get rid of us."

"I expected that much from them Jigumo. Hi no Kuni is the closest nation with ninja in it after all." Guren said to the bald man before continuing, "We've gotten confirmation from Gato that we've driven down the prices in the region enough we can leave this hellhole and go back to Oto no Kuni to prepare for the next big mission. For good measure we should make some noise one last time to get Gato the best deal. His arrangement with Orochimaru-sama is too important to half-ass missions for him."

"What about the Konoha ninja?" One of the multiple masked Oto shinobi said, balking slightly behind his mask when Guren turned to him to see who had spoken.

"It's Sarutobi Asuma." Jigumo said, informing the female commander of the one heading up the Konoha side of things, "What do we do about him? The second we try anything he'll know it and he'll attempt to take us down."

"Then I'll take his life." Guren responded matter-of-factly before continuing her breakdown of what was to happen, "You Fuuma can take the men for one last big press on the town. I'll make my own ruckus this time and split their attention. Expect to fight and be ready."

Jigumo nodded and looked around the room as if preparing the setup of their forces in his head, "I think that one of us should go with you. Take Hanzaki with you just in case. If you'll allow it, then Kamikiri, Kagerou, and myself will be the ones to head out with most of the men."

Guren frowned deeply, not particularly liking the thought of having a tagalong, but figured that she better take one of them with her. Anything could happen after all, "I don't like it, but you have a point. I'll find that idiot later and tell him he's with me tonight. You all work out your own plan and remember; we pull out no later than daybreak. If you aren't with us then you're either dead or you can find your own way back home."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Degarashi Port – Town Streets)

Of course as luck would have it, Team 10 were saddled with Idate as their guide around the town as they searched around for a sign of the attackers or if anyone had any information on the matter since the problems seemed to be centered around Degarashi Port.

And as they did this, eventually while Ino and Shikamaru were speaking with a group of dockworkers with the day off sitting outside of a bar, Naruto stood staring at a sign that had caught his attention across the street with a scowl on his face.

"Hey, what are you looking so hard at?"

Naruto turned around to see Idate looking at him and then at the sign on the fence he had been staring at. All Naruto did was point at the sign.

Idate squinted and read the sign out loud, "Coming soon: a future site of Gato Company." He then shrugged as if it didn't matter and ignored the rather brutish looking men lounging around the building site. They didn't seem to be workers so who were they? Weird, "So what? Gato is a rich guy. I'm surprised he didn't try setting up shop around here any sooner."

"That's because he was too busy leeching the life out of Nami no Kuni until a few months ago…" Naruto said, kicking the chain link fence surrounding the facility wishing he could take a swing at that bite-sized sack of crap, "But after all that happened he just wound up walking away." Well… running away. But the point was that he managed to escape without a single repercussion for his actions.

Clearly there was a lot that Idate didn't know about Gato, but it wasn't the issue at hand at the moment. He'd have to look into it later, "Your teammates are asking around about anything strange, trying to find out who attacked Boss Jirouchou. I'm guessing you want to see the place where we were jumped?" Naruto nodded and they proceeded towards the area where it had occurred.

So Idate was actually going to help them? From the way he was speaking it could be perceived that he just cared a lot about the boss of the Wasabi Family for some reason. Still his beef with ninja was annoying. As long as he kept that toned down he was tolerable, and he was a worker of their client so it would have been in his best interest to find some common ground. It wouldn't do to have him in the mindset to knock Idate's lights out like he and Shikamaru had the inclination to do the previous night.

"What's your problem with ninja? …Other than the fact that they attacked you guys I mean." Naruto decided to ask out of the blue as they walked to the place where Jirouchou and other members of the Wasabi Family had been attacked, "Or are you just a dick to everyone you meet out of the blue?"

Idate scoffed at the question as he led Naruto to the locale, "You wouldn't understand so don't worry about it."

"Try me."

"Alright." Idate said before launching into his explanation, "Did you get promoted from the chunin exams or was it a field kind of thing?"

"Exams." Naruto admitted before thinking to himself, 'Wait, we didn't have to go through all of that crap to get promoted? We could have just worked missions until someone pushed us up the ladder? Son of a bitch.' It would have probably taken years of stellar mission track records though.

"What was your first test in the exams then?" Idate asked, paying attention due to his interest in the information.

The memory of the first test forced Naruto to subconsciously work his jaw to get the phantom pain out of it, "I got tied to a chair and got the crap kicked out of me until I could either break free or Ino and Shikamaru got a password to get me out. That Ibiki guy with the scars is a sadistic bastard." Especially since he seemed to get a kick out of the blood leaking out the young blonde's face after they advanced to the next portion of the exams.

"He went with a physical torture for his exam this time?" Idate said to himself mostly, "I guess it was because I heard that all of the villages were collaborating on the last exam. He _can_ do straight physical torture, but it's not really my brother's style."

"You don't say." Naruto said before almost tripping over his feet in the street after registering what Idate had said, "Wait, brother? You're telling me that the freaky interrogation guy Ibiki is your brother?"

"Yeah." Idate said before pointing at himself, "My name's Morino Idate."

"B-But why are you not a ninja? If you're asking about the exams then you must have taken them before right?" Naruto asked. Idate had asked him about the exam as if he was about to compare Naruto's experience to his own. That meant he had taken it before, so what was he doing in a whole different country?

Idate glared at the ground and clenched his hands into fists, "Ibiki failed me in the first test and because I failed it I could never take the chunin exams again… that was what he said. He even said I wasn't cut out to even be a ninja. And then I was tricked into stealing something for my instructor that swore he had a way to get me a promotion. It was a trick that made me into a criminal, so I ran… and I kept running. And now I'm here."

Well that sucked. What exactly did he steal? And how was this guy related to creepy Ibiki? He must have been adopted because the two didn't even look alike, let alone act alike.

"It's not important though." Idate said as they turned a corner and ended up on the street they had been after the entire time, "I was 11… it was three years ago. It's in the past. And this is the place. So go ahead and take a look. I don't think you'll find anything here though… no one else did. They didn't leave any tracks other than a few shuriken and kunai they used to fight."

And not only that, but it had been a week at that point. Any remnants from the attack were probably long gone. Still, it was worth a try though, "Well… we might as well give it a try anyway." He was not going to find a damn thing, he was not one to look for clues or search scenes, but it was his job.

XxX

(Ta no Kuni/Hi no Kuni Border Area – Sundown)

The patrol route that Team 7 had been running for the last day or so had been dipping in and out of the Ta/Oto no Kuni line. One more day and they'd reach the original road where their patrol had begun, the marker to let them know that they had gone up and back and could return home to the village.

Still, there was always a chance to sightsee, even in the middle of nowhere. As the Valley of the End was notoriously the natural border of the two countries and the river sitting down the waterfall and the span of the valley was the border all the way across.

Following the river and the cliffside that the river travelled along as they moved through the trees, Team 7 returned to their original patrol point, "Well that was a fun little field trip wasn't it gang?" Kakashi said with an eye-smile.

Sakura nodded with a smile. It was a little bit out of the way, but the bookworm in her thought that visiting the site of the two founders of Konoha's epic battle was too cool to pass up. It was amazing that two shinobi could carve out that valley with their own abilities. A scary thought was wondering if there were anyone alive like that at that time that could do something similar, "Why'd they build those statues of Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama that far out from the village sensei? Wouldn't more people remember it if there were something commemorating the battle in the village?"

"It wasn't exactly an event that people back then liked to think about." Kakashi said, "Madara was just as important and was every bit as powerful as Hashirama, and their falling out was a major event. I don't know what led to this, but Madara left his clan to battle for control of Konoha with Hashirama and lost in the end."

'Uchiha Madara…' Sasuke thought to himself. An Uchiha was powerful enough to carve his mark into the earth forever. As powerful as Itachi was, he doubted that even his older brother could hold a candle to that man. That was the kind of power he needed. But even with all of the skill and strength he possessed he was still defeated in the end by the Shodai Hokage, 'And that means that no one is unbeatable… no matter how far ahead they seem to be. Itachi, I'll get you one day. I know I will.'

But for now, despite the field trip that had something to do with his own clan history, Sasuke was still bored. At least they'd be heading home the next morning. He would note that from then on whenever possible, Kakashi was not allowed to select the missions.

Chouji noticed Sasuke's smoldering bad mood and nudged his teammate to get his attention, "Hey Sasuke, what's the matter? The mission's going great so far. Nothing's happened."

"Exactly." Sasuke said, rolling his eyes at the attitude of the good-natured Akimichi boy, "Nothing's happened. Doesn't being a chunin mean that there are supposed to be more chances to prove myself?" He needed to find out if his training was bearing fruit or not, and running around the backwoods flinching at crickets chirping was no way to learn if he was getting any better. Even with enemies like Fuu, he knew Itachi was miles ahead of her.

Which meant that he still wasn't even close.

Kakashi could hear the annoyance in Sasuke's voice at the action-less mission that they were currently on, "Sasuke, not every mission can be action-packed. Trust me, eventually you'll come to love missions like this. Later you'll get more than your share of the kind that you _think_ you want right now." Sasuke simply let out a 'hn', seemingly regressing as he apparently wanted the combat.

Oh well. It wasn't going to be an overnight change to being a cool, well-adjusted adult like himself, and he was never going to see Sasuke emote. That was fine, and Sasuke was beginning to trust more in his comrades either way. Being on a team was good for him in that regard. Kakashi hadn't been through anything nearly as bad as Sasuke had when he was Sasuke's age, even though his father committed suicide. Sasuke watched his entire clan die and came to accept his team… all without anyone having to die first.

He idly wondered how Sasuke would take reading certain literary works. It might help the kid mellow out like himself… and learn to accept and embrace the copious amounts of fangirls that it was clear still wanted him.

While he was thinking though, his attention was diverted by the sound of something ripping through the leaves of the trees around them, and it wasn't a bird or another woodland creature, "Cover!"

Hearing the easygoing voice of Kakashi change into one of urgency at the drop of a hat, all of Team 7 stopped advancing through the trees and took cover behind the nearest trunk that each of them could reach while staying in the branches.

Their decision to do so was a good one as a barrage of weaponry deposited themselves into the trunks of the trees that they covered behind. Mostly the very oversized and dangerous fuuma shuriken that were thrown in abundance.

'An attack?' Kakashi thought to himself, narrowing his visible eye before looking over to where his students were taking cover, all of them having to split up due to the lack of room on the branches for all of them to share hiding spots, 'That new village…' They _were_ traipsing about on the border of the new country's boundaries, "Get ready to attack." He ordered his genin.

Sasuke simply turned his Sharingan on and drew a kunai to use in case of close-quarters fighting, "I've been ready for a week." With that, he was the first to move out from behind cover, using his eyes to keep track of any possible attackers that would try to take advantage of him leaving the safety of behind the tree trunk.

In response, a group of fifteen armed shinobi with Oto headbands dove out of the woodwork to attack the Konoha team.

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

Kakashi wasted no time in catching six of the ten hapless foes sent directly after him specifically in a fireball from his mouth, showing that he wasn't world-renown for no reason.

While an ironic thought went through Sasuke's head at the sight of it, thinking that Kakashi needed to stop stealing his moves, Sasuke moved to begin fighting as well. He reached into his supply pouch and quickly threw a handful of shuriken at the ten remaining Oto shinobi to split them up so that they could be dealt with in bits and parts.

The three of them; Sasuke, Sakura, and Chouji against five Otogakure ninja while Kakashi mopped up the rest. Sounded fair.

Sakura seemed to throw a single kunai at the lot that had gone after her, missing before diving out from behind her cover of the tree trunk and trying to get some distance from them as in a close-range fight she would have been toast.

Still, it didn't take much for them to bear down on her, all drawing kunai to stab the poor genin girl, "We don't have to keep them all alive right? Just the one?" One of the Oto ninja said, not waiting for an answer as they all dropped down on and stabbed into Sakura.

However, Sakura's body burst into petals the moment that they made contact with her. The five of them looked around for her only to hear a thunk sound, looking to see a kunai with an explosive tag burning down stabbed into the branch they were standing on.

"Sakura Fubuki no Jutsu (Cherry Blossom Blizzard Jutsu)!"

Mixed in with the blossoms were tiny explosive tags that floated around, something that many of the ninja saw and immediately dove away from, clearing out off of the branch before the single explosive tag blew up, causing a chain reaction of smaller explosions that rippled and combined, tearing down the tree that it had been centered on.

Three of the Oto ninja jumped in one particular direction and smirked when they saw Chouji jumping directly at them. Until his body expanded into ball-like form as he tucked his arms, legs, and head into his torso and began to rapidly roll mid-jump, "Nikudan Sensha (Human Bullet Tank)!" Chouji then proceeded to plow into them and knock them out of the air like flies with one hit.

Sasuke dove at one of the ninja that had vacated the branch after Sakura's attack and kicked him right in the face, knocking him upside down before Sasuke wrapped his legs around his upsided down body and dropped with him to the ground, driving him into the ground on the forest floor headfirst, "Hayabusa Otoshi (Peregrine Falcon Drop)!"

If his neck wasn't broken then he simply didn't have a bone structure, and with that in mind Sasuke left his recently killed enemy on the ground to ascend the trees once again and continue the battle, at least until he heard something from behind him.

Turning he saw someone grey hair, pale skin, turquoise lipstick, a brown tunic, long black wristbands, and a thick purple rope tied around his waist coming right at him, more specifically he paid particular attention to the fact that it looked like he was about to be hit with two arms being sprouted from the same elbow… or maybe he was seeing things. No, because the Sharingan saw everything correctly.

And that was why he saw the punch that hit him right in the face and made him see stars as clear as day.

Maybe Kakashi was right after all?

XxX

(With Sakura and Chouji)

"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura shouted as she saw the strange young man punch Sasuke in the face, "Chouji where is Kakashi-sensei?" She asked after not seeing the masked man anywhere in sight. Had they really gone that far away from him when they broke off to fight their own respective battles?

Chouji shook his head as he saw Sasuke's body rolling along the ground after taking the first punch from the strange new arrival, "I don't know, but we've got to do something Sakura. Come on!" Sakura nodded and was about to drop down to the forest floor to try and assist Sasuke, but Chouji grabbed her arm and held her up, keeping her from changing levels right before a spider web stuck itself between the trees where she would have fallen towards.

As she was hoisted back onto the branch along with Chouji they both looked towards another one to see a young man with tan skin, black hair in a spiky upright ponytail, an Otogakure headband around his forehead, a grey sleeveless tunic with a purple rope belt around his waist, and six arms, "Sorry, but we've got him off playing with our other characters. He'll get here eventually I'll bet, but by then we'll be done with what we need to do."

"We don't have to keep these cocksuckers alive Kidomaru." Both Sakura and Chouji looked down to see a girl with long red hair, a hat with bandages around the sides on her head, a tan tunic with a purple rope belt, and black wristbands, "Sakon's the only one that has to, so we can just kill these two before Hatake shows back up."

Kidomaru let out a laugh as he crossed his six arms over his torso, still smirking at the two genin, "Tayuya, come on and calm down already. If these two last five minutes I'll eat your hat."

"You won't touch my fucking hat!" The red haired girl Tayuya snapped at her six-armed teammate, "What, are you turning into that fatass Jiroubou now or what?" She turned towards Chouji and gestured her head at him with a smirk, "Those two fat fucks would probably get along pretty well don't you think?"

Chouji grit his teeth at hearing the jibe at him, but set it aside at the moment and narrowed his eyes at their new enemies. There was something more important than his own self-esteem at the moment, "What did you do to Kakashi-sensei?"

XxX

(With Kakashi)

"Hmm, this is a strange situation." Kakashi said to himself as he stood looking around in a pitch black dome of rock. One minute he had been fighting off hordes and hordes of Otogakure shinobi, the next he wound up trapped within the current structure that housed him, "I had figured that it was all too easy." The people he had mostly been slaying were more like bodies meant to fill spots than anything else.

"Well now you're stuck in there, and your chakra's going to be mine Copy Ninja Kakashi." Said a burly voice from outside of the dome that Kakashi figured was the one that attacked him, "I can't believe trash like you is considered elite. I thought you were supposed to be the pinnacle of shinobi excellence."

It didn't matter if someone took jabs at Kakashi's skill to him. He was never really one for tooting his own horn on his talent and just did what he had to for his village and to survive, if he wound up getting famous off of how well he did his job that was just a byproduct. But there was something more significant than trying to defend his reputation at the moment, "What is this all about? Are you after my team as well?"

He heard the burly man let out a laugh in response, "Well you're trespassing on Oto no Kuni's border. We're well within our rights as a village to expunge possible invaders." That old excuse for initiating a battle eh? Otogakure was probably more bloodthirsty than was first figured, "The weak pink-haired girl and the fat kid are as good as dead by now if my team has anything to say about it. We're the best." What humility.

So his genin and Sasuke were fighting others as well? And if this man was that confident then they might have been as strong or stronger, "I see…" Kakashi said before forming three hand-seals and clutching his right wrist as blue lightning began to circulate around his body, but most specifically around his right hand, "Well in that case I'm afraid I can't let you keep me here any longer. If my students are in danger I'll have to be in a bit of a rush. Sorry."

"What could you possibly do from-?"

"Raikiri (Lightning Cutter)!"

From the back of the dome, Kakashi punched a massive hole right through it with his jutsu that he proceeded to burst the rest of the way through sliding to a kneeling stop on the forest floor as he was now able to observe his enemy. It was a young man that was larger than himself both in height and girth, he had an orange Mohawk, a grey sleeveless tunic that showed off his massive arms, black wristbands, a purple rope tied around his waist.

"You were saying?" Kakashi said, narrowing his single visible eye at the young man as he was prepared to blow right past him and get to his team as quickly as he could. Hopefully they were where he left them before he wound up being corralled by the dozens of shinobi that came at him, "You know me, but I don't know about you. Trapping me even for just a moment is a big deal, especially for a young man like you. What's your name?"

"Jiroubou of the South Gate." The large teen said as a black marking began to spread across the left half of his body, looking like chains of triangular arrows, "And with all of that chakra I absorbed from you I guess now would be as good a time as any to start off using this."

The foul chakra radiating off of Jiroubou caught Kakashi's immediate attention. He didn't even need to utilize his Sharingan to pay attention to how intense the power was, "Well that's certainly interesting." Not interesting enough for him to draw this battle out any longer than necessary, but something to keep in mind if more powerful Oto shinobi had the same ability. Especially if the ones sent after Sasuke, Sakura, and Chouji had the same ability.

XxX

(Cha no Kuni – Degarashi Port – Nightfall)

Naruto's forensic skills left much to be desired as his investigation of the attack site bore no fruit. Thus he and Idate simply returned to Shikamaru and Ino to see if their asking around had gotten them anywhere.

Team 10 plus Idate regrouped at a small seafood stand where Ino and Shikamaru had been waiting to grab a bite to eat before continuing their work. The setting of the sun didn't mean that their job was done by a long shot. Night was probably the best time for them to be out and searching for trouble.

Poking at the grilled squid that had been set on his plate with his chopsticks as he wished it were ramen, Naruto let out a sigh at their luck, "All there is from the site is one stupid, weird shuriken." He said, picking up said shuriken from his flak jacket pocket and dropping it on the table. It was pink in color and looked crystalline, shaped in the form of a sharply bladed snowflake.

"We're not exactly trackers you know." Ino said before taking a bite of her own modest meal, "It's been a week since the request was sent to Konoha. If someone was going to track them they'd need a specialist because any sign that could be trailed would be gone by now. How hard did you have to look for that shuriken anyway?"

"Idate already had it from the night of the attack." Naruto said before picking up his squid and taking a bite of the tentacles, chewing with considerable effort, "That's just great. Are you sure you didn't see anything?" Idate glared at Naruto for pressing the same issue they had been going over all day long, "Okay, nevermind."

In front of Shikamaru's own half-eaten plate was a map of the town, "We didn't check the northern side because we were kicked out by the workers. With all of the storehouses and dockside shipping places over there it could be a good chance of _something._"

Idate raised an eyebrow, "You guys got kicked out? Did you say you were here to help the Wasabi Family solve their problems going on in town?"

"They didn't seem to care…" Ino said before her eyes then narrowed, "It was a site that belonged to Gato Company." The next time they had to take a mission it would definitely be C-ranked. This B-rank stuff was giving her a migraine, "I think we should drop in on that spot just out of principle."

"You guys again with your Gato Company stuff." Idate said in exasperation, "Look, I understand what Naruto told me about Nami no Kuni but there's no way that would happen here. If Boss Jirouchou went down, or even if both he and the Wagarashi Head went down we'd still fight them back. We wouldn't let ourselves get bullied."

Ino shrugged her shoulders and finished eating before turning on her stool towards Idate, "Fine. We're still going to the north docks though. It doesn't make any sense not to. Not at a time like this."

A groan left Idate as he palmed his face, "If you guys are caught trespassing in the dead of night, even if it's on Gato Company's property and others find out about it then Boss is going to lose support with all of them together. People are already doubting both the Wasabi and Wagarashi's ability to keep the town safe with all of this ninja stuff."

Naruto good-naturedly slapped Idate on his back hard enough to almost make him stumble forward in his stool, "Don't be so nervous! We can handle this. You were a ninja before, right? If it's just a few dock workers and thugs we can slip right past them. You know that."

Idate nodded despite himself. When he first started working for Jirouchou and the Wasabi Family he distinguished himself even as nothing more than a former genin. His knowledge of basic ninjutsu and his own natural advantages that had been developed through training in his Academy years kept him head and shoulders above other fighters in the area. Even at the age of fifteen as he currently was he still stood above most on both sides of the Degarashi Port conflict between the two families.

So he had to admit, if things were really just about the dock workers and there was no shinobi hideout over there then Team 10, a group of chunin, could easily handle anything without starting trouble.

"…Just do it then." Idate said before making another point, "But I'm coming with you just in case you need someone to vouch for you."

XxX

(With Asuma)

Working for Wagarashi Kyuuroku was going to drive Asuma to drinking. But at least he was in a good place for it as he had been required to accompany the man to a bar as he and some of his more favored underlings celebrated. What they were celebrating, he had no idea, but he was working Asuma's nerves.

He drank without even having anyone test the source of the drink, he was a lightweight that couldn't hold his liquor and when inebriated he was a complete scumbag. Asuma swore, the moment he tried to grab a girl or something along those lines he was going to knock him the fuck out and drag him home.

"Heyyy, Mister Ninja." Kyuuroku said sliding up to Asuma's side with a drink in his hand that sloshed about wildly due to his rocking and rolling in his seat, "You don't drink?"

"Not while I'm supposed to be your protection detail." Asuma said, wishing he would just go back to getting annihilated with his dumb muscle, "You don't want me fighting for your life drunk do you?"

Kyuuroku slid away from him and stroked his chin, "That's a good point ninja-man." He said before turning towards his crew and shouting, "Hey! No more drinking for you dumbasses! I need you sharp to cover my ass tonight! Who knows what could happen?" There was a unanimous groan of disappointment from the mass of flunkies while Kyuuroku was directing the bartender to hand over particular bottles to him to take on the go, "Okay… I'm responsible so I'm turning in early tonight. The man that runs this town's gotta know when enough is enough right?"

The eye of Asuma twitched as Kyuuroku's goons came over to carry his handpicked drinks for him on the way back to the house, 'Then why are you getting even more to drink?' He sincerely wished he had a nice, calming cigarette in his hand right then. This mission had put him in a foul mood, 'Naruto, Shikamaru, Ino… you three better be working to get this shit over with and done before I have to kill somebody.'

Eventually the party spilled out into the street and with the raucous noise of the disruptive Wagarashi Family it was a wonder why they didn't get attacked more often just for disturbing the peace.

Kyuuroku was a total target with how he was the center of his own entourage and Asuma kept his eyes peeled. It was his ears however that picked up something of interest. Asuma had been so accustomed to using wind as a weapon that he could hear the shifts in the air, and he heard the sound of sharpened metal flying through the air, "Hit the deck!"

Upon hearing Asuma's shout, the more sober members of the Wagarashi Family grabbed Kyuuroku and fell to the ground. Those that did not wound up getting riddled with shuriken and kunai. Unable to do anything for them from the surprise attack, Asuma pulled out his trench knives and immediately began his chakra flow to extend the length of the blades as five men jumped from a rooftop to attack what was left of the Wagarashi Family.

His patience having long since reached the breaking point, Asuma jumped into battle with not a second thought. Asuma immediately cut through two of the attackers and delivered a powerful kick to another man that sent him crashing right through the front display of a building. By then the remaining two from the initial ground attack turned to fight Asuma, but as they did so he disappeared from their sight and reappeared behind them as blood began to spray from their chests and necks, as he had cut them down before they had ever even realized it.

The petrified Kyuuroku looked up at Asuma in fear as he stared down with the man, "Stick with me and listen to my every word. I don't want any bullshit here."

Kyuuroku nodded and the remaining four members of the outgoing Wagarashi Family party got up off of the ground as from down the street several more Oto shinobi ran towards them along the rooftop and jumped into the air to strike Asuma down all at once.

Instead of telling Kyuuroku to run while he fought them off, Asuma formed the bird hand-seal and placed his hands to his mouth in a cupping motion, "Fuuton: Fuujin no Jutsu (Wind Release: Dust Cloud Jutsu)!" A stream of wind filled with dust particles flew at the lot of them from Asuma's mouth. Upon making contact with the airborne bodies of the attacking ninja it began to tear their clothes off, and then their skin, decimating them and tearing them asunder before they even hit the ground dead, 'Otogakure…' Asuma thought as he looked at the metal plate on one of the masked ninja's heads.

A sharp and loud clicking noise directed Asuma's attention to behind himself and the Wagarashi Family, but when he turned there was no one there. It was merely a feint allowing both Jigumo and Kamikiri to attack him from behind with kunai. Asuma was able to turn and block both with his trench knives though, "Well it looks like we've got easy pickings here don't we?" Kamikiri said as both he and Jigumo struggled against Asuma, unable to make him budge.

"So who hired Otogakure?" Asuma decided to press the issue, "Obviously if you're trying to assassinate this jackass here I don't see how that'd have anything to do with the country your village originates from."

"It's important enough to someone for us to take this mission." The scar-faced bald man Jigumo said as he and Kamikiri broke off from clashing with Asuma, "We don't care why. It's our job to make a mess of things in this place and that's just what we're going to do."

"Admirable I guess." Asuma said, backing up closer to Kyuuroku before hearing the man cry out in fear. Asuma turned around to see him facing behind them and dove in that direction to divert another attacker with a sudden kick that sent them flying off onto a wall. They landed on the wall on their feet however and landed on the ground to stand with Jigumo and Kamikiri. The grotesque hunchbacked figure of Kagerou stared at him, prepared to fight him to get past Asuma as well.

"Sarutobi Asuma." Kagerou said, correctly identifying the Konoha jounin before turning eyes toward Kyuuroku, "He's more important a person in the grand scheme of things than you Wagarashi. Leave now or die where you stand."

Kyuuroku snapped to action after hearing himself be addressed by the strange looking trio of shinobi, "N-No problem!" He said before turning tail and running with a speed that Asuma figured wouldn't be obtained by a regular person, "Don't just gawk you idiots! Run!" He yelled in the distance.

Well apparently it was true that fear gave men wings… on their feet from the looks of how fast Kyuuroku proceeded to haul ass out of dodge.

Asuma turned to see the last remaining living Wagarashi Family members standing there with their own small weapons drawn; clubs, pocket knives, short blades. But they were absolutely shaking in their boots. Well he had to at least give them credit on deciding not to try and run, but if they stayed they'd be shredded like cheese, and for as much of an advantage in openings as that would potentially bring him Asuma wasn't that kind of guy.

"Go on, get out of here." Asuma said to the lot of them. They didn't need to be told twice as they ran as well… though not as fast as Kyuuroku. He had probably made it back to his house by now and had ordered his men to put the place on lockdown. But with the riffraff gone he could focus on the three Oto shinobi remaining out of the twenty he had originally put down on his own, "So why'd you let him go? I thought you were after the leaders of this village."

Kamikiri shook his head, "He's not even the leader of this town. We don't want them dead anyway. We just want this place good and scared so that businesses leave in the droves. Our client wants some cheap dockside property for his own business. And you dying right in the middle of town would totally work on that front."

"Why?" Asuma asked.

"You're the son of the current reigning Hokage. Not only that, but you're an absurdly dangerous man in your own right with your bounty of 35 million ryo." Jigumo said to answer his question, "Killing you is doubly significant."

Now that got Asuma to puff out his chest a little bit with pride, "Oh. They've got that listed even in Otogakure's bingo book? I'm flattered. At least I would be if you weren't all about to try and kill me." He then blinked before grinning in a very Naruto-like manner as he rubbed the back of his neck, "Oh hell, who am I kidding? I'm still flattered. So bring it on." He finished, setting back in his boxing-looking stance prepared to take the three of them on.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Northern Docks of Degarashi Port)

"He is taking way too long." Ino said, kneeling down on the roof of a warehouse along with Naruto and Idate as they looked over the rest of the area being that their position was high enough to get a good view of most of the other storage facilities in the area, "Why'd he actually choose to look around the place himself? He doesn't volunteer to do anything… ever." Ino kind of wanted to try and use her new hard-earned jutsu to check things out by herself. She could have at least taken over someone's actual body with her original clan jutsu and went around like that.

"Well…" Idate said, trying to generalize why Shikamaru took point on doing preliminary scouting, "He seems to be smarter than both of you, so I guess that's why he figured he'd be better off searching." He then noticed the two blondes glaring at him, "No offense."

"I have clones…" Naruto said, trying to argue.

Shaking her head, Ino responded, "You already have like a hundred of them watching over the Wasabi Family place. And if one of them gets caught it wouldn't matter if they were clones or not, our cover would still be blown."

"So?" Naruto responded as if it didn't even matter.

"One hundred clones?" Idate said, as if he were coming to terms with what Ino was saying about Naruto, "No way. You can make one hundred solid clones and still make more on your own? How much chakra do you have?" And he was trying to pick a fight with this guy the other night? He would have gotten slaughtered.

Hearing the awe in Idate's voice at her partner's amount of sheer chakra, Ino chose to simply talk to Naruto, "Goldie-kun he's really late coming back. Go ahead and use your jutsu again, we need to make sure Shika's alright and didn't get into any trouble."

Naruto nodded and proceeded to make the hand-seal to let out a pulse to try and pinpoint Shikamaru, "Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh what?" Ino raised a delicate eyebrow once she heard Naruto's exclamation, "I don't like 'uh-oh'. What does uh-oh mean?"

"Uh-oh means move your ass before Shika loses his." Naruto said, getting up and jumping from one rooftop to another, heading towards Shikamaru's location. Both Ino and Idate got up and quickly followed after him.

XxX

"Troublesome…" Shikamaru quietly muttered as he hid within a pile of crates near a ship that sat outside of a warehouse, a dozen workers were busy moving things off of the ship. The thing that caught his original interest was the fact that the guards of the Gato Company warehouse were shinobi with that sound note plate on their facemasks. That explained the shinobi attack and where they had been hiding. The Wasabi Family couldn't simply search private property without just cause or they'd have lost standing.

Too bad they didn't know Gato Company's secret policy of playing dirty for getting an advantage over the competition. But what particular thing could Gato be coming after in Degarashi Port? If it was just to assassinate the Wasabi and Wagarashi Heads as originally thought to try and get control of the port that way then they would have been far more aggressive with their actions.

Ugh… the smell of the crates were messing with Shikamaru's head. He couldn't think. Why'd he have to hide in the mess of crates that were used to carry Gato's illegal drugs? Shipping heroin into the port? That was just great. He could smell the remnants of the chemicals used to cut the drugs.

They had long since hidden their stores of the drug. Where and in which of the dozen warehouses lining the dock, he didn't know since he had been hiding for quite a while. Maybe he should have let Naruto or Ino do this themselves? Nah, if either of them got caught they would have just tried to fight their way out.

Fighting his way out was not the plan. He could get out, all he needed was enough time to think of a way-.

-To get the hell out of the way of the giant sword that was being slammed down on his hiding place. Damn it!

Shikamaru dove out of the pile of crates as a zanbatou sliced through his crate and would have cut him clean in half if it had hit him. Stopping to size up his attacker, Shikamaru saw an incredibly large man with shoulder-length brown hair, a red headband with the Otogakure symbol emblazoned on the metal plate on his forehead, a dark purple high collared shirt, and black trousers, "Great… I've got to fight a behemoth now."

"A little Konoha brat." The man said, holding his zanbatou up to rest on his shoulder, "I didn't know they sent baby chunin on missions this far away from home. Does your mother know you're out here kid?"

"I think my mother is actually glad I'm out and about now that you ask me about it." Shikamaru said, still with his mostly uncaring expression on his face as he seemingly tried to make light of his situation.

"You're in the wrong place little man." The shinobi said, lifting his zanbatou before rushing to attack Shikamaru again. However instead of having to draw a weapon to try and defend himself, Shikamaru only had to barely use his right hand to reach into a pocket of his chunin flak jacket to pull out a small explosive ball that he threw at his adversary, exploding in a flash of light that blinded him, "Gah! Why haven't the others attacked you yet?"

"Because we already kicked their asses!"

The air was driven out of the exceedingly large man's lungs when a pair of Naruto clones delivered powerful driving kicks to his belly, followed by another Naruto delivering a heavy uppercut to his chin that sent him stumbling back, "Ino-chan!" The Naruto clones yelled before a swing of the zanbatou dispelled them.

"On it!" Ino said with her hands placed in her clan's signature hand-seal, "Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu)!" As Ino fired her own consciousness at the burly Oto ninja and took over his body, "Got him… now someone finish this please. I hate being in this guy's body."

"Yeah, yeah. Just make sure your timing for the release is spot on." Shikamaru said as he formed the rat seal and his shadow began to slink out towards the body Ino currently had under her possession, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possesion Jutsu)!" Ino released her control over the body just as Shikamaru's shadow grabbed a hold of him, "Naruto, finish him now before he gets his senses back!"

"Whatever!" Naruto charged towards the man and made three clones that all leapt right at the stunned and trapped man, "Kakeyapakto (Flash Mallet)!" All four versions of Naruto smashed a jumping knee strike into the head of the man. He seemingly became aware right before the four knees struck him throughout the face and head and rendered him unconscious.

As the man's body thudded off of the dock, motionless after falling, Idate walked up to the trio of chunin looking at the fallen Otogakure ninja, "Wow you guys sure kicked their asses." He said, looking back towards the warehouse where the other Otogakure ninja stationed there were in similar or more serious condition, "So are we done?"

"You beat Hanzaki pretty easily… useless as he was. Good job kids."

Team 10 and Idate turned towards the ship to see a lady with blue hair in a spiky ponytail looking down at them with a smirk on her red lips as she held a crystal ball in her hands, "That was an entertaining little scrape to watch from the hold of the ship."

"We'll beat you too!" Naruto shouted at her with his four clones having his back as well as his teammates, "Get out of Degarashi Port and leave this place alone!"

The smirk that was on the lady's face dropped as she looked down at the blonde boy and his tangible doppelgangers, "You know… I actually was going to leave by sunrise. But now I think I'll take a few scalps with me when I go."

Even faced down with three shinobi and one former ninja, this strange woman didn't seem to care in the slightest, "Who the hell are you anyway?"

"My name is Guren." The woman said before crushing the crystal ball in her hands, allowing the shards to fall to the ground, "Remember to take that name to hell with you when the demons ask who sent you."

* * *

Omake: Training Day 2

A mountain with one hand tied behind his back and he couldn't even use his chakra to try and stick. It was all supposed to be him and nothing more. Now Naruto figured he was strong, but it was an entire body kind of strength. Most of his strength-related taijutsu attacks revolved around sudden and quick bursts of energy. That wouldn't serve him any good when climbing a mountain… with one hand, "Damn you Ero-sensei you really screwed me over this time."

He _did_ not want to obsess about this, but with Shikamaru and Ino constantly training with their fathers his own training was what he had to hyperfocus on.

"Dynamic Entry!"

Like a post-traumatic stress disorder flashback, Naruto immediately grouped those two words with getting brutally blindsided with a kick that probably gave him a 2nd degree concussion the day after his graduation from the Academy.

Thus when the foot of his nightmares plowed into the back of his head it wasn't a big surprise when his body was replaced in a puff of smoke with a log. The attacking Rock Lee blinked until he turned around to block a diving ax kick from Naruto, "Naruto-kun! I have come for my rematch! This time I will not exhaust myself with the Eight Gates and I will defeat you!"

"You could have just asked me to fight damn it!" Naruto snapped before dropping to the ground and launching at Lee with a follow-up punch that Lee blocked, "I don't want to do this right now Lee! I've got some serious stuff to worry about!"

"More serious than a challenge from your eternal rival?"

"So we're rivals now?"

"Of course!"

Naruto grabbed a hold of Lee's wrist after the green-clad genin blocked his punch and pulled him in to slam his shoulder harshly against Lee's own shoulder and chest only for Lee to barely budge. Wow. That should have put him on his back and at worst dislocated his shoulder.

No time to think about that as Lee threw a punch of his own that Naruto had to let go of Lee to avoid, with Lee's reach being far longer than his and with Naruto not wanting to test Lee's actual strength.

"Lee go away!" Naruto snapped irritably, "I need to go train!"

"This is training!" Lee insisted, not taking no for an answer, "A hot-blooded, spirited competition between two youthful rivals! What could be a more effective way to train than this?" He then launched at Naruto again to engage him once more.

XxX

(Two Hours Later)

Both Naruto and Lee were staring at each other looking exhausted and bruised but still trying to stand in their fighting stances, "Can we stop now?" Naruto asked desperately. He just wanted to go home at that point. He'd figure out what to do about his training tomorrow since Lee wasted so much of his time, "All I wanted was to find a training exercise…"

"Lee where have you been!"

"Gai-sensei!" Lee said, immediately perking back up as his larger green jumpsuit-sporting sense arrived in the clearing that he and Naruto had been going back and forth in, "I was just training with Naruto-kun here."

Gai gave Lee a disapproving look, "While I understand your desire to train, we had a mission to begin at noon. It's late in the afternoon now. We have to postpone the trip until tomorrow."

Lee looked down in shame at being admonished by his idol, "I am sorry Gai-sensei. I simply wanted to fight Naruto-kun again at full strength to see who was better. I completely forgot about today's mission."

Shaking his head at his student, Gai put a hand on Lee's bowl-cut head, "You must have better prioritizing skills than this." He then turned his attention to Naruto, "I heard you say that all you wanted was a training exercise. What kind of training were you thinking about."

Hey, Maito Gai was a strong guy. He could probably climb that cliff one-handed in his sleep. He was definitely the guy to ask about something like this, "Well I was looking for an exercise to make me stronger and-." He was never able to finish his sentence that would have said that he needed to increase his ability to focus as well since Gai grabbed him by his arm and lifted him off of the ground.

"Strength training?" Gai said, his eyes burning over with passion for hard work, "Say no more! You've come to the number one shinobi in physical exercise and conditioning! Lee!" He said, getting his younger counterpart to snap to attention, "As your punishment for the missed mission today you will train with Naruto-kun and myself until tomorrow when we are to leave for our assignment!"

"Yes Gai-sensei! I will help Naruto-kun improve his own physical strength for as long as it takes!"

And with that, the two taijutsu specializing shinobi grabbed Naruto and dragged him off for a long training session revolving entirely around taijutsu and body workouts… none of which had anything to do with what Naruto actually needed to have done or needed to improve on.

He did learn a very valuable lesson though; only train with Gai and Lee if he had lots of time to kill, if he hated himself, and if he felt the need to feel arduous amounts of pain in places he didn't know he had.

Omake: Wake Up Call

Naruto sat up in his bedroll with his sleeping cap on his head and pajamas adorning his frame. With a yawn he stretched out and looked around the room that he, Shikamaru, and Ino were staying in for the duration of their mission. Shikamaru was still curled up in his own accommodations, sleeping soundly, while Ino's own was neatly made up and the girl was not in sight.

Taking Ino to just be an early riser as he had been used to seeing her up and about at that time of the morning in the past, Naruto stood up and stretched his legs out before heading to the bathroom that was connected to their room.

If he had been in a sound state of mind he would have noticed that the light in the bathroom was on by noticing it through the crack at the bottom, but he did not, and thus Naruto opened the door to the bathroom only to wonder why the hell it was so hazy and hot in there before his half-conscious morning brain kicked in and he noticed that the bathroom was not empty.

And he then went wide-eyed with a small trickle of blood creeping from his nose before slowly creeping backwards and shutting the door with not a sound for his efforts. Naruto just stood in place staring at the door he had just come through both ways.

He had just seen his female teammate Ino naked… and the only thing that saved him from a horrible fate of Ino taking over his body and doing horrible things to it was the fact that she had her back turned to him and the mirror she had been standing in front of was fogged over due to the shower she had obviously just taken. Though he had only seen her from the back that was certainly more than enough for him.

Now having swiped his own share of dirty magazines right off of bookstore shelves in the past to develop Oiroke no Jutsu (Sexy Jutsu), despite Naruto's open debunking of Jiraiya's exploits and pervert lifestyle was no stranger to the female form himself. He could appreciate a pretty girl just as easily as the next guy. Still, it was something else completely to see such a thing from a girl he saw every day and found rather attractive. 'An obtainable kind of beautiful' was what he would refer to Ino as if he were that articulate since he knew her quite well.

It didn't help that Ino fell right in with the tradition of every kunoichi on the face of the planet as being too damn good looking for their own good, even going on 13. And she looked good with her hair down too… but he wouldn't be able to bring that opinion up without his mind reaching back to this incident in the future that he was lucky to escape without a bump or a bruise.

As a matter of fact he felt kind of wrong that he wasn't going to suffer any repercussions for his accidental actions, unintentional though they may have been.

With that in mind he walked over to Shikamaru and shook him awake, not taking no for an answer until Shikamaru began to stir, "Shikamaru I need you to-! Oof!" Naruto exhaled sharply when Shikamaru's fist deposited itself firmly into his stomach without warning, "*cough* Thanks…" Naruto wheezed out with a pained smile, "How'd you know I wanted you to punch me in the stomach?"

Taking a second to rub the sleep from his eyes Shikamaru looked at the doubled-over Naruto groggily before yawning and lying back down in his bedroll, "I didn't… I just hit you because you woke me up asshole. You should know better than that." He then turned over and stared at Naruto since he was awake anyway and had a question, "Why did you want me to punch you in the first place?"

Naruto didn't answer. He simply averted his eyes from Shikamaru, unknowingly directing his gaze towards the bathroom door. Shikamaru saw this and noticed a few things.

Namely the drying blood trail coming from Naruto's nose, the fact that Ino was not in the room with the two of them, and the light that was on in the bathroom with the closed door that had slight amounts of steam coming from the cracks.

Linking these things up into a possible logical conclusion was simple for Shikamaru, even in the morning because it was staring him right in the face, "Troublesome…" He muttered with a red face.

* * *

Jutsu List

Sakura Bunshin no Jutsu (Cherry Blossom Clone). C-rank ninjutsu, bunshinjutsu, supplementary. A technique that produces a clone by projecting one's chakra to maintain a shape and form using sakura petals. Due to the clone's flimsy make it cannot actively participate in battle, bursting into petals once it makes contact with opposition, though it works as a good distraction. However Sakura's usage of the jutsu of her own creation revolves around the fact that once the clone dispels she can use the petals for another special attack of her choosing.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Wasabi Family

Morino Idate

**Ninjutsu: 1  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 15.5**

Otogakure Shinobi

Guren

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 30**

Fuuma Clan (Otogakure)

Jigumo

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 18**

Kamikiri

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 1.5  
**

**Total Score: 18**

Kagerou

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 20**

Hanzaki

**Ninjutsu: 0.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 0.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 17**

Sound Four

Jiroubou

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 23.5**

Tayuya

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 24.5**

Kidomaru

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 25**

Sakon

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 25**

* * *

**I'm done, and I hope you enjoyed. Been doing a lot of working… and studying for midterms… and healing. My hand is officially good once again, no longer broken. So in my eternal wisdom I will be doing my best to break it again on a sparring partner's headgear, because that's how we roll. I'm sick of doing situps…**

**So until the next time around folks, I'll see you. Kenchi out.**


	36. That Old Glass Ceiling

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do own several oil fields under an assumed identity in another country; I'll let you guess which one. My point is: I'M RICH AS HELL!

I wish.

Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 36: That Old Glass Ceiling**

* * *

(With Sasuke – Ta no Kuni/Hi no Kuni Border Area – Nighttime)

Sasuke shook the cobwebs off after getting hit in the face harder than he had ever cared to get hit in his ninja career. Even Chouji never hit him that hard because they pulled punches more often than not when they sparred. He got back up to his feet with a kunai in hand from his supply pouch as he bled from his lip and his Sharingan eyes scanned the whole immediate vicinity of the forest.

"I can't believe I actually hit you with that punch. I figured that you Uchiha Clan members had more of a kick to you than that." With that, the young man that had hit Sasuke, the one with the grey hair, pale skin, and turquoise lipstick, came towards him into clear and plain view.

Hearing the confident voice of the teen slightly older than Sasuke that came walking calmly from the trees to face off with him, the newly minted Konoha chunin narrowed his eyes and wiped the blood from his mouth, "Get over here and I'll show you just how much 'kick' I have once I kick your ass."

"You Konoha trash are so weak."

"Let's find out if that's true or not."

Sasuke rushed forward to attack his opponent, wondering where the rest of his team happened to be for a split second before he launched his kunai at the enemy. With a grin that could be easily seen by Sasuke's sharp eyes even in the nighttime shadows of the forest, the strange young man dodged the blade before eating a kick right in his stomach from Sasuke that sucked the air and spittle right out of him, 'He's fast.' He reacted and tried to deliver a punch to Sasuke but missed and watched as Sasuke back handsprang out of his physical attack range, smirking at him after landing a blow without retaliation.

"Great reflexes." Sasuke quipped sarcastically, "I'm going to run circles around you all night if that's what you've got. And you say that we're weak?"

A glare came Sasuke's way before the Oto shinobi laughed, placing his hand over his right eye, covering it as he pushed his bang up, "I like that. Your trash-talk needs work, but that wit of yours is almost as quick as you are. My name is Sakon."

"I don't give a damn." Sasuke replied, his smirk dropping and being replaced with his usual cold, stoic demeanor, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Sakon clicked his tongue in a chiding fashion and wagged a finger at Sasuke, setting the boy off again, "What am I doing here? You _are_ trespassing on the border of a sovereign country. Just because Konoha apparently rules the roost in this region doesn't mean you can just do as you like. Your little village isn't as strong as they like to make you think they are… and neither are you."

That was all Sasuke needed to hear from some guy that had randomly jumped him and his team and had separated him from them. He needed to defeat this guy and get past to reach them and find out what had happened to them. If he didn't already have enough motivation, now he was pissed off at this random person declaring him as weak without even fighting him first. Well he was going to change that tune to the beat of Sasuke dancing on his head in a few moments.

Sasuke rushed back in to attack him with his taijutsu, trading punches and kicks with nothing that had any substance landing for either ninja. Sasuke wound up being knocked back a few steps with a hard double palm thrust to the chest that knocked him back-first into a tree with Sakon following up, attempting a hard haymaker of a punch, "Tarenken (Multiple Connecting Fists)!"

From Sakon's punching arm at the elbow two other arms seemed to suddenly appear to hit Sasuke along with the original fist coming at him from the middle of the three. There was no way he was going to stick around in front of that to be hit with three punches all at the same time again, not after taking it the first time.

Sasuke ducked out of the way of the punches and watched the hit crack the wood of the tree upon contact, 'What a powerful punch.' But instead of marveling at Sakon's strength to deal such damage to a sturdy tree with one attack, Sasuke chose to launch a counterattack of his own, drawing a kunai from the pouch on his thigh and bringing it around in a stabbing motion meant to drive into Sakon's neck to end the fight.

Until an arm reached out from the back of Sakon's shoulder and stopped Sasuke's stab by grabbing his wrist, "Good try." Sakon said with a smirk, his back still turned to Sasuke as the wrongly placed arm that had suddenly sprouted continued to hold onto him, "For such a nice effort I think I'll give you a hand." A second arm sprouted from the back of Sakon's other shoulder and nailed Sasuke with a punch to the face that knocked him back. Sakon whirled around and then threw a kick, "Tarenkyaku (Multiple Connected Feet)!"

From Sakon's hip joint, two more legs seemed to momentarily sprout and deliver simultaneous kicks to Sasuke's body. A dark grin came over his face at the feeling of Sasuke's abdominal muscles giving way as he bashed his ribs with the attack.

With Sasuke's defenses down due to the successful kick, Sakon began gleefully pummeling Sasuke with his bare hands, not letting up and giving Sasuke the needed second to analyze his move and counter with his incomplete Sharingan, "Like I said, you're weak! You might be able to slap around wimpy thugs and bandits, and you might be able to beat any other insect your age, but compared to a real true elite of Otogakure you're a lightweight! I'm one of Orochimaru-sama's elites! The very best!"

Sasuke was knocked to the ground, his vision swimming from the repeated punches he had been taking to the face and head but his mind still working even as he was hoisted off of the ground by the collar of his vest, 'Orochimaru. He was a Konoha ninja wasn't he? One of Hokage-sama's students just like the Tsunade woman that healed me after the exams. But he left after committing a bunch of crimes.'

"Stay with me now!" Sakon ordered, socking Sasuke in the belly one good time before tossing him out of his flak jacket to the ground and holding it up, "They'll give these to anyone in your village won't they? Now I'm not saying that you're not good because you are… but from the stories I've heard, you're no Itachi." He then felt Sasuke's fist buried firmly in his stomach, doubling him over in agony.

"Don't you ever mention that man's name in front of me." Sasuke said lowly in a dangerous tone of voice, "You don't know the first thing about anything, so don't compare us, or use his name like you're familiar."

Even with Sasuke's punch sucking the wind out of his lungs, Sakon smirked and wheezed out a response, "Hit a nerve did I? You're run-of-the-mill compared to Itachi. Or are you a secret ANBU captain and no one knew about it?" He lifted his hands in a double-sledgehammer blow but was cut off by a rising kick that sent Sakon into the air. Even though an extra pair of arms came from his body to block the kick, Sasuke's foot went right through his attempted defense, 'The Sharingan… it lets him adjust in a split second. That's absurd.'

"Rank doesn't mean anything to me." Sasuke said as he flew through the air, matching Sakon's trajectory right beneath him as if he were his shadow, "Kage Buyou (Shadow of the Dancing Leaf)." Something he had managed to gleam and copy from Rock Lee during the exams and the Team Gai/Team Asuma matchup.

'How did he get there without me even noticing?' Sakon thought, gritting his teeth angrily.

"The only reason I care about being a chunin so that I can keep on getting stronger and testing myself so that I'll know when I'm ready for _him_." The alarmed Sakon tried to turn in the air and punch Sasuke, but the moment he made even the slightest move Sasuke shifted to the opposite side that he was turning towards and delivered a hard kick that pushed him above Sakon and began sending him down to the ground. He then quickly smashed him with a backhand and then spun through with a hard front punch as the ground got closer faster and faster. Sasuke then finished the combination in time with Sakon hitting the ground, delivering a smashing ax kick to his sternum, "Shishi Rendan (Lion Combo)!"

After delivering the final blow that smashed Sakon into the forest floor, Sasuke rolled back away from him and got his distance, turning his eyes towards where Sakon dropped his flak jacket. Sneering one last time at someone that had disrespected something that Sasuke had broken his body to obtain, he walked over and picked up the padded article of clothing before putting it back on and zipping it up.

"And this is what toying with your enemy gets you in the end Sakon."

"Shut up Ukon… all you do is sleep so I wouldn't expect you to get the concept of trying to have fun."

"And look at what your 'fun' has gotten you; all beaten up by our person of interest."

"I said shut up! I can still fight!"

Sasuke turned around to believe that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Instead of just Sakon he saw a mirror image of Sakon standing there over the bruised and beaten one taking a knee that Sasuke had sworn he had just finished putting down hard, "No way. You should be out cold after that."

"And he would have been." The second identical Oto ninja Ukon said, gesturing his head down to his apparent brother, "Luckily I'm such a caring brother and I broke his fall to keep you from breaking his back and sternum."

'So that's where the extra limbs came from.' Sasuke mentally deduced, setting himself in a fighting stance to prepare for more fighting, 'Somehow this guy was inside of the other one. How freaky.'

Sakon stood back up, glaring angrily at Sasuke, but before he could walk over to continue fighting him Ukon put a hand on his shoulder to hold him back and spoke up, "No, we've had enough of you trying to do that. Do you know how much time you've wasted? From now on we handle this my way." As he said that, black markings spread from his forehead around his entire body, "And my way is quicker."

"Tch." Sakon sounded quite displeased at his fight being hijacked by his twin brother, but listened anyway and activated his own seal that formed his own black markings all over his body.

'This is not good.' Sasuke said as his eyes could see the foul chakra radiating off of their bodies, 'They both seem at least twice as strong now.'

XxX

(Kakashi vs. Jiroubou)

"You're very strong, but you're very slow." Kakashi commented as he dodged a tree being picked up and thrown at him by jumping over it while it slid through and tore up the ground, "Are you sure you were the proper member of your team to come and fight me?"

Instead of before when Jiroubou simply had the black markings on his skin he was now red-skinned with tough looking bumps on his shoulders and forehead, with his orange Mohawk turning into a mane going down his back, and with black eyes with yellow irises, "I'm all that's needed. With this power that Orochimaru has gifted me with I can even overcome the likes of you Hatake." He then smashed the ground with his palm, kicking up a lot of rocks and chunks of earth as well as causing a mini-tremor to rattle the woods.

Kakashi's footing was momentarily compromised and Jiroubou took full advantage of that when he seemed to reach down onto the ground and rip up a massive lump of the ground over his head as if it were nothing, 'What kind of strength does this seal on the boy give the user?' Kakashi wondered in shock as the fear creeping into his heart at the fates of his students began to set it, 'He said that everyone on his team had a similar ability.'

"Doton: Doryou Dango (Earth Release: Earth Mausoleum Dumpling)!"

Jiroubou chucked the large mass of earth at Kakashi and smirked when he heard the attack hit the ground with a booming crash as it slid across the ground, eventually crashing into a row of trees as it came to a stop, leaving a massive drag mark along the ground where it had been sliding.

From behind Jiroubou, Kakashi's arms popped up out of the ground and grabbed a hold of the Oto ninja's ankles, "Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no-!"

"No you don't!" The powerful young man immediately reached down and grabbed Kakashi's arms, pulling him out of the ground by them before viciously slamming him into the ground, "Just die already you trash!" Once he crushed Kakashi's body between his and the ground with the slam, the body of the Sharingan-wielding shinobi disappeared in a puff of smoke. Jiroubou got up off of the ground and turned around once he heard the sound of electricity crackling. With a gasp he saw Kakashi's hand building up lightning chakra and struck the ground with his hands once Kakashi began rushing forward at him, "Doton: Doroku Gaeshi (Earth Release: Earth Shore Return)!"

A wall rose up from the ground in front of Jiroubou, blocking Kakashi from coming right at him with the dangerous ninjutsu in his right hand, but before Jiroubou could spring back and move away from the wall since he figured Kakashi would punch through it, he turned his head to the side to see Kakashi there, having not moved to destroy the wall at all, only choosing to go around it.

"Raikiri (Lightning Cutter)!"

Jiroubou immediately began choking on his own blood when he found Kakashi's right hand shoved right into his left side, forearm deep as the only thing keeping him alive happened to be the electricity coursing through his body. His strange transformation began to recede and return him to his normal appearance as he tried in vain to clutch at Kakashi's arm with any kind of strength as he sank to his knees on the ground.

"The eye lets me adjust to sudden changes in the environment of the battlefield, even things as quick as your defensive wall coming up from the ground. It wasn't that wide, so I just went around it." Kakashi saw Jiroubou's eyes with panic and desperation in them as he gave the boy the last words he'd hear, "Sorry. I saw that opening that just screamed 'attack'… so I did." He then pulled his arm out of Jiroubou's chest and let him sink backwards on his knees dead.

Kakashi at least spared a second from that point afterward to make sure Jiroubou was lain down in a more dignified position and his eyes were closed.

He shook his head at the sight, "…Way too young for this." He then thought about his comment and shook his head, "No he wasn't. And nether are my kids." He said to himself before looking at Jiroubou's blood on his hand and making a set of hand-seals, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!" Slamming the bloody hand onto the ground in a puff of smoke a pack of dogs varying in size and breed appeared in front of him, "You know what Sakura, Sasuke, and Chouji smell like. I want you to split up and locate them. Now!"

With affirming barks, the ninja hounds set out to do just that, with Kakashi making a corresponding Kage Bunshin for each half of the pack of dogs as they split up into two groups and took off in separate directions.

XxX

(Naruto, Shikamaru, Ino, and Idate vs. Guren – Cha no Kuni – Northern Docks of Degarashi Port - Nightfall)

Guren stood on the railing of the ship she had revealed herself to Team 10 from and smirked down at them as they and Idate all looked ready to anticipate an attack from her, "If I attacked all of you there wouldn't be a second one, so why don't you all jus go ahead and give me your best shot. Maybe one of you will get lucky and you can take the fact that you got a hit on me to the grave."

"It's four-on-one here lady!" Naruto shouted up at her challengingly, "You can't beat us by yourself, so just leave town already, and tell Gato or whoever you're working for that he's not welcome here!"

"I'm only working for that worm Gato because he's got a deal going with my actual master. And it wouldn't matter if it was _fifty_ of you against one of me. You still wouldn't have a prayer of winning against here." Guren said confidently, not even looking down at the kids before her as a threat, especially the boisterous blonde kid with the orange clothes and the goggles on his head.

Naruto growled at Guren and made the cross-seal with his index and middle fingers, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Mutiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" In a puff of smoke, dozens of Naruto clones lined the dock by the ship all glaring up at Guren, "Let's find out for sure!" All of the clones barked in unison before springing into action against Guren at once.

"Naruto wait!" Shikamaru yelled as he watched every copy of his fellow rookie chunin launch an attack right at Guren, "We don't know what she can do!"

"You should listen to your friend sweetie!" Guren said as she jumped off of her place on the ship over the top of all of Naruto's clones and the rest of the young ninja below her while making a decent amount of hand-seals, "Kesshou: Rokkaku Shuriken: Ranbu (Crystal: Hexagonal Shuriken: Wild Dance)!" From thin air she created and began to bombard them with a massive amount of shuriken, spinning rapidly like razor blades as they began picking Naruto's clones apart and forcing the others to dodge or be hit.

They retreated off of the dock back towards the warehouses amid the sounds of the shuriken thudding into the dock and the poof noises of Naruto's clones being dispelled. As they ran, Ino took a look at one of the weapons that had stabbed into the ground, "These look just like the snowflake looking thing that Naruto showed us at the stand!"

"So this woman attacked Boss Jirouchou!" Idate said angrily glaring back at Guren as he wished he was strong enough to make her pay right then.

The remaining twenty clones of Naruto had warily drawn their machetes as they walked slowly towards Guren who had landed on the dock, still smirking at Naruto and his doppelgangers as they continued to advance her way.

'Okay… that was really impressive.' Naruto thought to himself as he walked forward carefully with his clones, 'This lady moves fast and all of those shuriken came from nowhere. I've got to slow her down.' With that thought, Naruto planned to use his clones to try and box her in to overwhelm her. Guren had other plans however.

She made four more hand-seals, getting Naruto's clones to tense in preparation until she chuckled, "You want to play taijutsu with me? That's just fine. Shouton: Suishou Tou (Crystal Release: Jade Crystal Blade)!" A long arm blade formed from the back of her forearm to extend over her fist before she ran headlong into Naruto's clones.

Without fanfare she began hacking and slashing her way through the crowd indiscriminately. Her movements were so fast, Naruto's mental feedback from the demise of his clones happened to be the only thing that protected the original as he was able to track Guren's trail of destruction before she gave him a new breathing hole in his throat as he blocked her with his machete, letting out a panicked breath as he realized just how close he came to not even seeing the attack coming.

Guren shoved Naruto back and prepared to strike at him again before she saw a flash of purple and dove away from Naruto as a trio of senbon whizzed past her body. Her attention momentarily diverted by Ino, Guren barely redirected her attention back to Naruto in time to lean back out of the way of a horizontal swipe of his machete. Guren kicked Naruto in the side of the head when leaning back, knocking him away from her.

"Dokusei Tanki-sha (Toxic Spitfire)!"

Ino spat several purple poisonous globs at Guren forcing her to jump away from them, but as she watched her own trajectory she saw an unnaturally long shadow along the ground rushing to where she was about to make a landing. The moment her feet made contact with the ground she jumped away from the shadow, tracing it with her eyes back to Shikamaru who was intently focusing on pursuing her with the jutsu.

In a method of evasion, Guren jumped from the dock onto the side of the ship, watching as Shikamaru's shadow couldn't bridge the divide from the dock to the ship across the water. A kunai sank itself into the side of the ship where she was standing that she evaded by moving up and landing on the deck, "Is that the best you've got kids? Run on back to your parents before I really hurt you."

And apparently they took her advice because before she had even started talking, Naruto and Ino had been hauling ass away from the scene. What she didn't see was what had been attached to the kunai that had stuck into the ship. Hanging from the ring of the kunai on a strand of ninja wire was a rather large ball of explosive tags at least fifteen wrapped together with one on the surface burning down.

BOOM

A massive explosion rocked the entire side of the ship, sending debris, wood, supplies, and even the deck that Team 10 had been standing on flying in a fiery blast that was impressive even by Naruto's slightly pyromaniacal standards.

"Yeah!" Naruto, goggles over his eyes so that he could look at the blast safely, cheered exuberantly with his hands in the air victoriously, "If an explosion doesn't solve your problems then you're just not using enough explosives, dattebayo! How do you like us now crystal lady?"

Ino sighed as she looked into her supply pouch, "You couldn't just use all of your own tags for that? You had to waste all of mine too Goldie-kun?"

Idate, who had been hanging back with Shikamaru as he lacked any weapons or ninjutsu to fight Guren with, grabbed his head in something of a panic, "You can't just blow up ships and docks like that! Who's the hell's going to pay for all of this?" Idate pointed at the destroyed dock with wooden remnants in flames and the sinking ship with smoke and fire billowing up into the sky from it.

"It's Gato's." Shikamaru commented in a rather uncaring manner, "Who cares? We just took out your boss's assassin. I think he'd rather pay the damages for the docks than be dead." He then saw that Idate hadn't lowered his hand from pointing, nor had he taken his eyes away from the flaming ship, "What's the matter?" He looked over at the ship again and widened his eyes, "Troublesome…"

Sticking out of the water behind the flaming ship and looking like an iceberg was a massive gathering of crystal with Guren standing at the top of it as it floated, "Yeah…" Guren said in a completely unamused tone at almost getting blown up in what she saw as a fluke, "You've all got to die."

'She still doesn't have a scratch on her.' Shikamaru thought to himself before shaking Idate's shoulder, "I want you to run and find Asuma-sensei, fast. Tell him we're fighting someone strong and to get over here. The further this stays away from the Wasabi or Wagarashi houses or the town in general the better things are."

Idate nodded and immediately from beneath his leg-warmers he dropped a pair of weights that hit the ground with a crash and took off running at an absurd speed to leave the port area and head back into town.

Guren watched him leave with a scoff and turned her attention back to the trio of young Konoha genin, "And you're sending for help to boot. It's too bad that by the time he finds who he's looking for your blood will be cold on the ground."

Naruto's slackjawed expression at seeing Guren unharmed from the sheer amount of explosive tags that he had used to make sure he took her out gave way to a look of determination, "Come and try it then! I'll send whatever you throw at me right back at you twenty-fold!"

Guren jumped off of her floating crystal onto the concrete that ran alongside the length ocean for most of the docks, still looking very grave and ill-tempered. No smirk, no snide comments. With a motion of her hands she began running forward as a disk-shaped wheel of crystal formed around her that tore through the ground as she ran directly at Team 10 with a dangerous speed.

Knowing that if it could tear up the ground it would slice them into ribbons, all three of them dove out of her way. But when she passed them she abandoned the wheel and hurriedly assaulted all three, leveling Ino with a nasty punch to the face and a kick that knocked her away onto her back before dodging a retaliation machete swing from Naruto and nailing him with one of her own. Shikamaru saw that in the moonlight and in the light from the nearby fire he could identify a sheen on her skin underneath her clothing that was a translucent layer of crystal she formed like some kind of armor.

'Who is this woman?' Shikamaru thought to himself as she turned her attention towards him and dove out of the way of a kick that was aimed at him before he tossed a few shuriken at her, 'She can deal with all three of us. We haven't come close to hitting her yet.' Guren began steadily focusing her attack on Shikamaru as she was not going to risk being caught by his shadow and immobilized.

He was never one for taijutsu but he was being forced into a hand-to-hand battle, and as Shikamaru tried to defend himself against Guren's swift and accurate crystal-lined punches that steadily began to quickly bruise and cut his face he wondered just what kind of skill other Otogakure shinobi had.

Ino had by then gotten up and had drawn a kunai to help Shikamaru fight in close with, but as she attacked Guren from behind she ate a malicious back kick to her face that knocked her away. Naruto jumped back into the fray with his clones and his machete, but Guren grabbed Shikamaru by the collar of his flak vest and threw him at the copies of Naruto to get rid of most of them and to get them to lower their weapons so they didn't hurt Shikamaru by accident.

After beating the rest of Naruto's clones into smoke, Guren began quickly looking around for the real Naruto and saw him swinging his machete by his chain with one hand while making a one-handed ram seal, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!" He yelled before blowing wind chakra into the spinning machete blade.

The cylindrical blast of bladed wind coming her way had Guren blocking with her arms in front of her face, but Naruto's attack only blew her backwards until she ground her feet in tightly and left nicks and gashes at best in her crystal armor. She rushed directly at Naruto through the force of his wind until she could break out of the affected area of the jutsu. From there she rushed at him and held one hand out that got within inches of him, just short of actually touching him.

Naruto thought he had dodged her and was preparing to see if her crystal armor could take a slash from a wind-coated chakra blade, but her next words stopped that course of action short.

"Shouton: Kesshou Gokakurou (Crystal Release: Crystal Pentagonal Prison)!"

It was almost surreal to watch as Naruto was entirely encased in crystal that emerged from the ground and ripped through the concrete, freezing him in time with a bewildered look on his face while mid-swing with his machete as if he could feel an irregularity prior to being trapped.

Guren looked at her own work of art, with Naruto fossilized inside of the crystal by way of her jutsu, "That's much better. Now I won't have that brat's grating voice murdering my ears. You're much more bearable stuck in a crystal." She said, patting the structure that held Naruto frozen and unresponsive.

"Naruto." Shikamaru couldn't believe what she had just seen, "She didn't even touch him. He dodged her and she still got him with whatever she did." Guren didn't have to touch anything to encase it in crystal as long as it was merely in the near vicinity. But it was different when it was just thin air. She had just encased their friend in the middle of a crystal. He turned towards Ino and saw her hands covering her open mouth in horror as she stared at Naruto, "Ino come on, you've got to snap out of it."

Ino wanted to walk towards him, to touch him to see if it was actually real. He wasn't moving a muscle. He wasn't even blinking, "Goldie-kun… he's alright isn't he?" She asked Shikamaru, desperately wanting to hear a yes, "Shika, he's going to be alright once we get him out of there right? We can chisel him out somehow can't we?"

"I wouldn't do that." Guren said matter-of-factly, rapping a knuckle on the crystal that encased Naruto, "If you break the crystal you'll break him too. He'll flitter through the air just like particles of the prison. But hey, at least he'll make a good decoration for someone's living room. And you're all next."

Shikamaru placed a hand on Ino's shaking shoulder, "We can get him out of there after we find some way out of this. We can't do anything to help him if we're dead, okay?" Ino nodded reluctantly, wiping gathering tears out of her eyes as she glared murderously at Guren.

That was pretty much all Ino needed to hear, as if she needed another reason to want to finish off Guren, "Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!" Ino exhaled a purple cloud of gas from her mouth that forced Guren to dodge, and as she did, Shikamaru's shadow appeared from the cloud that had been obscuring her vision to try and make contact with her.

'Damn it!' Shikamaru grit his teeth as his shadow continued to give chase, pushing Guren further away from Naruto's crystal-encased body, 'I can't even start to use my new jutsu until I catch her with the Kagemane no Jutsu!' Was he going to have to get inventive to try and trap her somehow? 'I really don't want to use the other jutsu I learned… but I can't be picky at a time like this.'

"Shikamaru, watch my body." Ino said not leaving any room for argument as she made a special hand-seal that joined the index, pinkie, and thumb fingers of both hands to take aim at Guren.

Shikamaru heard that and was about to stop her from trying to hit such a fast moving target with her clan jutsu, but he noticed that Ino's hands were in a different seal than it would have been for the Shintenshin no Jutsu, 'That's not how she fires her consciousness for Shintenshin… is this her new jutsu?'

"Shinjoueishin no Jutsu (Mind Body Projection Jutsu)!" Ino shouted before her body fell limp, and from the lifeless body rose a spectral avatar of the blonde girl with a ghost-like lower half. Ghost-Ino looked over at Shikamaru's curious expression and grinned, "Yep, it's exactly what it looks like. I am a motherfucking ghost." She then turned towards Guren with a dark look on her face, "Ooh, I can't wait to possess you and do all kinds of messed up stuff to your body."

Ghost-Ino flew at Guren swiftly, with Guren creating a few crystal shuriken to throw at Ino. To her misfortune however, they just passed right through her and she was forced to dodge, not particularly knowing why Ino wanted to make contact with her, but also not willing to let something she just saw phase weaponry through her body get close.

Once Ino missed her kamikaze-like rush, Guren's attention turned back towards Shikamaru who was again attacking with his shadow, "Don't you get the point yet kid? Your shadow's too slow to get me as long as I'm paying attention to you. And there's no way I'm letting a Nara, even a brat like you, get a chance to connive behind my back." She then saw Ino's prone body nearby Shikamaru's and smirked again, a course of action set for her to take.

Before she could though, she had to move out of the way of another attack from Ino. This time from the air, as after the spectral divebomb missed, Ino's avatar passed through the ground. Guren jumped backwards hard to avoid Ino's next move to attack her blindspot from underneath and kicked a crate in the direction of Shikamaru's advancing shadow in order to give herself an extra second to put some more space between it and her.

When she did that though she found herself looking back up in the direction of Ino's spiritual figure, diving towards her again with intent to make contact. However Ino abruptly stopped short, no longer able to move any further forward.

Ino let out a gasp and tried to float further, but she was unable to do so despite every effort to reach ahead, "No, that can't be the limit! _That's_ 150 feet?" She asked to no one in particular incredulously before turning back to Shikamaru, "She's out of my range!" She shouted in warning before a gigantic snowflake-looking crystal passed through her towards both Shikamaru and her body, "No!"

"Kesshou: Kyodai Rokkaku Shuriken (Crystal: Giant Hexagonal Shuriken)!"

"Shikamaru!" Ino shouted trying to get him to move. It was her own fault that her pursuit of Guren failed. If her body was to pay the price for not keeping track of her jutsu's own limit then that was her own problem and fault which was why she was poised to let out a bloodcurdling scream when she saw Shikamaru dive at her body and shove it out of the way of Guren's attack, letting the crystal blade rip into his own instead.

She was about to scream until she saw Shikamaru's body disappear in a puff of smoke.

"Ino get back into your body now!"

Without even turning to see where Shikamaru's voice was coming from due to the all-out authority he shouted at her with, Ino did just that, getting back into her body and sitting up with haste. There was no blood from Shikamaru, nothing he used to substitute himself with, nothing. How'd he get out of that?

"I take back what I used to think about how learning Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu) would be cool." Shikamaru said, panting heavily from his place by the corner of a nearby warehouse as a shadow from him continued to chase Guren around, 'It's exhausting… for just one clone. I was told I had the reserves for it, but I figured that meant I'd be able to do it and have enough chakra to fight almost at full capacity myself.'

Ino saw this and stood back up on her feet, "You jerk! Are you telling me Goldie-kun taught you that jutsu and he didn't teach me even when I asked him to?"

"Dad taught me that." Shikamaru clarified, as he had never even asked Naruto to do so, knowing that Naruto was forbidden from doing so, "I thought your ghost would keep Guren off-guard long enough for me to get into position to capture her, but you can't go that far from your body and she attacked. I had to make my move to keep her from trying another one while you were getting back." The sweat pouring down his face from exertion due to attempting to catch Guren with his shadow for so long was evident of his growing exhaustion.

He had split his chakra in half and used it to form a clone that had been throwing Guren off to make her believe it was still the original Shikamaru with its own shadow attack. This was after already extensively using his jutsu to direct her into attacks from both Ino and Naruto combined. Ino had never seen Shikamaru use his shadow so much before. By this point in a battle he had usually either captured their enemy, or had directed them into a finishing blow from her or Naruto.

"We can't get her..." Ino said with some desperation, "Even with the new stuff we learned. Just who is this person?" She then saw Shikamaru's shadow retract back to himself as he fell to his knees, trying to use the wall of the warehouse he was by to stand back up, "Come on Shika, please don't stay down! You have to get back-!" A sharp pain in her side later and Ino felt too much shock to continue speaking as she fell to the ground. Her clothes and her body felt wet but she didn't have the energy to lift her head and body to check how badly she was bleeding though.

Guren stood over Ino with blood dripping from her crystal arm blade reformed and prepared to finish her off and move on to the last Konoha ninja that stood before her when a kunai flew past her from behind, aimed badly. She turned and saw Shikamaru standing back up, leaning against the wall of the warehouse with his entire body. Beaten, bruised, bleeding from his nose and mouth, but still standing to face her, "You've got to have some kind of death wish kid. If you tried to run you might have had a chance at getting a good distance away while I finished your friend."

"Sorry." Shikamaru said, drawing another kunai to defend himself with, "I'm just not the kind of guy that would leave his friends behind. No matter how dumb that makes me seem."

Guren just stared at him wondering why even the kids from that village seemed to act this way. Will of Fire? Yeah, whatever, "You know, you look tired."

"I am tired."

"Then let me help you go to sleep."

Another large snowflake-looking crystal shuriken flew at Shikamaru and despite him pushing himself off of the wall it still cut deeply into him, making blood fly as he fell to the ground with a thud.

With a satisfied sounding sigh at her handiwork, Guren looked around the dock area at the fallen and motionless Shikamaru and Ino. She spared them one last glance before walking over to the crystallized Naruto observing him one last time before drawing her arm blade back to smash him into shards. Before she let fly with the punch though, she noticed something, "Hey, didn't this brat have blue eyes before?"

And she then had to cover her eyes once the crystal that used to imprison Naruto exploded and sent shards everywhere. While her eyes were closed a fist hit her right in the face and sent her bouncing along the ground like a ragdoll until she finally got back up. The thin layer of crystal that had been covering her skin cracked and fell off revealing her actual skin on her face as she looked at Naruto, "Well would you look at that."

Orange chakra was blazing around Naruto's body like fire and he had dropped his machete to the ground with a metal clang. His eyes indeed weren't blue any longer, they were red with vertical slits in them. His whisker-marks were darker and deeper in his cheeks than before and he was staring at Guren hatefully, "I saw everything."

"You should have been dead." Guren remarked matter-of-factly, "And now you're not. That's the chakra from the Kyuubi no Yoko isn't it?" She asked curiously, not even registering or caring that Naruto was angry, "You're more interesting than I thought. Your chakra must be pretty strong to survive being stuck in there for as long as you did."

The Kyuubi made him watch. When he was first trapped he immediately tried to tap into the Kyuubi's chakra to try and break free, but it laughingly denied him, even when he said that Guren would kill him and by proxy it if it didn't. Still, the Kyuubi assured him that he would survive for long enough to get its point across.

And he watched Shikamaru do their best and still fail. This was where the point was made right before the Kyuubi finally gave him the chakra he needed to break free and escape. It was the same point that the creature had been trying to make since the end of the chunin exams and his fight with Gaara.

"**You're weak and without me you're nothing."**

The nonchalant look on Guren's face as she observed him, not particularly caring that she had stricken down his friends, only added to his rage, and if it was the last thing he did he was going to vent some of that aggression on her.

XxX

(Asuma vs. Fuuma Clan)

It was like some kind of cheesy ghost town showdown scene. Asuma had sent the Wagarashi Family representatives away for their own safety, and because they would only get in his way, while he faced off with their three assassins in the middle of the deserted nighttime street. Representatives from Otogakure to boot.

Okay, that fight was doable for him. He was Sarutobi Asuma after all, and in his mind at least that meant something.

To begin, Asuma simply blitzed ahead, self-assured of his own taijutsu skills to handle three combatants at once with his trench knives and the chakra blades. Apparently they thought the same of his skills since they leapt away from him, not looking forward to getting into a fistfight with him. Not to be deterred, Asuma merely used this as a way to pinpoint which of them was the slowest.

His target for the moment identified as the easiest prey, Asuma diverted his direction to go after the bald man Jigumo. In one motion, Asuma cut right through the man with his chakra extensions from his trench knives, cleaving him in two. But once he did so, Jigumo's body turned into a mass of small spiders that began to try and spin webs around Asuma.

Asuma cut his way through the webbing but wound up getting his arms up to block a kunai attack from the dark-haired Kamikiri. He struggled against the man for a moment before kicking him away roughly.

"Kazegumo no Jutsu (Wind Spiders Jutsu)!"

Thick webs from the same spiders from before began to descend around Asuma as Kamikiri's boy rolled away on the ground from his kick. In response, Asuma began cutting through the webs to keep them from landing on him and tying him down.

A kunai flew at Asuma and a tilt of the man's head saw it whiz past him, but as he continued to cut through threads at a swift rate he felt something wrap around the back of his neck and saw the kunai swing around like it was attached to a rope. He saw a blue thread of chakra connecting it and went wide-eyed as he felt the chakra string wrap around his throat, barely able to get one hand with a few fingers in between to keep it from flat out strangling him on the spot.

This wound up with Kamikiri yanking him forward with the chakra thread and dragging him down onto the dusty street. An angry Asuma cut himself free with his wind chakra coated trench knife and got back up to his feet only for Jigumo and Kagerou's hunchbacked form to slam into him and smash him through a wall.

Kamikiri rushed towards the hole in the building to assist his teammates in possibly finishing off the Konoha jounin only for both of them to be hurled out of the wall through newly made holes, stopping him from going inside. He huddled over his teammates and helped them back to their feet as they then saw a small spark of fire coming from inside one of the holes in the wall they had just punched through.

"Kagerou, get him now!" Kamikiri yelled, seeing an opening for them to take advantage of.

"Katon: Kasumi Enbu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Mist Blaze Dance Jutsu)!"

Kagerou's mouth opened and blew out a gas that sprayed into the building, and when it came into contact with the small wisp of flame that they had seen inside it blew up in a fiery explosion.

All three Otogakure Fuuma Clan shinobi looked at the damage they had just wrought with a double sense of accomplishment. Not only was this adding on to the execution of their mission, they had just blown up Sarutobi Asuma, a rather famous Konohagakure shinobi.

Until they heard a content sounding inhale and exhale come from down the street, only to see Asuma standing there unscathed, with a lit cigarette in his hand, "Oh that's so much better. It's been three days since the last one I've had."

Jigumo started to growl angrily at Asuma, still smarting from being unceremoniously hurled out of a building with one arm along with his partner Kagerou just moments prior, "You're mocking us… aren't you?" Asuma's only response was blowing ring clouds with his cigarette, "Otokage-sama is helping us bring our clan back to prominence, and in return we're one of Otogakure's more prominent clans. Finally, the Fuuma Clan is once more getting the respect we've earned all those years ago."

"Fuuma Clan…" Asuma said to himself as if that name had sparked a thought, "Wait, you're the clan that popularized the fuuma shuriken? How the hell did you fall from prominence?" That thing was awesome. One of the baddest-ass weapons that ever existed for widespread use.

The three looked at each other before Kagerou spoke, "…Different clan."

"Oh." Asuma said in understanding as he took another drag from his cigarette, "Well… wait, Otokage? Who the hell made your leader a kage? Nobody else recognizes that crap as legit."

"We don't need to hear anything else from you." Jigumo said, "Just die already."

Asuma shrugged his shoulders and tapped the ashes off of the end of his cigarette before just letting it sit in his mouth, "Wait until I finish my cigarette."

All three Fuuma Clan members bristled at what they perceived as an insult and not even considering the fact that Asuma had something of a nicotine addiction, "Finish him off." Kamikiri said to Kagerou who nodded and seemed to melt into the ground, not disturbing a speck of dust as the technique was performed.

Both Kamikiri and Jigumo rushed directly at Asuma, but instead of attacking him as he was prepared for, they ran past him and jumped, scaling the sides of the buildings on opposite sides of the street, getting Asuma to look around as he knew that it was because of what Kagerou's next move would be.

The ground then began to move and be sucked in towards a central area as a large pit began to be created. Asuma quickly made his way to the top of a nearby shack, but found that the pit had the force of a landslide as the foundations of the buildings began to loosen and his shack began to be sucked in as well, 'This is going to destroy every place on the entire block!' Asuma thought frantically as he made several hand-seals and inhaled sharply while taking aim, "Katon: Karyuu Endan (Fire Release: Fire Dragon Flame Bullet)!"

Asuma fired off three separate flames that roared forth with the head momentarily looking like a dragon's. But all three in the end went right into the hole in the middle of the pit, engulfing the opening in flames and stopping the jutsu from tearing up the streets any further.

"You bastard!" Seeing Asuma incinerate anything that possibly could have been at the center of the jutsu that had been destroying that part of town, Jigumo and Kamikiri angrily attacked Asuma simultaneously.

Asuma swung wide at both with his chakra blades and both Oto ninja thought that he would be parried since the chakra extension was about to make contact with the kunai they were prepared to use against him. They hadn't however known that the chakra extension provided by Hien (Flying Swallow) couldn't be blocked with something as simple as a mass-produced kunai, and Asuma cut right through the iron, bringing the two men down at once.

'And that leaves one.' Asuma thought to himself, spitting the useless butt of his cigarette out on the ground.

"Jounin-san!"

Asuma turned and had to bite back a yell as he saw Idate running towards him at top speed, actually noting that the boy was very, very fast. That was not very important at the moment though, because right on cue, Kagerou rose from the ground behind Idate and lunged out at the boy to grab a hold of him, "Kid look out!"

Idate looked befuddled at why he needed to be wary until a hulking presence made itself known behind him. Idate turned around, pulling out a pocket-knife from when Asuma had given him warning, and his defensive posture was all that saved him as a kunai was driven into his shoulder and sent him to the ground with blood flowing from the wound.

"Gah!" Idate scooted back away from Kagerou as quickly as he could while holding the hole in his shoulder. Kagerou would have finished him and moved along had Asuma not jumped between him and thrown a trench knife at Kagerou in desperation.

Kagerou dodged it, but the spinning weapon was still infused with Asuma's Hien and managed to make some sort of contact prior to continuing on after cutting into some flesh and cutting through the wall of another building.

With Kagerou down, Asuma grabbed the bleeding Idate and got some distance from the Oto ninja, "What in the hell are you doing here? Did something happen to your boss? Can't my team handle it?"

Idate bit back the pain of his wound long enough to relay the mission, "That's the thing. They're fighting someone that's really strong… at the docks on the northern end of town. All of us couldn't take the woman down fighting together. They blew up the ship she was on and it didn't do a thing."

"How'd you even know I was here?"

"You'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see or smell the smoke and fire."

With a point like that made by the young man around his students' age, Asuma looked back at the building that had been blown apart not too long ago and frowned, "Oh. Duh." He then looked back at Kagerou who was still standing, albeit with a considerable wound, "Well I'll finish this and we can head back to the docks. You're still good to go right?"

"I used to be a ninja." Assured Idate, standing up with a wince, "I'm fine."

"Good." Asuma said, not taking his eyes off of an opponent that had already proven that they would attack a noncombatant if the opportunity arose.

"You're too powerful Sarutobi Asuma." The labored breaths of Kagerou gave way to some words as blood dripped onto the ground from the wound that had been inflicted by Asuma's thrown trench knife, "I can't get out of this without some sacrifice… the way my comrades sacrificed themselves for my sake."

"Leave Degarashi Port and I don't have to finish this." Asuma said, giving the grotesque looking shinobi an out, "I've killed enough men tonight. I don't want or need to kill one more, but apparently my students are in trouble and I'm not going to waste anymore time."

"Understood." Kagerou said, content with the decision to stay and fight either way. The Fuuma Clan's worth in the eyes of Otogakure was more important than personal well-being, "Kagerou Ninpou: Utakata (Antlion Ninja Arts: Ephemeral)."

It was like a night and day difference when Kagerou activated the ninjutsu.

The reason being because instead of the hunchbacked man with matted down brown hair and buck teeth that he had been fighting the entire time, Kagerou's appearance turned to that of a barefoot beautiful young woman with hazy-blue eyes, shoulder-length light green hair, a silver bracelet choker around her neck, and a sleeveless white dress that had one strap over her right shoulder. From her back she had four wings comprised of pure chakra looking like the wings of a firefly that allowed her to hover off of the ground in front of Idate and Asuma.

"Why the hell did that guy turn into a girl?" Idate asked, exclaiming in alarm.

Kagerou answered sedately, "This is my true appearance. The other is my Henge that I use as a disguise."

Asuma shook his head when he caught himself looking her over, "That's one hell of a Henge. It didn't dispel even after I injured you. But why transform back now?"

"Because of the jutsu I'm currently using." Kagerou said with the wound from Asuma's last attack bleeding into her white dress. However she didn't seem to register the pain of the injury or the blood loss whatsoever, "It uses too much chakra for me to maintain the transformation any longer. My kinjutsu. Pay close attention, because I can only perform it once, and you will never see anything else again."

That didn't sound good, and the chakra that was building up in front of her from the wings on her back certainly didn't look good.

"Kid…" Asuma said Idate as he placed his hands together in the snake seal, "I think you should run."

"I've been running away all damn night." Idate said, holding his pocket knife in his good hand in case he was attacked again, "Why not?" Heeding Asuma's warning since the first time it saved his life he ran away.

Kagerou's chakra build-up was prepared to fire at Asuma until her eyes widened with a pained gasp escaping her lips as her wings began to flicker out and die down, dropping her to the ground, "W-What did you-?" She landed face down to reveal Asuma's trench knife sticking out of her back with the blade stuck inside of her, "How?"

"Fuuton: Suiran Reppuu (Wind Release: Verdant Mountain's Violent Wind)." Asuma said, holding the snake seal as his trench knife forcefully freed itself from Kagerou's back and floated over to him where he snatched it out of the air, "I knew exactly where I threw my trench knife the entire time."

"Hah…" Kagerou laughed bitterly with blood coming from her mouth, "We never had a chance. You really are your father's son Sarutobi Asuma."

"That's what I'm told." Asuma said, as Idate walked over as well to observe Kagerou's final moments, "You fought well."

"No I didn't…" Kagerou said as her eyes began to close, "…But it's okay. Guren is the one fighting your students is she not?"

The topic of why he was even there in the first place being brought back up, Idate took a worried step towards her, "Yeah! That's her name! She uses these strange attacks with crystals, I've never seen anything like it!"

A bloody cough came from Kagerou before she continued from where she left off, "Then they cannot defeat her. Guren is far stronger than my teammates and myself combined. She could kill us easily. How long did it take you to find us boy?" She asked Idate who blinked at being addressed.

"Twenty minutes or so."

"It's too late then. Five minutes with her would be lucky for anyone."

With that, Asuma took off running towards the northern docks, leaving Idate there with Kagerou who allowed her eyes to close with a content smile on her face as she got a look around the area, "Mission complete." She said quietly before ceasing to breathe.

"What mission?" Idate asked her before noticing that she wasn't responding, and her torso wasn't even rising and falling from breathing any longer, "Hey! What mission are you talking about here? Who did you kill? What did you steal? How is this a success?" He asked in a loud voice before looking around and grunting to himself before taking off running in the direction that Asuma took off in to follow him.

XxX

(Ta no Kuni/Hi no Kuni Border Area – Chouji and Sakura vs. Kidomaru and Tayuya)

"Well that was a complete fucking blast." Tayuya said sarcastically as black marks that had been on her body receded. The same for Kidomaru as they stood over Sakura and Chouji, both of them completely encased in webs from the eight limbed Oto ninja at Tayuya's side, "I can't believe these pieces of trash made us use the seal. That fat fuck almost smashed one of my Doki in half."

"If Kimimaro finds out that we had to tap into the cursed seal to get the win over these guys then he'll run us into the ground." Kidomaru observed with a smirk as he kicked at one of the webbed bundles, "Stupid bitch with her genjutsu."

"We need to go." Tayuya commented as she heard the bark of dogs getting closer, getting a nod from Kidomaru in return, "Sakon better have finished his job, because fighting Hatake fucking Kakashi was not a part of the plan." Both of them then jumped away only for Kakashi and four of his dogs to arrive moments later, landing in the clearing with the dogs sitting at the ready for Kakashi's next order.

Looking down at the webbed bundles he narrowed his visible eye, "There's got to be some way to get them out of there." The dogs bit at the webbing but were unable to break it as he couldn't cut through it with a kunai either. He quickly formed a Chidori and slashed an opening in the webs to find an extensively beaten Sakura and Chouji trapped within, "Damn it…" Luckily they weren't dead, but they were in rather grave condition.

Hopefully the other Kakashi and the rest of the dogs could find Sasuke in better shape.

XxX

(Sasuke vs. Sakon and Ukon)

Sasuke was on the ground, a bleeding and swollen mess from the beating he had just sustained from his two twin assailants. He tried to crawl away to get enough distance to get back up, but a harsh stomp to his back elicited a yell of pain out of him and stopped that course of action.

"Do you see?" Sakon said in a self-satisfied manner, "For all of your gifts and as hard as you train you'll never reach the level of a real shinobi the way you are now. Your village is soft, not treating you like the weapon you think you were trained to be. Look at us. Orochimaru-sama saw us and imparted us with this gift, our cursed seals."

While Sakon was gloating over Sasuke, Ukon stood off to the side impatiently while tapping his foot on the ground before he could hear something approaching rapidly in the distance, "You idiot. Hurry up and grab him. We need to go already!"

Sakon stared up at his brother in an annoyed fashion before scoffing, "Fine. You certainly are cranky right after you wake up aren't you?" He then reached down to grab Sasuke to knock him out, but only saw a log in Sasuke's place, "Now what the hell is this?" When did he substitute himself out? He did it without a trace.

An angry Ukon was about to berate his younger twin for his negligence until he saw something from his point of view that Sakon could not, "Sakon you fool, get yourself out of there right now! Run away!"

Not needing to question his partner and twin after years and years of working together and trusting his judgment, Sakon did just that, right before the explosive tag slapped on the log by Sasuke during his departure exploded with a thunderous blast.

Sakon managed to get away with minor burns and shrapnel damage due to the pieces of wood that went flying, "Where the hell is he? Did he try to run?"

"Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"

The sound of the blast and the settling rumble sound of the aftermath masked the chirping electric noise of Sasuke building chakra for the jutsu, and he showed his chunin chops by taking advantage of that window and attacking Sakon from his blindspot mercilessly.

"You bastard!" Ukon shouted, having leapt towards Sasuke upon seeing him close to attacking Sakon managed to reach him slightly after he hit Sakon with the Chidori, grabbed Sasuke by the head and slammed him into the ground hard enough to leave an indent of his skull in it. He seethed down at Sasuke before turning to his gravely wounded brother, "You're lucky that it's forbidden to kill you or we wouldn't have even gone as easy as we did."

As Ukon reached Sakon, the injured twin reached out for his brother and their bodies began to join, "You take over for a while… give me some time to heal." Sakon said as he took his spot in what was formerly Ukon's place, his head protruding from the back of his brother's neck as he lay dormant and rested.

Once Sakon was settled inside of Ukon's body, Ukon let out an impatient growl, "It's too late for me to take over. We have to go for the second plan." He said before pulling out a syringe with a sickly purple liquid inside, "I personally hope you don't survive this weakling. I don't see why in the case of our failure of the main objective we give you such a precious gift." He then injected the syringe in the side of the motionless Sasuke's neck, "Then again I'm not Orochimaru-sama and I refuse to question his orders."

With that being done he beat a hasty retreat since he would not be able to escape with Sasuke while being pursued by one like Hatake Kakashi. Of this he was certain, especially with his lack of stamina due to his inactivity within Sakon most of the time. He raced to the link-up point meant to rendezvous with Kidomaru, Tayuya, and Jiroubou though he doubted the latter was alive if Kakashi managed to break away.

The only thing that could be heard in the area at that point was Sasuke's struggling and unconscious breathing, the nocturnal animals in the forest, and the barking of Kakashi's dogs as they got closer, eventually culminating with the four of them and Kakashi landing in the clearing, sniffing at Sasuke before the smallest of the dogs, a pug with a Konoha headband and a blue jacket on, spoke up, "There were others here. Should we go after them?"

"No." Kakashi said as he knelt by Sasuke and checked over his injuries. The boy wasn't conscious, but there was pain evident on his face as he writhed even while completely out of it, "We need to take them all back to Konoha as fast as we can. I don't know if the other me found Chouji and Sakura or not, so let's find them and link up so we can leave. Pakkun I want you to head out ahead back to the village to tell them to expect wounded."

The small pug immediately took off to head home in advance as Kakashi picked Sasuke up and put him over his back before following the rest his dogs to find the other dogs, the other Kakashi, and the students that had been separated. Sasuke was more than stable enough to transport so he got right on the move again.

In his haste to ensure that all of his students were alright, Kakashi did not register the small black marks on the back left of Sasuke's neck as anything more than bruises at the time, but as he carried the boy the 'bruise' turned into three tomoe, almost like that of the Sharingan.

XxX

(Cha no Kuni – Northern Docks of Degarashi Port – Naruto vs. Guren)

"This is a blast kid!" Guren said as for the umpteenth time in Naruto's growing rampage the only thing that stopped him from shattering her jaw with a punch was a wall of crystals that she formed to block him, "A jinchuuriki like you can be as mediocre as they want as long as they've got this power to back them up! Isn't that right?"

"Shut your mouth!" Naruto roared at Guren angrily, the force of his action blowing her hair around wildly and getting her to take a step back as a shockwave produced by the intensity of his chakra flew at her.

Guren moved her hands to try and encase Naruto's immediate area in crystal again, but the fleet-footed young jinchuuriki, boosted by the inhuman chakra flowing through his system had his senses enhanced and avoided the attack to get closer to the Otogakure shinobi. A punch aimed at her pretty face whiffed, but the force behind the punch that didn't land managed to shove Guren off-balance.

'My Kami, this kid is a total diehard.' Guren thought, gritting her teeth at having to deal with a growingly berserk demon container. She got away from him to get more space, getting another feral-sounding roar of anger from Naruto, 'I'm pissing him off even more. Why won't he just stay down already?' She had blasted him plenty of times, but he just kept hopping right back up for more each time.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Guren jumped, leapt, and sprang until she stood atop a warehouse looking over a veritable platoon of Kyuubi-enhanced Naruto clones and a sneer grew on her face, "You're such a parasite!" She shouted down at him before making four hand-seals and slamming her hands on the roof, "Die! Shouton: Suishouheki Hachi no Jin (Crystal Release: Jade Crystal Wall Eighth Formation)!"

The ground quivered and shook as the concrete on the ground in front of her split and up rose a massive amount of crystal, encasing every one of Naruto's dozen clones and suspending them in the translucent mineral until they dispelled.

As she looked at what she had just done there was no sign of the real Naruto trapped inside after all of the fakes had vanished. There wasn't any sign of Shikamaru or Ino, which didn't make sense because even if they weren't dead they were unable to move, especially fast enough to avoid such a wide-area affecting ninjutsu.

A pair of hands crashed through the roof of the warehouse and grabbed Guren's ankles before Naruto's entire body burst through the roof, and another, and another, as multiple Naruto clones emerged through the hole linking to one another by grabbing each clone's ankles. The last Naruto stood up on the roof after all the clones came through the hole and he prepared to slam his heavy chain of clones to the ground, "Bunshin Kusari no Karada Gachan (Clone Chain Body Slam)!"

"Like hell you stupid brat!" His grip was like iron, and Guren couldn't wrest her legs out of his grasp, but she still had access to her hands and that was more than enough to escape as she recreated her arm blade of crystal and cut through the Naruto clone hanging onto her to fling her into the air above the roof, "You've got nothing on me! Shishou Tenketsu (Pressure Points of Harm and Death)!" Chakra exploded from her body, enough to be visible to the naked eye before a prism of crystal formed around her, "Die! Shouton: Isshi Koumyou (Crystal Release: String of Glory)!"

From the front tip of the crystal prism, Guren channeled her visibly powerful chakra into a powerful beam of light that fired from it like a laser and annihilated Naruto's chain of clones before blasting Naruto himself right through the roof of the warehouse, forcing the roof to collapse inward on top of him.

She laughed at the destruction her one move had wrought and continued firing extra blasts. One after the other, adding on useless damage to the already thoroughly wrecked building.

The crystal she was in eventually landed on the ground and neatly broke around her, depositing her there casually. With a bead of sweat on her brow, Guren dusted her gloved hands off and smirked one last time at the scene before choosing to walk away, "There." She said as she walked towards the massive crystal construct she had used to overcome Naruto's clones on the way to the water, "Get up from that."

She formed her bladed crystal wheel around herself and used it to effortlessly travel on the water, planning on heading back to base to report on her accomplished mission. Gato would have to be pleased with how low prices in the town would be after all of the havoc that had gone on that night. And the more pleased he was the more business he would give Otogakure, the more he would pay for the next missions, and the more concessions he would grant her master.

"Orochimaru-sama should be pleased with this job well done."

XxX

(A Few Minutes Later)

In the destroyed remains of the warehouse there was no motion to be seen until a piece of what used to be part of the building's wall shook slightly and was finally shoved aside by a gravely injured Naruto, back to normal with no more Kyuubi's chakra running through him.

His body was ravaged with wounds. The glass on his goggles had been shattered, blood caked his arms and legs, his entire frame was smudged with grime, and he just couldn't take anymore. His chunin flak jacket actually endured the damage better than he had. It was definitely made of some sturdy stuff.

He spared a glance back at what else had been under the slab of wall with him and he managed to spare a small smile at seeing that if nothing else Ino and Shikamaru weren't any worse off than they were before.

With that bit of peace he could spare himself he dropped to his knees and eventually outright collapsed onto his face.

"…Naruto… did we win?"

Naruto opened his eyes back up once he heard Shikamaru's weak voice to signify that he was awake, "…No." He replied tiredly, "Are you alright?"

"I'm great." Sarcastically spoke Shikamaru, barely able to crawl forward, "I love bleeding to death on concrete. At least we've got a view of the ocean to die to. Maybe the sunrise will make the clouds look better? That would be a good sight to leave with."

"Kami, will you stop complaining." Making herself and her own alert state known with that remark, Ino could move her limbs but not with enough energy to actually move her entire body, "You're such a bellyacher. Can't you even die with some semblance of cool? Give us an epic one-liner if you're going to waste energy talking."

"Troublesome…"

"…Not epic."

So all of them were alive enough to banter back and forth. That was a better ending than had originally been expected when Naruto first saw Guren cut them down. A small victory to take with the defeat; that at least they were all alive for now.

"Goddamn it you stupid brats better be in one piece!"

Hearing the grizzled and older voice not belonging to any of the chunin trio, they figured it to be their jounin-sensei and were proven right when he saw them while running through the destruction, "Asuma-sensei." Naruto managed to get out, loud enough to echo in the fading night, "Over here."

It didn't take long after that for the man and Idate to come across them, with the eldest shinobi rushing to the bleeding Shikamaru and Ino while Idate went to Naruto who had managed to push himself against a piece of a broken crate, unable to move upward any further.

"What the hell happened here?" Idate asked Naruto as he made sure he was set upright and in no danger of falling to the side, "Did that ninja you were fighting do all of this?"

Naruto for once wanted to say it was him. He wanted to say that the cursed chakra that ran through his system as naturally as his own from time to time did all of this. It would have meant that he had given just as good or worse than he had gotten.

But he didn't say that… because he couldn't. He and his had been thoroughly crushed by one shinobi between the three of them, by the strongest person he had ever fought going all out without a demon inside of them.

Trying to lift his hand to one of the pockets of his vest ended in failure, and Idate saw his attempted motion. After reaching into Naruto's vest pocket in his stead and pulling out a mashed pack of cigarettes and a lighter he lifted an eyebrow and gave Naruto a strange look, "Really? You smoke these? You know that these can kill you don't you?"

Naruto didn't say a word, just letting the setting that they were in and the condition of his body sink into Idate's awareness to prove his unspoken point for him. With a nod of begrudging acknowledgement, Idate pulled out a slightly bent cigarette and put it in Naruto's mouth to assist him.

"You can't win 'em all. Just be grateful you're not dead right now." Asuma said to Ino and Shikamaru barely within Naruto's earshot.

Once it was lit, Naruto took a puff and breathed it out with a defeated sigh before sinking his head forward and dropping into unconsciousness, the cigarette falling from his maw as instead of Asuma's words of consolation as he tried to stabilize Ino and Shikamaru's wounds one last mocking voice stuck with him in his head from the very depths of his mind.

"**Just as pathetic as I thought…"**

* * *

Jutsu List

Shinjoueishin no Jutsu (Mind Body Projection Jutsu). B-rank ninjutsu, supplementary. An advanced and versatile Yamanaka Clan ninjutsu where the user projects their consciousness into an intangible form produced by chakra, fashioned in their original likeness. The spectral form moves by hovering and flying and can move through walls and other solid objects. When the spectral form makes contact with the living target the person will be possessed by the user. Much like the basic Yamanaka Clan ninjutsu Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu), the user's actual body is vulnerable while the consciousness is out and when possessing a body any damage inflicted to the possessed body will be inflicted upon the user's body as well. There is a limit from the user's body that the avatar can move from without possessing anything. This is dependent on the user's skill with the technique and can be expanded upon over time with training.

* * *

**Oh, the agony of defeat. I know it well. **

**Anyway, contrary to what was popular belief from a few of the reviews I got this was not a filler arc. Chapters 13 and 14 were filler since nothing lasting came of them and it only served the purpose of illustrating the growing dynamic of the team. The use of characters and situations that are not in the manga or a part of any main storyline does not constitute filler in a fanfiction unless blatantly stated as such or intermittently evident or palpably blatant. **

**I'm not going to be doing anything that has to do with copying and pasting canon for the rest of this story and I'm using the resources available to me. I'm trying to be interesting with this whole thing and go a certain way with it.  
**

**This entire thing with Gato trying to get cheap land near the sea to buy will come into play later since it leads to a later major storyline, and you'll see a focal reason for why it was done next chapter. Team 10 was thoroughly beaten by someone head and shoulders better than them which will also come into play soon during a vital decision-making point in the story. So stuff did get done.**

**And I got Ino a new combat jutsu from my own mental mind that I rather like and I think fits… so there's that.**

**A lot of fighting… but I was overdue for a combat scene anyway.**

**Anyway, until the next time I update something that you read, I'm going to go back to abusing the multiplayer mode of Modern Warfare 3.**

**Later everyone. Kenchi out.**


	37. What Are Friends For?

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I wonder which type of city in the U.S. an anime/manga theme restaurant would do well in. Depending on where I open it that could be a sound business investment. I might even be able to expand it into a national chain. Something to think on. And if someone actually does that, makes money, and I find out about it I'll sue your balls to the wall.

**Chapter 37: What Are Friends For?**

* * *

An innate hatred of anything hospital-related sat deeply within Naruto's mind. A hospital meant that you were injured badly enough to require medical attention. Getting beaten that badly was usually associated with defeat.

And man did he ever suffer a defeat.

It almost took him back to when he was in the Academy. That had been the very last time he had been overcome so completely when it mattered. He had forgotten how terrible it felt. He had even fallen out of the practice of pasting a smile on his face to trudge through the bad feelings that came with it.

Someone who said that you learn more from failure than from victory… had either never failed and was bored with success, or failed so much that they came up with an excuse for themselves.

Naruto lifted his head off of his pillow and slammed it back into it hard just to feel and hear the thump. Doctors told him he was cleared to leave later that day and it couldn't come fast enough for his tastes. He had been there for two days. That was 36 hours more than he cared to be there for, and that was only because he was unconscious for the first twelve.

No surgery had been required as the bulk of his most severe damage had been handled by his internal protector when Asuma had been racing him and his team back to Konoha. How he did so by himself (at least as far as Naruto knew from his place stuck in bed), Naruto had no idea, but he had more important things to dwell on.

The door to his room opened and in walked Jiraiya, much to Naruto's delight, "Ero-sensei!" He said excitedly upon seeing the tall white-haired shinobi, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm training you, remember dumbass?" Jiraiya said amusedly, chuckling at the corresponding pout on Naruto's face, "I heard you were on the 'ass' end of an asskicking. So how'd that feel?" He asked, his mood sobering up upon asking his question.

Not only did Jiraiya's mood take a nosedive, but Naruto's budding good mood sank right back into the mud and the muck as well, "How do you think? I used the Kyuubi's chakra and I still lost the fight. Guren beat all three of us down."

"So she was strong enough to take all three of you." Jiraiya asked, taking a seat on the windowsill by Naruto's bed and looking out the open window, "Was she the strongest person you've ever fought?"

"Other than you, yeah. But I don't think you count. You weren't trying to kill me."

Jiraiya nodded, still looking out the window as the birds chirped, "Well I've got some bad news for you then. I should have told you earlier but you had enough on your plate with the chunin exams, and then you had gotten promoted and I wanted you to get some time to get that out of your head. Now though, it seems a better time than before to bring this up. In the near future there are going to be ten bonafide badasses of the criminal shinobi world coming for you."

This wasn't going to be brought up if it wasn't important. Naruto knew that much from simply the tone of speech Jiraiya used, "Now when you call them badasses…"

"I mean that they'll make the person you fought look like you when you were fighting that person." Jiraiya explained, "Top class S-rank criminals or so I've heard. Their movements are clandestine and you have no idea how hard it was to get that much info on them. All I know for certain is that my old archbastard of a teammate claimed membership with them, and that should be scary enough that they were able to kick him out and still exist… the hateful son-of-a-."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Naruto cut him off with wide eyes, "Are you kidding me? They're that strong and these guys are coming after _me_? What the hell are they doing coming after _me_? Did my mom piss them off or something when she was alive?"

If the moment weren't so serious, Jiraiya probably would have burst out laughing since the possibility of something like that happening wasn't out of the realm of actuality at all. Kushina probably did have some kind of hit out on herself when she was alive and kicking. That was neither here nor there though, "It's not anything personal about you per se. It's what you have inside of you that they want."

Naruto looked down at his belly and frowned, "Damn it, it always comes back to you doesn't it?" He looked up at Jiraiya with a displeased expression on his face, "What the hell would anyone even want with this thing anyway? It sucks." He then held his head after being swatted on the head with a paper fan, "Ow! What the hell, I'm supposed to be getting out today! Don't hit me!"

"Then don't ask dumbass questions." Jiraiya replied, slipping the paper fan back into his kimono shirt, "It doesn't matter why, and whatever the reason it doesn't matter. As you are now, you can't beat them. Not even close. Kyuubi or not."

Naruto grabbed a tight hold of the covers and looked at his legs while he was in the bed, "Why are you telling me this? What am I going to do?" He looked up at Jiraiya somewhat expectantly, "You came here to tell me what I'm going to do aren't you?"

"I'm going to train you." Jiraiya said, reaching out and putting a hand on the boy's shoulder, "And by the time I'm done with you, you'll be a complete terror. Your surname will be just as scary as it used to be in the old days, back when the name Uzumaki roughly translated to, 'You'd better think twice about getting into this fight.'" He saw Naruto's face perk up and decided it was time to drive home the final point, "But I want you to go and take the job to become a guardsman."

Surprise showed as clear as day on Naruto's face, "You do? I thought you said you didn't care and that it was my choice."

"I've had time to go through this with some of the people that care about you one way or another; Sarutobi-sensei and your own sensei Asuma." Jiraiya said, standing up to pace around the room, "I was going to take you on a long trip around the region, but this way I can make sure you get tested from time to time with a mission and it can help build your reputation as well."

"I still… don't know." Naruto said, thunking himself on the head to try and clear his mind, "What if someone-?"

"Kid if this didn't get it through your head I don't know what will." Jiraiya said with his arms crossed, "I told you already that the village won't stop if you leave, it's still going to be here when you get back. It doesn't revolve around you, you revolve around it. You just got beat. Bad. That's not even the strongest person you're going to fight in your life. So if anything actually happened that could threaten the overall village, what could you in particular do to stop it that your sensei couldn't?"

Take the job, get his money, get a life experience, train hands-on with Jiraiya, come back home after his contract expires, and he'll be good to go from then on out. That was basically the gist of the point Jiraiya was trying to express.

But could he really just cut and run like that? Would it really be that simple? For better or for worse Konoha was his home and always had been. Could he leave it and fight for another the way he knew he would fight for Konoha in a heartbeat?

"Ero-sensei. I don't feel comfortable about just leaving my friends behind without a clue. It's not right."

"Who says you have to just clear out and head straight there? You have five and a half months."

Jiraiya's reasoning seemed to plant a major seed in Naruto's head. He was really thinking on it, harder than before. Konoha wasn't built in a day, so he'd take that push for now. He reached out for Naruto again to tell him to get dressed so he could get him discharged and grab him a bite to eat of actual food when he was stopped by Naruto's voice.

"I'll go." Naruto said quickly in case he would rescind his own decision halfway through, "If you, Hokage-jiji, and Asuma-sensei think it would be good for me I think it'll be okay." How on earth was he going to break that to Ino and Shikamaru? He was not looking forward to that conversation.

XxX

(Nara Clan Compound – Shikamaru's House)

Sitting on his front porch with Asuma and a shogi board between them was Shikamaru. He had nothing on his torso other than fresh bandages from that morning as he and his sensei were locked in a heated game.

After making his next move and while waiting for Shikamaru to make his, Asuma decided to make some conversation, "I'll tell you this now. Naruto's going to take the daimyo job. I'll do what I can to make sure he knows what to expect and hey… maybe one day he can end up an elite like me before his contract expires."

"Why are you telling me this?" Shikamaru said with a sigh, scratching the side of his bandaged chest, "There really isn't much you can say to make me decide one way or the other Asuma." Now if he were a woman he could just nag and bitch him into leaving, but even his mother wasn't trying to push him into making a decision one way or another.

"I'm telling you this because Naruto's going to leave."

Shikamaru's eyes panned up from where they had previously been on the shogi board to Asuma's eyes as he stared at the man, "He's already made his choice? Why didn't he tell me?"

"Why haven't you two told Ino?" With that reply, Shikamaru's eyes left attempting to stare a hole in his jounin sensei, "I don't know if he's made his choice or not. I'm just saying that one way or the other Naruto's going to leave. Jiraiya-sama is going to take Naruto with him on a training trip if he turns down the offer." The trip was actually scheduled to happen within a few weeks if Naruto had declined the job, "But I like the idea of him and you as a guard. A position like that can eventually end up with you becoming one of his elites and a member of the Twelve Guardian Ninja. Joining them made me the man I am now, so I'd highly recommend it."

"So if we go me and Naruto will end up a pair of chain smoking guys that are whipped by their women?"

"I am not whipped by Kurenai."

"I never said anything about her did I?"

"…Damn it."

Another thought sprang to Shikamaru's mind, "Why is there a training trip planned for Naruto?" Yeah, they lost, but was that a reason to go into panic mode? Maybe it was since Naruto was their jinchuuriki and him losing couldn't really be a regular thing if every village eventually found out who he was. It was a requiem for summoning other jinchuuriki-containing villages to mess with them even though it had been televised that he had defeated two others, "It's not like after that beat-down Guren's going to be coming after us or something."

"What about a group that would make what Guren did look tame by comparison?" Asuma said, staring Shikamaru dead in the eyes, "There's a group out there that wants Naruto's Kyuubi, and they'll be coming for him at any time. If he works as a guard that can buy him some time to train while being a nameless face in the crowd of the daimyo's employ instead of as a ninja in a place where he can be found more often than not. If he actually becomes elite enough to be heard of while working for him it won't matter anymore will it? It will prove that he's ready for them."

A group coming after his friend. Shikamaru doubted that taking the Kyuubi from Naruto would end with only that blight on the blonde boy's soul leaving him; there would be some actual damage done to him to say the very least, maybe even death with their luck. Only Shikamaru, Asuma, the Hokage, Jiraiya, and Naruto himself knew of the possibility of Naruto becoming a guard so that actually would buy him some time since this group didn't know how to find him.

As things currently stood Naruto was the equivalent of a rare animal stuck in a nature preserve with poachers after him.

Speaking of which, "Does this 'group' have a name?" Shikamaru asked, finally moving the piece of his choice on the board.

"Akatsuki is what Jiraiya-sama called them." With the game back underway, Asuma's eyes and the majority of his focus went back to the board, "He implied that if things went south even while I was around I couldn't protect him, so I signed off on him teaching Naruto. He's going to try and steer Naruto towards taking the job in the end." Shikamaru let out an unintelligible grunt and the two sat in silence as they continued to play. A pronounced frown slowly growing on the jounin's face as it progressed.

"Checkmate." Shikamaru said, getting up off of the ground with a sound of effort as he held his bandaged wound, "That one was actually hard to win this time."

Holding back a childish urge to flip the board and storm off, Asuma nodded and lit himself a cigarette as a consolation prize, "I'm going to beat you one of these days, I know I will." There was no way a kid was good enough to decisively beat him each and every single time. He begrudgingly packed up the board as he had only really come to see how Shikamaru's recovery was going after doing the same for Ino and prepared to head off until Shikamaru's voice stopped him at his front door.

"I'm taking the job." Shikamaru suddenly uttered as he seemed to be looking out at the forest that his clan's property sat on, "I'm going. Five months right?" He asked, turning his head to a stunned looking Asuma who only nodded dumbly, "Alright then. Thanks for stopping by." With that, Shikamaru went inside and shut the door only to find his parents sitting in the living room getting him to palm his face, "You both heard that didn't you?"

Shikamaru's mother Yoshino nodded and walked towards her son before engulfing him in a hug, "I'm so proud that at least my son has a bit of a sense of ambition. You sure didn't get that from your father." She let the embarrassed Shikamaru go with a pat on the head to leave the room. It was better than being scolded at least.

Shikaku simply got up out of his chair and headed towards the back of the house, "So you're really taking that job?" Shikamaru nodded without hesitation, "Well as much of pain as it's going to be I can't exactly let you go off unprepared."

This was now officially more trouble than it was worth as far as Shikamaru was concerned, "Now? You want to train now? I'm still hurt here."

"It's not going to re-aggravate your injuries so come on." Even with his father's request, Shikamaru quickly measured the merits of running up to his room and shutting himself in for the next five months until the older Nara spoke up, "I could always tell your mother that you're shirking on training."

As he walked towards the backyard, Shikamaru felt that uttering the word 'troublesome' out loud just didn't sum up his feelings on the situation.

XxX

(Konoha Hospital)

Through observational glass, three high-ranking shinobi looked into a room at Uchiha Sasuke who happened to be sedated at the moment. In addition to the Hokage himself, there happened to be the jounin sensei of the boy, Hatake Kakashi, and someone with experience on what was currently afflicting the boy; Mitarashi Anko. And she had her own opinions on the matter.

"This is going to be more trouble than it's worth…" Anko said cautiously, her eyes never tearing away from the black mark on Sasuke's neck, "If we kill him now it would be something of a mercy because right now I can tell you that all the sedatives in the world aren't making that damn thing hurt any less and he'll still probably die, and if he wakes up it'll be leading to a whole list of problems that no one wants to deal with."

"No one is killing him Anko." Kakashi said, not glaring at the woman since he knew of her own past issues with the seal on his student's neck. First Itachi tries to incite Sasuke again during the exams and now Orochimaru was poking his head around him as well, "This is manageable. Or are you saying that we should have killed you when you came back with your seal?" She noticeably flinched and her hand went to her own neck where she had been branded.

Hiruzen nodded. He was not about to kill a young shinobi in his employ, especially when other measures could be taken first, "I think it is more disconcerting than anything that Orochimaru has ties with the new village Otogakure since this is noticeably his work." A grim look stood on the face of the old man, "A man like Orochimaru with an entire fighting force at his back, and from the reports of young Chouji and Sakura in addition to what my own son told me of his mission they are rather formidable."

A bitter scoff left Anko, "What the hell would a man like that possibly want with leading a hidden village? People to filch new jutsu from maybe. Or he probably has them so he can kidnap people to experiment on for free… sick fuck. And the daimyo of that country signed off on letting him do as he pleases? Nobles are so spineless."

Whatever purpose Orochimaru had for building his own village was definitely not for the benefit of any large group of people at all. It was all for Orochimaru, and he would be the only one that got anything positive out of the endeavor.

XxX

(Ta no Kuni – Otogakure Base)

"You've done very good work Guren." Orochimaru said as the woman in question bowed in front of him, "Even with the damage done to the property he owned, Gato was still very pleased by the extent to which prices in Degarashi Port fell. He'll have a heavy economic influence over that region within the year if he has learned from his mistakes in Nami no Kuni."

"It was easy enough Orochimaru-sama." Guren said with a satisfied smirk. It actually wasn't all that easy. The preparation for the final jutsu she performed on Naruto took quite a toll on what chakra she had left. If she had run into Sarutobi Asuma before leaving she probably would not have won that ensuing battle and would have fallen to the fate of the Fuuma Clan members that died by the man's hand.

"Such a strong shinobi with a valuable bloodline." Orochimaru licked his lips imagining having her Shouton bloodline for his own personal use, just like Kimimaro's. She was certainly top two for a replacement body if he was forced to switch before securing his clear and blatant first choice. The Sound Four had not managed to bring him Sasuke due to Jiroubou's foolish insistence on fighting Kakashi to, 'Get a bite to eat.' In the manner of absorbing the man's chakra.

He paid the price with his life in a quick and embarrassing fashion. And at least in the end the secondary objective was achieved when Ukon, standing in for his injured brother, reported that the finished Cursed Seal of Heaven was successfully applied to Uchiha Sasuke.

That was something. And if he survived, which Kabuto would report to him on, it would be worth watching and waiting until the moment when Sasuke was ripe for the picking. Especially if he came to enjoy the power that the seal would give him. He would need Orochimaru to unlock the seal's full potential and that would be where that particular story ended. Kabuto's main mission while in Konoha was to monitor this.

There was a chance that he could get Kabuto to kidnap Sasuke while he was out cold from the seal's application, but the boy would be steadily watched during that period, and having to deal with Sasuke after he awakened would not be advisable even for someone like Kabuto. Let Konoha deal with that issue.

"I'm thinking of sending you to coordinate the main effort of our more… clandestine operations in Mizu no Kuni." Orochimaru informed Guren matter-of-factly, "I believe that with your special ability to capture complete specimens you will be perfect for helping the Mizukage with his bloodline problem and for helping ourselves to their bloodlines."

With the newer arrangement with Gato, and with him having a way to get back into the transit across the seas, a dual arrangement was worked. Otogakure would supply security for Gato's overseas smuggling and regular transport, and in return Gato would let him use the same ships to bring ninja into Mizu no Kuni when he began his deal with the Mizukage as well as letting him use them to bring the bloodline shinobi they managed to capture with them upon the ship's extradition from the islands.

Hey, Gato was into human trafficking anyway. That was one of his criminal activities. He clearly had no problem with it, thus neither did Orochimaru. Better for the both of them.

Guren nodded before glowering, "I've heard that you have an interest in the Konoha shinobi Uchiha Sasuke." That burned her up inside. Someone that wasn't even loyal to Orochimaru and didn't comprehend or understand how great he was would get the honor of housing his existence one day soon. She would rather it be someone like Kimimaro if it weren't her.

"Don't fret my dear." Orochimaru said in a sickly sweet, patronizingly consoling manner, "Even without becoming my vessel you are still one of my best and brightest. Your skills are valued by me. So don't worry about any of that."

"Of course Orochimaru-sama." Serving this man's whims put a smile on her face. Someone that found value in her talents and saw fit to reward her with the prestige he gave her in his organization, "So you wish for me to prepare to head to Mizu no Kuni?"

Orochimaru nodded with his usual smirk on his face, "Yes, but feel free to take your time with your preparations. The campaign will not begin for quite a while. Handpick those you wish to bring and everything else along those lines. I feel that this will be a very vital endeavor we will be undertaking."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Yamanaka Clan Compound – Ino's House)

Ino sat in her bed with her hair loose, wearing a pair of purple pajamas with a smile on her face, "Thank you for coming and visiting me Goldie-kun. It was very sweet of you." She said as she bat her eyes at Naruto. Her fellow blonde was sitting a few feet away in a chair by the desk in her room wearing a grey shirt with the Konoha symbol on it and an orange pair of shorts with blue trim.

Having never been in Ino's room before, Naruto found that it was very… girly. And that was the only opinion he could give since he could not objectively observe his teammate's room with his lack of experience around girls to this extent. The only other girl's room he'd ever been in had been Shiho's, and he was sure that it wasn't normal for one to have a sea of books lining their floor from wall-to-wall.

But then again, was it normal to have a large purple rug under one's bed, purple bedding, and it just went onward from there.

"Well I'm just happy that you're alright." Naruto told her with a happy look on his face that went along with the tone he used and the message he conveyed, "I can't believe they let you guys go home and kept me in the hospital though…" He sounded rather put out by the latter fact.

Ino giggled at the look on his face and told him why, "It's because we've got people here to keep their eyes on us and because Shika's clan makes good medicine. The two of our clans are so close we're supplied from them directly sometimes."

"If I was still hurt I'd still be in the hospital. You guys are so lucky." Naruto held his broken goggles in his hands, running his fingers over the broken glass of the lenses. He'd had them for almost five years and they'd gotten smashed in a fight.

Ino watched Naruto's attitude over his busted eyewear and shook her head, "What are you going to do with those if you're still carrying them around with you? Are you going to get them fixed?"

The head of Naruto snapped up from looking at his goggles to looking at Ino confusedly, "Oh, well they were still with the stuff the doctors took from me when I was in the hospital. I was just going to try and buy another pair." It was just fortunate that Jiraiya had broken into his apartment and had brought him a change of clothes or he'd have been wearing either bloody rags or a hospital gown out of there. His goggles were still caked with his own dried blood. They now were gross in addition to being broken, "I don't know why I didn't just chuck these into the trash or something."

His attention was then captured when he saw Ino hold her hand out expectantly, "Well give them to me then. I'll get them fixed and if you get a new pair I'll just keep them for myself."

"You'd wear goggles Ino-chan?"

"Hell no!" The thought was simply ludicrous to Ino. She'd never wear those damn things in a million years. That wasn't why she wanted them.

"Then what are you going to do with them?"

A deep red flush sprang to Ino's face as she thought of how weird it sounded in her own head to ask for Naruto's busted eyewear, 'Kami, I sound like a total creep right now! What the hell is wrong with me?' Naruto clearly didn't seem to be thinking along the same lines as his attention was diverted to looking at the pictures of the team that Ino had on her desk; the stunned expressions on their face after they had gotten their first mission, and a picture of them in the hospital at the same time after the end of the chunin exams. Thank goodness for the small miracles that Naruto's attention span provided from time to time.

Apparently Naruto didn't even care about getting the answer to his question any longer as he just set the goggles on Ino's desk absentmindedly.

With the subject dropped, Ino cleared her throat and awkwardly smoothed out the covers of the bed she happened to be sitting in before getting a devious idea in her head while her parents insisted on her staying bedridden for the time being, "It's so good to see a friendly face Goldie-kun but why are you all the way over there. You can come closer you know. Come on." She said, patting an open spot next to her on her bed for him to sit on.

Naruto shrugged and got up to sit on Ino's bed, his eyes widening as he took his seat, legs off of the side of it, "Wow. Your bed is way better than mine." He said, bouncing on the mattress in a testing manner, "Your mattress is probably super-expensive."

"Want to test it out for real?" Ino asked before noticing Naruto's face turn red and how that sounded. She thumped him hard on the shoulder and rolled her eyes, "Not like that pervert. I meant do you want to take a nap? You look dog tired."

"And you're asking me to sleep in your bed?" Naruto said with a deadpan expression.

"I've slept in _your_ bed like a dozen times already." Reasoned Ino off-handedly.

"Without me in it." Whenever Team 10 met at Naruto's apartment after the team training during the chunin exams period, Ino would usually crash in Naruto's bed for an hour or two to get some rest while Naruto and Shikamaru would hang out in the front room. Naruto had never ventured into his room while Ino had been there since after Shikamaru had tried to do so once to beat her to the bed and get some sleep of his own she kicked him right out. He was not about to let that happen to himself. Even if it was his own house, Ino could be scary bossy.

"Oh stop being so timid you big baby!" Ino snapped, getting Naruto to recoil in alarm, "What about the night before the last rounds of the chunin exam? You were just fine with it then."

"Nope. No way. What happens in Tetsu no Kuni stays in Tetsu no Kuni." Naruto was certainly not willing to flip his thoughts on the matter, especially with Ino's father downstairs. The man was a better sensor than he would ever be in his opinion. No chance was he going to crawl into Ino's bed and risk getting his mind jumbled for life by some secret Yamanaka Clan kinjutsu… they had to have at least one, right?

"And just what happened in Tetsu no Kuni?"

Damn it… speak of the devil.

Both Naruto and Ino's eyes slowly panned towards her door and saw Inoichi standing there leaning against the doorframe with an expectant look on his face. The two then turned towards each other with Ino giving Naruto a pointed look that he could just see was screaming at him, 'Why the hell didn't you sense him coming?'

'I can't sense things through walls and closed doors!' Naruto thought to himself as if Ino could hear him yelling in his own mind. Apparently she could read it off his facial expression as she puffed her cheeks out indignantly and looked away from him, 'If you want a better goddamn sensor get a Hyuuga or find Kiba!'

"Well are you two going to stare at each other all afternoon or are you going to answer my question?" Inoichi said again, getting their attention back onto him, "You're obviously not talking about anything that happened during the tournament since it was all televised. So what happened in Tetsu no Kuni?" He then focused his gaze on Naruto with a stern glance, "You should just go ahead and tell me now. I'm just going to find out later anyway."

A month of training and hanging out with Jiraiya had taught Naruto quite a few things. How to begin to deal with someone stronger than you, a few ninjutsu for his trouble, that when you get beat up by a group of women you can either cover your face or your junk but never both, he had even begun to subconsciously glean a few other things, but the thing he had learned from Jiraiya that stuck out at the moment was simple.

"_Do not ever let on to a girl's dad that you're interested in the girl or have had some kind of intimate moment with her. Ever. It's just always going to end badly for two of the three of you."_

"_Why are you telling me this Ero-sensei? And how would you know anyway?"_

"_Just shut up and listen gaki, if anyone knows romance it's me. I'm teaching you a life lesson here. The cuter the girl, the more protective the dad will be. And they're bulldog-tenacious. Trust me, it's a total pain."_

"_When the hell am I ever going to use this?"_

"…_With a teammate like yours I'd say there's a good chance you will."_

"_What was that?"_

"_Nothing, now get back to work."_

Before the silence became palpable, Ino began laughing sheepishly and reached behind where she was on the bed, "Oh, we were just talking about the day before the tournament started when Goldie-kun won like a billion prizes at the festival." She picked up a small pig wallet from her nightstand and held it up prominently, "See? He won this and gave it to me. I was just wondering what he did with the rest of the stuff he won."

"I gave most of it away, remember?" Naruto said, picking up on Ino's escape topic and going along with it before blinking once something sprang to mind, "Wait, you still have that? I thought you got all upset when I gave it to you, like I was making fun of you or something."

Why wouldn't she have kept it? Giving Naruto a confused look, Ino responded, "It was a gift. It's still a nice thing either way about it. I won't throw out your stupid pig wallet just because it's a bad joke on my name." She then let out a smile and shoved Naruto a bit playfully from behind, "It matches that frog wallet of yours too, so why wouldn't I walk around with it?"

And then it was something like a shark smelling blood.

In the course of the rapport that had seemingly been established right in front of his eyes, Inoichi plucked Naruto up by the back of his shirt and wordlessly carried him out of the room much to Ino and Naruto's confusion… and then to Naruto's horror when he put this together with what he had been told by Jiraiya. Ino was indeed sitting awfully close to him… on her bed… in her pajamas… with the door closed…

As a matter of fact she had moved to where he was sitting with his back between her legs, almost like he could pick her up piggyback-style right from where they were. Apparently that was danger close.

Being stuck with the number two in Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Force was not anyone's idea of fun, only being below the extremely imposing Morino Ibiki in that department.

"I like you Naruto." Inoichi said, much to Naruto's surprise once he put him back down at the foot of the stairs, "You've been a very good teammate and friend to Ino and you're an impressive young man for quite a few reasons."

'But…' Naruto thought to himself, nodding despite the fact that he had heard such a start to a conversation to know full well that this was not the extent of what Inoichi had to say to him.

"But…" Inoichi continued, going right along with Naruto's expectations, "I will give you the same speech that I gave Shikamaru when I found out that he was teamed with Ino and the same speech I gave Chouji back when I thought he'd have been teamed with Ino like the way their fathers and I were." He put his hand on Naruto's shoulder and took a breath, "Ino is a very capable young ninja and she's only going to get stronger over time. That I am not worried about at all."

Naruto's face lit up with a big grin. It wasn't like Inoichi was saying anything Naruto didn't already know, "Yeah, I know Ino-chan's good. I wish I had some of the jutsu that she knows how to do. They're really cool."

Naruto's grin then slowly dropped when he felt Inoichi's grip on his shoulder slowly tighten, "What I am worried about though, is her trust being taken advantage of by the young male influences in her life. She trusts you absolutely Naruto… do you understand that?"

A slow and deliberate nod came from a wide-eyed Naruto, 'Ahh! Why is this happening to me? I didn't do anything!'

"Then you also understand that this means that _I_ trust you absolutely as well." A deceptive smile that gave Naruto a chill down his spine appeared on Inoichi's face, "Now being that I am well aware of who you're being taught hands-on by and the more extracurricular activities that he happens to be known for, I would like you to remember to keep your hands and eyes to yourself. Remember, I can read your or Ino's mind if I suspect any funny business."

"Hands to myself. No acting like Ero-sensei around Ino at all. Got it." Naruto said with a shaky thumbs up. Damn Jiraiya and the stigma that came with being his student. It was almost as over-encompassing as the fox in his stomach, "Please don't break my brain with a crazy Yamanaka kinjutsu…"

A look of surprise came over Inoichi's face, "Naruto I would never do such a thing to a comrade of Konoha." A relieved expression made itself known on Naruto's face after hearing that, "…Ibiki would though, and I could just force your body to go to him directly so there's that." The thought of being pressured by Ibiki put a frightened look on Naruto's face and that seemed to satisfy Inoichi, "If we're clear then you can go back in with Ino." Naruto did just that, with heavy and slow footsteps, "Yeah… I'm a good father."

XxX

(One Day Later – Field by the Waterfall)

Both Naruto and Jiraiya sat, silently trying to meditate in the middle of the empty field. On this day with summer pretty much at an end and with the women that had been frolicking there no longer going out as the weather began to chill enough to where it would no longer be comfortable. Even in a place with compliable weather like Hi no Kuni it did get a little cold in later months.

Naruto was back in his usual attire of the zipped up orange short-sleeved windbreaker and orange shorts both with blue trim, blue arm-warmers, his headband in a bandanna-like style around his neck, and a new pair of goggles on his forehead with orange tint that one could actually see his eyes through, just not the color of them.

"The bloodlust you feel when you tap into the Kyuubi's chakra is a limitation." Jiraiya stated out of the blue, though Naruto didn't turn towards him or even register that he had heard him, "You were still overmatched and you should have known that not too long after resuming your battle. You just wanted to get that Guren person back for what she had done to you and your friends didn't you?"

Again Naruto didn't answer, but his face twitched to let on that he understood what Jiraiya was saying. He knew that his teammates were hurt, and he had originally told himself that he just wanted to hit Guren once to get her back. Once was enough to beat her he had figured. After all, who could stand up to the power of a demonically-fueled haymaker? Well now apparently he knew that there were at least eleven people that could. Or twelve if he included Jiraiya… or thirteen if he considered the Hokage. That old man had to be tough to still be Hokage. And then there was Asuma, and Naruto figured he could beat him too when using his chakra shroud.

His frown deepened as he kept thinking about other stronger people he probably knew that could take advantage of his own berserker fighting style when he used the Kyuubi's chakra, 'Calling me weak… you make me weak.' He could hear a hateful growl from the back of his head, but he couldn't care any less about it. What could the Kyuubi do? It held back chakra from him intentionally to torment him and belittle him the last time.

"**You say that now. But the moment you need to crush your enemies… to end their lives before they end yours… we'll just see where you choose to hang your hat. You'll see that no matter how hard you try, your powers and abilities as a human simply pale in comparison to that of a biju. Your best will never come close to touching my very worst."**

The bad part of meditation that Naruto despised aside from the boring part of it all. With such a clear mind and with no thoughts cluttering his head, Naruto could hear the Kyuubi's remarks as clear as day. At best they were usually rumblings of dark thoughts in the back of his mind since he had discovered its existence within him, but when Jiraiya made him meditate it was like he was forced to mentally interact with the being.

'What about the people that sealed you? I bet you felt that way about them too, and now look at you. Your big furry ass is stuck inside of me.'

"**If you're comparing yourself to any of those that overcame me then all you're missing with that evaluation would be a large amount of divine intervention on your part… because that would be the only way you would last any longer than five seconds in a battle with any of them. You're nothing to me compared to them. All mouth and no strength or talent."**

'Fuck you.'

A finger then started poking him in the head, bringing his attention back to his physical surroundings, "You were way far gone there. You need to find a true balance when you meditate or an enemy can take advantage of you while you clear your mind."

Naruto nodded but also had a thought, 'When would I need to meditate in the middle of a fight?' He shook that off though because it wasn't an important question at the moment.

'Maybe if I loosen his seal he can get better control over his jinchuuriki powers?' Jiraiya thought before he saw Naruto punch the ground, "What's the matter?"

"If all I think about in a fight while using this stupid thing's chakra is trying to destroy whoever I'm fighting no matter what then how does that make me any different from it when I'm using its chakra?" Naruto said, speaking his thought angrily aloud, "I just went right at her Ero-sensei! I haven't fought like that since-."

"-Since you fought Gaara." Jiraiya finished for Naruto, cutting him off from saying that he hadn't fought like that since he had first become a genin, "You mostly fought Fuu like that as well. The only difference between those two fights and the one you had with Guren was that when you fought Gaara you were able to outmatch him in the end since he fought more berserk than you did. Against Fuu you got your bell rang hard enough that you realized right from the start that you couldn't beat her in a head-to-head fight."

Guren didn't flat-out overpower him until the very end as all she had done until that point was avoid him and use her crystals to divert his straightforward attacks. It hadn't been until he had gotten a hold of her and planned on slamming her straight through the concrete when she had pulled up enough power to injure him badly and leave. Fuu had been beating the daylights out of him right when he started using his powers to try and match hers. That put it in his head that he had to use one of his tricks to get through that battle. When fighting Gaara, Shikamaru's input to fight smart kept Naruto from turning it into a battle of attrition that it had devolved into at that point when he and Gaara started bashing each other back and forth with their demonic influences.

He knew how to fight, but was the Kyuubi's chakra that damaging to his own mental stability that he lost his own sense of base strategy?

Jiraiya clasped his hands and then pulled them apart as a show, "The problem is that you need to be able to filter out the Kyuubi's will when you use its chakra. If you can do that then you can keep your sanity and own mental influence about you while fighting. When we begin your training for real we'll have you get your meditation down, then we'll have you try it using the Kyuubi's chakra… and we'll add on more and more."

"Why can't we do it now?"

"Have you actually paid attention to how much damage you do when you use the Kyuubi's chakra, or how much damage any jinchuuriki does in general when they fight?" Jiraiya asked before using a past example, "You and Fuu tore up a good chunk of that forest part of the field during your exam battle, and you and Gaara went ahead and wrecked most of the rest of it." He gestured around to the tranquil location they were currently seated in, "You're a good kid, but if you start pumping out more and more of the Kyuubi's chakra as your training progresses you'll scare people. Eventually you'll start disrupting the overall environment itself."

Upon hearing that, Naruto thought about it and started to laugh. His laughter lasted for over a minute until he realized that Jiraiya wasn't laughing himself and he stopped, "Wait, you're serious?"

"Remind me to go take you to see the Valley of the End."

Naruto gulped just thinking about such a thing. An entire valley was created by this thing inside of him? Maybe it was best to practice working with a complete aura of destruction away from people he was probably going to have to look in the face the morning after he could possibly go on a rampage?

"Don't be so grim though kid." Jiraiya said, grabbing Naruto's shoulder and shaking him good-naturedly, "If you just think I'm going to leave you hanging for the next five months you're out of your spiky little skull. I'll tell you what. Your birthday is coming up, right? Two days?"

Naruto nodded with a suspicious look on his face, "Yeah. October 10th. But how did you know when my birthday was anyway?"

"I'm not just a ton of sex-appeal and badass ninjutsu skill." Jiraiya pointed at himself in a showy manner, "I am a master at gathering information. You're acting like it was hard to find out when your birthday is. But speaking of my unmatched prowess in the ninja arts, as a present for your birthday and for getting promoted during the exams I'll teach you a strong ninjutsu… and I'll even give you a choice. One is an attack jutsu, one that would probably suit you pretty well, while the other is one of the most versatile techniques for a ninja to learn. An honor for any ninja."

Well Naruto felt he had enough attack ninjutsu for the moment, and he needed more versatile techniques since when Guren went on the attack he had absolutely no defensive answer for her. His desire for bouts of cool destruction had to be fought down for him to make his choice, "I'll take the second one."

A grin spread across Jiraiya's face as he bit his thumb and began making hand-seals, "I was hoping you would say that kid." He said before slamming his palm on the ground, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

Naruto coughed and swung his arms around to get the smoke out of his face before coming face-to-face with a very large orange toad with blue markings on its body and a necklace with beads. He jumped back sharply and reached for his machete, flashing back to the last time he had to deal with Jiraiya's toads, until he saw a scroll wrapped up in the toad's tongue that Jiraiya took and unfurled to show a contract with five names signed on it, "What's this about Ero-sensei?"

"Thanks Gama." Jiraiya said to the toad as he took the scroll from the large amphibian, "This is what you need to sign to learn the technique that I said I'll teach you." Jiraiya pointed towards a pair of names on the contract; his own and that of Namikaze Minato, "I signed it, and my student the Yondaime Hokage signed it. So how about it?" It was for the best anyway. The other jutsu he was planning on teaching Naruto would go easier once he strengthened himself with the cliff-climbing training.

Getting slapped around by toads while training puts a sort of respect for them into you, at least as far as Naruto went because his eyes shined over with the thought of being able to call that kind of a beatdown onto someone else for once.

Able to see the eagerness in Naruto's eyes, Jiraiya gestured for Naruto to step towards the contract, "Go ahead and sign your name on the contract in your blood and I'll teach you the hand-seals for the jutsu." He then palmed his face when Naruto cut his entire palm with his machete to use it like a palette for his other hand's fingers to draw out the kanji for his name, "You could have just bit your thumb and dabbed the rest of your fingers on that hand… oh nevermind."

"Come on!" Naruto said excitedly, ignoring the blood dripping off of the palm of one of his hands. It would heal up just fine in like a half an hour anyway, "What are the hand-seals Ero-sensei?"

"The seals are; I, Inu, Tori, Saru, and Hitsuji." Jiraiya said, watching Naruto go slowly through the seals, "You've got to have some blood on your summoning hand before you make the seals and after you make the seals you have to slam your blood-covered hand down on the ground."

Naruto did just that and with a huge grin on his face he slammed his hand down on the ground, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

A sealing array appeared on the ground where Naruto's hand was pressed and a large amount of smoke appeared at the point of impact.

The smoke started to clear out as Naruto looked around to see what cool combat-ready toad he had just brought from its home of… wherever they were from. He seriously needed to ask about that later.

But when he didn't see anything his size both he and Jiraiya looked down to see a tadpole flopping on the ground.

"Hm…" Jiraiya said in a calm manner, belying the fact that he wanted to laugh as Naruto had a mortified look on his face, "Yeah… we'll work on that." Gama let out a few croaks to go along with the situation and Naruto could swear that the toad was mocking him.

XxX

(The Next Day – Konoha Hospital)

A nurse rushed into Sasuke's room and looked at him in astonishment, "Uchiha-san, you're awake!" That was surprising to say the least. Due to the amount of anguish he was in, Sasuke had been given a steady flow of painkillers and sedatives. Even if his long bout of pain and discomfort was over he still should have been asleep until a doctor came in to force him to awaken, "I'll be back in just a moment with a doctor!"

With that, the nurse scrambled out of the room to hurry and find his physician to report that he had somehow woken up well enough to sit up in his bed.

Sasuke wasted no time in getting up as he swung his legs over the side of the bed facing the back wall of his room and flexed his hands out in a testing manner. Sasuke threw on a pair of grey sweatpants and a loose blue shirt as he looked around for his shoes, not turning to face the door when it opened back up and his doctor walked in.

"Uchiha-san you should really still be in bed right now." He shouldn't even have been walking around with the sheer amount of sedatives that had been pumping through his body prior to his awakening, "I'll have to ask you to lie back down until we can rightly release you."

"I'm fine." Sasuke said as he held his left hand on the side and back of his neck, rolling it out to work out whatever kinks he might have had, "I'm feeling really good right now. I don't think I've ever felt this good in my entire life." He looked at his hands with his back still turned to the nurse and doctor and began laughing, "Just what is this?"

That laughing didn't exactly sit easily with the doctor as he looked at the nurse who nodded and stuck her head outside of the door, "Orderly!"

In a matter of seconds two men quickly made their way into the room, moving swiftly past the doctor and the nurse to try and restrain Sasuke. Their attempt to grab him only wound up with Sasuke substituting himself with the pole that had contained his I.V. with his fluids and sedatives.

The confusion wrought by just how seamless the sudden action was quickly gave way to alarm once Sasuke knocked both men out with a kick that sent them through the glass observation window his room had come with.

The nurse fearfully shrieked as Sasuke jumped out of the broken observation window like a blur and took off down the halls gleefully with this new power coursing through him.

"Damn it." The doctor muttered as he moved to assist the injured orderlies, "Someone call Hokage-sama and tell him what has happened here!" He kneeled down over one of the unconscious men and checked over his cuts from the glass and his probable concussion from the knockout, "And tell him that the seal has manifested as well…"

* * *

Omake: Training Day 3

"This is so stupid." A blindfolded Naruto grumbled out as he stumbled around an open field trying to feel his way around with his hands, "This isn't what I said I needed help with Kiba! Why am I here?"

An equally blindfolded Kiba let out a chuckle, "Come on Naruto. I tried to help you that one day, so in return I wanted you to train with my team for one day. It's not a big deal. It's normal." Akamaru popped out of Kiba's jacket with a blindfold on as well and let out a happy yapping back

"Why are we all blindfolded though? This seems all kinds of dumb."

"A question with a quite obvious answer Naruto-san." Even though he was blindfolded, Shino still had his sunglasses on over the cloth concealing his eyes, "Team 8 is a team of tracking specialists. With my insects, Kiba and Akamaru's powerful senses of smell, and Hinata's Byakugan we don't need our eyes uncovered to be effective fighters."

Naruto crossed his arms and if one could actually see his eyes one would find them squinted in thought, "I get why you two are blindfolded because you can find things without seeing. But why did you blindfold Hinata? Doesn't she need her eyes to find stuff?" That was basically the whole thing that made the Hyuuga Clan special.

Hinata silently poked her fingers together bashfully as she was turned to face in Naruto's direction, "Well… about that. You see Naruto-kun…" She started to say demurely until she saw Naruto turn towards her to face her, inability to see notwithstanding, "Um… well." It was a good thing that Naruto couldn't see because if he saw her red cheeks heating up she would have died from embarrassment.

Taking mercy on the cute and bashful female teammate of the tracking specialist squad, Kiba let out a few chuckles and finished Hinata's thought for her, "Hinata and her Byakugan can see through things Naruto. That little blindfold isn't doing anything but making her use her kekkei genkai to see. It's training her eyes to be better too."

"What the fuck am I supposed to do then, walk around with my hands out like a zombie?" Naruto snapped irritably back in Kiba's direction, "Damn… this is just payback because you didn't get to fight me during the exams isn't it?"

"Language Naruto." The cool, collected, reprimanding, and very adult female voice of the Team 8 sensei Kurenai got Naruto to freeze up the moment it entered his ears, "And I was told you had your own way to locate the things that you can't see. You can use that to anticipate where the attacks and your opponents are coming from for this four-way spar." Honestly she was kind of surprised that he had never tried this kind of training before.

"Oh. I guess that's right." Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head and laughing at himself sheepishly, "I can." With that, he jumped into a ready taijutsu stance for his fighting style and patted his cheeks hard to wake himself up, "Ok, let's do this. I'm ready to roll. Don't hold back on me you guys, I can take it."

Kiba chuckled as Akamaru jumped out of his coat onto the ground, "You won't be saying that after you're face-first on the ground eating dirt. If you're lucky we won't all gang up on you at once just to take you out quick."

"It would be the wisest course of action." Shino said, holding his arms out to prepare to bring his kikaichu insects into conflict, "The reason being of course that Naruto-san is the rank chunin amongst us all. That has to count for something."

"Ha, ha, ha." Naruto deadpanned irritably, knowing that they were picking with him, "At least Hinata's nice enough not to pick on someone before the fight even begins. That's why I like her so much better than the rest of you."

All Hinata was able to hear from Naruto's last comment was him saying, 'That's why I like her so much.' Nothing more. This being simply because once her brain registered those words it shut off from overheating and rendered her unconscious.

At that point, Naruto whipped his head around confusedly, "Did we start? I heard something hit the ground pretty hard just now." He then released a pulse of his sonar jutsu and gasped, "Which one of you jerks knocked out Hinata before we even started? You don't treat a teammate like that!"

Kurenai, Shino, and Kiba all had the same thought run through their heads as they saw Naruto flagrantly ignore the fact that he had just used a jutsu that temporarily allowed him to see in favor of stumbling around blindly before he finally tripped over Hinata's downed form, '…Idiot.'

"Hey! Are we _still_ fighting? Don't trip me while I'm trying to help her off of the battlefield! Show some common courtesy here!"

Omake: Training Day 4

Naruto stood in the field with Jiraiya pulling at his hair and stomping about angrily, "Gah! A tadpole! I've done this three times already! Why do I keep getting tadpoles?"

'What's the kid's problem with this thing? He should be able to summon pretty much anything.' Jiraiya looked at the pathetic little tadpole flopping on the ground before it desummoned itself back from whence it came, "Wait. I think I have an idea. Are you sure you're using enough-?" He was about to say chakra, but Naruto figured him to be prepared to say something else.

"Clones? That's a perfect idea Ero-sensei! I'll get this jutsu down in a hurry after this!" Naruto suddenly shouted, surprising Jiraiya and breaking his train of speech before he made his favorite and easiest to remember hand-seal, "This'll make the whole training thing go down way faster now! Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

The field was then filled with more than one hundred Naruto clones. With a sharp look in their eyes all of them rolled through five hand-seals and slammed their hands onto the ground with a unanimous cry of the intended jutsu, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

XxX

(Meanwhile – Mount Myouboku)

"Oh Kami! Someone go get Fukasaku-sama and Shima-sama! All of the tadpoles just up and disappeared!"

"What the hell is going on around here?"

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konohagakure Shinobi

Mitarashi Anko

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score:** 25

Ino-Shika-Cho

Nara Shikaku

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 27**

Yamanaka Inoichi

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 26**

Akimichi Choza

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 25**

* * *

**About the whole rating system thing. I like it and I like using it in this story, however it is admittedly very vague and is not really explained in any databook, thus I feel that it works like this:**

**10-15 = Little threat. Most young genin won't crack 15.**

**16-20 = High potential for further growth. Very skilled genin, possible chunin in my observation. Actually I'd say that most nameless shinobi with no background that are used as cannon fodder for actual characters to run through fall into this category. For example; like the eight Otogakure ninja that Shikamaru stayed back to fight during Konoha's invasion in canon, the ones he had to be saved from by Asuma. I say that they're in this category. **

**20-25 = They've got some moves, they've got something in particular that they do very well, but probably have a big weakness or something. Not really meant to be trifled with, but can be defeated by one of the two below them… especially when numbers come into play. Can also overcome one of the two above them if the circumstances are right. This is pretty much a happy medium that can go either way with the right setting.**

**26-30 = Very, very dangerous. High level of skill, raw power, etc. something that sets them apart and makes them better than the people around them that are considered on their rank. Pretty damn elite all things considered.**

**31-35 = If you are not in the class directly below then I suggest you run for cover, put all of your eggs in the divine intervention basket, or learn how to make some strong friends… because even with them you are probably to-be dead if you're up against someone like this. People like this can more than likely fight a kage (if they are not a kage themselves) and survive or possibly win on their own.**

**36-40 = Totally not possible since I haven't even seen it in any of the reference tools I've been using (Still, there hasn't been a databook since chapter 389 so there might be a few that go this high… more than likely). Itachi and Jiraiya only go up to 35.5. So for the sake of leaving things open to a time when it may be necessary to use this, 36-40 is classified as: Curl up in a ball, pray, grab your ankles, and kiss your ass goodbye. For obvious reasons.**

**In the end though, I consider them a rough guiding estimate of a character's talents and not a concrete table of showing who can beat who, because some characters that are rated 5 in one category are clearly more advanced in that particular category than another person rated 5. A great example would be the fact that ninja such as Hiruzen, Kakashi, and Orochimaru are rated 5 in the ninjutsu category... but so is canon Sasuke after the timeskip. You can see the difference there and why there is one.  
**

**I just think it's all in good fun to try and figure what characters that didn't have any stat ratings would be though, and characters will be developing differently in this story.**

**So, enough about that. I'm done, I've got some university work to adhere to over the week I have off for Thanksgiving… and I've got another odd job to do for $200 that I'm going to be jumping all over.**

**Until the next time folks, Kenchi out.**


	38. The Curse of Talent

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'm very tired right now. So tired… so sleepy. All I want is just to sleep for the next 36 hours. Maybe because my dreams are better than my life?

**Chapter 38: The Curse of Talent**

* * *

After Naruto hashed out how to accurately summon something better than tadpoles the day after learning the jutsu for summoning, he went over to Shikamaru's house to find the Nara boy still a little banged up with bandages still adorning his torso, but fortunately he was in good enough condition to go walk with Naruto to check on Chouji, as their rotund friend had run aground of some foul luck in his own right during his last mission.

It was good to know that there were others around that weren't receiving the full blessing of Kami's bounty as well… in a sort of sick way.

Regardless, Naruto and Shikamaru were walking through the streets towards the hospital. It wasn't because Chouji was still in bad condition at all. As a matter of fact Chouji was more or less cleared to go home by this point. The reason he was in the hospital was because when he did go home he was given a big meal by his family and overate to the point of landing himself back into the hospital again.

The sun was looking like it was beginning to set on the early fall day in Konoha as the two walked through the streets and the normally bustling paths had the populace dwindling as the people returned to their own homes for the evening. It was Shikamaru's kind of time of day if he were to be honest with himself.

Naruto had his new goggles down over his eyes to protect them from the blinding sunset directly in his face and Shikamaru just had his eyes closed altogether. Hey, Naruto could see for him. Why use his eyes when Naruto had a perfectly good pair already working for them both?

"So…" Naruto said, acting nonchalant despite what he wanted to say.

"So…" Shikamaru sounded as if he was being put under duress just by being forced to speak. Why say anything Naruto? It was cool just walking down the street and staring at the back of his own eyelids. Hey, maybe he'd get a seeing-eye dog. He liked not having to look at things and waste brainpower scrutinizing everything on the roads.

When Shikamaru didn't say anything further, Naruto took it upon himself to proceed with the conversation, "So… are you taking the job to go train as a guard?" He asked, actually getting Shikamaru to crack an eye to look over at him, "…I'm asking you 'cuz I am. I'm going. Ero-sensei convinced me."

Shikamaru nodded and sighed tiredly, "Well at least that means I didn't make the decision to go too for nothing. Because if you weren't going I wasn't going to go. Someone's got to try to make sure you don't get nabbed by some crazy criminals that want your fuzzy little indigestion problem… even if it is the single most troublesome thing I've ever agreed to."

That really meant a lot to Naruto. Usually people tried to distance themselves from him because of his little problem. It was rare to find people that actually wanted to watch his back because of it. He could count the number of standup people that would do such a thing on one hand, "Thanks Shika. That's really cool of you."

"Whatever. Don't thank me yet. You're the one telling Ino."

"What?" Naruto replied with an owlish blinking of his eyes before reality set in on just what that implied, "No! Fuck that, you tell Ino-chan."

"Make a clone and tell her. You don't even have to be there for it."

"_You_ make a clone and tell her then 'Mr I-have-clones-and-didn't-think-to-tell-anyone-about-it.'"

"I can only make one."

"You only need one!"

The bickering between the two continued all the way into the hospital until they found the staff in a tizzy. Both boys looked around confusedly and went to the main desk to try and get some attention, "Um, excuse me." Naruto asked the woman behind the counter, "Could you tell us where Akimichi Chouji's room is?"

The lady turned around from her rapid filing of reports and saw the two young chunin looking at her in confusion as to what was going on, "Oh, I'm sorry. Now's not really a good time. Uchiha Sasuke awoke from his coma and attacked several orderlies before breaking out of the hospital."

"What?" Both Naruto and Shikamaru said simultaneously. Naruto could understand wanting to break out of the hospital, but injuring people just for that? That was a little much.

"It wasn't that long ago." The woman said with a frown on her face, "No one knows where he went. It happened so fast he broke out and left without anyone touching him."

Without even saying a word, Naruto shot a glance to Shikamaru who didn't even need to look back to know that Naruto's eyes were boring into the side of his head, "You seriously want to go do this? Let someone else handle it, someone like a chun-. Oh hell…"

"It's our job though Shikamaru, so let's go!" Naruto said, grabbing Shikamaru by the arm and dragging him out of the hospital to begin searching, though he had a tough time of it as Shikamaru had dug his feet into the ground outside to keep from being pulled, "What are you doing?"

"We're going to go by ourselves?" Shikamaru questioned rhetorically, "At least let's get someone that can track. We don't even know where he went. Your jutsu isn't good for distance searching, remember?"

That got Naruto to stop in his tracks and turn to Shikamaru slowly, "Come on Shika. We're in a bit of a rush here. It'll have to do for now won't it? What if Sasuke actually hurts someone? Or what if he had a head injury and it's messing with him? We know about it, so let's go get him." With that, Naruto took off down the path away from the hospital and jumped off onto a rooftop to begin searching above the walls that would disrupt the better range of his jutsu that he'd get on the ground.

With a desperate groan, Shikamaru took off after him, "I'm really not looking forward to going back to the hospital over this whole thing…"

XxX

(Meanwhile – Hokage Tower – Hokage's Office)

"What?" Anko squawked out indignantly upon being told of the news from the ANBU who had entered the room and delivered news to her, Kakashi, and Hiruzen, "He broke out? But he had enough sedatives in him to put down a bull elephant!"

The masked ANBU nodded and continued, "On his escape from his wing of the hospital he injured several of the staff orderlies. None dead or severely hurt though, just a little banged up at most. He is still somewhere within the limits of Konohagakure as the guards on gate duty have tripled in response.

Hiruzen nodded and turned his attention to Anko, "Anko, how dangerous is Sasuke with the Cursed Seal of Heaven?"

The purple-haired specialist shook her head, "I… couldn't tell you. I was angry, really angry and I wanted to just fight something when I woke up from it. It went away after a while though. I never found anything to vent on so I just tore apart what was left of the base I was in. That's all I remember Hokage-sama."

That wasn't particularly the answer that Hiruzen was looking for, but there was a call to make, "Anko I want you to mobilize a team to find Sasuke before he gets himself hurt or hurts someone else. If there are any available Inuzuka or Hyuuga clan members in the village you would take do as you wish. Until further notice you have free reign to recruit." Anko nodded and left the office to get herself a team in a hurry.

Kakashi stood there, more or less at attention, and that in of itself should have let one know of just how uncomfortable he was with not being out there himself, "Kakashi." The way Kakashi's body tensed up waiting on his own order spoke volumes, "Prepare the isolated room for Sasuke's sealing. His life is no longer in jeopardy from the physical effects of the seal, it is time to handle this once he is retrieved."

"I should be out there Hokage-sama." Kakashi replied, chomping at the bit to be granted the right to go get his student, "This is my responsibility. This happened on my watch. Any consequences should fall on my head and I should be the one out there to locate Sasuke."

"I understand Kakashi. Believe me I do." The age on Hiruzen's face shone through at that moment as he did everything but let out a sigh, "But none of this was your fault. You were split up and separated in battle. This is not something you have to do on your own. You stress teamwork, well this village is your team as well. Let others handle this for the time being and believe in your student. He won't succumb to Orochimaru's darkness. Anko didn't."

Kakashi's single visible eye looked rather grim at the final analogy made by his Hokage, "Sasuke has far more darkness of his own than Anko had."

XxX

(With Naruto and Shikamaru – Training Ground 44 – Forest of Death)

"You're telling us he went in there." Shikamaru's voice couldn't have sounded any more disenfranchised at the moment, "Are you sure you're not just smelling the wrong thing? Who goes into this place? Ever. For any reason at all?"

On the search around town for Sasuke, he and Naruto found Kiba and Akamaru and enlisted the help of two actual trackers so that he and Naruto didn't spend time chasing their own tails, no pun intended. This was much to Naruto's chagrin as it slighted his tracking skill… that he didn't technically have, but it was an extra set of hands and paws so they went with it anyway and kept searching. This quickly led them to the current abnormally large and gated off forest they were standing in front of.

How a forest like that actually existed within Konoha's gates was beyond the trio of them and how they had never been there before, but that didn't mean anything at that point in time, "I don't know what you want me to say Shikamaru." Kiba said with a deadpan look on his face, "He's in there… unless someone cut him in half and threw part of him over that fence… but even then I'd smell that too. He's intact, he's in there, and his chakra smells pretty funky."

"Well let's rock and roll then." Naruto said as he hit a switch that opened the nearest gate and motioned for the others to follow him, "Come on guys, let's get a move on!"

"This is just getting worse and worse all the time." Shikamaru muttered as he followed Kiba, Akamaru, and Naruto inside the large, foreboding looking forest to begin searching for their wayward comrade, "How did Sasuke just wake up and flip out anyway? Wasn't he in a coma or something? Who just wakes up from something like that and decides to go for a little jog?"

The trio managed to climb their way up into the branches of the massive trees that the forest held and Kiba decided to comment, "Yeah, this is quite the 'little jog' isn't it?" He remarked idly, getting a bark from Akamaru as he did so, "Alright, follow me. Me and Akamaru are getting a good whiff now."

The sheer amount of overgrowth was staggering. They couldn't even see the sun through the canopy. What that place needed was a good old fashioned forest fire to clear some of that crap out of there, especially on the ground. It looked particularly nasty down there, and the animal life for the most part seemed none too friendly.

Genin were not supposed to be allowed entry into that place without permission first, but Naruto and Shikamaru were chunin and he was supposed to be with them. At least that was the excuse they were going to use if they got in trouble for going in there.

Just like their Academy delinquency days, only Chouji wasn't with them this time, having been stuck in the hospital.

And instead of skipping school they were running through a potentially deadly forest chasing after a comrade to figure out what was wrong with him.

"Whoa, check it out. Tigers. They're huge, and they're all looking right at us from down there. Hmm… there sure are a lot of them."

Yeah, this was a _great_ idea.

XxX

(Konoha Hospital)

Both Ino and Sakura walked through the halls of the hospital on the way to Sasuke's room, with Sakura wheeling an embarrassed Chouji around in a wheelchair, "You seriously don't have to do this Sakura. It's not like I'm here for an actual reason."

"Your doctor told you to relax." Sakura chided him getting Chouji to stop disputing her assistance, "It's not that far from your room to Sasuke-kun's either. None of us got to see each other before we were released. You were put back into the hospital and you haven't even seen him yet."

"It's good to know that my team wasn't the only ones that got their asses kicked recently." Ino said too cheerfully for the topic of her comment, "That didn't sound very nice in hindsight did it?" She remarked after the fact, getting a shake of the head from both Sakura and Chouji, "My bad."

"Why'd you decide to come anyway Ino?" Chouji asked as they all continued to proceed down the hall, "I thought you didn't really like Sasuke the way that Sakura did anymore. So what's with visiting him in the hospital?"

Suspicion crept into Sakura as she narrowed her eyes at her newly reformed best friend, "Hey… yeah. This isn't some plan to get to Sasuke-kun to nurse him back to health is it? Because if it is you can just sit back and watch-."

A shrug came from the blonde Yamanaka girl in response, not particularly rising to Sakura's suspicions, "I don't know why I came. Forehead here was going to go, and I don't know where Goldie-kun or Shika are so I figured I'd go too. You're still my friend Chouji, Sasuke's still from our grad class and he's a chunin like the rest of my team so why not?"

She kept hearing it, but she couldn't really believe it. Ino really wasn't that into Sasuke anymore. It was just hard for Sakura to wrap her mind around that the person she had split with years ago had given up on her entire reason for ending their friendship. Did splitting off into teams after graduation really change things that much? It was like there was something else attracting her attention entirely. Was it purely her training? Because the exams that Sakura had seen showed that Ino had picked up quite a few nasty tricks. She was supposed to be smart so what wasn't she getting about the whole situation?

Better not to look a gift horse in the mouth anyway. If Ino didn't like Sasuke like that any longer it was all the better for her. No need to really wonder why, "Okay. If you say so, but I still don't know what in the world happened to make you-." Sakura stopped as they rounded a corner and saw the glass to an observation room broken and scattering the hallway floor, in the process of being cleaned, "What happened here?" She saw Kabuto as one of the people sweeping up the glass and decided to speak to him about it, "Kabuto-san. What's going on?"

Upon seeing Sakura, Kabuto put on a strained smile, "Oh. Well your teammate had a bit of a freak-out when he woke up from his coma. He took off from the hospital to who knows where. Sorry."

"What do you mean? He just freaked out and left?" Chouji asked, standing up slowly from his wheelchair, "Why would he freak out? He's back at home. He had to have known that after getting up."

"I don't know what to tell you guys." Kabuto said helplessly, "I wasn't even on this floor when it happened, but I've been here for the whole aftermath. Sasuke beat up a couple of orderlies that tried to keep him from leaving, took out that window and just left."

It was a shock to the systems of both Sakura and Chouji. Sasuke didn't just freak out. Ever. Even when he was upset about something he seemed in control for the most part. Slowly backtracking down the hall, Sakura eventually took off running, "I've got to go find Kakashi-sensei… Chouji you should go back to bed!" She finished with a shout as she ran past the personnel in the corridor.

"Wait! Sakura!" Chouji said preparing to follow after her, but almost falling out on the floor if not for Ino supporting him and putting him back into his chair, "Damn it… I'll never catch her like this. Ino can you go get her and make sure everything's alright?"

"Yeah." Ino assured him, making sure that the large young man was alright before heading off after Sakura, "Don't worry about anything Chouji, everything's going to be fine!" The frown on Chouji's face as Ino ran away didn't seem too sure of that fact.

XxX

(With Naruto, Shikamaru, and Kiba – Training Ground 44 – Forest of Death)

They had been following after Sasuke's trail for well over an hour and below they had been finding a trail of abject destruction. Vicious animals of all sorts found themselves deceased or severely wounded. Proud predators found themselves slinking off to hide somewhere like injured prey and they weren't paying the three youngsters and small puppy moving in the trees above them any mind.

Kiba took a sniff of the air and grimaced slightly, "We're getting close. Really close. That's definitely Sasuke man." He shook his head and spared a glance back at his two friends, "What the hell is he on? It's got to be the strongest soldier pill or steroid on the market to be up and about after just waking up like that." Akamaru whined inside of Kiba's jacket, "Are you kidding me boy? It's that intense?"

"What's intense?" Naruto asked as they moved from branch to branch, "This forest? Because yeah, I agree with the puppy. This place sucks."

"No damn it." Kiba said, rolling his feral eyes at the young jinchuuriki's comment, "Akamaru says that Sasuke's chakra is powerful. It's nasty guys."

That didn't sit easy with Shikamaru who had gotten his fill of powerful chakra during the chunin exams, "How nasty?"

"Real nasty." Confirmed Kiba before getting another telling whiff of the air, "I think he stopped. It's time to find out what's up with the last Uchiha standing." The group sped up and started moving lower and lower to the ground.

It didn't take too much longer for them to find the exact place they were looking for, with Sasuke standing on a rock in the middle of the river looking down at his reflection like he was Adonis seeing himself for the first time. He didn't even have a pair of sandals on his feet and he didn't seem to care.

Naruto, Shikamaru, and Kiba all looked at each other wondering just what Sasuke's deal was. He didn't even seem to notice that they were there. Either that or he just didn't care. Deciding to break the stillness of the situation, Naruto let out a whistle to get Sasuke's attention, not even getting him to turn towards them, "Sasuke! Oi, what's going on? Why'd you hurt those people and leave the hospital?"

No response, he was still just looking down into the water with his back turned.

So Kiba tried a more subtle approach, "Yo prick! We've been chasing your ass all over this forest for the last two hours! What, did you flip out and flashback to the asskicking that landed you in the hospital in the first place?"

"They were in the way."

"What?" Shikamaru said, having barely heard Sasuke at all. Kiba had heard him and raised an eyebrow at what the dark-haired chunin had uttered, "They were what?"

"They were in the way." Sasuke repeated louder this time, "I didn't need to be in the hospital. I needed to get back to training. I can't let what happened on the last mission happen again, and I guess my body is agreeing with me… because I've never felt this good in my entire life. Not even when I awakened my Sharingan." He turned around to show that the entire left side of his body was covered in black flame-like markings, "What do you guys think? I like the new look."

"Damn dude." Kiba exclaimed, taking a step back at the strange sight on Sasuke's body, "You look… horrific. That's like the regret tat from hell. What the fuck is that supposed to be?"

Sasuke looked at himself and at his own hands, "I don't know honestly. I woke up and the first time I looked at myself I saw these markings. I feel stronger though. So much stronger. I think that if I had this during the chunin exams I could have beaten Fuu." He then looked up towards Naruto, "Then we could have fought and had our rematch the right way Naruto. What do you think?"

He took a step forward and all three boys standing across from him felt quite a bit of malice emanating off of Sasuke. Naruto held his hands up and tried to reason with him, "We can have a rematch Sasuke, no problem. But now's not really the time don't you think? There's something wrong with you. Something just doesn't feel right."

"It's this power of mine right?" Sasuke said, grinning as he continued to step forward, "It's not wrong. And if you asked me, now's the perfect time for a fight in my opinion. I'm ready to go, and it would be a great test for the both of us… unless you're scared." He knew that questioning Naruto's courage or resolve was the quickest way to get him into a conflict.

"I'm not scared of you Sasuke." Naruto stepped forward with his hands clenched into fists.

"That's what I wanted to hear."

_That_ wasn't what Naruto, Kiba, or Shikamaru wanted to hear though. But Sasuke didn't want to seem to take no for an answer as he used absurd speed to get between all three of them, delivering a jumping split kick that knocked both Kiba and Shikamaru away from himself and Naruto in one move.

Despite having watched Sasuke fight during the exams, they had no idea he was that much faster than what they had seen. Caught off-guard, Naruto's eyes went wide as he got an up-close feel of Sasuke's malevolent chakra, "Sasuke… this isn't-."

"You're not going to back down are you Naruto?" Sasuke said, standing well within reaching distance of Naruto but staying his hand regardless, "I've wanted a match with you ever since Nami no Kuni, and when you won the chunin exam with your team and we both got promoted that just made me want to fight you even more. I want to see if I couldn't have defeated you had we faced off instead."

"Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possesion Jutsu)!"

Sasuke jumped off of the ground away from Naruto to avoid the swift shadow snaking towards him on the ground from behind, taking refuge on the trunk of one of the massive trees the Forest of Death had to offer. Sasuke narrowed his eye at Shikamaru, Sharingan active but felt an instinct to dodge again.

"Gatsuuga (Fang Passing Fang)!"

A pair of drills that were a rapidly rotating Kiba and Akamaru flew at Sasuke, but he avoided them and they smashed large chunks of tree out of the trunk before they both landed on the ground with Kiba and Akamaru in a man-beast clone of Kiba staring Sasuke down, "What's your problem? We came here to help you out and you attacked us! You're hurt! You need to be back in the hospital!"

Sasuke stood straight up and raised an eyebrow at the Inuzuka pair, "Do I look like I need to be in the hospital?"

"A mental hospital, yes!" Kiba snapped at him, not taking kindly to being kicked as hard as he had been by Sasuke moments ago, "We're your friends dude! You don't dropkick friends in the chest!"

"Sasuke what about Sakura and Chouji!" Shikamaru shouted, trying to convince him to stop before things got out of hand, "What would they think of you if they saw you now? What would you do if they were here? Would you just attack them too?"

That got Sasuke to turn towards the young genius with a scowl on his face, "They're part of the reason I feel like I need this power. During the exams… for all the skill I'm supposed to have, I was still too weak to keep my team safe. And then on our first real mission out we were all almost killed. I was spared and I was given this power..."

"By who?"

"I'm not really sure to be honest." Sasuke felt a bit of confusion as he had never thought of why exactly he had suddenly received so much power, "It's not important. The source… it doesn't matter. But I need this. I need to see just how far this power can take me. I need to…" He had to swallow a lump in his throat as he thought about who had coined the phrase he was going to utter next, "…I need to test the limits of my ability." He couldn't believe that he had just given the excuse his brother had given to him on why he had killed their entire clan.

Naruto tilted his head in confusion as he tried to process what Sasuke had just said, "What does that even mean? What does going off on villagers have to do with testing anyone's limits? Listen, I know about power that messes with your head. It screws up your point of view, and it's okay. You can control it, alright? Just… don't let it control you. Bad things happen when you do that." Naruto thought back to his own foolish thoughts and combat strategies, and that term was used loosely, when channeling the Kyuubi's chakra against Gaara and later Guren, with worse results against the latter.

"Power controlling you…" Sasuke said to himself as if it were some kind of foreign language he was trying to decipher.

"Yeah." Shikamaru said, seeing what Naruto was doing and trying to follow up, "This isn't you. Uchiha Sasuke might be a cold bastard and he might be one step above a functional mute for all intents and purposes, but he doesn't attack innocent people, he doesn't go on rampages through forests. It's not you. It's whatever power you've got now. Listen to Naruto, he knows a little something about this."

Kiba's eyes panned towards Naruto when it had been brought up that the blonde knew something about strange powers. He most certainly did in the dog-using ninja's mind. He had seen the last two rounds of the tournament and the abnormally intense orange chakra Naruto used. Was that what he was talking about? It had to have been. But for now they were proverbially talking Sasuke down from the ledge and he could sate that curiosity some other time.

Besides, it seemed to be working anyway.

"I don't want to fight you like this Sasuke." Naruto continued on speaking, "Not because you're using this power. If you really want to fight like this when we do it again you can, but I'm not going to fight a guy that's letting a stupid seal tell him what to do."

At first looking like a cornered animal when he began taking their words to mind, eventually Sasuke seemed to mellow out significantly and the marks on his body began to recede, centering towards a mark on the back of his left shoulder and neck area. He dropped to the ground on his knees, overtaken by the sudden loss of power that came with the canceling of the seal on his body's effects. It made him feel somewhat emptier.

The nightmares he had suffered while in a coma from the seal's application and the constant reassurances in the back of his mind that using the power as his own was the right thing to do didn't feel domestic, 'What happened to me? I was knocked out in that forest at the border and then I woke up feeling better than ever.' He ran his hand over his neck where he could feel the seal lightly burning his senses as if it was trying to coax him into using it again.

"_For all of your gifts and as hard as you train you'll never reach the level of a real shinobi the way you are now. Your village is soft, not treating you like the weapon you think you were trained to be. Look at us. Orochimaru-sama saw us and imparted us with this gift, our cursed seals."_

He could still see Sakon standing over him and gloating, as clear as day with similar marking all over his body as to what Sasuke had seen on himself. And therein lay the answer as to the origin and the source of his little 'gifting' of power, "Orochimaru…" Sasuke said quietly as he fell forward, stopping himself from planting face-first with his hands.

Kiba and Naruto ran over and held Sasuke up with an arm around their necks to support him, "Told you that you were still injured asshole." Kiba said with a toothy grin, Akamaru barking in a frantically happy manner as he ran circles around them.

"Shut up…" Sasuke replied, looking rather haggard with the seal burning his system. It was like an itch he needed to scratch to use it again. That kind of told him all he needed to know about it right there.

Shikamaru sighed in relief at finding the trouble to be all over. Having Sasuke lose his shit and pick a meaningless fight was not very high up on his to-do list, not today or on any day, "I think I should have stayed in the hospital longer. Then I wouldn't have to deal with this crap."

"Oh whatever Shika." Naruto rolled his eyes at his unmotivated teammate, "We did a good deed. Show some good cheer and be happy for once damn it. We helped Sasuke-teme find himself again, right Sasuke?"

"I wish I didn't need you to stand up right now dobe."

"You're welcome." Naruto deadpanned before he saw Kiba looking around expectantly, "What's up?"

Gesturing his head in a certain direction, Kiba answered him, "It looks like we don't have to drag this guy all the way back to the hospital. Check it out. Five, four, three, two-."

Before Kiba finished counting down, multiple blurs landed at the riverside that they were standing by. A team populated by Anko, Kiba's sister Hana, and what seemed to be three other chunin, "What's up sis?" He said with a grin, waving with his other hand to the young woman.

"Kiba… I knew I smelled you and Akamaru." Hana said as her three ninken sat on the haunches, panting and looking at the youngest people in the clearing, "You're not supposed to be in the Forest of Death without the permission from a superior." Kiba then pointed wordlessly at both Naruto and Shikamaru.

Anko meanwhile stomped towards Naruto, Kiba, and Sasuke with a scowl on her face, "What the hell are you brats doing out here? Did you come out here to stop Kakashi's runt?" Both Kiba and Naruto looked at each other confusedly and turned back to Anko to nod, "Are you out of your minds chasing this guy into the Forest of Death?"

"It's just Sasuke." Naruto said with a shrug, "It was a crazy Sasuke, but it's still Sasuke. Isn't it our job to deal with stuff like that in the village?" Chunin were supposed to be for rudimentary village defense… right? Or did he mess that part up when Shiho had driven tons of useless facts into his head earlier that year?

Anko marched over to Sasuke and pulled his collar down to show the mark on Sasuke's neck, "Do you see that? This thing was active when you got to him wasn't it? It makes him into a killing machine."

"I already am a killing machine." Sasuke said in his more common tone of voice until Anko gave his collar a good shake for measure.

Giving Sasuke a meaningful look, she returned to chastising the other youngsters, "What would have happened if he didn't calm down? If he had been berserk would you have been prepared to do whatever you had to in order to stop him?"

"But he did calm down." Shikamaru disputed, lazily looking over at the purple-haired elder kunoichi, "So I don't really know what the problem is here. If we would have had to fight him we would have fought him. But we didn't… so I don't see how this matters. Someone had to do something. We did. That's all."

Hana shook her head with an amused smile on her face, "Ooh, you just wait. Mom's going to kick your ass when she gets home and I tell her what I caught up to you doing Kiba."

"Kick my ass?" Kiba bellowed indignantly, "What the hell did I do wrong?" He stood back up straight as Anko took Sasuke off of his and Naruto's hands, hoisting him over her back fireman's carry style, "Where are you taking him?"

Anko stopped and turned back towards Naruto and Kiba before pointing at Sasuke whom she was holding up, "This brat, the Cursed Seal is siphoning his chakra like a leech, trying to get him to use the seal's own power to make up for what he's losing. That's a big no-no. We can't have that happen, so we're taking him to get the influence of the seal cut off."

"Ha!" Naruto said with a victorious fist-pump, "I knew it was a seal that did that to him!" He then stopped and took a moment to think, "Wait, there's a protocol for this happening? This happened to someone before?"

"Yup." Turning towards Naruto, Anko pulled back the collar of her trench coat and her mesh bodysuit to show her own Cursed Seal that looked like Sasuke's. Naruto stared blankly, and Anko took that as him being more or less speechless, "Well, good job I guess maggots." She said before taking off with most of the team sans Hana who stayed behind with the others.

Naruto pointed at where Anko had been standing beforehand and looked at Hana, "What is that seal supposed to be? I've never seen one like that before."

"It's nothing good." Hana assured him, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head, "Sasuke's been branded by a very bad person that did the same thing to Anko a long time ago. You guys know about the ninja Orochimaru don't you? He used to be one of the best that had ever come out of Konoha, then he defected. Well when he left he took Anko with him under false pretenses and put the Cursed Seal of Heaven on her. We got her back, but she couldn't remember just what had happened."

That name kept coming up around Naruto. Orochimaru. First he had heard Jiraiya say it, then he had heard Tsunade say it. Was that guy really that much of a big deal? He had to be if he was Jiraiya's teammate, because both he and Tsunade were considered to be the best. Staying alive for ten years outside of Konoha and still making moves against it had to hold some sort of weight on the matter as well.

"She's okay now right?" Kiba asked his sister, "Anko right? She's cool now isn't she?"

Hana smiled at the empathy of her little brother and pushed the hood of his jacket back to ruffle his hair, "Yes. Anko's been fine for a while. She never activates the Cursed Seal because using it more corrodes your mind. She wants to skin Orochimaru with the ring end of a kunai though, but that's just Anko being Anko." She let out a sigh, "I think she'd be like that even if she never had the seal on her."

"Good." Kiba sounded relieved to hear that, "…Because a woman that unlawfully fine shouldn't be afflicted by any nasty seal." A fist to the top of the head from Hana then sent Kiba right to the ground to eat dirt, "You wish you looked that good." Kiba said with his face in the ground, only for Hana to step a foot on the back of his head and push his face further into the dirt.

"Every kunoichi I've ever seen looks good." Naruto commented idly, picking at his ear dismissively, "Your sister is hot Kiba. Don't mess with Hana like that."

Hana stopped glowering down at Kiba and took her foot off of his head as she looked over at Naruto thankfully, "Aw. That's so sweet Naruto. You're a good kid." She looked down at Kiba who was choking up pieces of dirt and getting his air back, "You could learn how to speak to a lady from your friend."

Kiba didn't respond as he kept on hacking until he hit his chest several times to clear his airways. He then froze up before robotically turning towards Naruto with a thousand-yard stare, "…Did you just hit on my sister?"

An affronted looking Naruto took offense to that and quickly defended himself, "Who do you think I am? I didn't hit on Hana! If I wanted to hit on her I'd have said something stupid like Ero-sensei. Something like; 'Hana you're so pretty. I like a girl that's in touch with her instincts like you… it lets me know when she likes what I'm doing.'" Naruto then stuck his tongue out and gave a thumbs down, "…Something lame like that."

"Stop hitting on Hana you bastard! I'll kill you!"

"I'm not hitting on Hana! Are you deaf or do you need Akamaru to bark it out for you flea-brain?"

Shikamaru, Hana, Akamaru, and Hana's three ninken watched as Naruto and Kiba began angrily tussling on the forest floor for a while before Shikamaru let out a bored yawn, "Well this stopped being funny… I'm going home." He turned to Hana and pointed in a bunch of random directions, "Which way's the fastest way out of here?"

Hana's attention stayed on her little brother and his jinchuuriki friend wrestling like three-year olds until they fell into the nearby river. At that point she turned to Shikamaru with a toothy grin, "Well you can just go back the way you came. It's 10 kilometers all around towards the center in any direction and we're only five km in at the farthest. The way you entered would be the fastest way. Come on. I'll show you."

"What about them?" Asked Shikamaru, pointing at Naruto and Kiba as they took turns trying to drown each other, Kiba currently winning as Naruto took wisecracks at his hygiene practices.

"They're fine." Hana said with a dismissive wave, "Kiba can find the fastest way out of here on his own. And if they don't get out before nighttime when the tigers come out to hunt that's their problem. Let's go." She said, gesturing for him to follow before taking off into the trees.

Shikamaru spared a glance towards Naruto and Kiba before following after Hana to find the way out of the forest, "Well what do you know…for once a woman wasn't the most troublesome person in the group."

"I heard that kid!"

"…Nevermind."

XxX

(Konoha Hospital)

"This is gross." Sasuke said in minor complaint as he sat shirtless in a room, a sealing circle on the floor around his body with kunai in its edges. The reason he had complaints was because on his body there were numerous kanji written on his body in blood. It wasn't his, he knew that much. He was pretty sure it wasn't Kakashi's either.

"Oh it's not that bad Sasuke." Kakashi said as he finished drawing the last symbol on Sasuke and walked over into his own prepared circle for the jutsu right behind Sasuke, "Just think of them as temporary tattoos… made of blood."

"Whose blood?"

"Meh, someone's."

Sasuke frowned as Kakashi finished up his preparations for whatever this technique was going to do, "What is she doing here?" He asked, shooting his eyes towards Anko who was leaning against the wall observing the scene.

"I'm probably the first person you should be talking about when it comes to that death hickey on your neck." Anko responded with a smirk, "So get used to little old Anko Uchiha-kid. I'm going to be something like your parole officer when it comes to that seal."

"I don't think this is necessary." Sasuke defended, wishing he didn't need to stay statue still because the symbols painted onto him made him want to scratch, "I'll just train and get control of the seal. That'll be that."

Anko stared at Sasuke with a twitching eye, wishing that she could go over there and hit him one good time without messing Kakashi's entire jutsu up, "You don't get control over the seal fruitcake. The seal gets control of you. It makes you want to use it. That whole draining your chakra thing that's going on now, it's trying to force your body to keep it active for as long as possible after its awakening. The longer it's active the more your mind starts getting screwed. It wants you to use it and rely on it as much as possible."

Sasuke was a little insulted at what Anko was implying. It was like she was saying that his will and his mind weren't stable enough to handle any negative effects the seal may have had with it. So it would be a trump card. Big deal. Rock Lee's Eight Gates probably did the same thing to his body that the seal would do to Sasuke's mind. It was a trade-off to use in a pinch, just like most other kinjutsu.

"You don't want to use this seal for anything Sasuke." Kakashi said, as if he could read the boy's mind, "Its power is dark. Couldn't you feel it? Now I can't remove this seal. There are too many elements comprising the very core of it that are bonded to you. I can restrict its influence though. You can be normal and use chakra again without struggle after this, but your own will is the thing that will keep this seal intact over the other one. You have to resist the temptation to use the Cursed Seal."

A nod came from Sasuke, but Anko could see it in his eyes that the message didn't really sink in, "Hey Kakashi. This kid, he's not a genin anymore right?" This time a nod came from Kakashi, "Well how about I work with him for a while after this." Maybe she could convince him just how dark the seal really was? It was worth a shot. Orochimaru getting his claws into anyone else, especially one like Sasuke was just unacceptable.

At hearing the offer from Anko, Sasuke frowned visibly, "Don't I get a choice in this? I'd rather not. I can train on my own and do missions with Team 7, same as always. This thing isn't a big deal at all."

'Yes it is Sasuke.' Kakashi thought as he slowly began making hand-seals, 'You really need to understand this.' His single visible eye panned towards Anko, 'Come on. Sell this one Anko. He's not going to just accept it and I can't make him do it.'

"Fine." Anko said, seeming to give up on her attempts to work with Sasuke, "*sigh* And I needed a partner for some old-fashioned debaucherous missions too…" She feigned dejection until something seemed to hit her like a flash of lightning, "Oh wait… Hokage-sama gave me free reign to recruit anyone I wanted to until further notice. So you've been drafted maggot!"

Sasuke's jaw was dropped as he looked over at Anko, frozen at having his autonomy taken from him to work with Anko for the time being and didn't notice Kakashi going through a long set of hand-seals, "Don't worry Sasuke." He said to his student, "Anko's actually a sweet woman-."

"Aw… thanks Cyclops."

"-Once you get past everything else."

"I still accept that as a compliment."

"Of course you do. Fuuja Houin (Evil Sealing Method)!"

With that, Kakashi finished his hand-seals and pushed down on the focal point of where the binding seal was located, Sasuke's Cursed Seal, and all of the characters drawn on Sasuke's body seemed to recede into the Cursed Seal and form a red seal mark around it. This all caused a tremendous amount of pain to Sasuke and had the side-effect of him blacking out, falling to the floor unconscious.

With a sigh, Kakashi picked Sasuke up off of the ground to return him to a hospital bed until he woke up again, "So when are you going to start working with him?" He asked Anko as they walked towards the door to leave.

"The second he gets released." Anko responded brightly, "Who knows? Maybe having Mr. Personality here around yours truly will have some of my own precocious nature rub off on him a bit." So that was what she called it?

"I hope it'll be the other way around…" Kakashi grumbled, letting Anko leave the room before him and shutting the door behind them.

XxX

(A Few Weeks Later – Gates of Konoha)

"Back home at last." Naruto said with a huge grin on his face as he jumped through the threshold of the large open gates as if they were a portal or something, "That mission sucked!"

Trailing behind the kid with seemingly boundless energy were Kiba, Shino, and Hinata, "Was it the most exciting mission? No." Shino said as they pulled a cart with multiple cages that had birds of all types in them, "But the village needs a constant source of possible messenger birds. Hence it is necessary."

"Thank you Shino." Naruto deadpanned, stopping his excitement at returning home to turn towards the bug-manipulating genin, "Because I didn't get that whole explanation from the guy that gave us this mission." He said sarcastically.

"I'm sure that you didn't."

"Shut up Shino."

"The remark made by the losing side of an argument. Bad form Naruto."

Naruto stared at Shino, seeing if he could get Shino to blink first but even if he could with those sunglasses how would he have been able to tell? It was a moot point, "Well we finished the list off and that's all that matters I guess. Where's Kurenai-sensei anyway? Why am I running this?"

"She had her own stuff to deal with and couldn't go on a mission with us this time." Kiba said as they left the cart with shinobi that were supposed to be responsible for the aviary, "She didn't tell, we didn't ask. We know better. So we grabbed you since you were the first chunin we know that we saw." Akamaru barked something to the contrary that got Kiba to snicker and pan his eyes momentarily to Hinata, "…Quiet boy. Bad joke."

"Whatever." Naruto said, waving the whole thing off before turning towards them, "That was good work you guys. Especially you Hinata." He said, getting the girl to freeze at the complete attention he was paying her, "Half the birds we found were because of you. It would have taken way more than three days even with all the clones I had if you didn't have the Byakugan."

Averting her eyes away from Naruto to lessen some of the embarrassment she felt at getting brazenly complimented. Her red face contrasted her eyes greatly at the moment, "I-It's not that big of a deal. Any Hyuuga could have done it."

"Oh whatever, I'd much rather work with you than some other Hyuuga ninja. You seriously need to give yourself more credit." Naruto said, arms crossed as he walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, getting her to freeze up, "If you don't believe in yourself then who else is gonna?"

Seeming to get a kick out of Hinata's reaction to physical contact with Naruto, Kiba spoke up, "I don't know Naruto. She doesn't look very motivated. She looks like she needs a hug or something. Right Hinata?" He then caught an elbow from a silent Shino in the ribs, "Ow, what? I'm helping."

A strange request, but Naruto had heard weirder. He turned to Hinata with a raised eyebrow wondering why the hell her face was so red for no reason before shrugging as he didn't see anything wrong with it and pulling her into a one-armed hug, "There you go. If you guys need some help again later just come looking for me. I'll help you out whenever you need it until I have to leave." He said before making the ram seal and vanishing in style with a Shunshin.

Upon the loss of having Naruto to lean on, Hinata's eyes fluttered and she fell backwards only to be caught by Kiba and Shino, "Seriously. You've got to break this little habit of yours." Kiba said, not that she could hear him at the moment though, "The kid's as thick as a brick about stuff like this."

"Look who's talking."

"Shut up Shino."

"You kept from going to that for as long as you could bear didn't you?" Picking with Kiba aside though, there was something that Naruto said that Shino's overanalyzing nature took notice of in regards to his last comment, 'I wonder what he meant when he spoke of having to leave? He couldn't have been given a different mission in the meantime or he would have said something about it at least once over the course of three days.' Maybe he was just over-thinking it.

XxX

(Team 10 Training Ground)

Shikamaru and Ino were seated under a tree in the shade as the sound of metal clashing sounded out from in front of them, "So he's been doing this since before I got here?" Shikamaru asked Ino as they both continued to watch. Ino merely nodded and continued to watch, "Where'd the toad come from?" He asked before noticing that there was another observer sitting with them, "Oh, toad_s_."

On the ground next to them was a small orange toad wearing a blue jacket with purple markings around his eyes, mouth, and belly that was also watching the fight in front of them all, **"The kid out there is the new summoner. He summoned me, then he summoned Gama when he put more power into it."** In front of them, Gama in samurai armor was in a fight with Naruto and his machete, **"Don't know why they're fighting though…"**

Shikamaru didn't seem too stunned by the talking toad, but he expected Ino to have some kind of reaction, instead she was simply steadily watching Naruto fight the toad at least three times his size, "So the toad talks and you're just sitting there?"

"I've been here for three hours before you showed up." Ino said, not taking her eyes off of the battle, "I had my freakout, I trained for a bit, and now Gamakichi and me have come to an understanding."

"An understanding?"

"**I don't call her cutie, sweetheart, or anything like that, and she doesn't step on me or wring the oil out of my body."**

"Sounds like Ino." Shikamaru said, getting a nod of agreement from Ino herself before he saw Naruto hack away at Gama's samurai armor repeatedly, "Since when could Naruto summon toads? I never saw him do that."

"A few weeks apparently." Ino said with a smile on her face, "It's kind of cool right? Naruto's got the contract to one of Konoha's three legendary summon animals." Apparently, Gama got tired of being forced to block Naruto's manic machete strikes and used his tongue to grab him around the waist and chuck him at the tree that everyone else was sitting under.

A screaming Naruto crashed into the tree trunk and landed on the ground before sitting up and shaking the cobwebs out of his head, "I'm going to get you back for that you know!" He shouted at Gama who just croaked in a patronizing fashion and canceled his own summoning to return home, "I'm going to kick that thing's ass one of these days."

"You done?" Ino remarked, standing over Naruto with a raised eyebrow and an amused look on her face, "Because I'm done looking at you fight a big toad."

"It was just a spar." Naruto cracked his back and stood back up before he found that Gamakichi jumped onto the top of his head to lay in his hair, "These toads are really tough. Well, not really Gamakichi, but all the other ones I've summoned so far."

"**Hey Boss, why don't you summon my pops?"** Gamakichi asked Naruto, poking him on the top of the head with a webbed finger, **"He's the boss of all the toads. You've got to meet him, he's the strongest."**

"Really?" Naruto said, sounding interested and rather curious, "How much chakra do you think it would take to summon him then? Or do you even know in the first place?" Gamakichi shrugged and Naruto responded in kind, "You don't know much do you?"

"**I'm still young. Cut me some slack here."** Gamakichi stuck his long tongue out and dropped it in Naruto's face to mess with him, irritating him intentionally, **"How much chakra did it take you to summon Gama? Because I guess you'd have to use at least that much… and then **_**way**_** more."**

"What? I used a shit-ton to summon Gama!" Naruto yelled at his diminutive summon partner, "How much more do I freaking need?" He then felt Ino rap him over the back of the head, "Ow! What the hell?"

"You have way more chakra." Ino informed him, patting him on his stomach, "You've got all the chakra in the world. So put that big orange-red battery to use already and summon yourself a boss-level creature. I want to see it."

Despite not saying anything, Shikamaru did too. Both he and Ino had been regaled by their parents in the past with tales of the most powerful summons that Konoha ever had. They hadn't seen any before, so if Naruto could bring one of them out that was something he'd stay awake to see.

The power of summoning creatures, used by those chosen by them to fight alongside them and engage in mortal combat with one's enemies… now officially the plaything of a team of thirteen year old ninja.

"You guys sure?" Naruto said, rolling his shoulder out and preparing to dig deep.

Shikamaru took a minute to think about it before dragging Naruto and Ino far away from that tree. He liked that spot and didn't want to see it get randomly destroyed the way he knew it was probably about to be, "Yeah, now go ahead."

"Turn up the heat Goldie-kun." Ino encouraged, rather excited at the prospect.

"Whatever." Naruto said before taking a minute to focus and pull out some of the Kyuubi's chakra. It took longer than he anticipated because the biju was being a bastard and fighting him the whole way, but Naruto knew what the feeling was to use the chakra by now. As long as he had that, it didn't matter how long it took, he could draw upon it for one good burst to perform his summoning, "Here goes nothing!" He yelled as he bit his finger and made the necessary hand-seals, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

A massive puff of smoke that covered the whole training field burst out from the point where Naruto slammed his hand down.

"**Damn it Jiraiya, why did you just summon me?"** Shouted a booming voice covered by the smoke, **"There isn't anything going on around here and I don't see any drink!"**

"…Naruto what did you just do?"

"**Hey pops!"**

* * *

Omake: Training Day 5

"This is boring Neji." Naruto complained as he sat down on a stump in a forest, the same as Neji as the Hyuuga had his eyes closed, "When you said you wanted to train I thought we were going to spar or something."

"This is one of my own training methods Naruto." Neji replied calmly before opening his eyes with his Byakugan now active, "I'm improving on my own perceptive ability with my kekkei genkai."

Naruto stared at him with squinted eyes as he deciphered what Neji was saying, "…So you're trying to see stuff better with your Byakugan?" Well that made sense. Naruto did the same thing with Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) all the time. It was boring, and he was sure Neji knew that too, but apparently he was way more patient than the blonde.

"Exactly."

With that, Naruto and Neji both sat in silence while Neji seemed to be looking around without even turning his head. Nearly 360 degrees of vision gave one that sort of advantage. If nothing else, it was nice that the animosity or the rivalry, whatever it was, between the two of them had dulled significantly after their scrap in Tetsu no Kuni. After returning, for some reason Neji seemed way more approachable and pleasant to be around.

"How many birds do you see?" Neji said, catching Naruto's attention, "With your jutsu. It's supposed to be a sensor jutsu first isn't it? Use it and tell me how many birds you can feel in the vicinity." He then turned his Byakugan off so that he didn't take a flash of chakra to the eyes by accident.

It seemed like a reasonable enough request, so Naruto let out a burst of chakra sonar-style and the birds apparently felt it because they took off into the air, but Naruto had already counted the life-forms that he had sensed, "Meh, I got 8."

"It's seven." Neji disputed with a smirk. Hey, he could turn this into a competition if he wanted to.

"No… it's eight. You're missing one and you're supposed to be able to see through everything. How'd you miss that?" Naruto asked, noticing Neji's pronounced frown at the question, "Oh, we should leave too."

"Why?"

"Because when you turned your Byakugan off I felt Lee coming from _way_ back. So if you don't want to fight him-."

"-Let's go."

Abruptly jumping up from their place on their stumps, Naruto and Neji both ran away as fast as they could. No offense to Lee, but the guy was just too extreme for them sometimes, and coming from Naruto that was really saying something.

Eventually Lee came across the location that Naruto and Neji had been staying and looked around, seeing no sign of them, "Oh ho! So it seems that both of my eternal rivals wish to test my ability to follow a trail. Very well then! If I cannot find Neji or Naruto-kun I will do five hundred pushups! And if I cannot do that the I will do six hundred squats! And if I cannot do that-!"

This continued on as Lee ran through the forest, looking for a way to track the two boys.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konohagakure Shinobi

Inuzuka Hana

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 22**

* * *

**Whew. My exams are over and I'm free and clear for the next month. Then I'm stepping into the meat grinder of the important classes in my major, so I'm going to enjoy this bit of downtime. I ain't getting jack for Christmas since I'm too old for that shit, so I'll just take the rest I'll be getting as a gift… if I even get that.**

**Oh whatever. It doesn't matter. There's one more arc with some importance to it before the job is fully taken by Naruto and Shikamaru.**

**Until the next update, I'll catch you later. Kenchi out.**


	39. Strained Relations

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'd like a nice fat stack of contracts placed in my stocking this year to remedy this. That way all I'd have to do would be to sign them and BAM! I wouldn't be living like the chump that I am anymore. And I could run that franchise right into the ground.

Right. Into. The ground.

**Chapter 39: Strained Relations**

* * *

In the firsthand experience of Team 10 over the course of their rookie year as shinobi, it was clear from the things they'd seen or dealt with since graduating that no one ever explained to them exactly what they'd be facing out in the world itself.

From the barbarous and treacherous nature of Momochi Zabuza, to the litany of incredible kekkei genkai of all kinds in the world, to demon containers such as Gaara or Fuu; the past year had been an internship in the insanity that truly sat out beyond the gates of Konoha… and within it as well on second thought.

And another example of that insanity was right below the three youngsters, although this was insanity of their own creation… or at least the creation of one of them.

"Oh my Kami…" Ino said, on her knees as she felt around on the large, rusty red cranium of the toad that they were all sitting atop. From up there she could see all the way from the training field area of the village to the actual village portion of Konoha. It was quite a view, "Goldie-kun, you might have overdone it a bit on this one."

"How?" Naruto replied, almost as dumbfounded as the others at the sheer size of the toad he had called upon, "You all said to summon the boss. I summoned him. You can't say anything now. It wasn't like the strongest toad summon was going to be 'Kichi's size or anything like that."

"**Jiraiya get out here!"** The titanic toad bellowed, with the sheer force of his voice on its own enough to knock Naruto and Shikamaru down to their backsides on the amphibian's head, **"I told you years ago that the next time you pulled a summon-and-dash on me as one of your stupid jokes I would squash you flat!"**

Putting aside the thought that a summon-and-dash sounded like a completely awesome prank to pull if he could come up with a funny enough place to do it, Naruto felt it was time to introduce himself to this force of nature, "Uh hey!" Naruto shouted loudly to make sure he got the toad's attention, which he did when he found a long studded tongue completely engulf him as it wrapped around him, eventually holding him out in front of the large toad, "Bleh! What's the big idea?"

Now that he was able to get a frontal view of the toad, Naruto saw that it wore a blue jacket vest and bandages around its torso and had red markings on its head and around its eyes. It also didn't seem too pleased to be holding onto Naruto. Not one bit, **"What does a kid like you think you're doing standing on my head?"**

"Oh." Naruto said lamely as he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, "Well when I summoned you… I don't really know where else I would have wound up. I mean, you're huge… sir." Maybe flattering the toad would keep Naruto from getting chucked from there to the Hokage Tower?

The toad stared Naruto down before breaking out into laughter, **"Bwahahahaha! Ah, that's actually a good one for once Jiraiya. I have to give you credit for this one… trying to get me to believe that a pipsqueak like this summoned me all on his own."**

"Oi! I just haven't hit my growth spurt yet you jerk! It's easy to talk about me being little when you're like a million feet tall!" Naruto snapped at the toad as he remained seated on its tongue lest he fall a very uncomfortable height of at least ten stories to whatever lay below, "And I did summon you. Ero-sensei isn't anywhere near here."

"**I let you get away with standing on my head before kid, but I won't have you lie to me."** The oversized toad said gruffly, **"I'm Gamabunta, the Chief Toad of Mount Myouboku. To think that I would be at the beck and call of someone like you is laughable."**

"But I did summon you!" Naruto stressed desperately, "And my teammates are on your head too, you didn't say jack about that!"

"**What?"**

"Damn you to hell Naruto…" Shikamaru grumbled before noticing that Gamabunta had finally figured the presence of both him and Ino out, "Hi. And if it actually matters, he really did summon you."

Gamabunta was about to let the two chunin on his head have it until Gamakichi appeared from over Naruto's shoulder to add his own input, **"He really did summon you pops! This is the new guy, Naruto. I told him to do it so he could meet you."**

Now feeling self-conscious, Naruto started to sweat a bit when Gamabunta gave him a long, hard look. This was not the place to be, facing down a pissed off, grumpy-looking toad summon that just so happened to be the boss. When he first signed the contract Jiraiya didn't tell him that some of the toads could be pissy. Gama was totally cool, Gamakichi was a bit of a brat but he was still a great guy/toad, and Gamakichi's brother Gamatatsu was a bit vacant but he was nice.

"So what do you say?" Naruto offered weakly, "Partners?" He saw Gamabunta narrow his eyes at him and he quickly backtracked, "I mean, you're the man! Big time toad boss, A-number one!"

Still Gamabunta remained silent as he looked Naruto over, **"Hm… You're too young to share a drink with properly. But I suppose I could take you on as an underling anyway since Gamakichi seems to have taken a bit of a shine to you."** Naruto took that moment to grin at the little orange toad on his shoulder in thanks for simply existing at that point in time, **"You can play with the new kid some other time Gamakichi. I've been wondering where you've been disappearing to every now and again. Come on, we're going home."**

"**Fine…"** Gamakichi sounded rather depressed about having to leave, but when his dad was the boss and dwarfed him by ten-thousand times there really wasn't much of a choice in the matter, **"I'll see you later Boss. We should hang out again soon."** The small toad said before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

Nodding to himself at seeing his son obey his orders, Gamabunta turned his attention back to Naruto, **"Don't summon me for anything troublesome in the future, and tell Jiraiya that we'll be having a talk in his choice of who signed the contract."** Naruto nodded dumbly in response, much to Gamabunta's satisfaction, **"Good."**

And with that he also disappeared in a puff of smoke, albeit one much larger than the one Gamakichi left in. This had a few problems of its own. Namely that all of Team 10 were still at least one hundred feet off of the ground with nothing underneath them.

"…Troublesome!" Team 10 all fell and wound up crashing through the treetops, more or less (luckily) hitting every branch on the way down with all three kids crash-landing in a heap on the ground, "Ow…" Shikamaru said, body racked with pain.

Ino, who landed in the most favorable manner of the three with the two boys to break a good portion of her fall, crawled away first, "Ugh… Goldie-kun your summons really don't treat you like with respect or anything." He was also thirteen years old, so that might have had something to do with it as well.

"I'd settle for being equals, but no they don't really." Naruto said as Shikamaru got away from him after the fall. Thank goodness for the thick, leafy, bountiful trees of Konoha because that fall had the potential to be way worse than it actually was, "How's that for a morning meeting?"

Crawling himself into a sitting position against the tree, Shikamaru picked some twigs and stray leaves from his hair and vest, "Remind me to never sign a summon contract if that's what happens." He had no idea that summon creatures could be so moody.

"Fuck that hurt." Instead of sitting down somewhere, Naruto rolled directly onto his stomach to get some relief after landing smack-dab on his back, "All of this summoning stuff is cool, but it's freaking hurting my kidneys." Seriously, Gama threw him right against a tree earlier and he hit the sweet spot right against the tree trunk, and moments ago Ino landed on him with a knee or elbow or something with bone. He then grunted as he felt Ino lay across his back, "Get off Ino-chan. Go mess with Shikamaru."

"Kiss my ass. That stupid drop hurt." Ino whined, refusing to move from her place, "And it's your fault, so deal with it… blonde teddy." She finished, smiling as she shut her eyes and seemed ready to take a nap on the spot.

"Seriously, get off." Trying to shake Ino off failed as she just wrapped her arms stubbornly around Naruto's torso to hold him down, "Damn it. Shika, get her off before someone comes around here and sees this." No response, "Shika?" Naruto managed to turn his head enough to see Shikamaru asleep against the tree, "…Fine." He eventually conceded, shutting his eyes and using his arms as a pillow for his head.

Team 10 had to be the laziest collective team that Konoha had to offer. And for the most part they seemed to be okay with that.

XxX

(Sometime Later – Elsewhere in Konoha)

As he stood crouched on a roof with a great vantage point, Jiraiya chuckled lecherously with a telescope up to one of his eyes as he spied right into a woman's side of the hot springs, "Kami, I love this village so much. You just don't get this quality of open-air peeping anywhere else in the world."

"Should I be worried about you passing these pervert trait on down the line or what?"

Upon hearing the voice of his female teammate behind him, Jiraiya still didn't lower his spying glass. If she hadn't outright punted him into the hot springs yet then she probably wasn't going to, "No, and if you're talking about the brat he has enough pervert in him without me trying to do anything. You should see the first jutsu he 'made' Tsunade-hime. It's a thing of beauty."

"He summoned Gamabunta not too long ago." Tsunade informed him, "I'm guessing that you're the one responsible for that since you're the only one that can call on the moody frog."

"Toad actually. You know that." Jiraiya corrected, "And yes I did. I figured if anyone had a right to sign it would be him." It was then that he put the scope up and turned to face her, "So to what do I owe the pleasure of basking in your luscious presence?"

"I will hurt you, you know." Tsunade informed him after his last comment, "Don't get too fresh jackass. I was wondering when you planned on setting out again." She noticed the frown on Jiraiya's face and smirked, "Oh come on. You had to know that I wasn't going to stay here forever. There's no reason."

"You could take over for Sarutobi-sensei." Jiraiya offered, getting Tsunade to roll her light brown eyes at him, "He can't do this forever you know. You're the best choice to take over."

Letting out a laugh at the thought of being Hokage herself, Tsunade placed her hands on her hips to respond, "You're saying the same thing that Sarutobi-sensei's been saying since I've shown up. There's nothing you can say to me that I didn't already expect out of you all before I even came here. I want my money, and when I get it I'll be gone. I'm trying to synch it up for whenever you leave just for old time's sake, but there's no need for it I guess."

Two months had passed since Tsunade's return after the chunin exams final round and it still didn't seem like things were any closer to keeping her there. Shizune did a few things for the hospital and even took a mission or two in the meantime, but Tsunade simply didn't take part in anything one way or the other.

All of this was driving Jiraiya to drinking… more than usual… like more than the amount that it takes to be fun.

"There's no one else that can really do it." Jiraiya said, still barking up that tree.

And still, Tsunade didn't wish to budge on the matter one bit, "Let one of the younger shinobi do it. There's got to be someone out there good enough to take the title. Like Kakashi, he's got the reputation, the references, and he's that good."

"No he's not." Jiraiya replied without missing a beat on that measure, "Sensei could more than likely still put Kakashi down, Sharingan or not. That whole 'thousand jutsu' thing doesn't mean anything when it comes to Sarutobi-sensei. I'm not too sure about his large-scale leadership chops either. He's good at leading teams, but… and other than him there isn't really anyone else close."

"Then you do it if you care about it so much." Tsunade snapped, tired of the conversation. She was sick of the same old song and dance. Hearing about why she should be Hokage, about how Sarutobi didn't have that much time as leader left, "If age was such a problem then you should be taking this conversation to that old lawn gnome Onoki. Now tell me when you're leaving or I'll just leave when the last bit of cash is dropped into my account."

He wasn't meant to be Hokage, Jiraiya knew that much. He had his own roles to play, and supreme leader was not one of those roles. Tsunade had no such role, she was merely drifting about, and she could fill that spot. She knew that she was. He knew that she was. Everyone else did as well.

But one had to realize that dealing with a Tsunade that was set in her ways was like engaging in trench warfare; you know what you're getting, that it'll be nasty business, and the most you can do is dig yourself in and prepare to butt heads until either one side or the other breaks down.

"I'll tell you when Tsunade-hime, but I still think you should consider it."

"You can keep running this topic into the ground if you want to Jiraiya. You're going to get the same thing every single time from me." Tsunade said as she left Jiraiya alone once again. And for once he didn't particularly feel like peeping anymore.

But he would gut it out and do so anyway. He had a responsibility to his legions of loyal fans.

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Mission Assignment Desk)

Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino walked into the office and right up to the first open desk that they could find, ready to get the whole show back on the road. At least Naruto and Ino were. Shikamaru had to be dragged from his home and more or less abducted to take a mission.

But it had been more or less a month since they had worked together, with each member being busy with their own work, training and whatnot more often than before, so none of them were really against taking another mission together.

Marching right up to the desk with a confident grin, Naruto opened his mouth to ask for a mission the level that he wished it to be, which would have been B-rank if Ino and Shikamaru didn't beat him to the punch as she placed her hand over his mouth and Shikamaru spoke for the three of them, "A C-rank mission if you've got any."

With a smile and a nod as Ino continued to hold Naruto's mouth shut, the man behind the desk handed Shikamaru a mission scroll with a 'C' on it that he looked over before sighing and deciding that it was good enough for them, handing it off to Ino to look over herself.

As the mission had been accepted, a sizeable satchel was handed to Shikamaru that actually had the Nara Clan symbol on it, "Hey." Shikamaru said to the mission supply guy as he put the satchel in his backpack with his other supplies, "So is this job something you get in a rotation system or do you apply for it?" He had been looking for possible easy detail jobs in the village for a ninja of at least chunin rank and this seemed right up his alley.

Before he could get an answer he found his ear grabbed by Ino as she dragged both him and Naruto out of the room and outside.

Finally getting her to let go of them, Naruto took the scroll from Ino to read over it himself, "You guys suck. I wanted to try another B-rank mission now that we know what can happen. All we've done for the last month is C-ranks."

"And this is going to be another one." Shikamaru said as he waited for Naruto to read over their orders so they could prepare to leave, "Are we taking it, or am I just heading back home to get some sleep?"

"We're taking it." Naruto confirmed, knowing that the act of going to switch out missions even if he had a problem with it himself was too troublesome for Shikamaru. It wasn't actually a bad mission at all as he was getting used to them by then, "So are we ready to go?"

Everyone nodded until Ino reached at her arm-warmers and noticed something off, "Whoops. I didn't bring my needle launchers. Can we swing by the shop really quick? I have some stashed there in case I get called out on an emergency."

"Airhead." Shikamaru remarked, ducking out of the way of a punch directed at his head, "Fine. Let's go. I guess we can't have Ino missing a weapon in case we get jumped or something."

XxX

(Yamanaka Flowers)

"So Takigakure huh?" Naruto said, checking over his own equipment so that he didn't go in half-cocked the way Ino was almost about to, "I've never been up there before. This should be fun right?"

"Fun like a hernia." Shikamaru replied, and by now Naruto was used to his friend's attitude about most things; that he didn't really care for them if they took any personal effort from him. That was okay, both he and Ino had enough enthusiasm for most things to cover for him, "You seem happier than usual."

"I do?" Naruto asked, blinking curiously at Shikamaru's observation, "How can you tell?"

"You haven't stopped moving since we started hanging out in front of the shop." It seemed obvious to Shikamaru to keep a tab on one's own physical motion at all times since it was too much of a waste to move for no reason, but Naruto always had energy to burn so it was a moot point on that front, "What's up with you?"

Feeling that he had been caught, there wasn't any sense in keeping it under wraps anymore, "It's Taki Shika." Naruto said as if that explained everything. Shikamaru gestured for him to continue and Naruto rolled his eyes before speaking with more enthusiasm than before, "Fuu's from Taki. Maybe if we have some time we can see how she's doing after the exams and everything."

Now that was something Shikamaru had neglected to remember and he went wide eyed upon hearing Naruto's reason for being excited to be heading to Takigakure, "Fuu? You mean the girl that almost ripped your head off during the exams? Why would you be happy to go see her? She was meaner than all hell."

"She's not that bad." Yeah, Fuu kind of was that bad. But she was a jinchuuriki like him, and by the end he was certain that they had established some sort of rapport between them at the end of the exams. Better than Gaara. At least Fuu didn't turn into an all-out Nanabi form… if she could even do that, "Why not? It's not like we know anyone else from that village."

"Because we're not from that village." Stated Shikamaru. While Konoha and Taki might have been loosely aligned that didn't mean that their ninja were really friends with one another, "Think about it like this Naruto. We're allies with Suna and Taki, so that just means that we have our eyes on them and they have their eyes on us. Villages that we don't have alliances with, we aren't looking their way because we're busy looking at our 'allies'. Does that make sense?"

"That's stupid."

"That's because you're stupid."

"…_You're_ stupid."

"No I'm not."

"I know…"

"Ah there you two are!" The upbeat and foppish sounding voice directed Naruto and Shikamaru's attention towards the same attendant of the daimyo that had dropped the news over to them on the offer of a job. Still apparently dressed in fine clothes on the dollar of the daimyo, he walked up to Shikamaru with a smile on his face, "I must say, it is difficult to find you ninja types. But I'm just here to follow up on the confirmation from your Hokage that you two will be accepting the job offer?"

Both Naruto and Shikamaru looked at each other before Shikamaru answered the man, "That's right. We're both in. Looking forward to it." He said in sort of a mumble, not actually looking forward to the new assignment at all, "Ah, when do we report by the way?"

"Well that's also the reason I've come to inform the Hokage of the request for your arrival." The attendant said, seeming like there was nothing that could really irk the man. He just seemed like an inherently bright person. Probably why he was the one to do the legwork for the court's affairs like this, "Since you've both accepted with plenty of time to spare you two have three months before your presence is requested. I hope that's not a problem."

"No, it's not." Naruto said with a smile, the demeanor of the man from the capitol rather infectious from his point of view. He liked people like this guy, "We'll definitely be there."

"Splendid!" Clapping happily, the man placed a hand on both Naruto and Shikamaru's shoulders, "I'm looking forward to seeing how you two get results when you begin. Well, it's off to the capitol for me. I'll be in touch with you both soon. Goodbye!" Naruto waved at the man as he walked away, heading probably towards a gate that would take him out of the village and back towards the capitol city.

Three months. Huh. Well now that there was a definite time-span as to when they would have to leave it felt real. It was quite different to just talk about doing something. But after making a commitment and realizing that one would then have to follow through with the obligation, it was a strange feeling, like a mix of a hollow and a fuzzy scraping feeling in their bellies. It was hard to explain.

And as they saw Ino come out of the shop with a smile on her face as she adjusted her arm-warmers back into place they both felt a sinking feeling to go along with it, "Sorry that took so long. One of the others working their shift moved them from the front behind the counter to somewhere in the storeroom. So are we ready to go now?"

"Yeah." Shikamaru said before swallowing a lump in his throat, "Hey, we've got something to tell you." Oh, he was not looking forward to the reaction he was about to get once he told Ino about what Naruto and he had just been talking about, but it couldn't be put off any longer. Now that their future job was no longer just talk it had to be brought forward to the light.

"Well it can wait until we're on the road can't it?" Grabbing Naruto and Shikamaru's wrists, Ino started pulling them towards the northern gate before they could say anything else, "Talk and walk, you know? We've got a two day trip to the border and we're late."

Sharing uneasy looks between them, both Naruto and Shikamaru knew that this was going to be one long trip.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Cha no Kuni – Degarashi Port)

It was not a good place to be at the moment. Degarashi Port had seemed to transform over the course of the month into a town under the control of Gato Corporation. They had bought up all of the open dockside property and had bought out some smaller businesses with prime real estate elsewhere in town.

On the surface to the untrained eye it didn't look like much had changed, but to one that could see beyond there were too many signs to count. The people didn't even seem to regard the rivalry between the Wasabi and Wagarashi organizations any longer as the major going-on in the area. Even the two families themselves didn't seem to register their own feud any longer. As a matter of fact, many of the Wagarashi members could be found strung out on drugs outside of buildings and properties that were known Gato Corporation holdings.

Damn it, it was like a cancer.

And the Otogakure ninja that could be found freely around the town were another thing as well. Gato couldn't have had deep pockets enough that he was willing to part with the money to afford upwards of one-hundred and fifty ninja to run security for him. But then again it was probably a hard learned lesson from the way things fell apart in Nami no Kuni.

"This place used to be so nice." Asuma said as he breathed out the smoke from his cigarette. He was transformed into a non-descript merchant-looking man that lacked his normal features altogether as he sat in a café, "…Well, nicer than it is now at least."

In the seat across from him sat Kurenai, only her eyes weren't so distinct, nor were her clothes, and she was Henged with shorter black hair. Not big stretches from their normal physical traits, but it was done so that they wouldn't particularly stick out or make it seem as if they were trying too hard, "It's kind of scary, how fast things changed here." She said to Asuma as she took a sip of coffee, "You reported that there was only one warehouse under their name. One month later and they might as well let Gato rename this town altogether."

"I heard he was planning on moving to an island not too far from here." Asuma said with a smirk at how their information gathering mission had been going, "He's been getting some liberties by greasing the palms of the minister of the Cha no Kuni Daimyo. Got to love all of that money."

"Not really that important in the grand scheme of things Asuma." Kurenai chided him quietly, "What about that ninja that put your kids in the hospital?"

" It was a kunoichi actually."

"Whatever… it's a general term." She grumbled in return, getting Asuma's smirk to widen. If they weren't in a public place she might have had to sock him one out of principle, "Didn't she take on all three of them and Naruto when he was using the 'you-know-what?'" Kurenai mused, and they had actually snuck about to see the site where the fight had taken place. It was part of the extra land that Gato had bought up, in addition to the entire stretch of street that was ruined during Asuma's fight against the three Fuuma Clan members, "Is she here?"

"I couldn't tell you. I never saw her." Asuma felt a little bit of a burning anger in him when he thought of how close Team 10 had come to being killed by Guren, and he had never even gotten so much as a look at her. She wasn't a widely known shinobi as a description from the others bore no fruit, "But apparently they were barely able to touch her." From the looks of the docks after he had gotten his team to safety, that in of itself was something completely alarming.

With this nasty news of Orochimaru having some sort of tie to Otogakure with the knowledge of his branding of Sasuke with the Cursed Seal somehow, this was getting exceedingly more important. They had to come back to Konoha with something concrete. The only thing keeping this A-rank mission from being S-rank was that the confidentiality of this mission was not paramount. Asuma and Kurenai just figured that they would learn more if no one knew anything, even of their presence.

They had noticed many Oto ninja drifting in and eventually boarding Gato's ships to set out across the ocean. Had he really hired this new village to keep Gato Corporation's entire infrastructure secure, right down to every last transport ship? If only they had known where the ships were going, but that would have to be next. They had to keep another incident like Nami no Kuni from happening. There was no danger of that happening here. The people kept their full autonomy and other than the filtering in of drugs that would have to be ended at some point, the corporation seemed to be leaving people alone.

Once again, a hard lesson learned that he was seemingly not willing to repeat. The losses he incurred monetarily when he lost his entire foothold in Nami no Kuni was obviously not equal to the gains that he got from oppressing them. He would rather settle for just peddling his drugs and use this as a jumping point for heading out across the ocean, possibly to locate another place where he could actually get away with more illicit things. And with Otogakure shinobi on the payroll there was a much better chance that he could do so more freely.

"The next ship isn't planning to stop here for another week." Kurenai said, bringing up the information on the shipping schedule that they had managed to filch, "Should we just report back to the village now?"

Shaking his head in method to answering her question, Asuma figured that they had a lot of decent information, but as long as they didn't have a definite destination for most of these ships that seemed to be coming in and going out like clockwork they didn't have enough of anything to make an actual fuss over with the exception that one of their teams got pieced apart in this town one month ago and the fact that it was now teeming with foreign shinobi, but those shinobi seemed to be under contract to Gato Corporation.

"We shouldn't just hang around for a week waiting for a chance to get more, but we can't just leave either." Asuma said as he finished off his cigarette and put the butt out in the ashtray at their table, "I'm for staying, at least for another day or two. What do you think? Your opinion counts too."

While she could see where Asuma was coming from, they had obtained enough disconcerting information to warrant a follow-up mission at a later point. Kurenai did not have a habit of overreaching during her missions and this would be another example of such, "I think we should just go now while we're free and clear. I've got a team to get back to anyway."

"What, you don't like spending time away from the village with me?" Asuma asked with a grin on his face as he reached for another cigarette while he waited for Kurenai to finish her coffee, "Just the two of us? That's really disappointing Kurenai."

"I like it just fine." She replied with a ghost of a smile on her lips, "But I'd rather it be doing something relaxing instead of this. Still, I have my own responsibilities with overseeing the training and missions of the kids. We can't all have our whole team advance on their first try."

Flattery would get you nowhere… with most people. But Asuma was not most people and Kurenai wasn't the average woman to him, thus Asuma acquiesced to her desire to leave. It wasn't just his life he would be playing with in this instance. It would be hers as well. And he wasn't about to do that, "Alright. We'll head back home. But you definitely owe me."

"Name what you want."

"…I'm sure we can work that out on the road back."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – A Few Blocks from the Northern Gate)

Well this whole thing about telling Ino wasn't going very well. Every time Shikamaru tried to speak up on the matter, Ino told him to stop trying to get them to procrastinate anymore; that they had lost time to make up for. And Naruto couldn't say anything because Ino had somehow switched to dragging Naruto down the street by the back of his headband that was tied around his neck, this led to him being more or less strangled for the last ten minutes on their way out of town.

"I can't believe we're this late getting out of town." Ino whined as she continued to drag her teammates along, "Sakura's always talking about how this kind of thing keeps happening with Team 7's sensei and I laughed at it. It's really not funny when it's us!" And the fact that it was her fault that they were late to leave as well was pretty embarrassing. If they actually had a client they needed to meet upon leaving it would have been positively mortifying.

In this instance, the mission required them to head to Takigakure in order to transport some ingredient from the Nara Clan's stores that had been requested for some medicinal concoction. They weren't really a known village for their medical practices though… and the ingredient was more for something added into military rations pills.

Whatever. It was purchased and was prepared for transport, and they were the ones meant to take it out. It wasn't like it was a transaction that hadn't been made hundreds of times before either. There wasn't really any need to scrutinize it from Shikamaru's viewpoint.

Speaking of Shikamaru's viewpoint, "I think you're choking Naruto to death Ino." Shikamaru commented as he could see Naruto's flailing about begin to get less spirited as they continued to be dragged, "You could at least let go of his headband. It's right around his throat."

Paying her fellow blonde attention at this point as she wondered why he of all people had been so silent, Ino gasped and let go of her grip on the back of Naruto's headband, freeing him to stumble out, coughing and gasping for breath, "Sorry Goldie-kun. Are you alright?" She asked before laughing sheepishly when being fixed with a bit of a glare from Naruto, "My bad."

With the sweet, sweet oxygen filling his lungs freely once more, Naruto took some well-deserved deep breaths and finally got his vision from seeing double, "I'm good. Yeah. I'm definitely good. Let's roll you guys."

"You sure?" Naruto's eyes were still darting around rapidly, though that might have been his brain adjusting to having air once again. This was the next to last person that needed his brain cells to die via oxygen deprivation of any sort.

"Yeah, let's go." Well he knew himself better than anyone else, and that was all that mattered to Team 10.

The sounds of a shamisen being played directed their attention to the roof of a nearby dango shop where they saw a girl with said instrument sitting demurely with her eyes seemingly closed and a smile on her face. She had long dark hair in a ponytail with a large light green bow tied at the bottom end of it. She wore an ornate dark green kimono with dark brown and black designs on it. On her feet she wore black sandals with dark green painted nails.

After continuing to play, and upon realizing that she now had not only Team 10's attention, but the attention of everyone in the vicinity, the girl stopped and stood up. She was at least three years older than the younger ninja on the street and around her waist she wore a white sash with the kanji for fire emblazoned on it. Without even opening her eyes or dropping her pleasant smile she looked right at Naruto and Shikamaru.

She seemed to stare for so long that Ino began to feel that there was something up, "Can we help you?" Ino asked the older girl on the rooftop that seemed to be sizing her teammates up, "We were on our way out of town on a mission."

"Oh I'm sorry." The girl's voice was absolutely melodious as if it were an instrument in of itself, and she had yet to open her eyes for one moment at all, "I was just curious you see. I've been doing my job for four years and it's been quite a while since anyone else has joined our little group. We couldn't wait for the point where you two were actually supposed to show up, so we decided to accompany Nobuyuki-san when he came to confirm your acceptance."

"Nobuyuki…" Naruto said, squinting his eyes so that they were closed much like the girl on the rooftop, "Who's that?"

"That would be the older man wearing the robes that you two spoke to outside of the flower shop." The girl explained, never dropping her smile for a second as she turned her attention to Naruto to speak to him, "But then again where are my manners? It's nice to meet you two Nara Shikamaru… Uzumaki Naruto. My name is Suzukuro Kotoko." She turned her head around as if she were searching for something before eventually giving up, "Sadao-kun is around here somewhere. Oh he'll turn up eventually."

"Why are you just here to talk to Shika and Goldie-kun?" Ino asked, "That's really weird."

"Weird?" There wasn't anything weird about Kotoko's actions at all as far as she was concerned. Shrugging off Ino's comment she strummed a few more notes out on her shamisen and spoke again, "Now what in the world would be strange about coming to meet two people that are about to join your team? It just seems smart to me."

"Stop messing with the locals Kotoko."

Letting out a small laugh, Kotoko jumped down from the roof and landed right at the side of someone who was walking out, chewing on a stick of dango as he did so. He had short, brown hair with a white streak in it and a pair of small sunglasses over his eyes. He was slightly older than Kotoko and stood a head taller than Shikamaru and wore what looked like black monk's clothing as well as an identical sash to Kotoko's around his waist; white with the kanji for fire on it.

"I wasn't doing anything bad Sadao-kun. I was just here to meet the new guys." Kotoko put a hand on his shoulder and pointed over at Naruto and Shikamaru, "See? They're right there."

"No…" Sadou said in a deadpan voice as if the answer were obvious, "I don't see anything… ever." After a moment though his sunglasses-clad eyes turned towards the two aforementioned Konoha shinobi and his face seemed to take on one of consideration, "Naruto and Shikamaru. Got it. I'll remember that." With that, he turned to head down the street only to be grabbed around the arm by Kotoko, "Problem?"

Shaking Sadou's arm, Kotoko pointed at the two male members of Team 10, "Wait, we're not going to test them or anything? When I first showed up at the capitol I almost got a total beatdown."

Sadou shook his head in the negative, "Well we're not at the capitol. We're in their village. Part of the guardsmen or not, it doesn't matter. We can't just start something just for that. It's not really in good taste either. Noboyuki-san would be upset as well and we don't need anything negative trickling up any further than him do we? So say goodbye to the new guys. We'll see them again soon enough."

"Bye new guys!" Kotoko said, waving at Naruto and Shikamaru while walking away with Sadou, "Hope you don't get yourselves killed on whatever mission you're doing! We need more recruits because we aren't anywhere near twelve strong yet!"

Both Naruto and Shikamaru felt a cold, deathly shadow hover over the two of them, and it wasn't exactly Ino… yet anyway. It was merely the prospect of having to explain why exactly all of this had just occurred, as it would definitely not slip her notice that after a short while into the run-in with the strange pair of shinobi neither of them were very confused the way that she was.

XxX

(A Short While Later – Roads of Hi no Kuni)

"So." The two males of the team flinched when they heard the sharpness of Ino's tone. This was not going to be a fun trip. Not at all, "Is anyone going to tell just what the hell all of that was about back in the village? Or am I just supposed to be the odd man out here."

"You're a girl Ino-chan."

"I know that smartass, it was a figure of speech!" Ino snapped back at Naruto, bringing the team to a halt on the sunbathed forest path, "Just what was that back there? You two didn't say anything. What was all of that stuff about you two being recruits or whatever. Who were those people?"

Well it was time to let the chips fall as they may as far as breaking the news went. Not the place for it, but Ino was stubborn enough that she wouldn't let the topic sit, "You saw the sashes that they both had on didn't you?" Shikamaru asked the glaring Ino, getting a stiff nod from her, "Who else has one like that?"

"Asuma-sensei." That much was easy. It was a marker of Asuma's past before his return to Konoha. He wore it prominently despite the fact that it had been ten years since his incarnation of the Twelve Guardian Ninja had met its end with the exception of two members; Asuma and a man that Asuma never particularly spoke of named Chiriku, "So?"

This time Naruto spoke up, answering her question in his own way, "Well… I guess in a few months me and Shikamaru are going to be getting some sashes just like those." He saw Ino's eyes widen and her jaw hang slightly open and he flinched at the sight, "…Yeah, you've got it Ino-chan. It's exactly what they're saying. It's exactly what you're probably thinking right now."

Lifting a hand to point at Naruto and then at Shikamaru, Ino's face seemed to express her own shock at what they were(n't) telling her, "Are you two dopes telling me you're leaving? How-? When-?" She didn't even know what to ask them first, "I don't-. Why would you go?"

"It's not going to be forever Ino-chan!" Naruto was quick to make that point first and foremost. He was insistent on that being a factor the entire time; that he would get to return, that he was not going to be working as a guardsman forever, "It was just supposed to be for a couple of years. It wouldn't be that long."

That did not leave Ino feeling any easier than before, "A _couple _of years? We haven't even been ninja for a full year yet! It's not even January!" She shouted back at the pair of them, "And you're both going? You both got invited to go and you're both taking it? What the fuck?" She didn't want to blatantly say it aloud, but what about her? Just what was she supposed to do? She thought they were supposed to stick together.

How were they just going to leave? And why didn't they bring this up to her when they were making the decision in the first place? The first she was hearing about it was when the decision was already made and two of the other ninja guardsmen came to Konoha to check them out firsthand.

Trying to salvage the situation, Shikamaru was very grateful that at least this wasn't going down in public. She had a right to be upset, but trying to calm her down in front of people would not have been fun, "It's not for three months. That's when we leave."

It was what she had been afraid of after the exams ended, the team breaking up. Ino thought that bullet had been dodged. Yes, sometimes they worked apart, but they still trained together and did other things together all the time, "That's no time at all." Ino said quietly, "Three months isn't long at all. You're telling me that by the end of January you're both going to be gone? And that's that?"

"I was going to be leaving one way or another Ino-chan." Naruto said with a shrug, deciding that he was all in from this point, "Ero-sensei was going to get me to go with him on a trip to personally train me anyway. And then the daimyo offered me and Shikamaru this job and it fell into place to do that instead. Ero-sensei convinced me to take it, and Shika decided to come with me since he wasn't going to let me do it by myself."

"Someone has to make sure he doesn't blow himself up."

"Fuck you Shika."

"Fuck both of you!" Ino yelled at both of them, interrupting any banter that was about to occur. Now was not the time. She was far from pleased, and there was nothing about the situation that she could really take much solace in, "You're both leaving me by myself on some buddy-buddy guy bullshit! What about me? Did I fit into this equation at all, or is it because I'm not the strongest? What is it? I know that Shikamaru is smart, and I know that Naruto is a jinchuuriki and he's only going to get stronger. I _am _the weakest one out of you guys but-."

That was all that either of them wanted to hear as far as that train of thought meant, "If you say you're weak then I'm going to have to ask you to tell Ino to come out from where she's really hiding." Shikamaru said, cutting her off from continuing on, "Don't make it this way. This isn't about you at all."

And right when he said that he could tell that something had gone wrong in translation. That didn't come out the right way. Even Naruto visibly flinched. If he knew that Shikamaru had said something stupid then it really must have been bad.

"Oh, I can definitely tell that much." Ino said frostily, turning her back on Shikamaru and walking down the path away from the two of them, "Come on. I want to get a decent ways there before it gets dark."

"Ino-chan wait." Naruto tried to grab a hold of her arm only for her to rip it out of her grasp, "There's a pretty good reason why. Can't we just-?"

"I don't want to hear anything else about it you have to say." She replied, her arms shaking by her side before she stalked off down the road again, "I thought we were close. But if this was going to happen then I guess we should have just split off after the chunin exams after all huh?" The sound of her footsteps crunching leaves beneath her feet and the birds were the most audible thing around at that point, "…It would have saved you guys the trouble of ditching me later." No longer seeing fit to walk, she took off into the trees to begin moving faster.

It couldn't possibly go this bad could it? She didn't actually mean that. All they had to do was give her some time and then she would let them finish explaining why they were going. Ino was a smart and reasonable girl, and she was strong enough to deal without them. Everything would shake out properly in the end.

So why did the two of them feel like crap?

"Come on Naruto…" Shikamaru said as he began walking ahead as well, "We can't just let her go ahead by herself like that."

Nodding in agreement, both Naruto and Shikamaru took off hot on Ino's trail, grateful that at least she wasn't trying to do something outlandish like outrun them, "Shikamaru, she's going to let us tell her the rest of why we're doing this isn't she?" He didn't want to lose a friend over this. Especially not one as dear as Ino.

For once, Shikamaru didn't really have an answer for him. Women were dangerous and mysterious as far as he was concerned, and this one was sufficiently provoked and emotional all by their doing, "I hope so. I really do."

XxX

(Two Days Later – Vicinity of Takigakure Territory)

Ino could seriously hold a grudge. It had to be obvious to them… because she had managed to keep an attraction to Uchiha Sasuke for well over five years while he showed no interest to the fairer sex and their affections for him. So two days was not going to be enough to allow her time to cool down, especially since she had to see them for every waking second of every day until then.

Instead of yelling or being outright rude to them, Ino was merely quiet instead. Deathly quiet. She would not make eye contact with either of them, but when either Naruto or Shikamaru weren't looking they could feel her glaring into the backs of their heads.

That wasn't even the worst thing about it though. On the first day after Ino took off away from them they finally managed to catch up to her and get ahead of her enough to move as a group again, but when they looked at her they saw her eyes were red and puffy. It didn't show on her face in any other way, and she didn't let even a single sniffle escape from that point forward, but she was hurt.

Shikamaru was visibly rattled by the whole thing as he had more or less had Ino in his life for as long as he could remember. While she always hadn't been as close as say someone like Chouji she was still closer than most anyone else. He had never legitimately been on Ino's bad side before, and he wished that she would actually start yelling at them. He would have preferred that over the silence she had been giving them.

Naruto took it worse than him, clearly. Any attempt to get Ino to talk, or even to acknowledge them beyond short, terse sentences on what to possibly look out for met with no success. He had never made anyone mad enough to stop being friends with him before. After he had formed his friendships he managed to keep them no matter what, but one of his closest ones seemed to be on the rocks to say the least. If this was what it was going to be like from one of his best friends then did he even want to leave? What if others took it just as badly or washed their hands of him altogether? It wouldn't be worth it at all. Not for a few years to prepare for a nameless, faceless foe, and not for the boost towards becoming Hokage.

But there was still work to do. Personal social messes aside, they were still in the field… and more importantly they still had no idea where Takigakure was supposed to be. Nobody outside of that village did. It was absolutely absurd how a village that had been around since the days of the original Hokage still had no outsider that knew of its location; the most prevalent reason that despite being surrounded on at least three sides by countries with other shinobi villages they had never been successfully invaded.

So they were traversing around the general location of a 30 km radius of where Takigakure was supposed to be, looking for any sign of the place. Even using Naruto's exorbitant amount of clones bore no fruit. But it had never been invaded, so just using numbers to search obviously wasn't the answer.

Moving throughout a heavily forested area that was not visitor friendly, Naruto used his machete for what it was originally meant to be used for; clear-cutting a path, "Damn this place is wildery. What's with all of the overgrowth? I know that this place isn't into commerce like Konoha is because Shiho-chan made me learn that crap, but still…"

"Taki really doesn't need people finding that place." Shikamaru said as he and Ino followed behind Naruto as he cleared the way, "The one advantage they've always had in wars is that battles were fought on their terms since no one could ever really bring the fight to their doorstep. Guerilla warfare stuff, you know? I guess they have contacts in places for people to bring jobs to them and for requests like what we're doing to go out."

This had been going on ever since they had arrived in that region of the country and had been hacking their way through the hard to traverse terrain. Eventually they came to a stop in a place with less overgrowth, at least less enough for them to take a break.

Since the entrance seemed to be nowhere in sight, it seemed like a good time for a short snack to restore energy prior to heading out again, "This is dumb." Naruto said as he bit into an onigiri prepared for a quick meal, "It's like they don't even want this crap. What are we bringing them anyway?"

Reaching into his bag, Shikamaru pulled out the satchel with his clan symbol on it to show the others, "I looked in it earlier. It's got powder from the horns of the deer in my clan and a lot of herbs, stuff that people can't get around here. They're the base for energy stuff."

"Why don't they just buy military rations pills from us and be done with it then?" Naruto asked, getting a shrug from Shikamaru and a turning up of the nose from Ino that got him to frown deeply. He actually wished she'd just hit them and cheer up already. This was miserable, "Hey, we're not lost are we?" He didn't think that he could easily find their way out and back to Konoha if it came to that. It would take a lot of running around.

But that was not to be necessary as Shikamaru shook his head, "No, I remember the way we took to get this far. I know how to backtrack us out. I get why you're asking that though. This is more trouble than it's worth. Going back home seems like the right option right now." Maybe then they'd do something productive instead of making the Konoha ninja team run around all over the place for nothing.

The rustling of leaves got their attention and interrupted the snack and conversation at that moment. Naruto polished off the rest of his rice ball and held his machete up, prepared to fight as Shikamaru jumped up with shuriken at the ready and Ino had senbon prepared to throw.

"There's no need to attack anyone."

From the brush walked a man with a sky-blue flak vest and a Takigakure headband, calmly striding forward, even though this did nothing to take away the feeling of an ambush that Team 10 felt.

His eyes looked the young group over before he spoke up again, "There's really no need to be so defensive. We've been keeping a decent distance from you until we were able to determine that you hadn't located our village. A security measure. We're not here to fight."

"We?" Ino said defensively only for other Takigakure ninja to pop up all over the area. Huh, so that ambush vibe wasn't too off. They were surrounded if nothing else, "Well we're not here to fight either. We're just here to give you your stupid raw materials and go home."

Meanwhile Naruto felt totally embarrassed. If he had been on his game he would have been routinely feeling out to see if anyone was around. But he had been exacerbated by the terrain, he had been hungry, and he had been eating lunch. Just his luck that they caught him right then. That certainly didn't make him look very good. He would have liked to blame it on the whole Ino thing throwing him off of his game.

But on this occasion at least there were no negative repercussions outside of a little bit of tension as Shikamaru held out the parcel that they had been transporting, "So I'm guessing that you're not going to let us stop off at your village before we go home."

"That's right." The apparent leader of the Taki squad said as he took the goods from the young chunin holding them, "I'm sure you understand. We can't necessarily break our security protocol, even if you three have no ill intent, and I'm not claiming that you do. Even with the powers of _that one_." He said, shooting a short glance towards Naruto.

Naruto was about to ask what the man knew about any of his powers, but he then remembered that the chunin exams had been shown in many places and lots of people had seen the participants. No team fought more matches than his own and Naruto hadn't been very discreet with his use of the Kyuubi's chakra in the final two rounds.

And from what he already knew about how jinchuuriki were looked upon it was quite evident that in this place sentiment for people like him wasn't exactly on the upswing the way that he could at least say it was in Konoha. Making the whole village look like world-beaters on a major stage would do that for you.

It was no skin off of his nose really. They could have been ruder about it, but it just went to show that the outlook of a hidden village didn't translate over to a hidden village's 'ally'. Well that was another damper on what was already a bummer of a trip.

"We'll have one of our ninja escort you a safe distance away to ensure that you don't follow us back to the village's entrance." The man said before calling out to one of the ninja that had them surrounded, "Fuu. This is your mission. Make sure these Konoha ninja find their way to the border safely."

Hearing that Fuu was among the shinobi around them, Naruto's eyes lit up and a grin sprang to his face as he actually saw the green-haired jinchuuriki walk forward out of the crowd, "Fuu!" Naruto ran towards her, only to be stopped when she lifted her foot and planted the sole of her foot against his visage to stop him from getting any closer. That didn't stop him from speaking, albeit muffled with her foot stuck to his face, "How have you been doing?"

Pretty much everyone in the vicinity felt the urge to facepalm (and most did), Fuu included, although the most she did was raise an eyebrow with an uncomfortable look on her face, "I told you already kid. No freebie hugs." And with a shove of her leg, she pushed Naruto back way further than she actually intended to due to her unconscious strength as the sound of Naruto's body being shoved through brush and leaves and the like, "Oops."

It took a second or two, but Naruto came running back into the area with foliage in his hair and stuck between his goggles, still grinning, "I'm okay."

Fuu rolled her pink eyes and shook her head before turning her attention back to the captain of the squad, "I'll take care of getting these guys out of here. You all can go home. Tell Shibuki I'll be back soon." The captain nodded but left Fuu with a warning glance that she rolled her eyes at as the Taki squad vacated the area. When they were gone, Fuu stuck her middle finger up in the direction that she figured they had gone off in and turned back towards Team 10, "Hm. All got promotions I see. Good for you all."

"So how've you been?" Naruto asked the older female demon container, "It's been a while." It was nice to see Fuu's friendly (for the most part) face.

"It's been a while since I tenderized your face into a wall with my fist and you almost made me look soft in front of an entire arena?" Fuu returned before smirking when she saw Naruto balk at her recollection of their last run-in, "Yeah it has been. So what's up with you lot of runts?" She saw Naruto walk closer and held up a finger in warning, "Don't touch me. I kind of like you little guy, but the next time you try any of that hug me crap I'm chucking you over the tree line."

As Naruto slowly backed away from Fuu, grinning nervously, Shikamaru spoke up for the lot of them since Ino was still playing the silent game, "We've been better."

Interest danced in Fuu's orange orbs before just as quickly it was replaced by outright apathy, "Yeah… talk and move. We've got to follow the asshole brigade partway there. They're going in the same direction. I want to catch up to them just to mess with them a bit." She said as she motioned for the three to follow them, which they did.

XxX

"Fuu…" The captain said in an exasperated tone of voice once she and Team 10 had caught up to them, "What do you think you're doing?"

An innocent look was on Fuu's face as the squad glared at her for her transgression, but it was obvious that she knew exactly what she was doing to mess with the lot of them, "I was leading them away from the village." She said, trying to keep from snickering at the looks on their faces, "Unless you wanted me to lead them in the direction they were going in? But that was west. You don't want to drop them at Tsuchi no Kuni's border do you?"

"So you figured you would just take them home in the proper direction." The Taki captain said dryly, running his hand through his hair as he knew that Fuu was simply trying to razz them, and it was working from the looks of the others, "Just… take them in the direction of Konoha so that we can head the rest of the way to the entrance securely."

Fuu gave the man a salute with a smirk on her face before leading Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino on again. Once they were safely out of earshot, Fuu began laughing to herself and spared a look back at the non-entertained faces of Taki's guests, "Oh what? I've got to take what I can get when it comes to this place." She said, swatting at an insect that had been buzzing around her face.

"Nothing's gotten any better?" Naruto asked her with a raised eyebrow, "I thought you were being nicer."

"I am being nicer." Fuu argued back, "I'm pretty sure Houki would be attached to my hip right now if he wasn't still a genin. He likes me way too much ever since I've been actually trying to talk to him." She let off a scoff and pointed back over her shoulder, "I've been less inclined to punt people that get too close to me by accident, and instead of just scaring everyone I'm lightening up. The only ones it seems to really be working on are kids though. Yesterday some little girl told me that I looked pretty. *laughs* Can you believe that?"

Her tone was somewhat derisive, but from the serene look on her face it seemed like that meant a lot to her, and that much put a smile on Naruto's face. Fuu really was a good person. A little rough around the edges, but that was just because of how she was brought up.

"Ow!"

Ino stopped jumping from branch to branch, getting the group to stop as she held her hand to her shoulder and moved it to show the crushed remains of an insect. Naruto jumped from his branch to Ino's and looked her over after her sudden cry of alarm, "Ino-chan are you okay?"

Almost forgetting she was mad at him for a moment once Ino looked up at Naruto's emotive blue eyes, she remembered that she was actually upset with him and Shikamaru and her tone turned frosty again, "I'm fine." She said before looking at the crushed remains of whatever she had slapped on her shoulder, "It was just a bee."

"Are we running near a hive of them or something?" Fuu asked with a hand on her hip, "Because I had to kill a few of them too just a while ago."

Taking the initiative, Naruto formed the ram seal to gather his chakra more efficiently and released it outward as a sensor technique, "Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu)!" He then recoiled at the results of his scouting around, "I don't think it's a hive."

"Why not?" Shikamaru asked him before he got a good look through the trees and had to conclude the point, "Oh. Nevermind then."

There were countless bees just floating in the air, seeming to stare them all down and wait for them to make another move. Bees didn't do that. Not wild bees, but thinking of a concept of tame bees just freaked them all right the hell out.

"I hate bugs…" Fuu commented, getting a nod from Ino in agreement before Fuu seemed to hear a voice in her head, seemingly griping at her from the look on her face, "Yes that includes you too you bastard." She said, seeming to talk to herself. The Nanabi more than likely after they took a moment to think about it.

Still looking around with his brain moving at a hundred miles an hour, Shikamaru spoke up, "Should we… I don't know, run?"

As if to answer his question, from their stingers, the bees fired them forward at the four ninja, forcing them to drop down from their branches to evade and run away as the bees went after them in pursuit. But due to Naruto's own alarm upon sensing the full scope of the bees that had them surrounded he was unable to notice the man that had his presence cloaked, overseeing the scene.

The camouflage technique fell to reveal a man standing against the trunk of a tree. He was rather burly and had thick black hair that almost looked like devil horns. He had a full beard and a calm look in his eyes to go with a purple cloak that fell over his shoulders, with black pants and a black long-sleeves shirt underneath.

XxX

(With the Taki Squad)

The bodies of most of the ninja sent out to retrieve the package from Team 10 lay on the ground, motionless and swollen with many bee stings on their bodies. Many bees were still crawling over the corpses as if they were just a normal part of the landscape. Their bodies weren't even cold yet.

The captain of the squad though, sat immobilized against a tree with his body completely covered in beeswax that kept him from moving or being able to break free. He was alive and well, though that was entirely by design, "What do you want? You have the materials, you've killed my men. What are you here for?"

A bespectacled man with beady eyes and long blonde hair smirked down at the Taki captain. On his shoulders he had a light blue cloak with grey clothing beneath it, "We don't want your useless materials. It's pretty simple. All we want is the location to the entrance of Takigakure. That's all."

As if it were such a simple thing to hand over. That was right up there in vital information as far as the village's well-being went. The next thing to it would have been the Hero's Water, which was actually what the supplies from Konoha were meant to be added to in order to lessen the damage it did to one's lifespan.

This was worse than that though.

"Heh." The Taki captain chuckled darkly, knowing the severity of his situation. His men were cruelly wiped out by those bees that these people summoned before they were aware that it was a coordinated attack, "That's all you want?" He said sarcastically, "Well if you want to know how to get to Taki, I think the first thing you should do is just go to hell."

From another side of the trapped man, a kunoichi walked towards the Taki ninja and put the bottom of her foot on his head. She had short brown hair, red eye shadow, and wore a purple, red bordered short-skirt battle kimono with long sleeves and the shoulders out of them along with black gloves, a yellow bow around her waist, and purple leggings, "Hell huh? Listen up. Finding the location of your village would bring our clan quite a lot of lost respect back. Just because we know where it is doesn't mean we're going to attack it. It's just very significant information."

"A clan with no respect that uses bees to fight." The trapped captain said before something hit him as far as his train of thought went, "Wait, bees. You're that clan that got torched by the Aburame Clan when you tried attacking Konoha before; the Kamizuru Clan." He saw the anger in the pair's faces upon being reminded of their defeat from years ago, "And you're an Iwagakure clan. There's no way you won't attack us once you get the information on our village's location."

It had been Iwagakure's modus operandi to try taking down smaller villages to widen its influence. As an example, during the panic that had set off the Third Shinobi World War, Iwagakure tried to take advantage of it and quickly sack Kusagakure, only to find itself in a full scale battle of attrition with Konoha. From that point forward after the end of that war, the minor villages kept their eyes to the northwest to ensure nothing like that ever happened again.

"Listen, don't worry about it right now." The blonde man said, stooping down closer to the Taki ninja's level, "An attack won't happen _yet_ if you give us the information. And we'll let you live. That gives you plenty of time to go back to your village and tell them what occurred here. Feel free to." Feel free because it wouldn't really matter if Takigakure was prepared or not. They simply did not have the manpower to prevent any aggressive actions from Iwagakure if it came to a full scale invasion.

So giving the exact location of the village to an enemy force like Iwagakure would result in Taki's destruction one way or another. They didn't have any shinobi on the level of a kage. Even with the Hero's Water being used by their strongest ninja they would not be able to match the might of a kage.

"An attack won't happen at all." The Taki captain said before gathering all of his willpower and focus. The two Iwa ninja got away from him in case he had an attack he could use while bound, but it was not an action that was meant to threaten them. In one motion, the man turned his own head to the left with enough force to break his own neck and effectively commit suicide before he could be properly interrogated and tortured for the information.

The Iwa kunoichi let out an angry growl and kicked at the deceased captive's dead body, "So this is it? When no one from this squad reports back it's going to be known that something's up." She said, realizing that the village wouldn't be letting anyone in or out once such an alert went up, "Jibachi. We can't return to the village with nothing. This is our chance to get things back to the way they used to be."

The blonde man Jibachi didn't seem to be too concerned with the turn of events. What had been seemingly a breakthrough in locating a thorn in Iwagakure's side had turned into this mess of things. A mission on the brink of being botched.

"It can't really be helped Suzumebachi." He said kneeling down to make sure that the man was truly dead instead of just faking it, "He's dead. So unless you can read a dead man's mind or interrogate a ghost I don't think we'll be finding anyone."

The woman Suzumebachi had a deep frown on her face until she remembered the last few people that their bees had been keeping watch over, "There was one more Taki ninja, the one that split off to lead the Konoha ninja away from the entrance."

A look of realization came over Jibachi's face, "Oh, the ones that Kurobachi tailed after to make sure they weren't trouble."

"Yes." Suzumebachi smirked, "This mission isn't hopeless yet. All we have to do is meet back up with him and take things from there."

* * *

Omake: Training Day 6

Team 7 hadn't seen much of Sasuke since he had gotten out of the hospital post Cursed Seal-branding. It was actually really nice to see him in good condition before they were to go with Kakashi on a C-rank mission to capture a pack of wolves killing off farm animals in a nearby village.

Still, Kakashi's warning from that morning stuck with Sakura and Chouji, "Now remember. Sasuke's been with Anko for more or less the entire month… without me there since I'm still claiming responsibility for you two. So if he comes back a little off just let it be for now. And definitely don't ask him about anything that he's been doing."

"Why?"

"First of all you would probably wish you hadn't if you did." Kakashi explained, finding this important enough to set his beloved book aside to explain this to them, "Second of all we don't need his mind wandering to whatever Anko's been subjecting him to for the last month. The boy has enough problems and this probably just gave him a few more to go along with them."

"Kakashi-sensei it couldn't have been that bad." Sakura said with her hands on her hips. And she potentially would have been correct if Anko were more normal, like her. Anko was not normal though, and the one short meeting that Sakura had seen Anko during the chunin exams for did not fully express this.

"Whatever you say Sakura." Dismissed Kakashi. If she was going to be like that then she'd just have to figure it out the hard way, "Oh, look. Here Sasuke comes now."

And just as he said, walking towards the gate in his usual attire with his chunin flak jacket on over it was Sasuke, hands in his pockets and looking as aloof as usual. And walking right there with him was Anko, just grinning away and waving at the rest of Team 7, "Hello Cyclops! Hello Cyclops-brats! What a wonderful day, isn't it Sasuke?" She asked, planting a hand on Sasuke's head and messing up his cool.

"Don't touch me." Sasuke grumbled out as Anko messed up his hair. The speed he walked away from her with on the way towards his teammates could have been construed as him sprinting away if one knew him well enough.

Chouji greeted Sasuke with a friendly smile and a wave, "Hey Sasuke. How've you been?"

Sasuke spared a glance at Anko who was waving cheerfully at him, this forced a momentary chill to go down his spine before he got his composure back, "Fine. What about you two though? I'd rather hear about that."

That was a strange sign. Sasuke actually wanted to hear about what his teammates had been doing. And he was doing all that he could to avoid looking at Anko for longer than two seconds.

"What did you do to him?" Kakashi finally asked Anko who seemed way too cheery for there to be nothing going on.

"I taught him the error of his ways Cyclops. That's all." Anko said, slipping behind Sasuke again before anyone else noticed, "And he learned that you don't need a seal of tainted power to beat someone's ass." She pat him on the shoulder despite Sasuke's growing ire at her presence.

"I am going to set you on fire one of these days." Threatened Sasuke to his superior as he glared up at her, Sharingan active. He just wished that her eyes were open so that maybe he could fuck with her head, but she was really good at never making eye contact with him. It was completely annoying, "Count on it."

"You aren't still mad that you almost had to Chidori your way out of that snake's belly are you? I made him spit you out."

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konohagakure Shinobi

Yuhi Kurenai

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 4.5**

**Total Score: 29.5**

* * *

**Okay! It's Christmastime!**

…**And I couldn't care any less if you paid me. I'm an adult! And it totally sucks. I've got nothing to say. You don't care anymore since the chapter is over… and yeah. That's all I've got for now.**

**Later. Kenchi out.**

**P.S. Zack Ryder I salute you sir. If you don't get the reference that's okay, it's of no real importance, but it still needs to be said. That is an inspirational man for guys like me. He made himself.  
**


	40. F L B S L B

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'll deliver a pizza to the offices where Naruto is drawn and when them sumbitches let me in to deliver it to the person who 'ordered' it I'll take 'em all ransom and take what's mine!

I like it… and I want it…

I'm a warrior!

**Chapter 40: Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a… Beetle?**

* * *

"I thought I hated Shino's bugs more than any others!" Naruto shouted as he, Shikamaru, Ino, and Fuu ran away from a swarm of larger than normal bees that were doggedly pursuing them through the trees, "Why is this happening?"

"I thought I hated _my_ bug more than any other!" Fuu responded in kind, turning her head to see that they were still just out of range of reaching them and possibly stinging them. She didn't want to stop and find out if they could pierce her Tekiousei-Tai (Adaptable Body) as she had been dealing with too many surprises when it came to her natural defense after going to the chunin exams, "What are we going to do about this?"

Those bees weren't natural, they couldn't be. For an attack like that there had to be a hive, for there to be a hive there would have been w_ay_ more bees, and these bees were bigger than even bumblebees but looked like hornets. They weren't swarming, and they seemed organized, like they had been given orders.

Yeah… because before that they were surrounding them, just looking at them and waiting on them to make a move. Normal bees did not act that way.

"These are summon creatures!" Shikamaru exclaimed, turning his head for a moment to glare back at the bees as they ran, "They have a ninja giving them orders, it's the only way this whole thing can keep being coordinated in real-time! But where? And how are we going to get to who it is even if…" He then stopped and took a glance at his two teammates, "Ino I need you to use your new jutsu and Naruto use your echolocation jutsu to nail this guy!"

"What?" Both blondes said before sparing each other a glance, Ino glaring at Naruto and Naruto turning his eyes away from her, wishing that someone that close to him wouldn't look at him the way others used to.

"Hurry up before we get stung by the stupid things already!" Fuu shouted authoritatively at them.

"Fine." Reluctantly, Ino hopped onto Naruto's back and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist to make sure her body would be secure, "Don't you drop me or I swear to Kami I'll-."

"I won't, I promise." What was with that? Ino had done this a million times with him and Naruto had never dropped her or let her get hurt while she wasn't in her body. He took that very seriously. He didn't want to think about Ino mistrusting or hating him that much, and simply put his mind to locating the summoner of the hornet swarm.

PING

He didn't feel just trees blocking his signal nor did he merely sense the hornets, he sensed a person's body.

"Ino-chan seven o'clock, behind us!" Naruto whispered to her, speeding up to make sure the added weight of Ino didn't slow him down and get them caught.

She turned around but couldn't see any person, just the bees and the trees that were there the whole time, "I can't see anyone! Are you sure?" Ino already had her hand-seals halfway formed and didn't want to leave her body just for mere speculation.

So now she didn't trust his senses when he used his jutsu? Naruto grit his teeth, but let his hands go from Ino's thighs to form a quick Kage Bunshin that ran with them a short ways before sharply turning around, "Follow the clone then, he knows where!"

Ino nodded and finished her jutsu, "Shinjoueishin no Jutsu (Mind Body Projection Jutsu)!" Ino's spirit jumped out of her body in visible specter form and she followed after Naruto's Kage Bunshin as it brazenly jumped through the wave of bees, pointing towards the unseeable person before being destroyed by the deadly stings. Ino followed the exact direction that the clone had been pointing in blindly, but smiled when she saw the leaves rustle, signifying him changing direction.

Now all she had to do was chase him, and she could fly through the tree trunks in that form. But just as she started chasing, her spirit disappeared from the forest with a pop, returning instantly back to her body which stirred with a gasp and a start, "I saw him! I almost had him but he bugged out and ran away when I started chasing after him." She said with a bit of regret as to her limited range when it came to her latest jutsu.

"It's okay Ino-chan." Naruto said with a grin, "At least we know that the bastard is running now. So let's stop him."

Oh, so he was still being ever the sweetie in the hopes that she'd stop being mad at him. His dedication to having her forgive him was admirable but it would take more than that to get Yamanaka Ino off of one's back. Speaking of getting off of someone's back, "You can let me down now, I can run on my own."

"Eh?" Naruto said, blushing slightly at realizing that he actually was still holding Ino on his back and his hands were placed rather high up under her thighs to keep her in place, "Well what about our combination? We can't really do it if we're not close."

At hearing of a combination move and remembering what they had been working on, Ino's eyes widened and she hurriedly started making her hand-seals, "Ah, you're right! Okay, let's go! Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!"

Naruto had already drawn his machete and mid-leap from branch to branch, he turned in the air and started swinging it by its chain like a fan blade, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!"

Naruto's cyclone of wind that shot out from the windmill motion combined with the purple poison smog from Ino's mouth, blowing it directly onto the hornets. The many that avoided being cut down by the loose little blades of wind that came with the technique were killed by Ino's poison, dropping from the sky in droves and saving the four chunin from a painful demise.

Not missing a beat once the hornets were disposed of, Shikamaru stopped on a branch and immediately began heading back the other way with Naruto, Ino still on his back, moving right along with him, "Naruto can you still find him? We can't let a ninja with a cloaking jutsu stay around here."

"If we can get close enough I can." Naruto said with a frown on his face as he kept releasing pulses of sonar to try and find the jerk that had sicced bees on them, "The trees are in my way and I can't find things through solid objects."

"Follow me!" Ino took the lead at that point to show them the direction that she had last come into contact with the enemy ninja.

A bit behind them, Fuu stood there on the branch that Shikamaru had turned around on thinking to herself, 'I should just go back to Taki, it's not my mission to fight anyone… but can I really just leave them like that?' She shook her head of the thought and then followed hurriedly to catch up with Team 10, "I couldn't do something like that could I? We are… friends after all."

XxX

Kurobachi was busy taking a tactical retreat away from those Konoha brats that somehow managed to find him. It seemed more like a guess at first, but it was a damn good guess. He didn't know what would have happened if that blonde girl's little ghost thing hit him but from the way she was pursuing after him it was obvious he wouldn't have wanted to find out.

A trio of punks had stopped his hornets, and how had they even seen him to begin with? And now they were following him! He could tell he was being tailed!

All of this just to find a stupid entrance to this village. But it served a purpose. If it was well-known how to reach Takigakure then it would have been destroyed by now, there was no doubt about it. Iwa would have crushed Taki first during the last war instead of getting dragged into the drawn out war that had occurred with Konoha.

In the middle of his thinking, he didn't seem to notice a pair of blonde boys drop down from the canopy above him with machetes drawn, almost until it was too late.

Naruto and a clone fell from the sky, cutting right through Kurobachi in one pair of slashes before the man's body seemed to turn into beeswax, "Damn clone! I fell for the decoy!" At that moment, Shikamaru tackled Naruto and the clone to the ground before a dozen stingers could hit them, "Ugh… thanks."

"No problem." Shikamaru said, helping Naruto and his clone up as the original kept searching around for the bastard again that had substituted himself with that fake, "Do you have anything?" He asked as Ino landed nearby them. Shikamaru then noticed Naruto grit his teeth, "What's the matter?"

"He's going back the way he had been coming before, for Fuu this time." Who would be crazy enough to actually head back towards Fuu? That did not seem like a smart course of action for any ninja to make, no matter who they were.

Ino seemed ready for more dealing with pests judging from the way she reached towards her supply pouch to grab a few poison smoke bombs, "More stupid bees…"

True to her statement, there were bees hovering all around them. At the moment, Naruto felt like it was his fault due to the fact that he had thought he had felt the actual Kurobachi instead of just his clone. Otherwise the trap wouldn't have even happened. There was space being rented out in his head in regards to the whole situation with Ino. There had been all the way to Taki. But he had to set that aside or else they'd get killed.

'Get your damn head in the game already!' Naruto screamed to himself mentally, 'You might feel bad about Ino-chan hating us for leaving, but you'll feel even worse if everyone gets killed because you can't focus!'

"These bees…" Shikamaru said slightly warily of what strategy would be used here, "They've got explosive tags tied to their abdomens."

Another pulse of his sonar jutsu to ensure that there were no nasty surprises waiting for them showed Naruto that there were two more enemies with different signatures from the man that they had chased to that point. Gritting his teeth angrily, Naruto pointed in the location close to the forest floor where he could feel two signatures.

Ino didn't even need to hear him speak to know what he was alluding to and quickly hurled her poison-containing orb in that direction only for the bees that had been surrounding them to move away and form a wall to protect the two mystery ninja at the cost of their own lives, and at the cost of the explosive attack as the explosive tags burned down and exploded, rocking the quiet forest with a blast.

"Stop using that stupid jutsu to hide!" Naruto shouted, taking advantage of the lack of bees to subvert him. Dropping down to the ground and rushing ahead with his machete he drew back and swung at seemingly nothing but a shimmer in the air, "I can feel you there you bastard!"

Upon being discovered and attacked, instead of wasting chakra to keep up his cloaking jutsu, Jibachi, the blonde bee summoner, simply dropped the technique as he jumped away from Naruto's slash, "Ooh. Kids like you shouldn't be so violent." He taunted until he found himself frozen in place, "What the-?"

"Good work Naruto!" Shikamaru said, holding the rat seal from his place on the forest floor, having used Kagemane no Jutsu while the imminent threat of Naruto was rampant. Instead of just moving his shadow around to try and flank the man, Shikamaru had his shadow hitch a ride with Naruto's shadow, getting a short jump and a shorter distance to risk being discovered from when it chose to make its approach on Jibachi, "Don't waste time finishing this guy! Find the other one before someone gets hurt! I'll finish this guy!"

With a nod, Naruto quickly broke off to locate the next enemy per Shikamaru's instructions, knowing that he had the situation handled.

"Damn…" Jibachi said, finding himself completely unable to move, "You think you've won don't you Nara-kid?" He asked, beginning to percolate his chakra for one surprise attack, the only move he could make with his body frozen as it was.

"Nope." Shikamaru replied as a portion of shadow began to creep up Jibachi's body in the form of a hand that was moving for his neck, "I'm about to though." The hand of shadow clutched tightly around Jibachi's throat, making him feel as if his neck was in a powerful grip that was choking the life from him, "Kage-Kubishibari no Jutsu (Shadow-Neck Binding Jutsu)."

With a sharp crack, Jibachi's neck bent harshly to the side and what little outside of the panic that was left in his eyes left with the rest of the life in them. Shikamaru sighed and let his shadow retract before turning to locate Naruto and/or Ino, "I never get used to that…"

XxX

(With Naruto and Ino)

Fighting his way back through the multitudes of bees proved to be more difficult that Naruto figured it would be to catch back up with the large bearded bee user and the third person that he had sensed with the one Shikamaru had dealt with.

It was absurdly so though.

Naruto had to run in the middle of a living shield comprised of more than a dozen shadow clones, all jumping through the forest making sure that the original Naruto in the middle of them did not get stung by the countless bees pursuing and moving around them angrily.

The fact that these bees shot their stingers made the entire pursuit more miserable than before. Clones that had good aim with their machetes and were able to cut hornets before they got close enough to directly sting them were then covered in thick honey resulting from the bees' destruction, thus making them sitting ducks for the stingers that they had been trying to avoid.

"_Naruto…"_

Naruto almost tripped on a branch upon hearing Ino's voice in his mind as clear as day, "Ino?" He couldn't see her though.

"_It's Yamanaka Clan Telepathy… heh. Daddy finally started teaching me a jutsu instead of me teaching myself. Cool huh?"_ Despite what she said, she didn't sound that fine at all, _"Look, I just wanted to say that I'm still mad at you and Shika… but you don't owe me anything. This year has been awesome and I guess teams can't stick together once they start heading up the ladder. Thanks for always being sweet."_

The first time Ino decided to try using this new jutsu of hers and she was using it to apologize? Apparently the link wasn't two ways since she couldn't hear his own thoughts even when he tried to project them, nor could she somehow hear him try to speak, "Ino! What are you talking about? Now isn't really the time to say anything like this you know!" Couldn't it wait until after the mission was over, or at least until they had beaten these bee-using chumps?

The only reason he could think of as to why she would say such a thing was in case she figured that she wouldn't be getting another chance to do so… perhaps because of her own impending demise.

"No!" Naruto yelled, sending out pulse after pulse of sonar jutsu as his eyes started to turn red and his whisker marks began to deepen on his face. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes as his speed began to increase past what the swarms of bees were able to keep pace with as he tried to head back to find his wayward female teammate. This definitely wasn't going to be the way it ended after everything that had happened.

"**Still just a baby that can't do or save anything on his own."** The dark voice inside of his mind chuckled, further fueling Naruto's growing rage, **"Now then… who do you want to kill?"**

XxX

(With Ino)

Ino's eyes were half-lidded as she sat stuck to the ground by a tree covered in the honey from many destroyed bees as many more of them flew all over the area. In her mouth she had several visible senbon needles, one of which she spat directly at the easiest to target bee, getting it to explode in honey. She had fought off as many as she could on her own until she ran out of poison smoke bombs to take them down with like pesticide, and then it had been hand-to-hand and targeting which became her downfall.

'Stupid suicide trap bees…' She thought to herself as three stingers were fired at her and hit her, going along with the ones she already had in her. Ino let out a grunt of pain but spat two more needles and took out some more bees accurately.

Her breathing began to labor and eventually she lost the strength to hold the needles in her mouth any longer as they fell to the ground, effectively taking the only weapon she had left at her immediate disposal from her. She couldn't pull her arms off of the ground due to the honey and the bee stings were working her over.

"Wow. You should be dead by now."

Ino's half-closed eyes panned up to see a woman in a specialized kimono with a very short skirt, and neck-length brown hair. Without even letting any time pass, Ino used her very last senbon, one she kept underneath her tongue just in case, and spit it at the woman, narrowly missing her neck.

Suzumebachi was surprised at Ino's last attempt to fight back, just as much as she was surprised by Ino taking so many bee stings, but smirked when she saw the blonde girl's head fall forward. Suzumebachi touched at Ino's neck to find her pulse and found that she was still alive, "With all of the poison from the hornets in her system she should have been long dead."

Ino used too many ingredients in her own concoctions and just so happened to have built up a bit of an immunity to poisons that could be found un-tampered with in nature, even hornet's poison. Still, her body took the effects of it, it was only that such a thing wouldn't easily kill her.

"You could be pretty useful alive as a prisoner though." Pondered Suzumebachi before calling upon the hornets around her to begin to crowd Ino's body, constructing something solid around her entire frame, "Even if you aren't useful to this mission… you _are_ from Konoha, and from a prominent clan Little Miss Yamanaka. That has to mean something to Iwa I imagine."

XxX

(With Fuu)

Great, so in her endeavor to try and meet up with Team 10 after she almost had thoughts of leaving them, Fuu wound up running into another swarm of bees that sent her in the other direction. Her retreat back led her to come across the bodies of the Taki team that had given her the orders to lead Team 10 towards Konoha so that the entrance to Takigakure wasn't compromised.

'Oh no…' Fuu thought to herself, stopping momentarily to look over the bodies, 'Yeah… they were stung.' It was strange because more than a few months ago she wouldn't have cared any less that they were dead. She might have even spared a smirk. She then noticed the captain of the squad encased in beeswax and shook her head at the position of his head and neck. The suicide move that many upper-level Taki ninja knew.

"They didn't want to give up the location to their village you know."

Fuu heard that echoing voice and immediately headed off in the direction of it, a touch of anger running through her system. She might not have liked them that much, but they were still her villagers and none of them had ever been the ones to 'test' her special abilities when she was a little girl. They had been alright with her.

And besides, if anyone was going to beat up and possibly kill anyone in her village it was going to be her damn it. She was the one that had more right to than anyone else.

Eventually, Fuu came across a structure that she knew for sure wasn't there before. The forests around her village were well scouted in case anyone ever got close to discovering Taki's entrance by accident and she would have known full well if there had ever been an oversized hive made out of rock. A sneer crossed Fuu's face as she moved to demolish that piece of crap until the voice spoke up again, "Stop right there for just a moment."

Fuu did just that as she saw two people standing on the top of the hive along with another figure that seemed to be cocooned in beeswax. A large cloak wearing man with a beard and black hair and a woman with brown hair and a short kimono, "Why should I stop? I'm just a few steps away from rearranging your faces for life."

Suzumebachi smirked and pulled away some of the beeswax from the figure that was on top of the hive with them to reveal it to be Ino, "Because if you can live with having some girl that has nothing to do with this' blood on your hands, I wonder what kind of person that makes you."

"It's simple really." Kurobachi said calmly, having drawn a kunai that he held above Ino's head, "All we want to know is the location of the entrance to Takigakure. Once we have that information we can leave. No one else has to suffer."

'Yet.' Fuu thought to herself. Due to the location of the lands that happened to be Takigakure's main operating area and the fact that it and Iwagakure were the two closest hidden villages in existence by a large margin, the fact that Iwa did not have Taki's location was something that kept an unstable balance between the two that kept war from breaking out between them, as the two constantly stepped on one another's toes and were constantly at odds during missions.

The fact that Iwa couldn't locate Taki was the only thing that kept the larger and more powerful village from simply beginning a war against them and wiping them out in quick order before their ally Konoha could turn around and come to their defense. Without the anonymity of their village's location there would be nothing stopping it.

But it was Ino there. And while she didn't know the girl all that well outside of the few times they had spoken it was obvious that she was Naruto's friend, his close friend. And he was her friend too. Despite herself she liked the younger brat of a jinchuuriki, even with all of his past attempts to obnoxiously get her to hug him.

"Even if you didn't care for this girl's life." Suzumebachi said as multiple hornets started emerging from the hive, settling over the area, "Attacking us wouldn't be wise anyway. But like we've said, we're not here to fight. All we want is a little information. That's all."

Being surrounded by the hornets once again got Fuu to feel a bit smothered and crowded. The buzzing felt like the suspicious whispers of the villagers from her past. Her breathing started to get a little heavier and heavier and her chakra started to spike a bit in lieu of the growing tension and potential hostility, "It's either watch the friend of a friend die, or betray a village that doesn't love me but I still hold a duty towards. Heh, either way I'm screwing myself over."

She'd be a traitor or she'd earn the outright hatred of the first person that ever gave a damn about her and her wellbeing.

"Ino!"

At that moment when Fuu heard the voice of Naruto's that she remembered from a specific point during the chunin exams she decided to make her own move then and there before the situation got even more out of control, "Hiden: Rinpungakure no Jutsu (Secret: Hiding in Scale Powder Jutsu)!" Fuu exhaled a massive amount of shining powder from her mouth that shone brightly enough to blind everyone and everything in the area.

This did not affect Naruto due to the fact that he had his goggles down around his eyes and upon entering the area wasted no time upon spotting Ino and snatching her from the top of the hive and from the clutches of the bee-users.

"It's that stupid brat again." Kurobachi said as his vision came back from Fuu's surprise attack and he was able to see again, "Using Meisaigakure no Jutsu (Hiding with Camouflage Jutsu) against that kid is a gamble, he can tell where you are somehow."

Fuu smirked at the sight of the orange aura blazing around Naruto's body as he set Ino down next to her, "Welcome back." She then addressed the ninja trying to get her village location with a much brighter outlook, "So do you really want to find my village's location so bad that you'll fight two jinchuuriki for it?" She said before she began radiating green chakra much like Naruto did, her eyes glowing green eyes not promising anything good.

The matching death auras between the two, both orange and green, were extremely intimidating to the two Iwa ninja who had two jinchuuriki of their own in Iwagakure, one of whom happened to be very dangerous even to other villagers.

"You and him?" Suzumebachi asked with wide eyes before going into denial on the matter, "There's no way you two are jinchuuriki? You're just kids!"

"Every ninja starts out as a child at first you know." Fuu taunted before from the red cylinder on her back had her chakra wings sprout and levitate her off of the ground, "Even jinchuuriki like us… even a runt like him."

Naruto ignored the good-natured jibe at his height or lack thereof and ducked down to rip the wax off of Ino, shaking her in an attempt to wake her up, "Ino-chan!" Naruto said, noticing her stir and wrinkle her nose to show that she was still alive. This got him to smile and sigh in relief.

Losing their main bargaining chip in one move, Kurobachi grit his teeth and formed hand-seals to punish the kids for their treachery, "You all made a grave mistake. I hope this was worth your lives. Hachi Senbon no Jutsu (Thousand Bee Stings Jutsu)!"

The hornets surrounding them fired their stingers at the three and attracted Naruto's attention from his teammate's wellbeing long enough to let out a deafening roar, "RAAAAAAGHHHH!" The thin orange shockwave released from his sheer, Kyuubi charged roar blew Fuu's hair and looser articles of clothing around as she had to shield her face from it and focus to keep from being blown away from him. The hornets and their launched stingers were hit with the shockwave and knocked to the ground.

Gritting her teeth as the intensity from the outburst by her fellow jinchuuriki died down, Fuu began flying forward at the stunned bee-using pair. They saw her coming and Suzumebachi managed to jump off of the hive only to see Kurobachi try to but freeze in place before he could make his jump, "What are you doing? Get down from there!"

"Can't move!" Kurobachi said, seeing a shadow stretching across the ground, linking him to something in the forest. And this left him at the mercy of the charging Fuu who had her look of anger clear on her face for the attempt at holding her hostage by her morals.

"Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow)!" Fuu's high speed punch, delivered with the added hardness of her body, drilled into Kurobachi and sent him flying back hard enough to fell trees as his body smashed through their trunks.

"Kurobachi!" Suzumebachi shouted before jumping into the air to avoid the shadow that just so happened to have been chasing her, dumb luck saving her from being caught and suffering the same fate as her brother. She made a different series of hand-seals and pressed her palm on the air, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

In a puff of smoke a giant bee with fur around its neck, a massive stinger, and a jaw full of intimidating teeth was summoned with Suzumebachi sitting in its back.

Not showing any fear as apparently both had seen and had charged at bigger opponents before, Naruto and Fuu rushed towards the creature until getting blown back by intended flaps of the giant bee's wings that kicked up a strong wind. Fuu flew back and grabbed Naruto's ankle before he could be hurt, but this allowed Suzumebachi to get distance into the air with her bee to begin flying away.

Fuu began to fly up in pursuit, but the bee spat out a massive amount of honey that covered much of the sky and forced her to turn her back to try and avoid being covered in the dangerous attack, "Damn it, she's running away!"

Shikamaru had made his way over from his ambush spot to Ino's downed form, watching as Suzumebachi's massive bee flew northwest away from them, "There's no reason to chase her." He said, not seeing or desiring any reason to continue the battle any further, "She's got nothing, and all you have to do is go home. She's the last one left and she still can't find your village. You won."

Glaring at the sky with her glowing green eyes, Fuu settled down and landed calmly on the ground, her Nanabi's chakra vanishing once more. Realizing that she was still holding onto something in one of her hands, she held up an equally Kyuubi-calmed Naruto by the ankle who just stared blankly at her until grinning at her through his goggle-clad eyes until she dropped him, "Ow."

In the end, Shikamaru couldn't really blame Suzumebachi for retreating. He himself had killed one of her teammates previously and it had been two-on-two against a pair of jinchuuriki chunin before he had ever interjected himself and assisted Fuu in easily hitting Kurobachi with a killing blow. Fighting three-on-one against a group including two jinchuuriki was not honorable, it was the epitome of suicidal.

A sigh came from Fuu, remembering seeing the bodies of her Takigakure comrades. She wished that she could have gotten the last attacker as well, but at least she got their vengeance on Kurobachi if nothing else.

With a grunt, Shikamaru picked up Ino bridal style and walked over to the pair of jinchuuriki, Naruto getting up off of the ground and dusting himself off and Fuu pondering just how she was going to tell her village leader that she was the last survivor of a squad that was dispatched only to retrieve goods from a delivery team, "You guys didn't have much of a choice, but still… thank you." Fuu said earnestly with a small smile on her face, "But now… I've got to go home and tell the higher-ups what happened. Those guys all deserve to be buried."

"Well I guess that's our cue to go home then." Shikamaru said, shifting Ino's weight in his arms and wishing that she'd wake up soon before he had to carry her halfway back to Konoha, "After this I'm not even going to bother asking if we can rest in your village… it'd be too troublesome after all of this." He finished in a grumble, hoping that they could reach the outpost town at the border by nightfall for a night with an actual bed.

While Shikamaru was making sure that he and Ino were ready for travel, Naruto turned towards Fuu and much like he seemed to try and do repeatedly when in her presence opened his arms to gesture for a hug. And just like all of the other times Fuu gave him a deadpan look, putting the two into something of a standoff until Fuu finally relented, "Okay damn it. One time is all you get and if I accidentally crush you it's not my fault."

With a grin on his face, Naruto stepped forward with full confidence, "You won't hurt me accidentally because you know I won't hurt you. I'm not a threat." With that, he wrapped his arms around the body of the tan, mint green-haired older jinchuuriki and felt her do the same, somewhat tightly, but it didn't hurt, showing that she was holding back, "Take care of yourself Fuu."

"I'll try to." She said before releasing Naruto and pushing him back to give him a look full of intent, "If you tell anyone I let you do that I'll find you and I'll-."

"-I won't tell anyone." Naruto nervously assured her, knowing that she could certainly back up the underlying threat. As Shikamaru leapt off to begin moving through the trees back towards Konoha, Naruto refrained from doing so for a minute, "Wait. Before I go. There's supposed to be a group of super-strong ninja out there that are supposed to be trying to grab the Kyuubi out of me one day."

"What are you telling me for then?" Fuu asked, "Do you want me to help you or something?"

"No, it's just…" Concern was evident on Naruto's face before he simply came out with what he was trying to say, "If they want me then they'll probably want the Nanabi too. And if they take our biju out of our bodies we'll die." Fuu nodded, having known that much already, "So I just wanted to tell you that. I don't know how strong these guys are, but they're all S-rank and that means they're all way stronger than me."

"Aww. Little runt is all worried about me." Fuu said, putting a hand on the shorter Naruto's head to ruffle his hair, "Look, your fancy trick from the chunin exams aside, I know I'm stronger than you, so don't worry about it. But I'll keep on training and stay on the lookout to keep you calm now go home kid." She finished, turning Naruto around and giving him a kick in the butt with a playful look on her face to get him to leave.

Sparing one glare behind him as he rubbed his backside from Fuu's kick, Naruto gave her a wave before taking off to follow Shikamaru.

Fuu waited for a moment until she was certain that Team 10 had indeed left the area before beginning to make her own way back to her village, "*sigh* Time to face the music I guess…"

XxX

(Skies Above the Way Back to Iwagakure)

That entire mission had fallen apart after the Takigakure captain had killed himself to keep Suzumebachi and her brothers from getting the location of the minor hidden village. And then they had engaged in battle with not just a team of Konoha chunin, but they had fought two jinchuuriki from both Taki and Konoha.

And now her brothers were dead. She had seen Jibachi's body while she had been retreating. The hopes that instead of being dead he just retreated before them were not upheld when she had seen the corpse through the trees.

Now what was she going to do? Running away was the only option that she had and the only option that she would take. Going back for revenge against Naruto and Fuu would not have ended well and she wasn't the type to kill her enemy at the cost of her own life. That was just a waste of her life and their clan didn't need to take another hit like that.

"Look at what we have here Sasori no Danna. A lost Kamizuru Clan woman, un."

In the air along with her was a very large clay bird that lowered itself from above directly in front of Suzumebachi. That clay looked familiar, and there was only one person that would have used such a thing that she as an Iwagakure ninja knew very well, "You…Deidara." Why was this traitor here? To take her down? No, she wasn't important enough at all in Iwa's hierarchy for him to go after for any kind of missing-nin vendetta.

The man Deidara had long blonde hair in a ponytail with a bang covering one blue eye underneath his straw hat, an Iwagakure headband with a slash through the village symbol on the plate, and he wore a long black cloak with red clouds all over it. Also on the bird was another man with a hunched back and angry eyes dressed exactly like Deidara with the cloak and straw hat, "I see you've had a bit of trouble with our future target, un." He quipped at Suzumebachi's defeated state, "I saw the whole thing. So much for the Kamizuru Clan eh?"

"Your target?" Suzumebachi said, confusion evident in her tone of voice, "What business would you have with Taki? You left Iwa to be a terrorist bomber."

"Not Taki, just the jinchuuriki of Taki." Deidara clarified, "The rest of that place is useless, un."

"Deidara." The other figure on the flying clay bird said to get his partner's attention in a gruff tone of voice, "We've wasted enough time here. Our mission is complete. We should return. Leader-sama should not be kept waiting."

A frown came over Deidara's youthful face before he shrugged, "I guess you're right Sasori no Danna, un. Well Suzu-chan it was nice to see you again. When you get back to Iwa to get your ass chewed out by Old Man Onoki tell him I said hi." He said before turning an about face with the bird to head off his own way.

Suzumebachi watched him go a short distance before remembering that Deidara was a criminal of the highest order, "Wait a minute! Do you really think that I'll just let you leave so easily? You stole our village's secret kinjutsu and you used it for hired terrorist bombings! You're the most wanted man in our village!"

However, Deidara didn't really pay her any attention, instead continuing to fly on ahead with Sasori.

After the horrible day that Suzumebachi had been having, being blown off by a criminal from her own village after expressly declaring that she could not and would not let him simply fly off into the sunset was simply the last straw for her, "Kyodaibachi, do not let them get away. Take Deidara down!" She shouted, and the giant queen bee began buzzing aggressively, flying straight ahead with stinger prepared to attack.

"Katsu."

Deidara made a single hand-seal and the multiple clay insects that he had secretly managed to slip onto Suzumebachi's giant bee before he made his presence known to her, just in case of hostility, exploded in a fiery blast in the sky.

A sigh came from the criminal bomber as he spared a glance back at the remnants of the explosion before turning his attention right back to flying the clay bird they were on, "Stupid girl. I was going to let you just leave. You should know better than to stand against my Shunshin no Geijutsu (Art of a Single Moment). Fools in Iwa should know by now that true art is an explosion."

"Save your stupid theatrics for idiots that care." Sasori said, as gruffly and as impatient as before, "I could walk faster than this."

"…Then why don't you, un?"

XxX

(Takigakure no Sato – Early Evening)

Fuu climbed out of the water that housed the secret tunnel that served as Takigakure's natural hidden barrier from the rest of the world and just sat on the shore, legs still in the water and her hands on her cheeks. She had informed her higher-ups of just what had happened and had led them back to the places where she found her deceased comrades. She had just finished assisting with transporting their bodies back to the village for memorial purposes and had been the last of the group back in.

What a long day.

Even though she was soaking wet and the sun was going down she didn't care at all. All of those people had died. Despite the way she used to be she had never wished to kill that many, she still kept that much of her morals about her even in her darkest of moments. And now she really felt sorrow for the deaths of those that she might have been able to save if she had been there. Wasn't that a jinchuuriki's main purpose in the first place? To serve as a deterrent and in worst case scenario as a super-soldier?

She didn't feel much like a super-anything right then as she was too late to help anyone other than Ino. At least she could take solace in the fact that things could have been worse.

"There she is!"

Fuu's head turned around quickly at that shout that she just knew was directed at her and saw dozens of villagers coming her way. Her natural reaction was to prepare her body for anything that would be coming her way as she was still uneasy with being crowded and being around many people. And aside from that, many people paying attention to her had traditionally never ended well for her. Perhaps it was finally time that they tried to take the Nanabi out to look for a new host, "Look, I'm sorry alright. I did my best and I know that it's not much that I'm the only one that came back, but-."

"She protected the village from those Iwa monsters that killed our ninja!"

"All by herself? She's a hero!"

"See mom! I told you Fuu-chan isn't bad! She's really pretty and she's strong too!" A little girl said, tugging on her mother's skirt as she pointed at Fuu.

As the villagers chattered in approval to her, Fuu had her orange eyes as wide as saucers and her mouth hanging slightly open at people actually speaking favorably of her for once, "Fuu!" Her attention was then obtained by someone making his way through the crowd to get to her.

"Houki?" Fuu said questioningly upon seeing her teammate from the chunin exams so excited. He turned out to be a very nice person that didn't hate her and was actually grateful for even getting him as far through the chunin exams as he had gotten, "W-What's going on? I'm not in trouble? They're not going to take the Nanabi out of me are they?" Taking the biju out of her would mean death.

"No! No way!" Houki said, getting a hold of Fuu's hands to help her out of the water to her feet. She was so stunned and confused that she didn't register the contact as a threat and allowed him to do so, "Everyone knows what you did out there for us by yourself. The bodies of the enemies were recovered and the recovery teams saw all of the huge bees on the ground all over the place."

"So I'm not going to be executed?" Fuu said hopefully as she was still wary of the crowd that seemed to be growing, though she could see no ire in their eyes, "People are… proud?"

"You tell me." Houki said with a grin as he still held on to Fuu's hand and lifted it into the air to get cheers from the people. Taking that moment, he whispered so that only she could hear him, "People haven't felt that way about you since you did so well during the chunin exams. The only person that beat you or even came close was that Kyuubi kid from Konoha. They were just confused on what to make of you for the longest time. You did this for yourself."

"_-You're not a bad person."_

"_-You're just scared. But not everyone in the world wants to hurt you. Give someone a chance and you might be surprised… I know I was."_

"What's the matter with Fuu-chan? Is she alright?" One of the little kids that had been hoisted up on their parent's shoulders to see over the crowd said when they saw tears start to roll down Fuu's face.

Noticing exactly what the little girl was talking about, Houki turned towards Fuu in a bit of alarm, "Fuu are you alright? You weren't hiding being hurt again were you?" No ill intent whatsoever as he looked at her. Houki never had ill intent when he looked at her. There had been fear at one time, but that was mostly because of Dorobou and not her. Other than that, Houki had been nothing less than cordial.

"_I know that it sucks being by yourself. And for a long time it'll be hard trying to find someone that you can trust… but when you do I promise it makes everything better. Just… don't give up alright? You're better than that. I promise that it'll be worth it in the end if you can find someone like that."_

Why did Naruto's words from after their fight in the chunin exams keep ringing out in her head? And why did they affect her like this? She was supposed to be tough; the strongest kunoichi in Taki and the biju in her body had nothing to do with it. So what did that say when she was crying like a normal woman in front of what seemed to be a fourth of the village? Last time no one saw it. This time it was happening in front of everyone. But instead of making her look weak to them all, it seemed to further humanize her in the eyes of many.

"Stupid little runt… *sniff* what does he know anyway?" Fuu said to no one in particular as she continued to unknowingly shed tears of joy.

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato – Yamanaka Clan Compound – Main Home)

On the way back to Konoha following the conclusion of their delivery mission, Ino was actually less antagonistic to her male teammates, speaking to them slightly more than before, stopping with the heated glares that both boys felt burning into the backs of their heads all the way up to Takigakure, but she was still not her normal cheerful self and for the most part she refrained from speaking.

The only question she wanted to ask was one that they wouldn't give her answer to, 'What would it take to make you both stay?' And that was a question she didn't bother asking either way.

So after arriving back, delivering their mission report, and parting to head their separate ways, Ino went right home and just sat on her bed staring out the window of her room at the night sky. Kami, she was so pathetic. Who in the world said that she needed them that much? She wasn't supposed to be some pathetic little girl, she was a Konoha chunin. The Hokage saw enough in her to promote her, so why couldn't she just get over this and be done with it.

"Ino can I come in?"

Hearing her father Inoichi at her door, Ino turned away from looking out of the window lest he believe that she was desperate or something, and turned to lay down in her bed as if she were exhausted from her mission, "Yes daddy. You can come in." The door opened to reveal the taller Yamanaka patriarch that Ino graced with a smile, "Hi. How was your week?"

"Oh, the moments when I wasn't worried about my little girl's safety were pretty good." Inoichi said with a smirk as he walked into Ino's bedroom, "So how'd the mission go?"

"It turned into a big mess. We had to fight a team of Iwa shinobi that were trying to get into Takigakure's secret entrance." Ino could still feel the phantom stings on her arms, legs, and face, "Stupid bees…"

"Well if nothing else I'm glad you're alright." Inoichi said with a grin, "I'm proud that you're doing so well in your first year as a ninja. You're outdoing your old man's own rookie year the way you're going."

Ino blushed in a bit of embarrassment before deciding to ask a question, "Daddy. You and your team don't work together that much anymore do you?" She asked, getting a shake of the head from her father, "Why did you all break off? I thought that Ino-Shika-Cho was the strongest combination in the Elemental Nations."

"Well we were all needed elsewhere." Inoichi said with a shrug, "We still do work together all the time and our families are still really close, but we all had different directions to go in. I took up a job in the Intelligence Division and now I run it, Shikaku is the Jounin Commander, and like the rest of us Choza had our clans to run otherwise. It happens. Elites aren't kept together usually. They're often spread out to balance squads that need them so that they can ensure that more ninja make it home from dangerous missions. Why are you asking?"

She thought about telling him, but then remembered what she thought earlier; that she wasn't some little girl and that she could solve her own problems. It was an issue between herself, Naruto, and Shikamaru. No one else really had any business getting involved.

"Just curious." Ino said with a slightly nervous laugh that Inoichi raised an eyebrow at.

"Okay…" Turning back towards the door, Inoichi stopped at the doorway and faced her once more, "Oh, I came in here in the first place because you have a visitor."

"If it's Naruto or Shika I don't want to see them right now."

Just Naruto and not 'Goldie-kun' like usual? Well it was between them and not him Inoichi figured, "It's not either of them. It's actually your team's sensei." He saw Ino perk up in interest as she hadn't really seen Asuma since their mission to Degarashi Port due to a longer mission that he had been on right afterwards, "Do you want to see him?"

"Yeah, of course." Ino said with a nod. With that, Inoichi left the room and in a matter of moments Asuma was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, "Hi Asuma-sensei. Where've you been for most of the month?"

"Oh just on a mission, and no I can't tell you what it is." Asuma said with a grin, chuckling at Ino's pout due to being denied something that she might have been able to use as gossip later. With the ice between him and his pupil broken, Asuma shut the door for a semblance of privacy, "So I came here to tell you something that I'm not sure if Naruto or Shikamaru got to tell you. In a few months-."

"-They're running off to the daimyo." Ino finished for him on a bitter note, "To wipe his ass and be his gofer."

Asuma raised an eyebrow at how she had finished his sentence. Not exactly what he was going to say, "Well I guess that means that when I was your age I ran off to the daimyo to 'wipe his ass and be his gofer' too." Ino had the good grace to look bashful at that point, "Listen there's something about this that you need to know as to why they're going. It's about Naruto but Shikamaru knows too. It's the main reason why he chose to go."

Instead of making a remark or choosing to shoot her mouth off about whatever reason they had being stupid, she just sat there on her bed and listened quietly. She had waited a week to learn the reason behind it, but she didn't want to talk to Naruto and Shikamaru about it any longer.

Taking a minute to think of how to properly word it, Asuma walked over to Ino and pulled up the chair from her desk to sit by her bed, "Okay, well, it's like this. There just so happens to be a group of kage-killing ninja called Akatsuki that are going to try and grab Naruto and every jinchuuriki they can for the demons inside of them." Ino's jaw dropped but Asuma kept going, "He can't beat them. And this place, with the daimyo, this is where I became powerful. As a member of the Twelve Guardian Ninja. That's what Naruto and Shikamaru have the chance of becoming."

"Naruto's going to be hunted?" Like an animal? For the stupid demon fox inside of him? Just how many of the hits would keep on coming for that kid?

"He's going to be watched over by Jiraiya-sama and taken out of Konoha to continue his career and training with a bit of anonymity." Asuma explained for Ino's benefit, "Only you, myself, Hokage-sama, and Jiraiya-sama know of this except for Shikamaru. And since Shikamaru was offered the same job I told him to explain why no matter what Naruto would be going. He chose to go."

Ino blinked blankly but understood at that point why Shikamaru would bother doing something so troublesome. Even if he happened to be lazier than a sloth, when it came to his friends he'd do whatever he felt he had to do. It was pretty much his only motivation to do anything difficult.

"That's why they're going?" Asuma nodded in response to Ino's question and put a hand on her shoulder, "That's… I didn't expect that. Heh, and I can't go with them either can I?"

Asuma shook his head this time, "The job offer was just a means to an end. If it hadn't been presented then Jiraiya-sama still would have taken Naruto away from Konoha on a training trip to help him prepare for the Akatsuki." He could tell that all of this information was beginning to wear on Ino and decided to leave it at that, "Listen, you've got a choice. You don't have to be a part of this. Naruto's not going to ask you to fight his battles for him and neither will anyone else."

"To hell with that Asuma-sensei." Ino snapped in response. She knew that he was about to give her the chance to cut her ties with Team 10 on even terms so that she wouldn't be involved in Naruto's soon-to-be problem with Akatsuki, "My friends are going to work to fight a gang of kidnappers that want Goldie-kun's life and you think I'm just going to turn my back and walk away. I'm not doing that to him. Not after all of the times he and Shika have saved my ass."

A smile slipped onto Asuma's face at seeing an under five feet tall blonde teenage girl try to look tough while sitting in her bed. Still though, Ino was tough, and that look on her face let him know that it was as good as assured.

With a confident look on her face, Ino reached out telepathically with the only person outside of her clan she could use the jutsu with due to being the closest to him, _"Do you hear that Goldie-kun? You and Shika can go off and do your little missions for the daimyo. But you'd better keep getting stronger while you're gone, because if you're not and you come back I'll kick both of your asses!"_

XxX

(Meanwhile – Ichiraku Ramen)

Naruto had been eating ramen with Iruka and Konohamaru who had been kept back after class that day for hijinks when he heard Ino's telepathic message go through his head, alarming him enough to force him to fall out of his stool and backwards onto the floor of the ramen stand.

Both Konohamaru and Iruka looked down at Naruto in surprise at seeing him randomly fall out onto the floor, "Uh Naruto?" Iruka said, worrying about the vacant look on Naruto's face as he might have hit his head, "Are you alright?"

Konohamaru hopped off of his stool and tried to help Naruto sit up, "Boss? Are you good?"

"_Do you hear that Goldie-kun? You and Shika can go off and do your little missions for the daimyo. But you'd better keep getting stronger while you're gone, because if you're not and you come back I'll kick both of your asses!"_

The sound of Ino's determined voice going through his head was melodic to Naruto as he had missed hearing her speak in such a way for the last week... especially with the nickname.

A grin came over his face and he stood up to climb back into his seat, a happier look on his whisker-marked face than he had previously been able to boast, "Yeah." He said as Konohamaru got back into his seat as well, "Yeah, I'm fine."

* * *

Omake: Training Day 7

"I can't stand that guy Naruto-oniisama!" Hanabi huffed as she walked home with Naruto from her day at the Academy. She had run into him on the way home and had puppy dog eyed him into taking her back to the Hyuuga Clan Compound, all the way to the main house, and inside so that she could play with him. But she didn't say that much. No, Hanabi was a noble Hyuuga Clan member, and they didn't _play_, "It's like he won't leave me alone! I don't know what that Konohamaru kid's problem is, but ignoring him just makes it all worse!"

Strangely enough, Hanabi's idea of 'playing' was training. And Naruto had been roped into target practice with kunai and shuriken with the little girl. She certainly did seem to have issues with Konohamaru though. He thought he had worked them out of that when he was guest speaking at the Academy. At that time Naruto tried to think about what he could do as far as advice went.

"Naruto." Turning around he saw Neji walking towards him with Hinata none too far behind. Her face was red like usual and she didn't address him first, but Neji did, "I didn't know that you were on the grounds. And with Hanabi-sama as well?" The two shook hands upon getting close enough and Naruto grinned at the amicable greeting from the stoic Branch Hyuuga.

And that was it. The answer he could give Hanabi, "Okay, Little Firecracker. Listen up. The best way to make friends with people that don't like you is to beat their asses first."

Hanabi's eyes widened and Neji palmed his face at the 'advice' being given to the impressionable little girl, who while she was a Hyuuga through and through was still young enough to listen to people that she looked up to; Naruto for some reason being one of those people.

"Oh Naruto-kun…" Hinata said quietly, her face going even redder as she was slightly embarrassed at his 'sagely' advice to her little sister. Hopefully she herself could fix that later.

"Naruto that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Neji said flat out as he didn't care for being subtle when Naruto was poisoning the young mind of the future of his clan. A Hyuuga needed poise, grace, social presence. Not a habit of beating up the people that they didn't like.

"It's not that stupid." Naruto replied, preparing to hold up his fingers for each corresponding example he could dredge up, "I fought Sasuke in Nami no Kuni for a bit and we're kind of cool now, I met Tenten and fought her five minutes later and now we're friends, and you and me kicked each other's asses and now look at us. I'm on your clan's property teaching your little cousin life lessons."

"That's-." Neji was about to dispute Naruto's point and then make some kind of subtle yet scathing jab at his intelligence as was his way, but stopped when he realized that Naruto was 100% absolutely right… for the most part, "The thing about you and I doesn't count though. I'm nicer than I was for another reason… because of what Hiashi-sama gave me after I returned from Tetsu no Kuni."

"-Which happened _after_ I kicked your ass." Naruto finished with a self-satisfied nod before he leaned down to Hanabi's level, "All you have to do is just wait until it winds up in a big fight. But you have to win… because if you lose someone like Konohamaru will never let you forget it." Naruto loved that kid, but sometimes he just wanted to grab Konohamaru and Nebaiken-slam him on his head, "Anyway, after you win don't rub it in. Just be friendly and humble. And then he'll stop being a jerk."

He couldn't explain why it worked the way it seemed to, because it worked a lot. Perhaps because the concussions dealt out caused the other person to think in a different manner than before?

In Hanabi's eyes that plan was brilliant. She eventually got to vent some of her righteous pent up aggression on Konohamaru's face, she got to prove that she was Naruto's legitimate number two to the Sarutobi brat, and afterwards she could come out of it in the positive light by taking the high road thus probably netting her more friends in the future. It was deviously genius in her eight year old mind.

'Naruto-oniisama is a tactical mastermind!' Overcome with excitement towards her new approach in dealing with her primary rival, Hanabi jumped towards Naruto and wrapped her arms around his neck in a big hug, "Naruto-oniisama that's perfect!"

Chuckling and picking Hanabi up off of the ground to return the hug from the very cute little girl, Naruto held up a peace sign towards Neji who was just shaking his head. On the other side though Hanabi opened her eyes only to sweatdrop upon seeing her sister give her a look that stated that she wished it was her in Hanabi's place, "Oh Hinata-oneesama…" She said quietly in a disappointed tone of voice, 'Just tell Naruto-oniisama you like him already so that you can marry him and I can really have him as my big brother!' She screamed in her head.

Yes. Because that would be perfect for her.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Takigakure Shinobi

Fuu

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 25**

Iwagakure Shinobi

Suzumebachi

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 23**

Kurobachi

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 19.5**

Jibachi

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Total Score: 17**

Akatsuki

Deidara

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 32**

Sasori

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 34.5**

* * *

**Sunday night Tim Tebow made me one hundred and fifty bucks during the Broncos-Steelers game. God I love gambling on long shots! It's so awesome! I can see why people get addicted to gambling now… it's fucking ridiculous.**

**Okay, so I go back to college next Tuesday… and I don't care.**

**And neither should you since it doesn't affect any of you in any way, shape, or form. **

**Also; note to the youth of America. DO NOT play Vodka Pong… which is Beer Pong… just with vodka. When your partner sucks and can't make a shot to save his life even though you yourself are shooting lights out (which I was because I've got game honed at going to a party school for two-and-a-half years) you will get absurdly smashed. Just don't do it. There is no possible way that it ends well, even if it sounded like a great idea at first with potential for hilarity.**

**Kenchi out.**


	41. No Turning Back Now

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did then the biju would have had cooler (more original) names than Kurama and Son Goku (maybe not because I'm not good with names). When I told my brother that was what their names were revealed to be he banged his head into the wall one good time… left a mark. But hey, I'm nitpicking over this. I can find way funnier things to write disclaimers on, but just watching the brat bang his head into the wall was good for my heart to see.

**Chapter 41: No Turning Back Now**

* * *

It had been two months since the Team 10 mission to Takigakure and Ino's apparent sudden understanding of just why Naruto and Shikamaru were leaving. She still didn't like it, wishing that she could go with them, but without an invitation extended to do so there wasn't anything she could do so she just gave her not-so-silent support.

She even took Shikamaru's idea to take more missions without the two of them to get her used to the process altogether, and while she wasn't happy about it at first, she came forward with the mindset that they would still be there for her when she returned; be it to gripe at them over the mission's difficulty or lack thereof, her teammates on said mission, or any myriad of things that the blonde girl could find something to fill their ears over.

But on this particular day, Naruto himself could be found using his day of training being stuck in the Konoha Archive Library. With a new rank he was granted higher clearance, and while not particularly interested in reading anything he had hoped that he could find something worthwhile for himself now that he wasn't restricted to the general knowledge crap that everyone genin and lower got.

He had neglected to recall this fact after getting promoted despite having made a few visits to the place since receiving his cool flak jacket to take Shiho to lunch with his team. He had not been there in fact to look for anything in general. There wasn't particularly anything he wanted to know, and his first full library experience while bearing practical fruit was pretty traumatizing in the long run. All Naruto wanted was to see just what his newfound authorization would grant him.

It was just too bad that the library was _so_ crushingly boring.

Chatting with Shiho was cool, and he even managed to drag Shikamaru along for a bit before he decided to split that scene. He didn't seem to mind talking with the girl either, and Naruto couldn't really tell from the way the light hit her glasses, but Shiho seemed to take a lot of sneaking glances at Shikamaru when she figured he wasn't looking.

Either was it was a good place for a nap though… quiet, pretty warm, and the open pages of a book made for a damn good pillow.

THUD!

Naruto's head snapped up off of the table and out of the book he had fallen asleep trying to get through reading. His head swung around trying to locate the source of his awakening only to see someone pretty familiar taking a seat directly across from him at the table, a series of scrolls out in front of him for reading purposes, "Sasuke-teme?"

"Don't drool in the books." Sasuke said grumpily as he sat down and unfurled a scroll to begin reading through, "…Other people have to read those later."

Naruto looked down and saw a small drool trail on the page before shrugging and shutting it. A little drool never hurt anyone, and it would be dry by the time someone else read it. A yawn escaped Naruto's mouth as he slowly rejoined the waking world, "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be training with Sakura and Chouji?" All Sasuke did in response was shake his head without lifting it to look at him, "No? Why?"

"Mitarashi Anko is the most insane woman on the face of the planet." Replied Sasuke cryptically as he continued to read.

Upon hearing that name, Naruto remembered the lady that had been in the forest when Sasuke's seal had broken out of control and they had gone to get him back, "What about her? Did you piss her off or something?"

"I don't have to piss her off." And Sasuke hadn't overtly upset Anko since she had taken it upon herself to train with Sasuke in his free periods of time. She was just inherently sadistic and mean-spirited without the emotional fuel needed, "I just have to be within view."

"It can't be that bad." Naruto found himself the victim of a momentarily Sharingan enhanced glare for his callous comment. Sasuke never really showed that much outward expression about anything so he couldn't really be lying or exaggerating… because Sasuke was never really one for hyperbole in the first place, "Really?"

Sasuke let out a quiet sigh and set his scroll aside to pay more attention to Naruto to get this forward, "She's completely insane. The sparring is like a fight with a wild animal-." Usually because the fights consisted of him fighting snakes of various sizes, "-And the missions always end with me limping back home and her barely having a scratch on her at all." Because the bulk of the missions that Anko ran were assassination or combat missions and Sasuke was her diversion nine times out of ten, "That's why I'm here."

"She told you to come here?" That lady really was cruel, making Sasuke go to the damn library against his will. At least Naruto chose to subject himself to such an excitement crushing experience.

"Not a chance." Sasuke said, raising an eyebrow at the thought of Anko telling him to go to the Konoha Archive Library for anything other than looking up information on some missing-nin that she might have an inkling to go after, or terrain on the operation ground of a mission, "I'm here to stay away from her. She'll never come here looking for me. I can't go to Kakashi and the rest of the team, I can't go home, I can't go… anywhere without her finding me." It took a second for the thought of such to register through Naruto's head, but when it did a grin marred his face that Sasuke didn't exactly find reassuring, "What's your problem dobe? What's funny?"

"Nothing." It was a blatant lie as Naruto had to block his own laughter just to get that much out, "It's just… the way you say it, it's like Anko is the world's most aggressive fangirl." Before he could descend into too much humor over his own witty observation, a kunai nicked his cheek enough to draw a cut from him, much to Sasuke's horror as someone was hovering right over Naruto that he didn't want to see. Naruto blinked before letting out a chakra pulse to feel what was behind him, "That's Anko isn't it?"

"World's most aggressive fangirl am I?"

Naruto turned his head around enough to see Anko giving him a smile that promised nothing good for him, especially if she was willing to cut his cheek in a public place, "I mean; wow Anko-san, you sure do look pretty today." He said, eying the blade that had just been used to cut his cheek. His attempt at flattery had fallen quite flat, "You can't maim me in broad daylight." Anko's smile just grew further and Sasuke just shook his head, forcing Naruto to backtrack his statement, "…You can't maim me in broad daylight in the middle of the library, you'll get blood all over the books and the scrolls."

"Hmm…" This actually seemed to give Anko a moment of pause, "Well you have a point brat. I don't want you to bleed all over things that I might end up reading at one point so you're safe." She said, giving Naruto a pat on the head that got him to sigh in relief before she smirked at him, "But… you've got to leave sometime. And when your foot touches the ground outside your ass is mine, understood?" Before a frightened response could come from Naruto, a clipboard that was winged across the room smacked corner-first off of Anko's forehead and headband, "Ow!"

The Konoha Cryptanalysis Squad Head that had responsibility over the archive library adjusted his glasses on his face after drawing his hand back from the throw he had just nailed Anko with, "Stop threatening people inside the library. And be more quiet damn it."

Anko growled and was grateful that she had the metal plate on her headband or else that would have left a mark. She didn't know that record keepers would have such good aim, "Atsuto… there's no one here except me and the brats. Who am I being quiet for?" She said, glaring daggers at the man that had just hit her.

"Actually, your 'brats' as you called them, they aren't even here anymore."

"Huh?" Anko looked down at where Naruto was sitting to see that he was still there, only with a nervous look on his face now. Sasuke however, sitting in his place was Shiho, who was looking quite confused on just what had happened. She was walking past, vision obscured by multiple scrolls she was checking back in, and then she wound up in that seat. At that point Anko remembered something important about Naruto's particular skill set and glared at him in the chair, "…You're one of those stupid clones aren't you?"

'Naruto' took a moment to think about his response before doing so, "I don't think it matters if I say yes or no, because you're still gonna hit-." His statement was discontinued when Anko's hand passed through his head and knocked him into a puff of smoke. Apparently he didn't think enough.

No satisfaction was gotten out of punishing a clone of the kid as there was no lesson learned there. The lesson being to tread lightly around Mitarashi Anko. She figured that Sasuke had learned by now that running away only made things worse, but apparently not. It was a good challenge for the day though; chasing down two chunin runts to give them their just desserts.

All fired up from the challenge at hand, Anko prepared to leave when she saw the scrolls that Sasuke left on the table in his haste to leave, "Ugh, this could either be really good or really bad…" She said upon seeing that the top open scroll on the table was a record of sanctioned missions under the name Orochimaru.

XxX

"I can't believe I pulled that off so clean." Naruto said, proud of substituting himself with a shadow clone right under Anko's nose without her noticing. It did not meet its demise in vain as he and Sasuke got themselves the hell out of there as quickly as possible, "I'm so awesome." He gloated before glaring at Sasuke as the two of them ran back through the village to put as much distance away from the library as possible, "Did you have to use Shiho-chan for a Kawarimi?"

"You weren't complaining when I did it Mr. Morality. You were running ahead of me." Sasuke replied, cutting the same pace as Naruto as he was well aware that eventually he'd have to pay for skipping out on Anko after she located him once more. He'd deal with that when the time came though. Kami that woman was annoying, "I was there for an actual reason unlike you, just sleeping in the books." Naruto stuck his tongue out at Sasuke in response, "I barely got into what I was looking up on."

"Well what was it?" That was right. Sasuke had actually been there with a real reason in mind. He had been there too, but he hadn't been looking at anything in particular. His new clearance didn't really net him anything cool to look at. That left him pretty much checking out solo training suggestions for certain types of shinobi. Since he was responsible for himself at this point in time he didn't want to be one of those types that withered on the vine after making it to chunin, "I've been all over that place with clones. I haven't found any ninjutsu there to learn."

A scoff came from Sasuke as they continued moving from rooftop to rooftop. He didn't need to scrounge for jutsu like some others did. Not only did he have the Sharingan and the capability to learn most forms of jutsu from looking at them, he had his own clan techniques to study thoroughly, "I wasn't looking for any new jutsu. I was studying what I could on this Orochimaru person. The guy that put this on me." He said, pointing at the seal on his neck, "Anko never really says much about him even though he was her sensei."

"Oh." Naruto said, squinting his eyes as he tried to think. That seal was a nasty piece of work from what he had seen. What was with that foul chakra it produced? It was totally nasty, "Well I was going to go find Ero-sensei right now. You can come if you want to." He offered amicably.

"Why would I want to go with you to find someone called 'Ero-sensei'?"

"Well he was Orochi-whatever's teammate."

Hm, that was interesting enough. Of course. That was an avenue he hadn't tried to explore yet… mostly because he didn't know where to find the other sannin, but Naruto could? There was probably something that could be said about that, but instead Sasuke just decided to follow along and see what he could see. Besides… he'd be safer with Naruto. He was quite certain that if Anko came upon them again he could outrun Naruto if need be.

XxX

(Konoha Hot Springs)

When Sasuke heard Naruto say that he was looking for one of the most powerful ninja that Konoha had gone on record of producing, he did not believe that such a man would be found at the damn hot springs, but Naruto seemed to be treading around the property as if he knew exactly where he was going, and it wasn't inside of any of the springs.

Still, he kept his mouth shut since Naruto seemed to be doing so as well. But he didn't even seem to be looking around or asking for anyone's assistance or anything.

All he did was take them both _past_ a changing room and a conjoining bath area to the brush and shrubs alongside it, pushing his way through to a spot at the side of the fence where he… actually seemed to find the person that he was looking for judging by how he was impatiently standing behind the person peeking through a hole in the fence, "Ero-sensei." Naruto said, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Oh." Jiraiya said, still not taking his view away from the hole in the fence, "Long time no see kid." Technically he still hadn't _seen_ Naruto because he was still getting an eyeful of whatever was behind that fence instead of paying attention to the boy standing behind him, "What's up?"

"You told Gamakichi to tell me to come find you on Tuesday. It's Tuesday, so what did you want?" Naruto sounded a bit agitated because apparently the message had been passed along through his summons had been forgotten by the only other living toad summoner that had left the message in the first place.

"Oh will you chill out and just enjoy the sights with your master since you found me in the first place?" Jiraiya said dismissively, using a hand to wave off Naruto's question, "You really don't want to be in such a rush these days anyway do you? Take things slow, enjoy the days you've got before the you-know-what."

Damn it Jiraiya, you and your negligence of noticing the second presence. Luckily Sasuke didn't notice or care what Jiraiya was talking about as he walked forward to address the man himself, "Are you seriously doing this? You're a legendary ninja. What if someone caught you peeking on girls in the hot springs?"

A shrug from Jiraiya's shoulders was his initial response, "The fact that I like women doesn't make me any less of a badass shinobi kid. In fact… since you probably think I suck you'd more than likely underestimate me in a fight if you didn't already know me. And you'd be dead before you even got the superior look off of your face." He turned his head towards Sasuke with a grin, "A little quirk here or there actually helps you out a bit… and it just so happens that my quirk is my pure, unfiltered love of the ladies."

Sasuke's eye twitched while Naruto palmed his face and spoke, "Ero-sensei… even if you weren't just sitting here trying to rationalize peeking on girls in broad daylight, you're talking to the wrong guy about it anyway. Sasuke doesn't like girls." He then felt low killing intent radiating off of Sasuke, "What? How else can you explain not letting girls like Sakura and Ino-chan date you in the Academy."

"We weren't even 13 then you idiot." Sasuke said with a slightly red face, "Those harpies don't know anything about love or crap like that. They should have been focusing more on being kunoichi than focusing on me. Just because I didn't care about them being stupid doesn't mean I don't like girls." He stated flatly, "I've got more important things to do these days anyway."

Jiraiya just looked between the two boys before shaking his head and returning his attention to the hole in the fence, "Kami kid, you are a total buzzkill." Apparently not enough of a buzzkill to keep him from getting his jollies. He needed to be writing down some of what he was seeing. The star of his next book could be in that water somewhere, "I'm going to do you a favor and let you take a look through this opening. See if it doesn't change your whole worldview."

"No thanks." Sasuke grit out verbally before deciding to get down to business with this apparent legend, "I just want to hear about what you know of Orochimaru. That's all."

Hearing the name of his old wayward teammate, Jiraiya once again looked up from where he was paying attention moments before to take a better look at Sasuke, "Hmm… you're that kid." He said, remembering what he had heard from the Hokage on Orochimaru's underlings marking a young Konoha ninja during one of his missions, "You know… I don't really feel like talking about my bastard ex-best friend and partner and Sarutobi-sensei's favorite asskisser/backstabber at the moment… unless you look through this hole in the wall right now."

Now in the mind of one such as Naruto, the ultimatum wasn't much of one. He'd have already looked through the hole in the wall without even needing to think about it, and he would have blamed it on Jiraiya's influence corrupting him all the while knowing that he would enjoy every sight he got from it. Sasuke had a little thing called personal pride, and the last of a proud clan such as his was not going to be accused of having voyeuristic tendencies.

Still. It was just one quick look through a hole in the wall at a few women.

And to get his questions answered it didn't seem like a difficult request. Just one peek and then he'd grill that white-haired old coot for everything he wanted to know.

As Sasuke walked towards the hole in the wall to acquiesce to Jiraiya's request, the man himself had slipped up to Naruto's side, both crouched down to observe the process, "Hey brat." Jiraiya whispered to Naruto, "You're telling me that this kid never paid attention to a class full of kunoichi all fighting over him?"

"He never talked to a single one of them." Naruto tried to talk to them (i.e. Sakura) and got hit for his troubles. Maybe he should have tried not focusing his pick-up attempts on just one girl? He might have gotten astronomically lucky and gotten an actual date in the past if he had, but he doubted that would have improved his chances any.

Somewhere across the village the only female genin on Team 8 sneezed and gave away her position during tracking and stealth training.

But hearing what Naruto had just said put a huge grin on Jiraiya's face. Someone like Sasuke probably hadn't realized just what was so magical about the female frame at this point in time. The kid was such a loner he probably never had the life-changing experience that most men had of 'accidentally' bearing witness to their first naked woman. He was thirteen and a total wet blanket so it was completely plausible that he had never seen such before.

That meant that this had the potential to be epic in either one of two ways. Either outcome would be satisfactory to Jiraiya as far as entertainment value went.

Gravely unaware of the shock to his system that awaited him, Sasuke reached the hole in the wall and crouched down to get to eye level with it, a single onyx orb peering through to see what lay on the other side. And there he froze. Sasuke's whole face turned red and his eyes widened. Much to Naruto's surprise instead of blacking out, he actually turned his Sharingan on.

Both Naruto and Jiraiya looked at each other, both snickering quietly as Sasuke continued to burn this image inside of his brain for life, "Ah, we did a good deed today brat." And it was something possible lucrative as well, as Jiraiya was already jotting down ideas for a new main character in a future chapter of his novels, 'A prudish bishonen elite gets his first look at the most lovely female forms available to male viewing on the planet and finds himself addicted. Man this crap writes itself!'

Still laughing as blood began to trickle from Sasuke's nose, Naruto suddenly stopped as he felt the cold hand of death touch his spirit, "Whoa. I feel like I just did something to piss somebody off." Who in the world would be mad about something like _this_?

XxX

(Meanwhile – Konoha Hospital)

A bandaged up Sakura sat on an examination table and gnashed her teeth momentarily before looking around in confusion, 'That was weird. I really want to smack Naruto one right across the head for some reason. But I haven't wanted to do that since graduation, he isn't even here, and he really isn't the one I should still want to beat up right now.' She finished her thought and looked next to her at an equally injured Ino who was sitting on the table as well pouting.

"Damn you Forehead…" Ino muttered despondently, really glad that there wasn't a mirror in the room because she didn't want to know what she looked like at the moment, "It was a _spar_. You don't fight like that during a friendly spar. What's wrong with you?" Despite saying such, Ino had absolutely no problems with retaliating in kind which did nothing to deescalate the situation.

"What, you can't handle it?" Sakura taunted back with a somewhat weak smirk, "I thought you were supposed to be a chunin. Doesn't that make you better than me? I had to fight you harder." And they had both nearly killed each other had it not been for Shikamaru and Chouji who were also in the room stopping them. Deep down it hurt their hearts to stop a catfight in progress, but 'The Code' states that explosions mark the end of a catfight and the beginning of a blood war.

"Jealous?"

"I can't be jealous of livestock Ino-pig."

Before the two could butt heads and continue where they had left off from the training field, Shikamaru's shadow bound the two in place to prevent them from fighting.

A sigh of relief came from Chouji who was seated in a chair next to his old friend, silently thanking him as he didn't want to referee another fight between the two rabid kunoichi, especially in a place of tranquility like a hospital.

"Stop fighting damn it." Shikamaru muttered, holding the two girls in place as they continued to glare at each other. This was a total waste of his chakra, playing mediator between the most volatile best friend/worst enemy relationship currently existing in the village.

The door opened to reveal Kabuto walking in with a nervous smile on his face, seemingly uneasy at the fact that he had walked in at such an unstable time, "You two are fine." He said, getting both Ino and Sakura's attention, "Well, other than the injuries of course, but these aren't anything that won't heal by tomorrow if you two can promise me that you won't fight again." The two looked away from Kabuto getting him to laugh without humor, "Ha… well either way, you two can check out."

"Thank you Kabuto-san." Both girls chimed in unison before glaring at one another once again.

Seeming to shrink into himself a bit out of bashfulness at the praise, Kabuto waved his hands and his clipboard in front of himself, "Ah, it's nothing. With Tsunade-sama in Konoha spending a lot of time around the hospital everyone's here is working hard trying to impress her. She says she doesn't take students but no one's really taking that at face value."

"Wow…" Sakura said quietly to herself, "Tsunade-sama's student. But she's only taught one person before right? The Shizune lady that she usually has with her."

Frankly, Ino didn't particularly see what the big deal really was about Tsunade. After getting to experience a big part of her personality in Tetsu no Kuni before and after the chunin exam final rounds she didn't particularly wish to be her student. First of all she wasn't the medic type, second of all she more than likely had just as big a sense of person that Tsunade had and that would lead to way too many clashes of ego that would stress the training dynamic out.

This was clearly visible to Sakura who grabbed Ino's cheek and pulled on it once she heard the blonde girl yawn at the proposition of being trained by a sannin, "You really don't think it would be great to be trained by one of Hokage-sama's three famous students?"

"Goldie-kun's getting trained by Jiraiya and I've been around that guy." Ino replied as she chose not to refer to Jiraiya with any honorifics. In her mind that man didn't deserve any. She was the only one that could corrupt Naruto and get away with it, "If it's anything like that I don't want any part of it thank you very much. Our specialties don't match up anyway. All she can train me in that we actually match up on is using poisons, and I study that on my own."

It was true. While it wasn't that bad, Ino didn't have the best chakra control which one needed to be damn near perfect to be a medic-nin. She did not have the patience to deal with stubborn injuries and this patience was not improved upon during her past year working with the laziest man on the face of the planet and an equally as impatient as her fellow blonde with infinite times more energy.

She also wasn't a fan of blood or of grievous wounds at all. It wouldn't keep her from operating at full ability, but it was never something she could just be comfortable with. This was why nothing she did, even her killing techniques, made any kind of gory or graphic mess. She now almost exclusively used senbon to fight instead of kunai and shuriken at this point for this very reason.

So being trained by a legendary medic-nin would not really be her thing. She wanted to delve further into her clan techniques anyway. They were just starting to get practical as far as direct combat was concerned.

You couldn't train with just anyone anyway. You had to be compatible to what you were learning, which was why many jounin-sensei didn't train their students in their own techniques move-for-move. They were more for guidance and insight on actual real-world shinobi life for young genin than actual handing down of combat techniques.

With a point like that, Sakura took on a slightly dejected look. She didn't know anything about medical ninjutsu and she was more than certain that if Tsunade ever did take a new student she would most definitely avoid having to train one from the ground up. She was a genjutsu-centric kunoichi.

But wait. It was just something she couldn't ignore. It was too useful a skill to have, especially after what had happened to Team 7 in the wilderness.

"Kabuto-san." Sakura asked with shining emerald eyes, "How would someone go about learning medical ninjutsu?" There had to be a scroll or a class or something somewhere. Hell, he was a genin and learned it which was why he worked at the hospital after his team was killed during the chunin exams.

"Well you have to be a chunin to get yourself accepted into the training program." Kabuto replied apologetically, running a hand through his silver hair, "Sorry, my dad is the Captain of the Konoha Medic Corps. He adopted me and taught me everything I know." He then stroked his chin as he tried to think of something, "But I guess maybe since I don't work here that much, and I don't really have an active genin team I could teach you a little bit."

Shikamaru, Ino, Chouji, and Sakura's eyes all widened at the offer. That was… extremely gracious of the elder genin. He hadn't even asked for anything in return. Nothing at all. In some circles this could be seen as suspicious.

Any circle that involves Nara Shikamaru for instance.

"Why?" Shikamaru asked, narrowing his eyes at the purple-clad medic.

For some reason this guy had been latching close to them since the very beginning of the chunin exams. He seemed like a good guy, but it was just kind of weird. It was more than just being friendly. It was to the point where Kabuto was overly helpful and pleasant, more so than any of them were to each other, but like he didn't see them as close enough to banter with; still at the stage of a relationship of trying to keep them liking him. After all of these months he still didn't seem like a friend.

Still, Kabuto's answer seemed pleasant, good-natured, and logical enough, "There can never be enough medics out there in the field." He looked towards the rest of them with a smile at that point, "I can teach you all if you'd like. I'm not doing any chakra control training though. You guys are handling that on your own."

"No thanks." Shikamaru replied, trying to play off his earlier suspicious attitude towards the young man, "I do enough training on my own, and I'm not doing the work to get my chakra control to a needle point… more trouble than it's worth."

"Me either." Chouji quickly declined the offer as well, "Heh, what would I look like fumbling through medic-nin training? That's not for guys like me."

Ino was about to decline as well, seeing no reason to do it since Shikamaru had always been smart enough to keep himself from being hurt even in sure-fire danger situations and Naruto seemed to be able to heal from damn near anything aside from being decapitated. But then she remembered that they were mere weeks away from leaving, and that she'd be working with others from then on out.

Sakura's follow-up taunt was just the thing that drove the stake into the heart of her accepting Kabuto's offer, "Well I'll take you up on it Kabuto-san." She said with a bright smile, "Ino-pig already said she didn't want to learn any medic techniques. I guess she's just scared of getting left in the dust like she did in the Academy."

A tick mark formed on Ino's head as she started staring at Sakura with a twitching eye and a smile that did not bode well for the peace of the room, "Oh really? Who was the top scoring kunoichi and had the best overall grades? Who got promoted before who? And who kicked whose ass today? If you really want me to prove how much better than you I am _again_ then I guess I can do that."

A palm struck Shikamaru's forehead from his own hand as he shook his head. Chouji just lamely lifted up his finger and pointed out at the two kunoichi with dueling glares, "Ino just got goaded into medic training." A nod came from his genius friend, "Why aren't we telling her that right now?"

"Because I don't want to deal with the yelling."

XxX

Jiraiya sat at the edge of a cliff, calmly drinking sake while enjoying the view, Sasuke seated next to him. He took a sip of his alcoholic beverage and sighed contently, "Oh, my manners need some work I guess. Do you want some?" Sasuke just gave him a deadpan stare in response, "Right. Well, what did you want from me again?"

"To tell me about Orochimaru." Sasuke requested. He had followed Jiraiya outside of the village for just this purpose and now it finally looked like the goof was going to tell him seomthing.

"Interested in the guy that tagged you?" Jiraiya said before getting down to the point of Sasuke's presence, "He was a lot like you around that age. A pretty cold guy. His parents were killed too." He noticed a trace of anger appear on the boy's face and nodded as that was what he had expected, "It was back during the good old bad days of constant fighting and I don't think he ever had time to just sit back and deal with it. Even with me and Tsunade there, and Sarutobi-sensei too, he just started drifting further away eventually. Even more than normal."

"He started taking more joy in fighting foreign shinobi and seeing their skills and jutsu. He loved that part of the whole thing. If he had a Sharingan I swear he would have been happier than a pig in-." Jiraiya then stopped and looked at Sasuke before getting back on track, "…Either way, he never just gives anyone anything. That nasty seal on your neck makes you a war machine like you felt, but it corrodes your mind and makes you easier to manipulate. That's Orochimaru's M.O. more or less. He loves the head games." He poked Sasuke on the neck, getting him to recoil a bit, "Nothing from him is free. Trust me, he just wants your eyes to pull a Kakashi… or worse."

'Or worse' because he could have just had his Oto ninja take out Sasuke's eyes instead of just marking his body with that damnable seal. That meant that Sasuke's entire being was of interest to the snake.

"My Sharingan…" Sasuke said, touching at his neck and looking out at the view of Konoha's gates from the cliff they were sitting on. He let out a scoff at the thought of giving anything to someone like that, "He'll have to come and get me himself if he wants to have even a prayer of taking my kekkei genkai, because the clods he sent the first time won't be enough again to beat me. An Uchiha doesn't lose to the same opponent twice, and I know their trick if I have to fight them again."

"You tell him teme…" Both Sasuke and Jiraiya turned towards the cliffside to see a single hand plant itself at the summit, pulling a sweaty, slightly bleeding Naruto up with his other hand tied behind his back. After reaching the top he rolled over onto his back, chest heaving up and down heavily as he stared up at the sky, "There… I climbed your stupid cliff."

Jiraiya poured himself another cup of sake and raised it in recognition of Naruto's achievement, "Good. Now go back down and do it again with your other arm this time." Naruto's head turned robotically towards Jiraiya with a look of astonishment on his face while Jiraiya just proceeded to drink to his leisure, "I don't know why you're staring at me. You're burning your daylight. If you want to climb in the dark that's your thing, but you can't really see that well tonight. New moon and all."

Copious amounts of curses, mostly aimed at Jiraiya, spewed from Naruto's mouth. Still, he picked himself up and started climbing his way back down the cliff to start over on climbing the cliff with his other arm tied behind his back and no usage of chakra allowed.

This training was intense.

Watching Naruto begin his descent back down where he could actually walk back down with his chakra, Sasuke had to admit he liked what he was seeing. It was right up his alley as far as something demanding went, "So how did you train him for this?" Sasuke asked.

"I didn't train him for this at all." Jiraiya admitted with a chuckle, "I just told him I was going to make him do this months ago and put the fear of Kami into him. He did the rest himself. I still don't know how he prepared for it though."

"Do you think you could train me as well?"

The smile dropped from Jiraiya's face as he could see that Sasuke was earnestly asking this of him. Though he tried to hide it, the look on the young chunin's face was one of smoldering hope, "You're good. You're very good. I saw you during the chunin exams and you earned that vest. You just ran out of luck when you went up against a trained jinchuuriki. But I can't train you."

Sasuke's eyes widened before his head sank in disappointment, "Why not?" He asked, hiding his discontent over Jiraiya's answer.

Jiraiya didn't answer at first; instead letting the fading sound of Naruto griping and cursing as he walked down the cliff fill the silence of nature. Eventually he sighed and decided to address the topic, "You probably know me as the Yondaime Hokage's sensei don't you?" Sasuke nodded. That was a very good reason to want Jiraiya as his sensei. The man had a track record of talent, "What if I told you that I barely taught him how to do anything?"

"What? That can't be true."

"I'm being honest here." Jiraiya assured him, "I gave him the signs for Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu). I let him sign the toad contract. I gave him drills and I watched him grow up into a fine young shinobi. But that was it. He never needed my help, he'd have been great even without me." As proud as he was to have a hand in Minato's development, the most Jiraiya ever taught him was a crash course on seals, "Minato was a genius like you, and that was the thing. I'm no genius, and nothing I do is smooth. All of my techniques are hard-nosed power moves. You're a finesse fighter from what I saw. Even your Chidori (One Thousand Birds) is meant to attack a certain, exact place in particular."

A frown crossed Sasuke's face as he more or less broke down what Jiraiya was working his way around to saying, "Our fighting styles aren't compatible."

A sad smile came from Jiraiya as he nodded. The kid really was sharp. He didn't even have to say it, "If I were to train you I'd have to break you down and remake you from the ground up. You don't want that do you?" Sasuke just shook his head. He was an Uchiha, he fought like an Uchiha Clan member. That was his pride and he would never wash his hands of that, "Me and the brat; Naruto, we work even better than me and Minato did." He pointed down the cliff at Naruto who was finally at the bottom, tying himself up to try and climb again, "Minato… if I had tried that with him when he was the kid's age he would have fallen to his death."

"What makes Naruto so special?" Wondered Sasuke aloud. In around a year, Naruto had gone from the laughable dead-last to someone he considered right there on par with him. If Sasuke considered himself number one, Naruto was definitely 1-A. What on earth was the deal?

Jiraiya pointed over the edge to where Naruto had started climbing, "Well… first of all, he just went up and down… and he's about to climb back up here with one arm." Love Naruto or hate him, you had to respect that sheer stamina, "Second of all, he gets my style of fighting even though he's not one for hand-seals so I don't know how many of my own techniques would suit him. He's a grinder, a room-sweeper, a party-crasher. The exact opposite of you if you want to look at it that way."

A grunt of acknowledgment escaped Sasuke as he began to glower at not getting a chance to learn from Jiraiya, even a little bit, "I get it."

Well he didn't just want to leave the kid bitter. Spending so much time with Naruto was softening him up when it came to the brats, "Alright kid. Since you clearly recognize the amazing contributions that the incomparable Jiraiya-sama can provide you in your career I'll throw you a bit of a bone. I'll give you the hand-seals for summon creatures."

"What good will that do?" It wasn't a refusal of the offer, but it was more of a question of what that would do for him. Sasuke was quite certain that Jiraiya wouldn't let him sign the toad contract so what would he be summoning, air?

"This doesn't leave the mountain, do you understand kid." Jiraiya said sternly, getting Sasuke to raise an eyebrow at his sudden change of demeanor before quickly agreeing to do so, "*sigh* If you don't have a contract with any particular animal you'll be immediately sent to the home of the animal that you have a natural affinity for. But it's dangerous. Just because you show up doesn't mean you can establish a contract. More hot-blooded creatures will either deny you and test you or just try to kill you if they don't want you there at all."

And that was why Sasuke could see how showing him summoning was potentially dangerous. There was something about that he liked. Another way to prove himself, another way to get stronger. He turned his Sharingan on and Jiraiya quickly went through the seals, but Sasuke saw them all and had them committed to memory with just one showing.

Feeling like he had done his good deed for the day, Jiraiya felt that had freed him up for some debauchery. He stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff as he fished a frog wallet out of his vest, "Hey kid, I swiped your wallet! This is boring so if you don't finish up within thirty minutes I think I'll go back to town and find Tsunade-hime! Maybe I'll treat her to a few stiff drinks on your dime!"

That little distraction almost loosened Naruto's grip on the cliff wall enough for him to plummet a few hundred feet to his death but he reestablished it and kept himself climbing, now with a vengeance, "Oi! I need that! I don't have a bank account!"

"I'll invest your hard-earned money into the stock of earning Tsunade-hime's eternal love with booze!"

"When I get up there I'll kill you!"

"You'd better cut your other arm free first brat!"

And after watching that back and forth banter and the treatment of master to pupil, Sasuke kind of figured that he'd be better off sanity-wise not being trained by someone as overtly eccentric as Jiraiya.

XxX

(Sometime Later – Undisclosed Location)

A rather large squad of Otogakure shinobi were moving through the woods on their way towards Degarashi Port. The ships were up and moving in and out like clockwork and Orochimaru's planned joint operation with the current Mizukage was beginning to take shape as their force kept building up in Mizu no Kuni's outlying islands.

If things went well he would have bases in Mizu no Kuni, he would have his pick of domestic bloodlines to pick and choose to study, and he would possibly have a potential ally to get into his ear. Orochimaru required an ally due to the fact that he had his eyes on turning that village to a smoking crater in the ground.

At the head of the travelling team was Kimimaro. While the Sound Four would remain running Orochimaru's own missions he would be heading towards his birthplace to run things there. Failure would not be an issue as long as he was there.

Suddenly the entire squad came to a halt while Kimimaro continued to jump from branch to branch. He quickly realized that he wasn't being followed any longer and turned around to find his team no longer there. It was strange because he had only taken two more hops prior to turning around.

Without saying a word, Kimimaro pulled a dagger made of bone right from his body and stabbed himself in the shoulder without pause. The scope of the genjutsu shattered to find that the lot of Otogakure shinobi with him happened to now be unconscious and littering the forest floor, strewn about.

"I've come for you to send a message to your master."

Standing directly behind Kimimaro was a taller figure wearing a concealing black cloak with red clouds and a straw hat. Before the figure could even finish his statement, bones jutted out of Kimimaro's body like spikes and impaled the person that then burst into a flock of crows.

Amidst the crows, Kimimaro immediately dropped down to the ground from his branch and landed on the ground, holding his dagger and ignoring his shallow self-inflicted wound with almost robotic concentration. He would need every bit of it for someone as skilled as this. Kimimaro couldn't objectively judge how long he had been in the genjutsu, but it was long enough for whoever was there to defeat the entire squad and not long enough for them to finish the job against him.

"A message to my master?" He said, settling himself in a gracefully refined taijutsu stance in preparation to defend from any direction, "Well please, tell me of this message. I'll make sure Orochimaru-sama receives it after I report to him on your death… whoever you may be."

"How foolishly arrogant to believe you can simply kill me." A voice spoke again, seeming to reverberate in Kimimaro's head. A nice little parlor trick, but he had dealt with far more attempts at intimidation in the past. This couldn't even cause him to blink, "The only reason you still live is by the virtue of my mercy."

Still, Kimimaro did not move an inch, his body coiled to spring to assault at the first given opportunity, "From your attire you are clearly Akatsuki, one of Orochimaru-sama's sworn enemies. What you have to say means nothing to me, and less to him. The only thing that has any meaning here is your death." With something of a sixth sense, Kimimaro turned in the direction of where he felt the enemy and aimed his hand and fingers straight out, "Teshi Sendan (Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets)!"

From his fingertips, ten hard bones were shot out, spinning as they hurtled through the air. The shots missed the enemy, but drilled right into the tree that they hit afterwards.

Bearing witness to the target of his attack darting around the forest faster than Kimimaro knew he could reasonably keep up with, black marks spread across his body from the strange tattoo on his collarbone, "I see I will have to take you seriously. As far as trash goes you are admittedly something special to force me to this point."

Having had enough of the whole song and dance, the cloaked figure appeared a ways away in front of Kimimaro, standing there nonplussed at his first stage Cursed Seal appearance, "I'll repeat myself." The person said, reaching for their straw hat to take it off of their head, "I have a message for your master… from Uchiha Itachi."

This only made Kimimaro's anger spike higher. Orochimaru often cursed the name of the man that took his right hand in battle years ago. How dare Itachi choose to refuse allowing his body to play host to Orochimaru's soul.

Still, Itachi ignored the younger man and continued to speak, "Tell him that I hold no lingering feelings towards his previous attempt to take my body. I acquired my pound of flesh in return in the end. But, I have heard of him taking something of an interest in my younger brother." At that point, Itachi's Sharingan eyes morphed into a strange, foreign pattern, "If he is foolish enough to continue down this avenue I'll teach him more about the power of the Sharingan than he would have ever wished to know. I still need something from Sasuke that overrides Orochimaru's revolting ambition."

In a flash, Itachi was not only gone… Kimimaro was not on the ground.

He was still standing on the tree branch he had stopped on, just short of burying his bone dagger into his body as he had figured he had done previously to break the genjutsu, 'Uchiha Itachi…' Kimimaro thought to himself, 'He didn't kill a single one of these shinobi.' He took note of as he observed his defeated force closely, 'What a frighteningly powerful man. If this is an example of his abilities then I must get stronger for the sake of Orochimaru-sama.'

This trip to Mizu no Kuni would serve as his method of growing in strength. To destroy his beloved master's enemies… to crush any threat intending to cause that great man harm… Kimimaro would gain enough strength to bring down the five kage themselves.

XxX

(Later that Week – Konohagakure no Sato – Team 10 Training Ground)

Well this was it. Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn Naruto and Shikamaru would be departing for the capital of Hi no Kuni. He hadn't been so nervous since the night before team assignments.

He sat underneath the large tree in the middle of the mostly open field that comprised the area with a water balloon in his hand that Jiraiya had told him to pop by using his chakra to spin the water in it. Apparently the process of getting him prepared to climb that cliff one-handed was to ensure that he had the strength of will and focus to make learning the forthcoming jutsu easier.

Still, it was too hard to focus on learning a step toward piecing together a jutsu during a time like this. For all intents and purposes he was moving out of Konoha for a few years, and that was a big deal. He supposed he could just see it like one really long missions since that was in essence what it just so happened to be, but that would have seemed a little impersonal.

There he went again, overthinking things. Feeling that way about the way things would work out tomorrow and onward wouldn't change anything, and he wouldn't just wake up the next morning to realize that the entire job acceptance was a dream of some sort.

With a sigh he reached for his vest pocket and grabbed a cigarette that was then placed into his mouth and lit. He was going to miss that thing, and his headband too. He couldn't wear anything in the field during his mission with the daimyo connecting him with Konoha so no flak jacket or village identifying plate. Naruto spared a glance at the water balloon in his other hand and then at the spent cigarette butts lining the ground under where he was sitting. How long had he been there again?

"Man… if Kurenai saw this I'd never hear the end of it about me being a bad influence and all of that."

"Hey Asuma-sensei." Naruto said in a reserved manner, not even turning to face the man that was standing and leaning against the side of the tree he was sitting underneath.

"Damn." The bearded jounin replied in a seemingly disappointed manner, "I was expecting to scare the hell out of you at least one more time before you go off on your great adventure of a lifetime. There's got to be something renting out space in that empty head of yours if I couldn't get a jolt out of you."

Naruto spared Asuma a glance and smiled slightly, "Adventure of a lifetime? There's no way this could be any worse than some of the stuff I've done already." He was just a daimyo's guard ninja… and apparently there would be at least two more just like him, not even counting Shikamaru. How off the wall could it be? And then Asuma started laughing.

"Oh, that's the best joke I've heard in a while." The older man said, finding it prudent at the moment to ruffle Naruto's hair even if he knew the boy hated being treated like he was short, "Kid, working for the daimyo… do you know what that includes?"

"Um, protecting him?"

"Yeah." Asuma nodded, still grinning widely, "Protecting him… and his family… and his family's close acquaintances… and anyone that provides a decently important service to the daimyo." It was clear that it wasn't lost on Naruto just how many people that could potentially be, "Not to mention that the protection of the daimyo also means protecting the daimyo's affairs as well. So you're going to be running missions of great importance for him, and failing could lead to strained international tensions to say the least."

What?

Now a few thirteen year olds would think that it was pretty cool that this many lives would directly depend on them, and that they would be guaranteed to be doing so many important jobs. But then again, Naruto could now see why it was invite only, and why that Kotoko girl said something about them needing to push their numbers back up to twelve.

Because with job expectations like that it was kind of easy to see there being a lack of an adequate work force willing to venture that way and work for the man. The daimyo wasn't really loyalty-inspiring to hidden village shinobi, and dying for something trivial for him clearly didn't suit most ninja.

How did the daimyo become daimyo in the first place? Probably because the original was a person rich and influential enough to fund the hidden villages comprised of all of the clans he regularly hired for work, so they put control of the countryside into his hands while they maintained a standing military in the villages.

Why was he thinking about that when he barely knew what he was talking about?

Damn Shiho.

"So more or less-." Asuma continued, stroking his beard in an astute manner as a man of experience, "-You've just signed up for a nonstop series of B-to-S-rank missions until your contract runs out." Hey, times weren't as tumultuous these days as they were back when he himself worked for the daimyo, so maybe things would be slow?

Then again every older person figured that their time was harder than the time the future generation was coming up in.

Naruto had just been sitting there for the last several moments, just taking in what he had been told. It had been so long that his cigarette in his mouth had burned down almost all the way to his lips without him ever even taking a decent puff.

Ever the helpful sensei, Asuma yanked the shortening stick out of Naruto's mouth before his lack of attention ended up giving him the lovely taste of ash on his tongue.

That seemed to be enough to snap the young blonde out of his own thoughts that continued to pile on one after another. Naruto jumped up from where he had been sitting on the ground and swung a kick at the sturdy tree that held up with not even a quiver. Asuma raised an eyebrow at the sporadic behavior.

"Fine! Give me all the B-rank, A-rank, S-rank-! Hell I'll take a fucking Z-rank mission and I'll still come back, not a scratch on me!" Naruto shouted with supreme authority and confidence, "And I dare those useless Akatsuki guys to try and take the Kyuubi out of me!" He tightened his grip and popped the water balloon in his hand purely by squeezing it, getting him to blanch in embarrassment, "Oops."

Instead of finding Naruto's behavior curious, by now Asuma was more than accustomed to his eccentric method of choosing to address his problems and concerns and merely grinned, extending his hand in the process, "When you get back I want to fight you."

The stunned look on Naruto's face was just what he had been going for when he said that, "You want to fight me?" Naruto asked in a bit of amazement.

Asuma nodded and followed up on his statement, "I've never been able to say that I've wanted to fight anyone. Almost a year ago you were as soft as a wad of cookie dough. Well now you proved you can be a chunin, and in a few years I'll bet you, Shikamaru, and Ino will be as tough as diamonds. So when you and lazy-ass come back I want to fight you. All of you. For old times' sake."

Since Team 10 wasn't his team anymore he couldn't give them routine asskickings. He kind of missed it.

However, on the other hand Naruto seemed quite inspired by hearing that Asuma wished to eventually fight him and test his skills after he returned. And he'd be ready for that, for Akatsuki, and for anything else that his life as a ninja seemed suitable to throw at him next.

And he didn't think twice as he eagerly extended his own hand to Asuma's in a thorough and hearty shake.

XxX

(The Next Morning)

The streets of the village were quiet and empty as it was still extremely dark outside. The only real sounds over the fading sounds of the nighttime insects that could be heard were a pair of shuffling footsteps on the road towards one of Konoha's gates.

"It's too early for this crap. I'd have a clone carry me, but my clone would just complain and it would just end up being a waste of chakra. It's so troublesome."

"Shika are you going to bitch all the way to the capital? No, nevermind, that's not the question. Are you going to bitch for the next three years?"

"Yes. Yes I am. Someone has to, and since Ino's not coming I guess I'm the one that'll do it."

"…You bitch more than Ino-chan ever did anyway."

Their stride was stopped by a rather loud clearing of one's throat, attracting Naruto and Shikamaru's attention to a tree sitting behind a picket fence with Ino sitting in the branches and leaning against the tree trunk as she looked down at them both, glaring at Shikamaru, "…Shika, did you just call me a bitch?"

Instead of saying yes or no, Shikamaru froze in place much like a deer with a light shone on it until he came up with an appropriate response, "You see, the fact that I had to hesitate to think of an answer that wouldn't make you want to jump down here and give me a goodbye beating should answer the question right there."

Contrary to what would be expected of Ino, she did not jump down and begin assaulting Shikamaru for more or less admitting to her face that he called her a bitch. She simply kept an even looking expression on her face and made a sucking noise with her teeth, "I'm just going to save that. And I'll get you when you come back." She stood up and jumped down from her place in the tree to give Shikamaru a hug, "I'll miss you, you jerk. Shiho would have come to say goodbye too, but with her shifts she barely gets enough sleep as it is."

It was a hug that Shikamaru easily returned. Even if he found her troublesome more often than he would have liked to, she was still one of his closest friends, "Yeah, yeah. She's a nice girl. Way less trouble than you. Tell her I said I'll see her around. Just don't cry on me alright?"

Ino pulled away and thumped him on the shoulder with a smirk on her face, "You think I'll _cry_ over you leaving? Ha, don't flatter yourself Shika. But if you go and get yourself killed to make me cry, I'll never forgive you."

Rolling his eyes, Shikamaru couldn't help but smile a little bit, "I won't. Even if I died you'd probably still find a way to gripe at me beyond the grave."

With that being said, Ino turned to Naruto and extended her hand expectantly, getting him to raise his eyebrow in confusion until she spoke up, "Your apartment. Come on, who else is going to watch it and keep it looking halfway decent until you stumble back into town?"

"Oh! Yeah, sure." Naruto said, reaching into his pocket and dropping his key into her hand. In response, Ino gave him a beaming smile and a hug as well that he happily received. If he wasn't going to see her for a long time he was going to make it count. She was the girl or woman that was the closest to him in his life by an extremely considerable margin.

And much like him, Ino did as well with her arms wrapped around Naruto's neck to keep him close in the embrace, "The same goes for you too hero. Don't go and do something stupid like die on me. I'm sure you're smart enough to know how I'd take that one." She said quietly from her proximity to his ear with a sly smile on her face, "I want you back here soon."

"Yeah I know you'd take it badly." Naruto said, taking his time and rubbing her back gently, "Me and Shika are your friends, of course you would. We'll be back for sure. I promise."

'*sigh* Swing and a miss…' Ino thought to herself. Maybe he still _wasn't _sharp enough to figure what she was talking about with her last statement. Oh, well at least he was cute. And he had three years to get the picture. She'd have to make sure she developed into a knockout to take him off of his feet so that he couldn't miss her signals no matter how subtle she tried to be about it, "You'd better you gold-tinted bastard."

"Oi." Naruto said, feigning offense at Ino's comment, "I'm half of a bastard. I know who my mother is thank you very much." He really didn't want to let go though. He could have stood there holding on to Ino until the sun came up if he were to be honest about it, and he was pretty sure she wouldn't have minded in the least either. Ino was just like that. He liked it.

Much to Naruto's disappointment he eventually had to end the hug once Shikamaru played moment killer and spoke up, "Hey. If this is going to keep going on I'll just go home and go back to bed. Come get me and wake me up when you two get enough of each other."

Both of the blondes could have punched Shikamaru for that reason and he realized it when they let go of each other to shoot a glare at him. He had to take a few steps back to make sure they didn't attack him.

Ugh, Kami help him if those two actually got through the brick wall of both Ino's own desire to get boys to fall for her as opposed to the alternative, Naruto's own density when it came to other people's more discreet feelings towards him, and they got together.

He was not going to be the uncle to perhaps the most troublesome child ever conceived. Taking the most stressful personality traits in the village thrown together to make one single, solitary child? Oh goodness. No way in hell was there going to be any Shikamaru-oji to Naruto and Ino's offspring.

"Fine." Naruto growled out, jerking his head towards the path that led out of town, "We should get going anyway… it should take a day or two to get there." He said, shifting his backpack on his back and stomping off down the road.

Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck, knowing that this was going to come back to bite him in the ass sooner rather than later. It was a long trip to the daimyo's court and Naruto didn't need much time to formulate a scheme for horrific revenge pranking. No amount of strategic planning could keep him safe 24/7.

As the two of them walked away, Ino just waved goodbye and stood there until they were out of sight. Once they were gone her gaze softened fondly and she kicked at the dirt on the ground before turning towards the tree behind the picket fence she had made herself known from, "Why didn't you come out and say anything? He would have loved to say goodbye to you even if you didn't say a word. You didn't even have to say that you liked him."

No answer.

Ino's eye twitched and she jumped up onto the fence to look down at the base of the tree, hopping down to the ground to speak to the pale-eyed person that had been leaning with her back against the tree just as long as she had been there, "You came all the way out here so early in the morning to _not_ say goodbye to him? Come on Hinata."

At first Hinata didn't say anything, just choosing to remain leaning against the tree, inwardly cursing the fact that she couldn't get over how embarrassing it would be to try and deliver some kind of significant goodbye to Naruto's face the way she had played out repeatedly in her own head. Ino didn't have any trouble doing so at all. That was just the kind of confidence that she had.

"You won't win." Hinata's naturally quiet voice was heard as clear as day in the quiet of the still dark Konoha early morning. Ino's eyes widened at the declaration, but then again she had expected as much from someone that had a long-standing crush on Naruto, "When he comes back… when Naruto-kun returns, I'll be strong enough to tell him how I feel. I'll be the kind of person that can get him to look my way and walk with him. He isn't going to be yours."

It was very surprising to hear the conviction in Hinata's voice. And damn it she could relate because even though they were on the same team Ino often felt like she was always a step or two behind. Hinata had never spoken that way before, but with the way that Ino almost put herself forward while bidding the maverick jinchuuriki farewell it probably grated on the Hyuuga Clan kunoichi in a major way. She had not been going for that at all. That was admittedly her mistake.

But still…

"Well you'd better get some self-confidence by the time he does." Ino responded, hands on her hips with a tough look on her face, "Because the only way anyone's getting through to that thickheaded lug is by being as direct as you can possibly stomach. And I'll tell you a little secret." She then leaned forward towards Hinata closer as the girl did the same and narrowed her eyes at the escalating challenge before whispering next, "He already belongs to me. So try and take him if you want, I want to earn him the right way anyway."

Hinata didn't say anything outside of a small 'hm' noise as the two stared each other down intensely before choosing to go their own separate ways home.

A few hours after this encounter, the sun would hit Ino's face and officially wake her up. At that point she would curse loudly in the middle of opening the door of her clan's flower shop to customers for the day. This prompted Inoichi to rush into the storefront from the back of the storage room and ask her what was wrong. The answer was simple of course.

She had inadvertently created another rival out of a friend for a boy all over again.

…Damn it.

* * *

Omake: Training Day 8

(Two Months Ago – Naruto's Apartment)

While not really the most suitable place for a meeting of this size, Naruto's apartment was still the only place that was secure enough for what was proposed to go on when it came to the events of this particular day.

The male representatives of the (former) genin squads of Team Kakashi, Team Asuma, Team Kurenai, and Team Gai were in attendance for this particular happening… even Sasuke, who while not pleased to be there still made it a point to show up regardless.

After finding out the necessary reason for his requested presence however, he deemed the entire endeavor to be stupid and a total waste of time as far as he was concerned.

"Are you serious?" Sasuke said, arms crossed over his chest as he stood against a wall, far away from where all of the other seven young men were sitting on the floor in a traditional negotiation setup, "You called me here for this? I could be doing something useful right now instead of this dumbass crap."

"Just sit down already." Naruto exclaimed, sick of Sasuke's attitude if this was how he was going to treat the entire thing, "The faster you get with the program and help us finish, the faster you can go home and do… whatever you were doing when my clone came to get you." Even Neji was playing ball so to speak, so what was Sasuke's problem?

A scowl crossed the young raven-haired Uchiha chunin's face at the suggestion, "This is so stupid."

"It serves a purpose to all of us Uchiha-san." Neji said coolly, seemingly the main negotiator of the terms before them all due to his level-headed attitude and arbitration skills. Getting back to business he cleared his throat and returned attention to the list of things in front of them all, "Now due to the fact that we all seem to interact more personally than we do with most other shinobi in the village it has been established that a code of mutually agreed upon terms would be best for future dealings."

A unanimous nod came from Shikamaru, Shino, Chouji, but only a blank look came from Naruto, Lee, and Kiba. Shino let out a sigh and decided to simplify things, "What Neji-san is saying is that this is being done to keep things civil between us and establish a stronger bond."

"I knew that!" Naruto spouted with some red lining his cheeks, "…I didn't want those two to feel dumb though." He finished, taking a swat on the back of the head from Kiba at the insult, getting the two to almost come to blows were it not for their respective teammates physically holding the two hotheads apart.

Once civility reigned once more over the imposed meeting, main speaker Neji proceeded to give them all the rundown of the terms established between the lot of them thus far, "We will now go over a few of the more disputed terms of the pact."

Receiving the papers from Neji, Shino read first, "Number one: Clan jokes and comments will be kept to a wide generalization, they will not be personally aimed at any one person of a clan or family in particular not a part of this agreement. No innocents. An example would be; no commenting on the physically attractive traits of another's mother, sister, etc. This includes running past one's clan property and asking a member of the agreement's sister if she is 'ready to go on that date next week.' Even as a joke." Kiba glared heatedly at sheepishly grinning Naruto as this point was made, "Comments on the general traits of a clan will be kept good-natured taunts at worst unless there is ample provocation for more tepid remarks."

Finding something else about that topic to speak on, Kiba raised his hand, "Does your team sensei count?"

"No." Everyone said unanimously as Akamaru barked in kind. The jounin that had taught them were still fair game for personal taunts and other comments… as were the rest of them directly.

"Just wonderin'."

The papers were passed on to Shikamaru who began to read next, "In the case of a fight between two kunoichi of separate teams, a scale will be used to determine the need for intervention between those that are a part of this agreement. In the instance of small weapons being drawn we must move closer and be prepared to intervene. In the instance of actual ninjutsu with potentially lethal consequences intervention must be immediate with each male teammate on any given team responsible for restraining their respective kunoichi teammate. Anything less than these stipulations and the scuffle will be allowed to go on uninterrupted to deescalate naturally."

Both Naruto and Kiba exchanged a heartily agreed upon handshake in regards to this rule, more enthusiastic towards it than any other of those present who had agreed to the rule for their own reasons.

Shikamaru handed the papers back to Neji who quickly began to read the next thing out that held great importance to him and no one else really, "In the instance of future combat against one of the members that possess a doujutsu kekkei genkai, Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) is outlawed." He rattled off seamlessly before passing the page to Shino quickly while Naruto wasn't paying attention, still all jazzed up with Kiba over the catfight law.

Sasuke nodded unnoticeably in silent agreement to the decree or for whatever reason he chose to do so. Despite this though, he still didn't join the assembly directly.

"Let's wrap this up already." Complained Shikamaru. They'd been sitting there writing that thing out and arguing for hours to get what they wanted on the form. How Neji managed to slip in the little addendum about Naruto's sonar jutsu he didn't know, but that wasn't really important… to him, "My head hurts from putting this troublesome thing together. We all know what's on it so let's just sign it and get on with it."

He was not going to sit there while they went through fifty plus rules that ranged from astute and fully reasonable to asinine vanity requests. Either way, they were more like guidelines instead of actual rules… like Konoha's list of shinobi rules. Nobody followed those things all the way through; they picked and chose what they liked out of it.

Agreeing with his oldest friend, Chouji nodded just in time with his stomach growling, "Yeah, let's get out of here and get something to eat already. I'm hungry and Naruto's cup ramen sucks!" In Chouji's opinion he definitely needed more refreshments in his house.

Naruto of course took immediate offense to this, especially since twelve empty containers of his 'sucky' cup ramen sat around Chouji on the floor.

"You weren't saying that when you were sucking all of my food down like air were you, you f-!" Naruto's mouth was swiftly covered before he could get out the rest of the potentially harmful (emotionally for Chouji, physically for him) comment on the boy's weight, "Just sign the damn contract and get out of my house." Naruto said in a muffled voice from behind restrictive hands.

Not needing to be asked again, all of them took out a pen and started signing their signatures one after another.

When it was finally his turn to do so, Shino skimmed through the pages of the contract before raising an eyebrow at one of the addendums which he brought to the attention of those it mattered to. Looking at Naruto, Kiba, and Lee who had already signed the agreement, he spoke, "I have to wonder if you three all read this particular part. It says-."

Lee cut Shino off with flames in his eyes, "A youthful pact between comrades! Everyone should be aware of such a magnificent showing of unity between fellow Konoha ninja! I will not rest until I have memorized each one of these laws! I will do so by the end of the day or I will do 500 one-handed pushups! Where is Gai-sensei? He needs to know of this!"

As the green-clad taijutsu specialist sprinted out of Naruto's house, almost ripping the front door from its bolts in the process, everyone just stared after him until Neji broke the unilateral silence, "Lee just broke one of the rules. I'll rebuke him later." Lee would also be doing 500 pushups… because he didn't even wait for copies of the rules to be made before leaving.

With a nod, Shino was about to read the rule in question as he adjusted his sunglasses like reading glasses, "What does this rule state? I'll tell you. It says-."

"Shino." Naruto said in a deadpan voice, cutting him off, "I don't care. What are the chances that I'm actually going to break anything on this list?" A fine showing that he hadn't been paying much attention to any of the rules other than the ones that were cool to him or that he had a direct hand in making, "I'll read it later."

"Naruto-san you already signed it."

"I'll. Read it. Later."

The two engaged in something of a stare off before Shino signed the papers, never breaking eye contact from the blonde, at least as far as Naruto could tell. If his head didn't move Naruto couldn't tell he was looking down from behind his sunglasses.

At this point, Sasuke's curiosity won out and he made his way over, subtly activating his Sharingan to scan over the contract and its rules where he noticed what Shino had been referring to when it came to the what some of the others didn't read and what Rock Lee had violated within seconds of signing his consent to the rules.

"_When indoors, indoor voices _must_ be used. Yelling is legally allowed to be reprimanded with a strike to the head and the recipient is not allowed to retaliate. Also when outdoors if your voice can be heard further away than half a mile and someone _isn't_ about to die or you are not in horrendous pain the same punishment applies."_

Immediately, without being prompted, Sasuke picked up a pen and signed his own name before walking out of Naruto's apartment with his hands in his pockets. That was his kind of rule.

* * *

**Ugh… so tired. The up and down the highway travel mixed with the absurd amount of physical training for another upcoming fight is a monster. Good thing I only have classes on three of five days next week. Maybe then I can get some sleep in the morning before I start killing myself at night all over again.**

**Once again I'm rambling. You don't care, and no one reads this part anyway. This is how everyone knows that I've run out of halfway interesting things to type and that they can go ahead and hit the little x at the top of the screen to find something that's actually fascinating to do.**

**But Sunday is a day of rest. My day of rest. And rest I shall.**

**My mind is spent, my muscles are tired, my body is broken… lead me to my throne. Because I am the king. The king of something.**

**I don't know.**

**Later. Kenchi out.**


	42. Don't Start What You Can't Finish

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'm going to use my amateur stuntman skills to jump ten buses on my dirtbike to raise money for purchasing the rights to Naruto. Yep. I'm being sponsored by an AM radio station that took an interest and everything. I'm gonna get the guy in my crew who builds ramps, Rico, to do the best job he's ever done on this one.

Then I'm going to give the money right to Kishimoto and challenge him to a fight, and he will finally respect me as a man.

Wait. I don't own a dirtbike… and I don't know a guy named Rico (yet).

…And that's most of the plot to the movie Hot Rod.

Funky fresh.

**Chapter 42: Don't Start What You Can't Finish**

* * *

Naruto and Shikamaru worked their way south across the Hi no Kuni countryside with little problems, excluding the 'short' episode they had in the hills with those monkeys that raided their packs and took their storage scrolls with clothes and equipment. That slowed them down by at least half a day.

Stupid monkeys.

The minor occurrence with the primates aside, they made it to their destination with no actual trouble to comment on.

And their arrival to the capital itself… well once the city came into sight Naruto's jaw stayed slacked for fifteen minutes while they walked the rest of the way there until a gnat flew into the back of his throat.

It was amazing. At first there were homes outlying around the crux of the city itself with the regular civilians. Nothing major, just quaint little homes to stay at for the working folk; the backbone of the entire community. Smiling, happy people, and a marketplace where travelling merchants from all over would peddle their wares to the citizens there before heading into the city itself to make the big money.

Both Naruto and Shikamaru took their time walking through this portion of the city as it felt warm, a good atmosphere. It more or less felt like their kind of place.

But when they entered the city itself they started to be a little awe-stricken at the sheer size of the place. It seemed like everywhere they turned they were surrounded by buildings that made the height of the Hokage Tower look absolutely puny in compare. As the two Konoha born and bred boys looked around they felt like ants shuffling along through the neatly paved streets filled with people around the titanic buildings and very ornately constructed buildings.

Yeah, this was definitely the capital. As if there would possibly be anywhere else in the country that looked like this.

Eventually after seemingly forever, the two made it to a large amount of open ground filled with trees, even though the path they walked on seemed to become more well kept and eventually instead of just pavement the road was cobbled.

"How big is this place?" Naruto asked out loud after almost a full hour of being dead silent as they got through gaping at the city, choosing to move along to their future place of employment with little words spoken between them.

"The city or the daimyo's palace?" Shikamaru replied before smirking, "Because I don't know the answer to either yet Naruto. I've never been here before, just like you." He spared a bit of a chuckle at the pout on Naruto's face at that crack. The first thing either of them had said to one another in that long and Shikamaru had to get in the first good snide comment of the two of them.

"Well… the palace now actually." Naruto admitted, rubbing the back of his neck in a bit of exasperation, "I mean, we left the city a while ago. Do you think we should start tree hopping again?" A frown came to Naruto's face as he actually started thinking of the question he had just tried to ask.

That might not have been the best course of action for heading towards the palace of the most influential man in Hi no Kuni. Moving through the woods would have been suspicious. It would be obvious that the daimyo would have some sort of standing force as a guard aside from the Ninja Guardians and two shinobi moving through the branches would not go over very well if either of them were to hazard a guess on the matter.

Eventually after much walking and complaining from Naruto about how he just knew this place wouldn't have ramen, the pair came upon a beautiful manmade stream that arched from the sides of the road to run alongside it, with much gorgeous foliage to be seen alongside it.

A great gate marking the entrance to the massive guard wall around the palace grounds stood in front of them the size of one of the ones in Konoha with the symbol for Hi no Kuni on the front of it.

And they simply stood there aimlessly for minutes, "Knock." Naruto said to Shikamaru, gesturing him forward.

"You knock. I'm not touching that gate. You know how nobles are about people touching _anything_ that doesn't belong to you. It's troublesome business."

"No, I don't know. But you do. And that's why you should be the one to knock."

"Why don't we just wait for someone to open it up?"

That little bit of banter got Naruto to raise an eyebrow at Shikamaru. That wasn't really the smartest thing he'd ever heard his best friend say and he jumped all over it. You had to take the small victories when your friend was a genius, "Who's gonna open this thing? No one comes here regularly. I don't think anyone's touched this thing in three days at least, and I don't feel like standing out here looking stupid until the next time some aide has to go run errands. Now knock on the gate or I'll throw you at it."

Did Naruto just more or less call him out? Shikamaru raised an eyebrow as well at the statement as he looked at Naruto out of the corner of his eye, "Can you grab me before my shadow grabs you?" Both of them seemed to be more or less at a standoff, glancing at each other within arm's reach until Naruto's arm suddenly lunged out only to stop cold halfway there, "Nope."

Naruto didn't have to look down to know that Shikamaru had already caught him, "Okay, new goal. I'm getting fast enough to grab you before your shadow can stop me." Being able to grab and throw Shikamaru at will would be cool with him.

"Finish learning Rasengan first." Shikamaru said calmly, not taking Naruto's threat for the future seriously because even if he did get that fast, he'd still have to finish throwing him before his shadow locked onto him, "Then you can start talking about stupid ideas that you aren't going to make work." Besides, it wasn't like he wouldn't be training either.

Muttering to himself as Shikamaru let go, Naruto adjusted his clothes and marched forward determinedly before taking a deep breath as he turned around and back-kicked the gate, forcing a loud bang that was more audible than either of them had expected.

Naruto jumped back to Shikamaru's side in alarm as the two wondered just what the hell that could have been that magnified the sound of Naruto's kicks, but before they could start speculating the gates began to separate and pull open right in front of them.

What awaited them on the inside seemed like a village of its own, with fine traditional architecture and beautiful sights of both nature and manmade construction seeming to go hand in hand.

Of course, in order to get a better view of that they had to be able to look past the multitude of uniformed men with a multitude of weapons from clubs to well-forged spears, and even a broadsword or two. The uniforms were black pants, black sandals with greaves, and green and tan tunics with red flecks of flames throughout the outfit.

Both Naruto and Shikamaru shared a glance at the same time that more or less said, 'I'm not wearing that.'

The soldiers lined up in two lines, making something of a path for the two visiting shinobi to look down only to see the daimyo's attendant that had gone out to recruit them walking their way. Still dressed in his robes that were as extravagant as ever and seeming way too happy to have the job that he just so happened to be doing, he walked right towards Shikamaru through the lines of soldiers and shook both of their hands.

"I'm so pleased that you two made it here safely after such a long trip." The noble said, even more excited than ever now that he had Shikamaru and Naruto in front of him at the daimyo's palace instead of just relaying messages back and forth to Konoha, "I trust you two didn't have much trouble getting here?"

"Other than the monkeys in the mountains, no." Naruto admitted with a grin, finding the noble's attitude pretty upbeat and infectious, "It's good to be here… uh, I don't know your name." He admitted sheepishly.

"Oh!" The noble started laughing airily, enough so that it actually got Naruto to break out in a few laughs as well, amused at how the man himself was laughing, "I never introduced myself directly to you two. My apologies. My name is Nobuyuki and I am the director of the Guardian Ninja. All of your assignments will come down to you from me and I will be the one you should come to if you have any issues. Now follow along boys."

So he was basically the den mother to the lot of them. That sounded simple and straightforward enough.

With that, Nobuyuki began escorting Naruto and Shikamaru around, giving them a short tour of the massive property. The entire outdoors of the landscape had gorgeous running water and wooden bridges all throughout to go along with the well-made paths. Dozens of lords and ladies were seen walking about as close government workers of the daimyo's court.

He showed them the barracks and the operating grounds of the soldiers where around 3000 of similarly dressed warriors stayed, the quarters of the servants, the small district where the nobles lived, the many gardens and other aesthetic areas of the place meant for the daimyo's family's benefit and entertainment, and finally the main palace where the daimyo himself stayed with his relatives.

Shikamaru had to pull Naruto away from just gawking at the place as it was several stories off of the ground and seemed to have many bronze statues adorning the corners of the building's railings. Even the tile on the awnings looked incredibly expensive. It made him wonder what the inside looked like.

Eventually though, the pair of Konoha ninja were led to a huge four story building that was made in the same traditional manner as the other buildings in the daimyo's property only with dark brown wood making its outside instead of the lighter shades that comprised the others. The tiles on the roof were dark red and the yard around the house looked akin to a garden meant for mental tranquility and spiritual training.

"This is where you will be staying with the other members of the current Guardian Ninja." Nobuyuki said as he opened the two doors at the front for them all to go through, "The place is rather empty compared to the old days when it was twelve, but that was before my time heading up things here. With you two joining them that makes six, and I'm certain we will be up to full prominence once again soon."

As they walked into the front area, a large open room with wooden floors and rails for each floor of the building surrounding a slightly lowered dirt floor with equipment such as targets set off to the side to leave the vast majority of the floor open. More than likely for sparring.

But Nobuyuki's thoughts brought a question forth in Shikamaru's mind, "So you're not a Guardian Ninja yourself, are you Nobuyuki-san?"

"Oh heavens no!" Nobuyuki replied, a bit amused at the thought, "You lot are animals. Why, you would all tear me apart within the blink of an eye. You're all here because you have something special about you that sets you apart. You Nara-san with your intellect that is impressive even for your clan, and Uzumaki-san with his own special 'hidden power'." He said, covering his mouth with his sleeve, "You are both unique, and the daimyo will love the two of you once you get your first audience with him."

"That's _if_ they get that far."

Everyone looked up at the high ceiling and saw a tall, somewhat muscular young man with brown hair that had a white streak in it wearing black monk's clothing and a small pair of sunglasses over his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling with his arms crossed, sticking to it with his chakra before he chose to drop down from the ground. The fall would have injured his legs had he not positioned himself to land towards a pillar. He slid down the length of the pillar and jumped off to land on the bottom floor in the dirt, standing straight up to dust his pants and robes off.

"Sadao-san!" Nobuyuki uttered, seemingly happy to see him, "Well as you can see, these two are to be your new comrades in the Guardian Ninja I hope you take care of them and help them along."

"No problem." Sadao said with a ghost of a smile as he looked over the pair of chunin that he had met not too long ago in Konoha, "But of course, you know they have to pass the test first."

Nobuyuki made an 'ah' noise of realization before stepping back behind the two as he made his way to the wooden floor behind the training ring area, "Of course. I almost forgot. Uzumaki-san, Shikamaru-san, if you do not pass this test of your combat skill you are to become regular soldiers in the daimyo's standing forces for the duration of your contract."

"What?" Naruto said in surprise.

Sadao just chuckled a bit, "Yep." He gestured to the white sash around his waist with the kanji for fire on it, "This means we're the best. The daimyo can't have just anyone protecting him and carrying out his will you know? But don't worry. If you screw it up and have to be a regular soldier you can keep on training to challenge us once every six months to see if you can pass and advance."

In his head, Shikamaru let out a loud groan. He knew it wouldn't be as easy as just showing up and getting the high paying, high ranking job. Of course he'd have to work his ass off again to get a troublesome job like this. The story of his life it seemed…

On the other hand, Naruto was _not_ going to be a regular soldier under any circumstances. He was going to be the Hokage! He didn't leave Konoha and all of his friends behind just to wind up marching in rank in a stupid uniform. He was a ninja, not a commonplace kingdom's warrior.

"You can pick who you fight out of the four of the current members!" Nobuyuki added loudly from his place at the sidelines.

At that, Sadao made a noise of inhaling air sharply through his teeth, "Actually… they can't. The only ones here are me and… _her_. The other two are out on assignment, remember Nobuyuki-san? You sent them yesterday evening." He then put his fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly for someone else in the building, an echo streaming all throughout the halls, "Kotoko! I know you can hear me! Get your ass down here, it's time to work!"

It took a moment, but the sound of rapidly padding footsteps could be heard from the top floor of the Guardian Ninja building before the girl with the black hair in the ponytail and the dark green kimono with the brown and black floral patterns adorning it peered over the top railing, her eyes still squinted closed as if she were never trying to look at anything, "Work? But Shinya-kun and Akira-chan are already out…" She whined fitfully, "Whyyyy…"

"Kotoko… you forgot what was supposed to be happening this week didn't you? Friggin' airhead." Sadao deadpanned before pointing ahead at Naruto and Shikamaru who both stepped forward to look up towards her level in order to get a better sight of her, "The new kids? The ones we met in Konoha when Nobuyuki-san got their confirmation notices? They were showing up this week and someone had to stay back and test them."

Kotoko's eyes actually opened in surprise to reveal that they were actually colored dark yellow before they quickly shut again just as quickly as they opened and she got a huge grin on her face, "Oh, okay! One sec!" She chirped brightly before running out of sight again, once again with footsteps being heard all over the building.

Sadao sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, "Sorry about her, she's kind of…well I shouldn't say. Just know that she's strong enough to be here even though she acts like that. We can't make her stop so we learn to deal with it."

"The daimyo likes Suzukuro-san's attitude." Nobuyuki said cheerfully, "The soldiers all like her too. She's very friendly and rather popular in the capital city as well, I'm certain you both will get along with her."

At that moment she came rocketing out of one of the halls and over the railings, landing on a bit of a flourishing pose with her fingers in a 'v' over her eyes, "Ha, you two didn't die and you made it here after all! I'm so pleased to see you here!" She got a thoughtful look on her face and took the shamisen from her back and began randomly strumming notes, "I'm certain I can put a song together about this chance meeting between us all once more."

"It's not chance…" Sadao said with a twitching eye, "We knew they were coming. We've known for a month that they were coming. Get it together so we can do this right. Introduction time."

With that request, Kotoko put her instrument back onto her back and smoothed out her kimono and her Guardian's sash before smiling brightly at Naruto and Shikamaru again, bowing to them both before speaking, "Of course. The current no.3 Guardian Ninja, Suzukuro Kotoko, age sixteen. Otherwise known as 'Sangen no Kotoko (Kotoko of the Three Strings).'" She held her head up from her bow, still smiling all the while at the two, "Please take good care of me." Her voice positively sang with the request.

The sheer radiance of the girl's smile got Naruto to gulp a bit uncomfortably. And they'd have to fight this girl to test their battle skills? Naruto wasn't really sexist, but he didn't think he could hurt a girl like this. The women he had fought in the past started at 'tear his head off' and from there only leveled up in scariness. Kotoko wasn't like that at all.

But Shikamaru found her introduction fraught with its own dangers, 'This girl has an epithet? Crap…'

With Kotoko's introduction complete, Sadao stepped forward next for his own, "Current no.1 Guardian Ninja, Sadao. Just Sadao. Age nineteen. You should be well prepared for this, just a bit of a forewarning. This will be a one-on-one battle until enough has been seen of your skills. Uzumaki Naruto and Nara Shikamaru, select your opponent."

So it wouldn't be a team battle, it would be one-on-one. Both Naruto and Shikamaru looked at each other before shrugging and playing rock-paper-scissors which Naruto won. Celebrating with a fist pump before he and Shikamaru dropped their backpacks for the time being, Naruto pointed right at Sadao, "I choose you!"

"Aw…" Kotoko said dejectedly, "I don't get to fight with the miniature cutie… Shika-kun looks kind of boring." She eventually sighed and resigned herself to her fate of fighting Shikamaru, returning to her bright personality "Okay, in that case we're up first Shika-kun."

"Oh joy…" Shikamaru said sarcastically, stretching his shoulders out as Naruto moved back towards the wooden floor on the outside of the training ring area. Why did it have to be a woman? If he got his butt kicked Naruto would probably never let him forget it, but then again he was probably going to have to do all kinds of grunt work as a soldier, and he'd have to follow orders and whatnot… oh he was certainly not going to be a regular soldier if he could help it.

Nobuyuki cleared his throat and lifted his hand into the air within clear view of both combatants before shouting the indication to start fighting for both Shikamaru and Kotoko, "Begin!"

Never one to be the aggressor, Shikamaru watched intently as Kotoko placed a few small metal claws on her fingers. There was no way that they were weapons though. They couldn't have been able to hurt anyone unless they were poisoned, but she didn't look like the type. Still, they were ninja after all.

"Not gonna attack?" Kotoko said, still smiling all the while, "You're one of _those _kinds of people aren't you? Well that's okay." Her smile then turned very vicious and her eyes opened just enough to see what color they were, "I like guys like you that just stand still. It makes things so much easier."

Sadao just shook his head at hearing the gleeful tone of voice Kotoko was using. It didn't help that her sheer killing intent seemed to force the temperature of the room to feel like it had dropped five degrees, "Oh hell. She'd better not kill him. This is just supposed to be a test."

Kill him? Kotoko could and would kill Shikamaru? She didn't originally seem like the type at all. And then Naruto had to remember the fact that they were all ninja, and she had been a Ninja Guardian for years before this point.

So yes… she had killed people. Duh.

"Let's see how fast you can get yourself into gear dear!" Kotoko exclaimed, pulling her shamisen from her back and holding it as if she were going to play it, "Fuuton: Hasai no Kyouki (Wind Release: Shredding Madness)!" With a few plucks of the strings, Shikamaru had the instinct to duck down to the ground.

It was a good thing he did too, as over his head passed a light breeze, but as it flew towards the back of the ring and made contact with one of the pillars holding the upper floors up it left a slash marking in it at the same height where his neck would have been, the length of Kotoko's shamisen strings.

'Wind!' Shikamaru thought to himself, realizing that the breeze that passed him by could have sliced his head clean off in one move had he not dropped to the dirt, 'Oh man… why does Naruto have to be so lucky in rock-paper-scissors?' He would have the luck to get a long range fighter to have to deal with.

"You can't stay there either!" Kotoko singsonged as she took aim at her reluctant target once more.

Cursing to whatever God just so happened to stick him with this fight, Shikamaru heard the instrument playing again and saw the breeze passing over the ground from Kotoko, pushing dust aside as it moved towards him. With a mighty push he shoved himself up off of the ground and let this wind blade pass underneath him safely, 'Invisible wind blades… I really need a way to slow her attacking down so I can begin using my shadow.'

A pout made its way to Kotoko's face as she saw Shikamaru dodge her second attack and begin moving about the field, "You're really no fun Shika-kun. You've got to try harder than this or I'm gonna kill you, okay?"

The bright and cheery way she said that more or less told him that she probably wasn't kidding about that at all… and that was kind of creepy. Being told by someone with such a lovely voice that they were going to kill him with a smile on their face was a new experience that he didn't really like too much.

'I've got to get closer and keep her from using these attacks.' Shikamaru thought to himself as he drew some weaponry and threw them at Kotoko to draw her attention away from attacking him. Kotoko stopped playing and instead used the body of her instrument to block his shuriken barrage.

She lowered the thick body of the shamisen only to see not just one, but two Shikamarus running at her in a pincer motion after reaching both sides of her with his deceptive short-range speed, "You might be more fun than I first thought." In a flourishing whirling motion that sent her kimono spinning along with her, Kotoko took a seat on the ground seiza-style, "But don't think numbers mean anything to me!"

Her laughter began chiming out melodically as her pace of strumming became frantic and her wind control kicked up a dust storm around her that the two Shikamaru clones stopped outside of and avoided by moving away. Both Shikamarus took up the hand-seals for their signature jutsu and sent their shadows on in to find her, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu)!"

"Odori o Tsubusu (Crush Dance)!"

From the cloud of dust Kotoko could be seen dancing her way out with footwork that was mostly concealed by her kimono as the pair of shadows were attempting to give chase, but she was not only keeping herself ahead of the pace of the shadows, she was able to stay out of the trail that the shadows already made.

Reaching one of the two Shikamarus her shamisen was suddenly brandished and smashed directly into his stomach in the middle of one of her spins. It was clearly a debilitating attack, if she had attacked the real Shikamaru of course, because this one vanished in a puff of smoke.

Kotoko stopped spinning suddenly as she slid across the ground, drawing her fingers along the strings of her shamisen again as she took aim at the last remaining Shikamaru on the field, "Your jutsu needs more diversity. It doesn't work when there's nowhere to hide and ambush me from! Kyouki no Eiyou Buyou (Dance of the Madness Hero)!" The small claws on her fingertips were radiating wind chakra as she began rapidly dragging them across the strings wildly.

"Duck." Sadou suggested in a dry tone of voice and both Naruto and Nobuyuki took his word for it as he also hit the deck the moment he realized which attack Kotoko was set on using, "I knew she'd go overboard…" He said as all three of them stayed behind the cover of the pillars that the wooden railings ran through to mark the border of the ring.

Nobuyuki nodded, keeping a hold of his tall hat of status on top of his head as small wind projectiles were whistling all over the place to the soundtrack of Kotoko's random strumming, "Yes. Suzukuro-san is not one for holding back in battle is she?"

"You've got to be kidding me!" Naruto exclaimed as he could see small holes being spiked in the very sturdy walls and wooden railings along with the pillars in multiple places in the room, "This girl is totally crazy! Shika's gonna die out there!"

"You're just now picking up on that kid?" Sadao said with an amused look on his sunglasses-clad face, "Kotoko's pretty bloodthirsty when she fights. You're lucky we were able to get her to tone it down as much as we did when she was outside of battle."

"What?" Naruto replied in the most intelligent manner he could muster.

Sadao nodded sagely and Nobuyuki continued shedding a little light on the situation, picking up where Sadao left off, "Yes, her clan is _very _sadistic. They take on the guises of people that can easily be inserted as people that don't attract much suspicion. Things like musicians, courtesans, cooks, all sorts of normal occupations. They would act like civilians, trained to be the most pleasant people you would ever want to meet, much like Suzukuro-san's peacetime demeanor, until they finally reached their target and then they would massacre them and anyone that stood in their way."

"They don't belong to any village traditionally." Sadao followed up in turn, "No Kage can trust them and no minor village leader can really keep them in check since they're notorious for taking missions to kill VIPs so they operate on their own as solo freelance workers for the most part once they come of age. Kotoko used to be kind of a sociopath before she was a Guardian Ninja, but she's fine now." Sadao noticed Naruto's skeptical silence and reneged on the matter, "Okay, she's still out of her mind. But at least we got her to keep it to just being during fights because if you were here four years ago... whew."

"How is she not ripping the walls apart with her jutsu?"

Nobuyuki let out a small laugh at Naruto naivety of how the building was constructed, "This entire area of the Guardian's Quarters can withstand the blasts of a chain of explosive tags. How else would training with ninjutsu be allowed indoors otherwise?" He tapped on the extremely durable pillar with one fist, "The small cut in the pillar Suzukuro-san made earlier is nothing more than a notch here, but it would completely cut through the trunk of a normal tree."

Wow. That was kind of cool. A finely honed blade of wind couldn't get any further than half an inch into the five foot thick pillar. Good to know that the place wouldn't be destroyed from training.

It wasn't cool for Shikamaru though. Poor bastard.

But he was hanging in there. The sporadic pattern of the wind projectiles coming from Kotoko's shamisen also came with the price of not being able to all hone in on him directly, probably the only thing saving him. At least until one got him right in the center of the chest with two more following up on him in the shoulder and hip respectively.

"Shikamaru!" Naruto exclaimed as he saw the wind begin to drill a shot into his best friend's chest. A best friend that then disappeared in a puff of smoke much to his surprise.

"Huh?" Kotoko had taken count of two Shikamarus and had already destroyed the clone of the two before nailing the other one with her latest jutsu, "What? But there were only two… or did I miscount?" She turned towards where the others were ducking for cover and called out, "Sadao-kun, there were only two right? Did you see more?" She asked, panting slightly from the amount of effort she had exerted thus far.

"No I didn't." Sadao said, poking his head out from behind the pillar now that the barrage had seemed to cease, "But then again I don't see anything… ever."

Kotoko stomped her foot on the soft dirt floor childishly at her turn of fortune, "Well where is he? I know I didn't miss one. There were two, I got them both, Shika-kun should have been in there somewhere. It's a fact."

Slowly, right in front of her face, an explosive tag was carefully and slowly lowered. Kotoko curiously poked at one of them, forcing it to twirl a bit on the ninja wire it was attached to before she noticed that there were several more attached to the same bit of wire. Without saying a word she casually turned to try and immediately move away from it.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Kotoko looked up to find Shikamaru hanging from the ceiling, upside down with a hand in his pocket and another hand forming a hand-seal. A calm look was on his face as he peered down at his opponent and motioned for her to look around.

It became clear that there were dozens of lines of explosive tags hung in the same manner from the ceiling like the first one that had almost bumped into her face all over the ring area as if they were special charms of good luck.

"I used a ton of chakra on those two clones of mine and then you didn't even flinch when they came at you." Shikamaru started to say to explain his actions, "When my clones were caught up in the dust cloud I was there with them, but instead of jumping out to the side, I headed up one of the pillars to get out of your range to try and think of a way to handle you."

Kotoko puffed her cheeks out indignantly and shook a fist at the young man that was high above her, "You coward! How dare you deceive a lady, a fair maiden of the battlefield such as myself! Have you no shame Shika-kun?"

"Shame?" Shikamaru repeated, smirking for a moment, "I'm afraid I ran out of that when you almost cut my head off you troublesome woman."

A sigh of relief came over Naruto at seeing that Shikamaru had turned the tables in a major way. Kotoko was in the middle of the ring. She'd never make it out if she tried to make a break for it since all Shikamaru had to do was activate his chakra connection to the tags to remotely blow her straight to hell, "Iruka-sensei said my mind was scary… well Shika's mind is the scariest one I know."

Still on the ceiling, Shikamaru's features turned grave, "I can't beat you straight up and trying to trap you with my shadow leaves me a sitting duck for your wind in this ring we're in. So I just decided to trap the whole field. I'm lucky you're so crazy because while you thought you were killing the real me that gave me all the time I needed to prepare this trap and lower them all at once on you. Now give up or I'll make a total mess out of you. I already heard Nobuyuki-san say this place could take this much damage no problem."

"Hmm…" Kotoko said as if she were pondering her answer. However instead of giving the clear and obvious choice, she brandished her shamisen as she planned to still try and cut Shikamaru to ribbons from the floor even though she was surrounded, "I say no. I like playing with you Shika-kun… you're so hard to get. So let's play another little game called 'who can kill who first'. I still have one jutsu that you can't dodge from up there and I'll bet I can get it off before you take me out."

The two just stared at each other, with Shikamaru narrowing his eyes at the insane girl below him. Was she really testing him like this? Did she really think he wouldn't kill her?

"That's enough." Sadao said, taking the air right out of the tense atmosphere, "I've seen more than I need to see from Shikamaru. You can come down now kid, and Kotoko you're done. Don't try to kill him when he gets down here."

Shikamaru held his position for a moment before letting out a huge sigh and wiping his brow. He cut all of the strands of explosive tags down as he started walking his way down, "Oh thank Kami…" He muttered to himself, "Most of those were fakes. Nobody carries that many explosive tags at once." At least his con wasn't really called, "I can't believe she saw through the bluff."

"Bluff?" Kotoko repeated, tilting her head in a scatterbrained fashion as she continued to do nothing but smile with her eyes squinted closed, "Ara… you were bluffing? Aww, that's no fun. I thought you were serious." She said lightheartedly, "Hm, I kinda _wanted_ to see what it was like to die. It's such a big mystery to me." She giggled before skipping past the explosive tags to take a spot next to Naruto who took a large step away from her.

This was the most dangerous kunoichi he had ever seen fight in his entire life. Not because she was powerful even though it was clear that she was, but because she was certifiably out of her mind. And not even in the good way, not even to say that she had a quirk. She was flat out insane. There wasn't anything quirky about it.

And final test permitting he would wind up working with this girl? He would be sleeping with his trusty machete under his pillow and his bed and body facing his door for the foreseeable future.

"You're next Naruto." Naruto's attention was returned to the current activities when Sadao called out to him from the now cleared sparring ring. His arms were once again crossed over his chest as he stood tall and imposing, seemingly dwarfing Naruto by a foot at his current height, "Get on out here and let's see what you've got."

Not needing to be told twice, Naruto hopped over the railing and stood across from Sadao in his fighting stance, prepared to throw down with his fellow (hopefully soon-to-be) Guardian Ninja, "You're messing with the future Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato here." He bragged with a grin as he adjusted his goggles on his forehead, "Just tell me when to go."

"Begin!" Nobuyuki cried out, marking the start of the fight.

Naruto wasted no time before charging directly at Sadao, however when he got within teen feet of him he felt something strange and immediately averted to the side with a mighty leap that forced him to bounce off of the pillars to charge at him from an unfamiliar angle.

But Sadao didn't even turn his head or even shift his body Naruto's way. Instead he still stood there with his arms crossed, still like a statue.

As Naruto hurtled through the air at him he shifted to a thrusting knee strike that was his flat out fastest and most sudden striking one-hit taijutsu attack, "Kakeyapakto (Flash Mallet)!" Even if Sadao could somehow block the attack, Naruto had been training chaining attacks extensively and it would only be the start of his ever-improving taijutsu barrage.

But Sadao didn't block the speedy attack being aimed at his head. Instead he slid skillfully out of its path and let Naruto fly clean past him. The diminutive blonde flew towards the pillar on the opposite side and shifted in the air to stick to the surface, narrowing his eyes at Sadao. Something was off. He could feel it.

Wordlessly, Naruto let off a pulse of his ever trusty sonar jutsu to see if everything was as it seemed and to assure himself that he hadn't fallen prey to a genjutsu. He indeed had not. And once again Sadao was simply standing there, "You'll have to try harder than that. I love how blunt that move was though. I could feel the sheer power behind it. Nice." He commented, still not looking Naruto's way once.

It was starting to grate on Naruto's nerves, as if he was so much further above him. The Konoha chunin was proud of his rank and his hard-earned strength that had gotten him this far, and yet Sadao sounded so nonchalant and patronizing. He wasn't even offering the courtesy of acknowledging him with a ready stance.

'Who does this guy think he is?' Naruto thought to himself, gritting his teeth angrily, 'I know what my next move's gonna be. And it'll knock him right on his smug ass.' Naruto stared at his open right hand and formed a tight fist of intent.

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Shikamaru)

From the sidelines, Shikamaru was watching until he noticed that Kotoko had made her way directly to his side. He kept a sharp eye on the perpetually smiling kunoichi, but she seemed to only wish for a companion to watch the ongoing fight with, "Oh you shouldn't worry about me anymore Shika-kun." Kotoko said in her normally sweet tone of voice. Kami help him, Shikamaru knew she was wacked out of her gourd but that voice could turn any man to jelly, "I would never attack a comrade with intent to kill. This goes against one of the two most cardinal rules that the Suzukuro Clan stands by… the only concrete rules we live by really. Never betray a contract with an employer under shame of suicide, and never attack one's comrades."

"You just now tried to kill me." Shikamaru pointed out with no little bit of accusation in his voice, "It wasn't even five minutes ago."

"Yes I did." Kotoko admitted shamelessly, "But you weren't my comrade five minutes ago. You more than likely are now."

Wow. Even though her reasoning had no real flaws in it, Shikamaru still didn't feel comfortable around this girl so he decided to change to subject, "So, why is Sadao not even looking at Naruto? I hope he doesn't think Naruto's weak or something." Actually he did, because everyone that had ever underestimated Naruto in battle wound up paying for it in the end.

"Of course not dear. We know that both of you are strong. Otherwise you wouldn't even be here." Kotoko said, shedding her airhead personality for a moment to provide a touch of insight, "This is just how Sadao-kun fights. He's not facing Naruto-kun because he doesn't have to. It wouldn't make a difference. It's just wasted effort to move his body that way as far as he's concerned."

"What are you talking about?" Shikamaru asked, "If he isn't facing Naruto then he can't see anything that Naruto does; if he's making hand-seals, if he's grabbing a weapon. Naruto could be doing anything in his blindspot."

Kotoko just shook her head in response, "It wouldn't make a difference… because Sadao-kun is blind."

XxX

(Naruto vs. Sadao)

Naruto jumped off of the pillar he had been sticking to with chakra and landed back in front of Sadao, taking a deep breath before pointing at the young man in front of him, "What are you doing? Fight already."

"This is your test, not mine." Sadao replied casually, "I've been here for eight years, I earned my spot before any of the current Guardian Ninja. I don't have anything to prove to you, but you've got something you need to prove to me. Now bring it runt, or you can just head for the normal soldiers' barracks now to get yourself outfitted."

"Outfit this!" Naruto said, sticking up his middle finger at Sadao and growling when he again got no response, "Fine!" Naruto shouted before sticking both of his hands into the loose dirt beneath him. It was just as deep as he thought it was. Without the dirt the floor would probably be a pit in the middle of the building. It reminded him almost of sand. That was perfect.

Naruto shoved his hands deep into the dirt floor and grit his teeth as he pumped chakra to his hands with a wind tint to it. He could feel the material around his hands begin to vibrate and he grabbed nothing but dirt as he twisted his hands and yanked up sharply, "Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"

With the sound of a low 'whump', the vacuum force of Naruto's jutsu was enough to affect the entire floor as he formed an entire sinkhole in the middle of the ring.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Sadao said in pure disbelief as he could feel himself being drawn towards the center of the sinkhole from where he was standing, "That kind of raw power in someone's use of chakra is absurd! He isn't even using the Ky-!" Before he could finish, Sadao leaned his head out of the way of a trio of shuriken that had been thrown at his head by Naruto who had started standing.

If Sadao had vision, he would have been able to make out the clear as day sight of a full-on smirk on Naruto's lips. He had just shown the ingenuity to alter the form of this specific kind of battlefield with a nonconventional use of a niche ninjutsu.

XxX

(With Shikamaru – On the Sidelines)

"Wait." Shikamaru said with a raised eyebrow, trying to ignore the fact that Naruto had just effectively destroyed the floor of the room for a test, "If Sadao can't see, how did he dodge Naruto's attack like he could? There's no way his hearing could make out the sound of the metal over the sound of the sinkhole and his own yelling."

Kotoko made a thoughtful humming noise before deciding that it was alright to say it out loud to Shikamaru, "Well, it's all because of Sadao-kun's special jutsu. Keimoudama (Sphere of Enlightenment)." She pointed at Sadao and used her fingers to frame him up in a circle, "His self-taught ability to use his chakra to sense his surroundings is incredible. He always projects his chakra from his body and can feel anything that enters the sphere it creates. Depending on how much chakra he chooses to expel at one time he can feel things within fifteen feet of his body, or as far as one-hundred yards in all directions until something gets in its path."

That was kind of unbelievable in Shikamaru's opinion. Naruto could do it in singular bursts, but it took so much chakra to feel out farther and farther Naruto used it every so often in the field unless it was necessary, "That's got to take so much chakra. How does he have any left to fight with at the same time?" Sadao wasn't Naruto, he didn't have the Kyuubi so there was no way he could match Naruto's sheer chakra output.

"It does take a lot of chakra. But Sadao-kun has always been blind. He's been using this jutsu since he was five years old." Kotoko informed Shikamaru, shining some light on the longest tenured Guardian Ninja's background.

Shikamaru started looking at Sadao in a bit of an inspirational light.

Still, Kotoko continued, "He abuses it and had a lot of chakra exhaustion as a kid because he loved being able to feel the things around him, almost as if he could really see. He can't make out specific things like facial features or words that aren't carved into things, but other than that he's aware of everything around him. Even things through walls if he forced enough chakra out to a wall he was close to."

In Shikamaru's opinion, actually Kotoko sounded a bit remorseful at this, 'It sounds like a constant version of what Naruto can do, more like radar in all directions instead of Naruto's which would be like sonar in all directions.'

Noticing the look of understanding that began to surface on Shikamaru's face she kept talking, brightening up all the while, "All of the chakra he constantly expels… it started beefing up his own natural supply. A person's reserves of chakra happens to be like a muscle you know; the harder and more often you work it over time you'll build up more. He's got the most chakra out of anyone in our little group, and his control over it is just below that of a medic-nin. People say it's unnatural to have both to that extent."

'If this guy can feel in every direction for one-hundred yards max then just using enough chakra to feel around in this room for Naruto is nothing to him.' Shikamaru thought to himself, 'Even constantly using chakra like he is, he's got to have more than enough chakra to fight with.'

So these people with their own unique fighting abilities and traits were the Ninja Guardians? And they had only met two of them. Shikamaru could only wonder what the other two were like.

XxX

(Naruto vs. Sadao)

The two combatants faced off while using their chakra to stay attached to the pillars of the sparring ring area.

In his mind, Sadao had already made his decision on Naruto's membership in the Ninja Guardians. He was certain that Kotoko had as well. Even Nobuyuki with his complete lack of knowledge of the ninja arts and the lifestyle of the warrior had to know that they had two very special recruits in Naruto and Shikamaru.

Still, he didn't want to stop just yet. With his long-standing, well-trained sensing ability from this range he could feel the chakra burning in the pit of Naruto's gut like a raging inferno and it was exciting. It was like a flame trying to draw a moth to it. The moth had to know that the fire was dangerous, but its light was so enticing it simply couldn't stop. It had to play around it despite the danger.

And he wanted to see what this kid five years his junior had to offer for himself.

'Let's see how he deals with an attack in a situation like this.' Sadao thought to himself. Both of them were sticking to the pillars instead of standing on the ground due to the sinkhole spinning and sucking sand around and down below them on the floor. This made attacking and dodging all the more perilous now.

Sadao began darting from pillar to pillar to try and reach Naruto's while his opponent did the same brazenly, with the two meeting in a clash of kicks on one pillar, with Naruto having the high ground and Sadao having the low. The two began to battle it out hand-to-hand standing vertically on their support column as if it were flat ground.

Each punch that Naruto threw, when they would hit Sadao's arms past the sleeves of his monk's robes would begin to stick to his arm, only for him to twist the grip around and hold onto Naruto's wrists. Had he himself not been so well-versed in how to escape being grabbed by way of training his own style he would have been in trouble.

Still Sadao's style was strange. He barely moved from where he was standing more often than not, only taking strong steps forward up the pillar to accentuate the fact that Naruto did not hold a strength advantage in this situation.

But it wasn't like Naruto could even get around him because they were standing vertically on a pillar. It was either fight on the ground with the sinkhole or keep fighting on the pillar that didn't have any space to maneuver around.

And Naruto decided to tackle this problem the way he did most things when left to his own devices; he took it head-on. Just not in the conventional way.

Backing off from the melee, Naruto turned tail and headed directly up the pillar to the upper floors of the building and much as he had expected and had been counting on, Sadao did not follow him up, instead choosing to remain in his same position. Once he felt he was high enough, Naruto jumped forward (upward for those not paying attention) and then started falling back down directly towards his enemy.

Sadao didn't know what Naruto was doing at first until he started descending from the air, 'Holy crap, he was just trying to gain momentum to go right through me!' He crossed his arms in front of his head and chest as Naruto dove towards him leading with his knee much like his initial attack.

He wasn't fast enough to dodge and Naruto smashed directly into him, "Kakeyapakto (Flash Mallet)!" The attack sent them both slamming into the soft ground and down into the sinkhole that swallowed them up. Apparently this seemed to satisfy the constantly shifting dirt that seemed to stop once it had taken them both.

"Damn!" Shikamaru witnessed this and was prepared to run out there to try and dig Naruto out, but Kotoko held his shoulder and shook her head, letting him know that it was alright.

It took a moment, but the dirt began to move and Sadao clawed his way out, taking a big breath of air as he got up and shook the dirt out of his robes, "Kami! Who fights like that?"

For Naruto it took a bit longer, but a head of spiky blonde hair popped out and dragged himself out of the ground before reaching back down and pulling out another Naruto, who pulled out another, and another, and another until the original reached the surface again, allowing the others to dispel now that their job was complete. Still in combat mode, Naruto stood up and wiped the dirt from his face as he prepared to charge again.

"Stop." Sadao said, holding a hand up towards Naruto, "That's enough. I've seen all I need to see." He then chuckled at his own little inside joke about seeing. Naruto did not because he was unaware of Sadao's blindness.

Instead, Naruto's jaw dropped in disbelief, "You want to stop _now_? Come on! I was starting to win that fight! You just don't want to get your ass kicked by a thirteen year old kid!"

A snorting laugh came from Sadao as he emptied dirt from one of the sleeves of his monk's clothing and shook the dirt out of his brown, white-streaked hair, "You can't kick my ass even if we keep going. Just take this for what it was. It's over." He said, waving him off before taking the same stoic emotion he had before the fight had ever started.

Still, Naruto wasn't having any of that. He was still ready to go.

"If you want me to stop you'd better give me a reason." Naruto said, and almost on cue it became clear as to why Naruto was unwilling to stop fighting at that moment. Not only had he made clones to dig himself out of the dirt, he had scattered clones that had dug through the soft material to get within striking range of Sadao and they all sprang from the ground like creatures of the earth directly at him, "Because right now I say I just caught you in checkmate!"

"This isn't even a warning for check. I felt them the entire time." Sadao responded coldly, not amused by this in any way, shape, or manner. His fingers quickly formed the dragon and tiger hand-seals before he exhaled sharply, "Katon: Hikeimoudama (Fire Release: Enlightened Sphere of Flames)!"

From directly around Sadao's body, a sphere of fire erupted, causing Naruto's clones to stop their attack before they wound up getting scorched and destroyed. So it was a defensive jutsu meant to keep people from touching him directly was it?

No, it wasn't.

Sadao noticed that nothing was hitting his field of fire and realized that the clones smartly stopped short and were preparing to pelt him with weaponry instead of charging him. That was smart. But they were too close. Instead of the steady breathing he was doing he exhaled and shouted and a sudden shockwave of heat and fire blasted out in all directions around him.

Every clone was caught in the blast and dispelled. Naruto had a clear view of what was happening and coming for him and he quickly escaped the ring and dove behind a pillar to avoid being burned similarly.

Even Kotoko, Shikamaru, and Nobuyuki had covered themselves with a pillar… though Shikamaru had hidden himself behind the same pillar as Kotoko and found himself in a very compromising situation, with his face right in her breasts. She seemed to be extremely amused by it though, "Fufufufu… my Shika-kun, how forward of you. I knew you were more fun than you looked at first."

Of course she was also insane, so this could have just been a preamble to her decapitating him for all he knew, no matter how charming she sounded.

Shikamaru had never jumped away from anyone so quickly in his entire life, red-faced and all, "S-Shut up… you troublesome woman." Troublesome or not, for seven seconds it was a good time to be Nara Shikamaru and he knew this.

Instead of focusing on the stubborn thoughts of the situation that he would from then onwards dub 'marshmallow heaven' for his own budding libido's safety, he preoccupied himself with noticing that the wood that comprised the pillars, rails, and floors were not on fire and burning them all alive at the moment. It was that fire retardant as well? That must have been some expensive wood. It was superheated from the flames and the scorching heat that had just flown from Sadao though.

Speaking of Sadao, he simply had a scowl on his face that had him glaring at Naruto who was peeking out from behind the pillar he had taken refuge behind, "I said stop. We're done. There might not be any leaders amongst us all, and seniority doesn't mean anything, but when something is over it's over. And don't think just because you've got a biju stuck in you that I won't rip your spine out through your asshole. A jinchuuriki is still a human." Naruto just nodded dumbly and came out from behind the pillar.

Sadao had that jutsu the entire time and didn't use it until right then? That was rather disheartening to think about. And apparently even the thought of the Kyuubi's chakra didn't give him pause? Maybe because he hadn't faced it yet, but even so… it wasn't best to rock the boat, especially when he was in the wrong in the first place.

"So…" Naruto said, looking around aimlessly as he tried to distance himself from the almost severe moment from seconds prior, "Do we pass?"

Kotoko and Sadao looked at each other before the girl with the permanently closed eyes tilted her head, still smiling like always. Sadao simply shrugged in return, getting her to squeal in delight as she seemed to receive that as him accepting them both, "Yes! More comrades! The Guardian Ninja are up to six!" She grabbed Nobuyuki and tried dancing with the man, "Go ahead and order two more sashes to be made Nobuyuki-san!"

A grinning Naruto ran up to Shikamaru and popped him in the shoulder in a celebratory as the two shared a grin and a smirk respectively. Before they could really let the achievement sink in, Sadao walked up to the pair of them and stood over them with a stern look on his face as he cut his hand with a kunai and let it bleed for them to see, "Do you two swear by the blood in your bodies and on pain of death to protect the daimyo of Hi no Kuni and his interests with all of your strength for the duration of your time here, without refusal no matter the mission issued to you?"

Naruto drew his machete and cut the palm of his hand shallowly to draw blood and let it run onto the ground. Shikamaru drew a kunai and did the same, both giving him a stiff nod.

The blind ninja seemed to stare them both down despite his lack of vision before nodding in satisfaction and turning to leave, "Good. Now clean that up and I'll show you where you're staying. Welcome to the Guardian Ninja Nara Shikamaru; Guardian no.5, and Uzumaki Naruto; Guardian no.6." He turned and began walking away from the two to get them to follow once Naruto made a clone to clean the blood off of the floor,

"You two should get yourselves settled in quickly so you can rest." Nobuyuki advised from the front door as the daimyo's attendant prepared to leave to return to his own quarters inside of the main palace, "As members of the Ninja Guardians you will start regulated training with them to determine the state of your conditioning. I will see you all within a few days time to inform you of your audience with the daimyo."

The door closed to the large building and Naruto and Shikamaru followed to be shown around the premises that would be their new home for the next three years.

XxX

(Later That Evening – Guardian Ninja Building – Naruto's Quarters)

It took an hour to be shown everything in the place such as the kitchen and dining area, the recreation room, the other staying places of the other Guardians, and the armory. The floor layout was first floor: armory and training area where the fights had taken place earlier, second floor: kitchen, dining room, massive pantry (that was stocked with instant ramen much to Naruto's delight and Shikamaru's chagrin), third and fourth floors were the living areas of the guardians.

There were twelve separate living areas, one for each guardian, that was roughly the size of Naruto's one-bedroom apartment. From getting a look at Shikamaru's room that was selected first it was broken down into a living room, a bathroom, and a bedroom.

He wished he had more decorative stuff to put around the place, but that would come in time Naruto surmised as he opened the door to his particular residence that he was assigned and entered, shutting the door behind him before he turned around and almost had a heart attack at what he found waiting on him, "AAAAHHH!"

"Quiet down brat. You're making a racket."

Perhaps the term 'who' would have been more appropriate on what was waiting on him.

Or maybe three different uses of the word who?

"Oink."

…Make that four.

Since Jiraiya and Tsunade sat around in two of the chairs in Naruto's new living room drinking while Shizune puttered around the home with Tonton following along trying to make sure things were straightened up since the Guardian Ninja didn't get servants to keep things spotless for them and dust had settled over a right many things.

"What the hell are all of you doing here?" Naruto demanded to know, pointing a shaky finger of accusation at the adults in the room as Shizune stopped once Naruto had done his initial yell of surprise, "Tsunade-baachan I thought you were in Konoha! What's going on? How'd you get in here?"

Jiraiya just smirked at Naruto and held up a saucer, "Kid, the daimyo loves me. He'd recommend me Hokage if I had the ambition to actually do it. All I had to do was tell him that I wanted to wait here for you since everyone knew you and your friend were coming and they let me into the room they were going to assign you when word spread that you were here. It took forever by the way. What took so long?"

"The monkeys in the mountains are bastards…" Naruto said cautiously as he carefully treaded into the room and set his filled pack to the ground. He'd unpack later, "What is Tsunade-baachan doing here?"

The aforementioned Tsunade let off a rather unladylike snort and downed the alcohol in her saucer, a sake-induced blush on her face. She must have been at it drinking in there for quite a while, "I told you that I was only staying in Konoha until I got my money from Sarutobi-sensei. When he paid me and when I found out that Jiraiya would be heading up here to make sure you settled in properly I decided I'd leave with him."

Jiraiya chuckled as he refilled his saucer and Naruto took a seat on the floor on front of them since all of the chairs were taken, "Yep. Tsunade-hime cared so much she had to see her little blonde bundle off for his first day, just like a mother at school." He let out a few laughs until he heard Tsunade cracking her knuckles, getting him to stop instantly, "I'll be good."

"It was just on the way." Tsunade asserted gruffly, "Now that we can see the brat's here and he's fine Shizune, Tonton, and I are going to be on our way at first notice-."

"-But she'll be right back here at first summons because Tsunade-hime agreed to be the lead physician of the Fire Daimyo's court." Jiraiya blurted out, grinning roguishly when he saw Tsunade's head snap towards him with a glare, "So she can't go too far from the capital because who knows when her services will be needed? As a matter of fact I'd say she can only go really as far as her feet can carry her within two or three days…"

Which was a subtle way of saying that the distance to Konoha or the coast for a vacation was her limit.

"The money was so good though." Tsunade said, almost gushing over how much she would be getting paid for what she felt would be little to no work, "I mean just how sick or hurt could a bunch of straight-laced, neat-freak nobles get? The most dangerous thing that happens behind these walls are arguments between nobles. And with all the money I'm being paid I can gamble forever!" She started cackling madly until Jiraiya shook her shoulder and got her to stop.

Once Tsunade composed herself, Naruto just stared at every adult in the room with a deadpan look on his face, "Uh huh…" He said, glibly reaching for his backpack to fish out a pack of cigarettes, "Well I guess that makes sense." He said, about to stick a cigarette in his mouth until he noticed Tsunade glaring at him, "What?"

"Are you telling me you're really trying to smoke in front of me?"

"Yeah? So what?" Naruto replied, but when Tsunade's glare didn't relent, Naruto sighed and spit the cigarette out and back into the pack, 'Later.' He promised himself mentally, "So you guys waited here for me all day?"

Jiraiya nodded, "I wish you had been just one day later. That way I could try to convince Tsunade-hime to help me test out your bed in the fun wa-." He was cut off when Tsunade slapped him in the head with Naruto's heavy backpack and knocked him down the small hallway into Naruto's bedroom with a resounding crash.

She handed Naruto back his pack and he instantly opened it to see if she had broken anything inside while also choosing to take Jiraiya's previous seat while he was busy diagnosing himself with a concussion.

Everyone in the room started casually conversing over nothing of great importance at that point, not really caring about the white-haired pervert's well-being for the most part until Jiraiya walked back in holding his head with a bloody nose caused by physical trauma.

Jiraiya stood over Naruto waiting for him to get out of his seat but when he caught another glare from Tsunade he simply let the kid be, not wanting to risk his health by getting hit from the slug princess twice within the span of five minutes. Stupid brat… how'd he even get halfway on her good side, "So, how's the Rasengan going?" He asked, "I don't expect you to get it that fast. It took Minato three years to get it down himself from scratch-."

While Jiraiya was talking, Naruto pulled out a rubber ball from his bag and tossed it in his hand before a few seconds of intense focus forced it to explode from the force of his chakra. Naruto picked the remnants of the ball from his hand and grinned sheepishly at Shizune's pout over the mess he had just made on the floor, "Sorry… I'll clean it up myself."

Instead of showing disbelief over what Naruto had just done, Jiraiya jut fist pumped and broke into something of a victory dance in front of everyone, "Oh yes, I'm the best fucking teacher that ever lived! I knew I had the right idea not trying to teach you that first!"

"What are you on about now you goat?" Tsunade asked with a raised eyebrow at his sudden outburst. It was weird even for him. But to hear that he was teaching Naruto Rasengan? She bit her tongue on the matter since for some reason Jiraiya seemed ecstatic about what was going on.

Jiraiya laughed victoriously before yanking Naruto out of the chair by the collar of his top, getting an indignant 'hey' out of the boy, "The second step of learning the Rasengan is harder than many other training steps so I had him work on his inner strength and discipline first before I chose to test it-."

"-By making me climb a cliff with one hand." Naruto interjected, getting a rough shake from Jiraiya for his trouble, telling him to shush up as it was his moment to gloat and explain his thought process.

"Oh shut up. It helped didn't it?" Jiraiya replied in turn, "So now you just have to put step one and two together adding rotation of the first step to the power of the second step."

Naruto nodded before his eyes widened, "Wait, I've got to start training tomorrow for some rite of passage jutsu I've got to see if I can learn for the Guardians. Who knows how long that'll take?"

Jiraiya simply dropped Naruto back into the chair now that he was done with him, "Don't you worry about that. I've seen you train with those clones of yours. Trust me, use a few dozen clones for Rasengan like you've been doing and show up in person for your training. They just want to make sure that you're up to snuff so that you don't die in the field on your first mission for them."

"I'm not that much weaker than them am I?" Naruto asked, not getting a vocal answer from anyone, getting him to hang his head.

"Either way…" Jiraiya then picked up where he left off from, "For the time being until you prove that you're ready for action I want you to use clones to train Rasengan and I want you to show up in person to work the Guardian training. Doing both can only get you stronger faster."

Naruto looked at Jiraiya like he was crazy, "That sounds hard."

An evil grin came over Jiraiya's face as he rested a hand on Naruto's head, "Oh it will be. Did you think this would be a cakewalk? You're in an elite unit of ninja that go on nothing but the most treacherous of missions for your statehood and in three years you're going to have to be ready to fight the best of the best or die a miserable death. This is the easy part. I'll be here for a week and then I've got to get to work dredging up info on your Akatsuki problem but when I come back I don't care how beat up you are, I want progress or I'll force some progress into you."

The look of horror on Naruto's face as he realized the brevity of the fact that if he didn't keep up he was going to die a horrible death miles away from everyone he loved actually got Shizune and Tsunade to have to hold back some laughter at his expense. That was a rather dark concept. But for once Jiraiya's attempts to ham it up seemed to be entertaining.

"You're gonna bleed son." Still palming Naruto's head like a ball, Jiraiya lifted him off of the ground to hold his ear closer to him where he could hiss menacingly, "You've gotta love the pain… you've gotta love it. Love. It. Pain means you're alive. You like being alive don't you?" Naruto would have nodded if he could move his head, but he was unable to do so, "Then pain is your friend."

Now that Naruto was sufficiently good and scared, Jiraiya shifted his grasp on Naruto to hold him like a javelin and threw him down the hall into his room at his bed, "Now sleep! And rise again tomorrow to bring great pride and honor to your incomparable master; the great Jiraiya-sama!" He bellowed as he threw Naruto's pack into the room with him and shut the door, "…Good luck brat." He said quietly after doing so.

With his little performance over, Jiraiya sighed and walked back out to the living area where Tsunade was still waiting with her apprentice and pet pig as she watched him head towards the door, "I'll keep an eye on him. Just don't stay away too long perving on the women of the world." She said in a confident manner.

"Sure." Jiraiya said with a modest smile as he opened the door to leave, "After all, we all know that the only thing that can tear me away from my research on international ladies is the chance at research on you. Especially now since I know where I can find you Tsunade-hime." He witnessed Tsunade pick up one of Naruto's couches with one hand and bolted from the apartment before she could use it on him.

Knowing that after he got his head start she would wind up tearing half of the daimyo's property apart if she were really dedicated to catching Jiraiya, Tsunade set the couch down with a thump and stood up to leave Naruto to his own devices as well, "Come on Shizune. Let's find our own room we'll use whenever we stay here."

"So we're not staying in Konoha, but we're staying here?" Shizune said, questioning the entire reasoning behind leaving Konoha if they were just going to go to the capital.

"We're not staying here either." Tsunade corrected as they left Naruto's room and began walking down the halls to find her way out of the Guardian Ninja Building and over to the main palace of the daimyo where she would be staying as such an important person, "We're not standing doctors meant to treat every boo-boo that comes up. We're meant to be summoned when the existing medical staff can't handle what's going on already. It's just so we have a reason to keep an eye on the kid. I told Jiraiya I would when he wasn't around."

Shizune chose not to mention the fact that Tsunade had accepted the offer to work as a doctor in special cases before Jiraiya had ever asked her to keep an eye on Naruto at all, 'Then again… Naruto was sort of the reason that she returned to Konoha for even as long as she did.'

While she would never hear her mistress say it aloud, that was the reason she had gone back as throughout their stay over the last few months Tsunade had never brought up the point of payment for her previous services until others had addressed the fact that she was still in the village.

And now they were at the capital as well. What a coincidence.

Shizune let out a sigh before an exasperated smile came over her face and she started laughing nervously, 'Well at least we're still in Hi no Kuni… and hey, at least I can slip back to Konoha when I get permission from Tsunade-sama to see my friends.' And maybe she could get Tsunade to come along with her too.

Either way, if the migration patterns of one Uzumaki Naruto held Tsunade's interest it would at least let them establish a few roots for the first time in countless years. She also had to admit that the boy was very interesting. It would be kind of fun to see what he would be within three years time.

* * *

Omake: Training Day 9

Meanwhile while Naruto and Shikamaru were getting into their stride as members of the Guardian Ninja, in Konoha as time dragged on and the days turned to months it actually started going slower for one particular shinobi than others, and it wasn't just because of his valuable eyes that could see things happen in slow motion.

Sasuke sat on one of the three stumps that adorned the training ground that Team 7 used regularly with his travel pack on his back all ready to go at a moment's notice. His hands linked in his normally broody manner while his teammates, his sensei, and his supervisor all looked at him trying to let what he had just told them sink in.

What he had told them was stunning to say the least and the first one to regain their composure was the ever-stoic and levelheaded Kakashi, "Sasuke… if you wanted to learn how to summon you could have come to me."

Sasuke simply shook his head in the negative, "You didn't teach me that jutsu for a reason Kakashi." He said, explaining his reasoning for his soon-to-be actions, "Anko too. It's because I'm not compatible with her snakes and you raised your ninken… they just aren't for me."

"Well at least he knows that much without needing to be told." Anko replied, her arms crossed over her ample trenchcoat and mesh covered bosom, "You know what, I say go for it. It can't be any more dangerous than the stuff I make you do during my missions I make you go on with me."

She got a small sadistic measure of satisfaction out of the fact that Sasuke involuntarily shivered as if he could feel the wind whistle of a would-be life ending kunai whizzing past his ear.

Chouji meanwhile, had a headache from this whole thing and pulled out a bag of barbecue chips to settle his brain down from pounding against his skull at the news that had been dropped on them, "So let me just get all of this straight." He said before munching on a few chips, "The weird guy that writes those books that Kakashi-sensei reads-."

"-Jiraiya-sama." Kakashi supplied helpfully with an eye-smile, always happy to pass down knowledge of his favored author to potential readers.

"Right." Chouji then picked up where he had left off from, "-Is also Naruto's sensei… who is actually really strong and taught him how to summon, and he gave you the hand-seals for the jutsu too, but not a contract like he did for Naruto." Sasuke nodded stiffly as his rotund teammate had things correct so far, "So you're about to just use the jutsu right now anyway, because when you don't have a contract and you summon you're taken to the home of the creatures that you're best suited to have a contract with?"

Raising an eyebrow, Sasuke nodded again. The way Chouji put it he made it sound like what he was about to do was completely idiotic. Granted it was kind of dangerous, but the payoff in the end could and most definitely would be well worth the risk.

"This is crazy." Sakura spoke up, taking a step forward to try and appeal to Sasuke sense of reason, "Who knows where you'll end up? How will you get home all by yourself?"

The thing about it was though, that Sasuke's sense of reason took a cardinal backseat to his overwhelming sense of confidence in himself in the face of odds that hadn't already proven themselves to be insurmountable to his skills. In other words; if it hadn't already been shown that what he wanted to do was impossible for people that were far stronger than himself he would believe that it was within his potential to accomplish.

Things like overcoming certain foes… namely his older brother, but that was another story altogether. This would help with that. It was the entire reason he was set on doing it.

"I don't care if it's crazy or not Sakura." Sasuke said, choosing at that point to hop down off of the stump to stand as tall as he could as a thirteen year old boy with two adults in the vicinity, "It's not even like this is the most insane thing that someone can do to get stronger. It's been done all the time."

Jiraiya did it, and more than likely countless other shinobi with summon contracts did it. Sasuke even did a little digging around the village and found that Maito Gai, the strange man in the green jumpsuit, did the same thing he was about to do and wound up with a contract for summoning a tortoise.

He certainly hoped that his summon animal would be more… attuned to battle.

But that would mean that Jiraiya's warning would hold greater importance depending on the natural temperament of the summon creature.

Eventually Kakashi came to understand that even though Sasuke was still young, he technically wasn't under his command any longer as a chunin as he only was Kakashi's subordinate during missions that he ran with Team 7. It wasn't like Anko whom was assigned to handle Sasuke and steer him away from the Cursed Seal.

"If this is what you feel like you have to do…" Kakashi said, finally relenting his mother hen stance on the matter, "…Then go ahead. But just be careful. You have no idea what kind of situation this jutsu could put you in." He advised.

As much as it made him want to bite at his fingernails, these younger ninja had to learn how to develop themselves on their own, and at least Sasuke was showing the ambition to do so, refusing to rest on his laurels as a chunin.

"I will. I'll be ready for anything." Sasuke assured his primary sensei with a confident smile, "Honestly… I just decided to tell all of you this out of common courtesy. I was going to do it whether you wanted me to or not. I already cleared it with Hokage-sama."

Anko's jaw dropped before she glared at Sasuke, "You cheeky brat. You went around behind my back? Whatever happened to respecting my authority?"

"You don't have any authority you crazy bi-!" Sasuke almost finished blurting out the ill-advised curse but held back in favor for turning to Chouji and Sakura, "You two had better keep training. I don't want to have to carry you two as the only chunin out of the three of us for much longer." That was his subtle way of saying that he hoped if his summoning attempt took him a few months to return from they would be strong enough to pass the chunin exams the next time around without him trying to push them.

Chouji grinned widely and extended his hand to his Uchiha teammate, "I guess I can do that. Good luck Sasuke." He then realized that his hand was covered in chip dust and he brushed it off on his pants before extending his hand again which Sasuke actually shook this time.

As Sasuke took the time to turn to Sakura he just stared at her impassively as she looked unsure of what to do. Well he couldn't just let her suffer on the vine like that and he decided to suck it up and take one for the team in a literal manner. He sighed and rolled his eyes, "Go ahead Sakura…"

Her eyes lit up and she walked forward with a beaming smile to wrap her arms around Sasuke's neck in a hug that his image wouldn't allow him to even consider returning. In fact he looked downright miserable, especially since Anko was snickering at him and he was quite certain that Kakashi was getting a kick out of his misfortune as well.

"…Let go now Sakura." Sasuke directed, and she did so albeit reluctantly, returning Sasuke's much valued personal space to him. With nothing really left to say, Sasuke just shrugged his shoulders and bit his finger to draw blood before quickly making the necessary hand-seals, sticking on the last one for long enough to take a good, hard, deep thought about what he was about to do, "Well… later." He said before slamming his palm directly onto the ground, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

And just like that he disappeared in a puff of smoke and vanished from that spot.

Anko let out a sigh as the smoke dissipated and shook her head, "Oh, who am I going to torment on a daily basis now?"

She slowly turned her gaze toward the remaining members of Team 7 only for Kakashi to pick both Sakura and Chouji up and shield them with his back, "No." He said firmly, getting Anko's head to sag.

Elsewhere out of sight and keeping himself concealed, Kabuto appeared from the ground behind a tree with a sharp look in his eyes at what he had just borne witness to, "…Orochimaru-sama will not be pleased with this." He muttered to himself before choosing to make himself scarce for the time being as he wasn't set to train Sakura or Ino that day in their medic-nin studies.

Hopefully he wouldn't have to give any status reports to Orochimaru until Sasuke returned, as he didn't want to be the unfortunate messenger to break the news of his master's next prospective body up and vanishing to who knew where. It damn sure wasn't going to be him. Let the grunts die from Orochimaru's rage for all he cared.

XxX

(Unknown Location)

Not willing to take any chances, immediately upon appearing in his new location, Sasuke was standing in a stance with his Sharingan active, allowing him to be ready to at least have a fighting chance of defending himself if he had thrown himself face-to-face into the den of some treacherous beast.

But no immediate attack came, and Sasuke settled down enough to look around and get a feel for his location.

He seemed to be in some kind of mountainous valley, right on some ledge that overlooked a deep river below that did not look friendly for humans in the least. As a matter of fact nothing about this place looked friendly to humans in the least.

So where were the creatures that were supposed to be here?

Below Sasuke in the river far below he heard a splash over the sound of the rapids and saw a fish that was his size leap out of the water twenty feet into the air. His eye twitched at first as if his summoning creature attuned to him happened to be fresh water fish, no matter how big, he would be pissed off beyond all belief.

But at that exact second a mammoth shadow, many times larger than Sasuke himself passed by him at an absurd speed, diving down toward the water. With his Sharingan active, Sasuke stood witness to the largest bird of prey he had ever seen swooping down to snatch the human adult sized fish right out of the air, skidding across the water before flying back up into the sky towards one of the many high peaks in the area.

Hawks…

Hawks that were at least four times his size.

There was some good news though. They were _perfect_ match for him, with eyes just as sharp as his, speed that was absolutely murderous, and they could fly. That was the clincher right there.

His eyes panned upwards towards all of the high mountain peaks and he selected the one that was the highest. If he was going to be doing this he needed to know where the big boss of the hawks more or less would have been so that he could get this over with and done.

He'd get up there and establish a contract or die trying.

And as he heard the deafening, ear-piercing cry from the skies past the clouds that the mountain peaks pushed past them hawks of all kinds of sizes scattered in fear of the noise. Sasuke then concluded that the 'die trying' part was a very definite possibility.

* * *

Jutsu List

Fuuton: Hasai no Kyouki (Wind Release: Shredding Madness). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-to-long range. The user will force out a horizontal wave of invisible wind that flies at the enemy swiftly. It is very deadly due to the difficulty to anticipate the wind blade and has a high killing potential for a ninjutsu.

Odori o Tsubusu (Crush Dance). Taijutsu, fighting style, short range. This is Suzukuro Kotoko's method of defending herself whenever her enemies get past her ranged attacks and get close to her. Using nimble and athletic twists and spins that take advantage of her flexibility and the concealing ability of her kimono sleeves she will avoid the attacks of her opponents and get her distance or either lash out with her weaponized shamisen. The technique is named as such because of the graceful motions that look like dancing and from the at times lethal attacks from the hard body of her instrument that can break bones with the force of the attack.

Kyouki no Eiyou Buyou (Dance of the Madness Hero). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-to-long range. A very wild and reckless attack by nature. The user will strum the strings of the shamisen wildly with little rhythm or aim, sacrificing this for the sheer quantity of dart-sized drilling air projectiles that can be fired. The unpredictable swaying flight pattern of the jutsu can result in the injury of the user's comrades, but it can also be used against multiple enemies in combat or as a wide-area jutsu.

Keimoudama (Sphere of Enlightenment). Supplementary ninjutsu, all ranges. The user produces a constant flow of chakra from every tenketsu in their body, varying in intensity depending on how much chakra they wish to use and the distance that they wish to sense their surroundings. It is in essence a more complex and complete version of the Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu), however it requires not only a massive amount of chakra, but also near perfect chakra control so that the user does not exhaust themselves within a short amount of time of activating the technique. The difficulty of the jutsu's control and the amount of chakra one must build up in order to effectively use this jutsu makes it exceedingly difficult to master, taking around a decade of rigid training to eventually keep active for long lengths of time. Sadao of the Ninja Guardians uses this jutsu as a replacement for his eyesight.

Katon: Hikeimoudama (Fire Release: Enlightened Sphere of Flames). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, close range. Follows the principle of Keimoudama (Sphere of Enlightenment) but allows it to serve a purpose in battle with the use of nature transformation, in this case of the fire release variety. Like the necessary prerequisite jutsu one will expel a layer of chakra from one's body, but instead of a dense, full amount it is a hollow layer that can extend outward and retract, controlled by the inhalation and exhalation of the user along with the amount of chakra used to vary the intensity of the flames. Can be a double-edged sword of a ninjutsu. If it burns too hot and for too long the user can damage themselves within the sphere.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Ninja Guardians

Uzumaki Naruto

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 22**

Nara Shikamaru

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 2.5 **

**Total Score: 21.5**

Suzukuro Kotoko

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 24**

Sadao

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 28.5**

Densetsu no Sannin

Jiraiya

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 4.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 4.5**

**Total Score: 35.5**

Tsunade

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 35**

Konoha Ninja

Shizune

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 5 **

**Total Score: 29.5**

* * *

**Alright peeps, I can answer this at least since I've gotten enough messages on the matter and see no harm in answering this much all at once. The time skip is next chapter. This one was just to set up the environment that Naruto and Shikamaru were placed into and the main things that are keeping Tsunade around the storyline despite the fact that she did not become the next Hokage.**

**If it was missed by those reading, despite the lack of the bet bonding them, with the time Tsunade spent in Konoha Naruto still somehow wormed his way into her heart with a combination of grit, looking like her brother, and his overall personality that makes him so very popular amongst readers of manga and watchers of anime.**

**That aside, next chapter three years will have passed and this ain't gonna be your daddy's Shippuden… or more accurately Kishimoto's Shippuden (it could still be an accurate statement if Kishimoto is in fact your daddy, and if he is and he claims you I would like to meet you… so that I can get some of that money.). **

**I've got new things all set up instead of just the regular run of the mill tier of Akatsuki to run through. Orochimaru's dangerous and growing in power and influence in the shadows and will be very important instead of just cannon fodder to merely show a character's growth.**

**But perhaps I've said too much.**

**Until next time, Kenchi out.**

**P.S. I have to try and finish Fullmetal Shinobi to at least say that I at least finished a story... even if it's the one that I'm least proud of by far.  
**


	43. Before You Forget

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. And now… I slumber.

**Chapter 43: Before You Forget**

* * *

"Naruto." The voice of Shikamaru was muffled by the front door of Naruto's dwelling within the Guardian Ninja Quarters. A trio of knocks came at the door that stirred the slumbering blonde within from his very pleasurable dream, "Come on. Get your ass up. It's almost noon."

"Go away Shika… take someone else today." Naruto replied from his bedroom, pulling the covers of his bed over his spiky mop of hair and turning over to try and get back to sleep, "I'm still healing from the last mission."

"Your lies suck. You got back from that three days ago and Tsunade told me you were fine. Now come on, we've got work."

"No, _you've_ got work." A disgruntled Naruto finally chose to sit up in his bed revealing himself to be a few years older than he was previously, "You just want me to go with you." Though he still had spiky blonde hair of the same length and the same blue eyes and whisker-marks on his cheeks as ever there were a few changes in his appearance.

His body had grown into that of an average-heighted teenager from that of the shrimpy little boy he had been years prior. His torso had faint outlines of abdominal muscle and his arms had a bit of clear power in them as he sighed and scratched his hair with a yawn as he climbed out of bed in his boxers.

Continuing to yawn, Naruto walked his way to the bathroom and brushed his teeth as he started his shower. Before shedding the last remnants of his clothing and stepping inside he looked in the mirror over the sink, checking himself over before looking down at his belly-button, internally molding some chakra to force the seal that held back his inner demon to form on his stomach, "S'up?" He said to seemingly no one.

"**Don't speak to me this early in the morning weakling."**

"Stop calling me weakling damn it." Naruto muttered, punching himself in the stomach a bit as if it would hurt the Kyuubi as he began letting the water of the shower hit him to begin getting him clean, "How awesome do I have to get for you to stop calling me weak?" He asked aloud as he started washing himself

"**You call it 'awesome' when I have to patch your pathetic body up after every single time you face the slightest hint of adversity? Wow… what high standards for excellence you keep."**

"You're such a dick…" Just what was it going to take for the Kyuubi to stop being a jerk to him? He had done everything he could have possibly thought of over the last three years to get its respect. Fuu even stopped in and managed to give him some help. And still it wasn't enough, "Whatever."

He had tried to learn how to work with its chakra, but then it just accused him of relying on it and using it for its power. He had trained himself expressly with the intent to get by purely on his own skills as a shinobi to prove he didn't need the Kyuubi, but that only served to irritate it as well as it claimed that Naruto was just going to keep it imprisoned for no reason as if it didn't exist. Pondering this conundrum during his shower was making his head hurt.

"**Useless-human-says-what?"**

"Huh?"

"**Close enough."**

The dark chuckle of amusement from within him let Naruto know that he had just been had, "Ugh… it's too early for this crap." He said to himself, turning the shower off before he heard another knock at his door, "Are you _still_ out there?" He asked loudly as he grabbed a towel and dried himself off.

He could just feel Shikamaru's smirk from behind the front door, "Do you really think standing still for a few minutes bothers me? Now get dressed and let's go on the stupid mission already."

"No. Take Sora. He needs more missions under his belt." Naruto replied as he went back into his room and started going through his dresser to get his clothes for the day. When he heard no response from Shikamaru when it came to his request to take one of their other teammates he rolled his eyes, "…But you're not going to do that because it's just another Naho escort mission isn't it?"

"Yep. And she requested us both specifically this time. She'll know if we send clones again."

Outside in the fourth floor corridor, Shikamaru stood, his hair still in his pineapple-looking ponytail. Over the years he had come to wear a long-sleeved mesh armor shirt and olive-colored pants with his Guardian Ninja sash around his waist. Over the shirt he wore an open black jacket that his hands were currently shoved in the pockets of.

From Shikamaru's side of the door silence reigned in the hall for a few minutes until he started getting a bit antsy. He personally didn't like the 'escort' missions for the daimyo's young relative Naho. She was their age and for some reason found both him and Naruto very cool. The escort missions were really her attempts to get them to take her on glorified dates around the capital city.

Even Naruto's ever-growing hidden inner pervert found her annoying even if she was kind of cute.

Shikamaru knocked again repeatedly, "If you don't open the door I'm going to pick the lock and let Kotoko into your apartment." The threat went as unnecessary as Naruto opened the door fully dressed.

Naruto now wore an orange pair of pants with bandages around the ankles that ran to his black shinobi sandals. Around his waist he wore the sash of the Guardian Ninja group to go with a blue short sleeved armor-knit shirt that fit tight on his person with his clan crest on the back. Over the toughly designed shirt he wore a brown leather harness that held his trusty machete on the back, still with its attached chain and the keepsake bells from his genin days of training with Jiraiya on the grip of the weapon. His arms were covered from the top of his knuckles to his elbows with a pair of blue arm-warmers that covered the business portion of his armguards. One could see the black material of the armguards going over his fists underneath the top of the arm-warmers.

"Let's go and get this over with." Naruto said in a defeated voice, resigning himself to having Naho try to touch and feel all over whatever part of his body she could grab, not limited to his arms in the least. He wished she would at least pick just one of them to crush on and spare the other one, but she seemed to like them both.

At times he felt if he could literally see what the girl was thinking when he caught her staring at the two of them at the same time he'd bring himself to the point of retching because it probably involved lewd acts that they would _never_ do, it was like some kind of reverse-Jiraiya stuff. Naho kind of gave him the creeps whenever she got that certain dreaming look on her face. Noble girl was bored…

Shikamaru watched his friend pull his goggles around his forehead and place a green jewel necklace around his neck as he slinked down the hall in a dejected manner, "Come on cheer up. There's a silver lining around the cloud of being Naho's designated arm candy again today."

Stopping in the hall and turning to face Shikamaru who would usually be even more down in the dumps than himself at having to escort Naho, Naruto gave Shikamaru a deadpan look, "Oh yeah? And what's that? Are you finally throwing in the towel and letting her have her way with you? Kami you're lazy. I always knew that was how you'd end up giving it up."

"No." Even the jab from Naruto didn't get Shikamaru to revert back to back and forth insults with his brother-in-arms, "This is our swan song Naruto." Naruto's eyes went wide as if to ask him if he were serious, "Yeah. The contract is up today."

A grin slowly began to spread across Naruto's face before he jumped victoriously in the air, "Whoo! Yeah, Konoha I'll be back before you know it!" He started running through the halls, still loudly celebrating that this was their last day before they could go home.

And seeing Naruto take off with so much energy seemed to drain Shikamaru's as he palmed his forehead and decided to head down at his own pace, "Upbeat idiot… I swear he's bipolar." He then froze as if he were an animal being stalked down by a predator, and he wasn't that far off either.

"Aw, it's your last day Shika-kun?" The dark-haired musician and all around kimono-wearing psychopath of the Guardian Ninja draped herself over Shikamaru's back with her smile and constantly closed eyes, "Are you sure there's anything I can't do to make you renew your deal with the daimyo."

"Unfortunately not." Three years had given Shikamaru the necessary experience with the woman to take this calmly. Still, despite that, after having seen Kotoko actually work in combat against people she actually had the clearance to kill he still found her to be utterly terrifying. At least he managed to deduce why she seemed so partial wearing such dark patterned clothing.

Because when the blood of her enemies wound up dousing her in battle it could be disguised by all of the black.

He was quite certain that she was the epitome of the original definition of what a troublesome woman was supposed to entail. All the way.

A wistful sigh came from Kotoko as she let Shikamaru go and slipped casually to lean against the wall, tucking her hands behind her back, "Oh well… If there is anyone out there that understands what a contract expiration means it would be someone like me from a clan of freelance mercenary shinobi. I will compose a song in honor of Naruto-kun and yourself."

"You already have like three of those."

"Not of the two of you my dear Shika-kun."

XxX

(With Naruto)

A grinning Naruto jumped down the full flight of stairs from the second to the first floor of the building, having stopped to grab himself a quick bite to eat. Today would surely be bittersweet as he'd have to leave his hard-earned friends here in the capital, but that would give way to being all kinds of just regular sweet when he returned to Konoha.

"Where are you going dumbass?"

Naruto stopped in clear sight of the training ring, pushing himself halfway over the railing to speak more closely to the person within, "Hey Sora." He said before grinning widely, "Are you going to miss your senpai when he's gone? There's not going to be anyone else around here to show you what a _real_ jinchuuriki is supposed to be like."

"Juuha Shou (Beast Tearing Palm)!"

A blue blade of wind flew at Naruto that missed him when he leapt over it and landed on one of the pillars surrounding the training ring with one arm and one foot sticking him there with chakra, a frown on his face, "Seriously, you're going to stop doing that. Don't make me kick your head in again."

Sora was a young man Naruto's age with shoulder length blue hair and brown eyes. He wore the long white uniform of the monks of Fire Temple along with their customary black front dressing that draped over one shoulder and covered most of the outfit. Around his waist the sash of the Guardian Ninja group rested marking his status as one of them. The arm of the shoulder his black uniform dressing sat over had one large sleeve that concealed his right hand, but his left was in clear view and showed him holding up a three-bladed claw with chakra circulating through it.

"You might have vouched for me to be allowed to join the Guardians… but you can't ever get me to like the leftover Kyuubi's chakra in my system so stop going there." Sora warned with a bit of an edge as his eyes drifted momentarily to his hidden right arm.

Still, Naruto was unconcerned. Sora was mostly talk when it came to trying to hurt him and they both knew it. Naruto had way too many advantages, both naturally and in the ninja arts, "Yeah, I understand monk-boy. Just keep the sealing arm braces that me and Ero-sensei made on your arm and you can't have anymore outbreaks. It's on isn't it?"

Sora just gave him an expressionless look and lifted his right arm, letting the sleeve drop to show that his entire right arm was thoroughly bandaged thickly and around the bandages sat multiple metal braces held tight with thick bolts, inscribed with the chakra suppressing seal that was meant to stop berserk outbursts of the Kyuubi's chakra on Naruto, "Do you know how hard it is to take this thing off?"

"Duh." Naruto replied flatly, "I made it. It's supposed to be like that." He then dropped from the pillar onto the dirt floor and punched into the palm of his hand, "But I'm leaving with Shikamaru after our job is done today."

"Are you going to tell Naho that during the escort mission today?" Sora cracked, a sharp contrast from his normal attitude, but when it came to picking on either Naruto or Shikamaru when it came to the clingy noble girl, it was fair game and an inside joke for all, "She might sweet talk the daimyo into mobilizing his soldiers to barricade you two into staying."

"Shika'll find a way out even if he does." Naruto replied semi-jokingly, really hoping that the aforementioned scenario was purely hyperbole for humor content on Sora's part. Naruto had found over the past three years that the Fire Daimyo could be easily swayed by an influential enough force, relying on his ministers and loyal advisors to keep him from being coerced. Well Naho was his family and nobles weren't above using their power for trivial reasons.

A teenage girl's crush was a very trivial reason to blockade the premises and the capital city, but not to someone that usually got everything they desired.

"Do you want one more good spar before you go?" Sora asked, setting himself in the taijutsu stance of the Ninja Monks as he was banking on a yes from his comrade.

Naruto immediately reached for the hilt of his sheathed machete on his back with one hand, grinning as he stood in his own fighting stance with his unarmed arm leading the way, "Oh, so you're a good spar now?"

Before the two could begin to fight, a clearing of someone's throat attracted Naruto's attention to the front doors of the building where Shikamaru stood seemingly waiting, "Come on Naruto. The sooner we get this mission over with the sooner we can come back and get ready to leave tomorrow. You can fight Sora this evening."

Both Naruto and Sora were still set on fighting each other, but the wet blanket of the hour, Nara Shikamaru had a point. The mission came before leisure, no matter how asinine the mission was, "*sigh* Later…" Naruto said as he trudged over to the door and Sora returned to his own daily exercises.

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato – Hokage Tower – Hiruzen's Office)

"He should be here any day now you know." Jiraiya said, leaning against the side of one of the bookshelves in his village leader's office, "When I told him I'd be getting here before he would a week ago he told me to tell the old man that, 'When he got back he'd be kicking your ass and taking that hat.'"

A hearty chuckle came from Hiruzen as he sat in his chair looking out onto the village. While it seemed an unassuming act, the fact that he was willing to sit with his back turned to the door and to the only other person in the room showed the amount of trust he had in Jiraiya, "You know, these days I'd more than likely welcome such a thing. Koharu and Homura are getting on my case to find a successor."

"And?" Jiraiya responded with a raised eyebrow.

"There are many strong shinobi within these walls Jiraiya, but Hokage material?" Hiruzen said before a frown adorned his face, "I need to see more. You are still the number one candidate. You know this."

"Yet I still don't want the job." A sighing Jiraiya said. They'd been through the same song and dance for years now, "Sarutobi-sensei you know I'm not cut out for being Hokage. I'm not that guy. Someone will step up soon. And if not, hey, you're no older than the Tsuchikage and he's still squatting his gnome frame in his chair." At least he was able to get a chuckle out of Hiruzen with that last statement as he himself started looking out the window at the village as well, "Kami, this place never changes does it?"

"Let's hope it never does for a long, long time." Hiruzen remarked as he gazed upon his beloved village.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – Hot Springs District – Amaguriama)

At a small shop frequented by many passing by for its sweets and beverages sold within clear view of passersby that could select what they wanted almost on the go, out front on one of the benches sat a pair of Konoha kunoichi. This was actually a very common thing as many kunoichi visited the shop for its goods, but the people of interest happened to be the two kunoichi sitting there on this particular day.

On one particular bench outside of the shop itself sat a young woman sipping a sweet drink. Her long blonde hair sat in a ponytail that went down to her waist with a red clip in it, her blue eyes shut as she enjoyed her beverage. She wore a purple sleeveless blouse that buttoned up the front that showed her developed curves and exposed her midsection, no more bandages concealing her exposed body and fishnet covers on her elbows and knees. She also wore a purple apron skirt that was open in the front with a shorter black skirt underneath it and fishnet shorts beneath that still, black sandals down on her feet.

Next to her sat another girl with a more womanly figure that complimented her growth in age. She had long pink hair, green eyes, a sleeveless red top, black sandals with guards around her ankles and shins, black shorts, a short pink apron skirt, pink elbow protectors, Her headband was done up in her hair to frame and accentuate her face in order to attract attention away from her forehead, "So Ino-pig… fought Hinata lately?"

Ino stopped drinking after fixing Sakura with something of a glare and replied handily, "They're not fights Forehead… they're just spars. Friendly training between comrades." She defended rather weakly on her own end.

"Uh huh." Sakura said before taking a bite of her rice cake from Tsuchi no Kuni, "Is that why you two aren't allowed to 'spar' without supervision from someone that can stop you two from maiming each other? I could just _feel_ the camaraderie when I saw your face after the last time. What the hell happened? It's like night and day with Hinata these days. What'd you do?"

"I blame myself for starting this again…" Ino muttered quietly to herself so that Sakura didn't hear her. She didn't need her best friend to know that she had repeated the cycle of fighting over a boy only in a more subtle manner with a different girl. She'd never hear the end of it if that bit of information broke, "Well at least we can talk to each other and work together. We're not always at each other's throats… just when it's convenient."

Well it was more than could be said when Ino and Sakura were in their little one-upping phase back in the Academy so there was that. And there wasn't any need to dwell on such a thing on a beautiful day like the one they were out and about in.

Noticing Ino's sigh of comfort, probably at not having to work that day, Sakura brought that topic up to talk about, "It's nice not being busy for once." She noticed a slight growl come from Ino at that statement, "And now you're upset. I'm sure you want me to ask you why."

"The Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force is the worst job…" Ino remarked with disdain at her current job, "I'm the only girl in there, none of the guys are worth a damn to look at, I hate the stupid grey uniform I have to wear… I mean, it's totally not cute at all. I can't even make it look good. I only really joined because daddy wouldn't let me learn any of his mind reading techniques unless I did." And now she was sorely wishing for an excuse to quit after six months. She liked doing missions way more.

"So… quit." Sakura commented, taking a sip of her own drink as the two girls continued to converse, "I know, you can work in with me, Chouji, and Sasuke-kun if you really want to. Ever since we all got promoted Kakashi-sensei doesn't come with us on many missions so we usually have a free spot open that we have to fill."

"I guess…" Ino said, though she didn't sound that excited about it.

In truth she had been working with Team 7, Team 8, and Team Gai as they were the closest groups to her in Konoha, and she had led teams of her own over the last three years, but in the end it just wasn't the same. How many people could say that their first team was as good as hers was? It was just unfair to compare any other team to her original one, but she simply couldn't help it.

"Well don't sound so happy about it." Sakura said, rolling her eyes as she finished her drink and saw that Ino was through with her snack and beverage as well, "Come on. Today's a day to relax and I say hot springs. Let's go." That sounded as good of an idea as any at the moment and the two girls got up to make their way to the baths.

XxX

(Sometime Later – Konoha Hot Springs District)

It was a familiar scene, if anyone knew that much about just how common an occurrence this happened to be, as Jiraiya sat crouched on a roof overlooking the women's side of the hot springs from a distance via the use of his trusty telescope.

The lecherous grin on his face didn't drop even as he felt a familiar presence land behind him, "I knew you'd get back sometime around today." He commented matter-of-factly before taking note of the silence and letting out a sigh while shaking his head, "You didn't tell Tsunade-hime or Shizune that you two left did you?"

A few seconds later, Naruto crouched down right next to Jiraiya with a mischievous smile on his whisker-marked face, "Nope. I want to see how long it'll take for her to realize we're not there and if she'll come back here when she does."

"She'll come back." Jiraiya said full of certainty on the matter, "She'll come back just to punt your ass over the monument for getting one over on her when she realizes you're not there anymore. Kami kid… you're so dead."

"Tsunade-baachan loves me too much to kill me." Naruto responded confidently before realizing that this wouldn't stop her from trying to hurt him. It wasn't like she didn't know without a shadow of a doubt that he could survive it, "She doesn't know where my apartment is does she?"

A shrug came from Jiraiya as he continued to peep through his looking glass with no shame whatsoever, "Shizune does, and that's the same thing. Speaking of houses I'll bet your lazy-ass friend went home." Naruto nodded, not that Jiraiya could see. Shikamaru trudged his way home right the second they walked through the gate, "Why didn't you go home?"

"Because I don't want to sleep, and it's not like my house changed any while I was gone." Naruto defended, standing up on the roof, crossing his arms over his chest almost childishly, "I want to see the village again, and maybe catch up with some friends… but I haven't found any yet." They must have had missions.

Fully understanding Naruto's desire to want to see his friends again after being gone for so long, Jiraiya let out a humming noise of thought, "Well that's sensible. You should definitely do that, as long as you go see Sarutobi-sensei when you get the first chance too. Fancy a look before you go?" He offered nonchalantly, holding out his telescope for Naruto's benefit, 'Come to the dark side boy! You've been halfway there for three years already! Join me!'

Naruto just gave Jiraiya a deadpan stare in return that actually got the man unnerved a bit at how dull it seemed to be. At least it did until Naruto's arm robotically moved towards the scope and grabbed it, his body turning towards the hot springs visible in the distance to glance at it through the device, adjusting its distance accordingly, "Twenty seconds, and that's all. That's not even enough time to focus the-. Oh sweet Kami…"

Yes! Yes! Jiraiya was beside himself at this point, feeling victory running through his mind. All it would take in addition to the years and years of wearing down his defenses was some time away from the village to drive home the final fact into Naruto's skull that there was no place on the face of the planet with more beautiful women than a hidden village.

A hand planted itself on Naruto's shoulder from his proud teacher. While this might have been just a baby step towards the crevice of the lecher that he wanted to drive Naruto towards, it was still a huge victory, "They don't build women like that at the capital do they kid? You've only been around five kunoichi regularly for the past three years. Welcome home."

Naruto nodded and kept staring despite the fact that his mind was screaming at him that it was wrong, "…It's good to be home Ero-sense-." He stopped and his eyes widened, jaw dropping as well.

Jiraiya wondered just what Naruto saw because he immediately stopped peeping and turned to walk away with that same stunned look on his face that had never fallen away, "What's the matter? What'd you see? Give me the telescope back."

'Oh… Ino-chan definitely grew up. Sakura did too, but… seriously, Ino-chan's got to be sporting C's at least. Damn you sensei… I shouldn't be able to tell that from this far away.' Naruto thought to himself at the showstopper he had just borne witness to. What exactly were the chances of that being the first time he saw Ino upon his return; losing her towel and getting into the hot spring? That had to be some kind of foreboding. He tossed the scope back over his shoulder to Jiraiya who caught it as Naruto continued to walk away, "I'm… gonna go do stuff. Later Ero-sensei."

Watching his latest student disappear in a swirl of wind and leaves, Jiraiya just shrugged and left to find another spot to get a good look from. The never-ending search for proper research material had to continue.

XxX

(A Few Hours Later – That Evening – Naruto's Apartment)

Well he had spent some time traversing about the village, getting his lay of the land back and endeavoring to visit Hiruzen in his office as requested by Jiraiya to be returned to active duty and to just say hello to the old man. After sharing a warm greeting, Naruto told him to keep that hat and those robes handy because it was only a matter of time at that point before they became his.

From there he visited his mother's grave and talked to her for a bit about some of the things he had done over the last three years as he touched it up and before he knew it the sun was preparing to go down.

After grabbing a meal at Ichiraku Ramen where he said hi to Teuchi and Ayame, he figured that then was just as good a time as any to head home and get himself settled back in. The place probably needed a damn good dusting after years of negligence… thank goodness he had clones to do that manual labor for him.

As he reached for the doorknob he stopped and palmed his face before digging through his belongings and cursing at the fact that he didn't have his key. He forgot that he had given it to Ino so that she could watch his place until he came back, "…So now I've got to run over to her place just to get the key." After what he had seen earlier that day, he didn't think he could stand in front of Ino and keep up eye contact.

But it seemed to be unnecessary as he grabbed the doorknob and turned it to find that it was unlocked. He blinked confusedly at that before pushing it open to find the lights on, his curtains keeping him from seeing this outside.

Naruto walked inside of his home and sighed in contentment as a wave of nostalgia washed over him. Yeah, he was definitely home.

Looking around the place, Naruto walked over to the windowsill by his kitchen sink and marveled at how good the plant he had been growing there looked. It was looking healthier than it happened to look when he left, and even then he had taken good care of it.

A soft gasp came from behind him, diverting his attention away from his plant as he turned around and looked across the room at the very grown up Yamanaka Ino who seemed to be in shock as if she had seen a ghost, "Wow…" She said quietly, and were it not for just how quiet the apartment was he wouldn't have heard her at all, "…You're back. Shika's here too isn't he? In the village I mean."

"Yeah…" Naruto said rather lamely, not knowing what to say at that moment. Seeing Ino with clothes on, it was still hard to keep the memories of what she looked like without them from pushing forward, but he kept his head for the most part, "Damn it, it's good to see you again." He uttered as the first thing that came to mind.

Hearing him say that put a small smile on her face as she walked forward and paced around him to get a good look, "Well look who decided to go and get taller than me." Not only that, not only the change in clothes, but he had an air about him that she only got from certain shinobi like Neji or Sasuke, or most experienced combatants that showed they had seen their fair share of fighting.

She wondered if he'd talk about some of it, but that could be saved for later. What had gone on then during his contract with the daimyo was not important. What was important was that Naruto was back, Shikamaru was back, and that meant that they could be a team again.

Walking in front of him again, Ino simply threw her arms around Naruto's neck and hugged him closely, "Kami, it's so good to see you again you big yellow-headed dummy." She let him return the gesture before pulling away to look him over fully, "You could have wrote more letters you know. I mean five letters in three years? Really?" And he could have sent some damn pictures, because seeing him again as he was turned out to be quite a shock to the system.

Likewise for Naruto, but that was another thing altogether. He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly as Ino walked over to his table and sat down on the corner of it, "Aw come on. Using Shizune like a messenger wasn't fair. She had her own friends to come see when she came back to Konoha."

Playing as the go-between for kids couldn't have been fun when she had been asked to do so. But against Naruto's pleading eyes she was a total softie… until puberty slapped his physiology across the face and he got too old for that to work.

Ino glanced at him skeptically and blew the bang of her blonde hair from out of the way of her right eye before smirking and posing for him provocatively while still sitting on the edge of his table, "So Naruto… do you think I look different now?"

'Yes! Yes! Kami yes!' The little voice in Naruto's head shrieked, but for once he didn't say the first thing that came to mind. Doing such usually got Tsunade to punch him across the daimyo's property or got Kotoko to chase him with her shamisen wind blades, "Well you still look like the Ino-chan I remember." He said, getting a frown out of her before he continued, "But wow… you seriously grew up."

Apparently his mind still had enough spontaneous control to get that much out of him involuntarily.

"Aw…" Ino said, hopping off of the table to walk over and pinch Naruto's cheek, "I'm so happy you think so." She grabbed him by the hands and forced him to sit down at the table before taking a seat across from him, "So come on then. You've got a lot to catch up on and there's no time like the present for it. It's time to get you up to speed."

Blinking in confusion at just what he needed to know that he couldn't pick up via walking around and running into certain folks, Naruto simply shrugged. It wasn't like he was against the idea at all, but he figured that Ino would much rather go home and allow them to pick this up the next day once she would be able to wrangle Shikamaru up as well and kill two birds with one stone, "Alright. So tell me what's new?"

He should have known that once he got Ino started it was simply impossible to stop her. Yamanaka Ino with over three years of pent up gossip that had yet to be told to someone close to her? It was to have been expected that the two didn't part ways that night until well after midnight.

Well, some things didn't change at least.

XxX

(Border of Cha no Kuni/Hi no Kuni)

As peaceful as things would seem at a first glance in the tranquil night along the infinitely forested countryside, things were never as calm as they appeared on the outside.

Swiftly moving shadows darted through the trees in hot pursuit of another that was further out in front of them and steadily pulling away in a remarkable fashion. This was made even more impressive by the fact that the person under pursuit had been on the run for over three days prior to this point and still seemed to be able to move at such a speed.

"Fucking bitch! How's she still moving this fast?" An older, but still similar in appearance and temperament Tayuya blurted out as she continued a chase with twenty Otogakure ninja following the lead of her and her partner, "She actually got out of Degarashi Port lands in one piece! We sunk her fucking ship at the cove outside of town!"

Next to her was an equally older and mostly similar Sakon, who also seemed to be rather impressed at the resilience of their quarry from the looks of the smirk on his face, "Oh come on now Tayuya. How many times have we dealt with her back in Mizu no Kuni by now? Enough times to know that we can't underestimate her."

"She's fucking Kiri trash. One of the ones left over from that idiotic war they were fighting." Tayuya asserted, not willing to give up the thought that the girl they were after was merely lucky to get as far as she had, "Come on already! I'm not the one that going to tell Orochimaru-sama that she got away again… or Kimimaro either." The girl they were chasing was too far out of range for Tayuya's flute-based genjutsu to take hold of.

The thought of their target's escape wiped the smirk off of Sakon's face as he certainly didn't want to deal with Kimimaro after failing a mission. They had managed to kill the rest of her squad that had been sent with them by themselves before they ever made it off of Mizu no Kuni, but this last girl was an annoyingly tough rundown.

Both of them knew just how much Orochimaru loved his bloodline experimentation, and hers was rather unique. Aside from that she was a noted pest when it came to dealing with her in combat as many Otogakure ninja knew by then.

And from where they knew she was going it was of the utmost importance to capture her before she arrived past the point of no return where they couldn't safely follow. It was getting close to that point on the map.

Due to his utter domination of the maritime trade routes after buying up the Oceanside property in that town, Degarashi Port was Oto's gateway to the sea. It was what allowed them to so easily move as many forces into Mizu no Kuni as they could three years ago to begin capturing ninja with bloodlines, something that started Kiri's civil war in earnest as it was done with the Mizukage Yagura's consent.

Along with Ta no Kuni, both Cha no Kuni and the outlying islands of Mizu no Kuni were safe for them to operate in. While most of the Cha no Kuni countryside was safe for Otogakure forces to roam freely as long as they stayed low-key enough that the village communities didn't find them enough of an issue to send out requests for assistance from Konoha, they knew full well that things with the village in question were tense.

Thanks to Kabuto though, they were able to avoid many attempts over the years to find out what they were doing, and Kiri mostly kept itself isolated during its period of domestic trouble.

But now the new regime wanted Oto influence out of their country, and Orochimaru wasn't willing to go so quietly into the night after sinking his fangs so deeply into their lands. He had long been coiled around it, this close to establishing his control over one of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, the gem of them as far as he was concerned.

It was far enough away from Konoha that he could anticipate any moves made against him after they figured out how close he was to taking power away from Kiri, but he could still plot his moves directed at Konoha from there with little to no fear of something missing his sight, not with his agents all over the mainland. It was perfect for him.

Thus another secret war was being waged in those lands similar to the one that had begun three years ago in regards to kekkei genkai extermination. One that wouldn't stay a secret for long unless they captured the runner from Kirigakure before she got too far.

XxX

(Two Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato)

Naruto was ready and raring to get right back into the mix of things as far as mission work in Konoha went. He was back, he felt great, and he had a ton of pent-up excitement that he needed to put to good use.

Only he and Shikamaru had made Ino a promise the day before when they had all met up; that they would hold off on taking a mission until she was able to clear her leaving of the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force.

Naruto whined aloud for over an hour on how that could take days and he was ready to go right then, but the combined efforts of Shikamaru lazily agreeing to put off work for any reason and Ino giving him the seemingly revamped version of her begging look forced him to give in. Apparently she had three years to practice and refine her technique.

Being in the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force probably helped out with that a lot once he stopped to think about it.

But in the meantime until the green light was given by the higher-ups in Ino's department to let her end her obligatory duties to her current station of work there was the matter of what in the world there was to do around town until then.

"Well I'll be damned. Would you look at who decided to drag himself back to the village after all."

As he walked down the street, Naruto's attention was obtained by the voice of a man calling out to apparently get his notice since it was loud enough to do so. Turning towards a nearby dumpling shop, Naruto's eyes widened and a grin spread across his face as he identified who it was, "Asuma-sensei hey!"

Naruto's old Team 10 sensei looked just the same as ever, not changing a bit over three years. Same old beard, same uniform… same cigarette hanging from his lips, lit and burning away. Yeah, nothing on him really changed at all.

Asuma grinned as Naruto got close and gave him a second to see what had changed about the blonde chunin, "Ha, still taller than you." He chuckled at the frown that formed on Naruto's face at that before he continued the conversation, "So how'd the Guardian Ninja treat you and Shikamaru?"

"Great." Naruto replied in kind, arms posted behind his head in a relaxed manner, "After I almost died the tenth time I started actually liking it there." To be honest, Asuma couldn't tell if he was joking or not because he had a completely straight face the entire time.

"Uh huh…" Came the placid response from the longtime jounin ninja, taking a minute to blow his smoke out of his mouth.

Seeing the smoke reminded Naruto of something, getting him to snap his fingers before he started feeling around on his person, smiling when he was able to pull out a small box from his supply pouch, "Here you go. It's a present from me and Shika. We got these when we had a mission out towards Kusagakure's way."

Asuma gratefully took the box and opened it to find a row of neatly packed cigars inside, obviously painstakingly rolled and of very high quality. With that he then eyed Naruto with suspicion, "Alright kid, how in the world did you find out?" Ino must have read his or Kurenai's mind or something. But how did she even figure to do that? "We just did ourselves and we did a great job making sure nobody else-." He trailed off when he noticed that Naruto was completely and utterly confused as to what he was talking about.

"What the hell are you talking about sensei?" Naruto said, scratching his cheek as he felt lost as to the context of the conversation, "You don't want them?" That was strange. He thought Asuma would enjoy them as special occasion cigars.

So it was just a kind gesture from a pleasant young man. How ironic. Usually cigars were handed out to celebrate the birth of a baby by a father and his friends. For a minute Asuma thought that Naruto was on to the fact that he had gotten Kurenai pregnant recently, but that was just paranoia, "Ahem. Yeah, I want them. Thanks Naruto, I really appreciate it." He said earnestly, stashing them in his own supply pouch for the time being, "I'm looking forward to seeing how much stronger you are now."

"You won't believe some of the things I can do now." Naruto assured him wholeheartedly, "I used to be just plain awesome. Well now I've ascended to a whole new level past awesome… that I don't have a word for yet, but when I get one…" He just let that statement hang in the air on its own, "Either way, Akatsuki can bring it now. I'm ready."

Naruto would in the near distant future be noted to have punched himself in the stomach for such an unapprisedly confident statement when he remembered saying this.

But for the moment, he let his own normal extremely high amount of self-confidence carry him through his first conversation back in Konoha with Asuma, "Seriously sensei, just wait and see. You're gonna be telling your kids about how cool I am."

"Who said anything about kids to you?" Asuma hissed suspiciously, having lunged forward to grab Naruto's harness in a very shaky grip, "Nobody said anything about kids! Who's having a kid here?"

Used to crazy people that were categorized as his friends grabbing a hold of him in a similar manner for saying less over the course of three years, Naruto calmly removed Asuma's hands from his harness and pacified the unstable man, "It's alright Asuma-sensei… it's okay. Man, have back-to-back missions been kicking your ass or something?" He himself was no stranger to the PTSD of nonstop work.

Again, Asuma let out a sigh. Seriously, his whole paranoia over his currently secret offspring was messing with his head and it had only been two weeks since he had found out.

And speak of the devil herself, at that moment Kurenai walked out of the dango shop holding their order, "Well I was wondering what made you walk outside while we were waiting on lunch." Still looking as intimidatingly lovely as ever, she gifted a warm smile towards the youngest shinobi amongst them, "Hello Naruto. Welcome back."

Naruto gave her a big grin in return and waved at her, "Hey Kurenai-sensei. Asuma-sensei's taking you out on a date huh?" He finished, turning a roguish smirk towards the bearded jounin's way, "You really can't say anything otherwise this time, so don't even try it."

Asuma just gave Naruto a bit of a harsh look while Kurenai on the other hand looked thoroughly amused, "…I'm going to take that for now, and then I'm going to take the first opening you give me to make fun of you, and I'm going to drive it straight into the ground." The male jounin of the pair said.

Taking Asuma's 'threat' with a grain of salt to say nothing else, Naruto cleaned out an ear with his pinky nonchalantly, "You make it seem like it's some big issue that I know you and Kurenai-sensei are together. I think it's cool really. I wish I could get a girlfriend as pretty as Kurenai-sensei… that didn't come with serious baggage."

"You're saying that you had a girlfriend while you were gone Naruto?" Kurenai asked, an eyebrow raised in interest for more reasons than just her own curiosity. That would be some interesting news to someone that was rather close to her.

Instead of confirming this, Naruto let loose a shiver of sorts at the topic being brought up, "No… I said a girl _without_ baggage. Every girl I met on the job that 'liked' me was crazy. Shika didn't have that problem… bastard."

"How crazy?"

"'Kill me so I couldn't leave her village' crazy. Or my personal favorite, 'If you don't marry me my father will declare war on Hi no Kuni' crazy." Which was strange because he didn't say anymore than two sentences to those women… and she wanted Shikamaru too.

Nobles…

Good thing the Fire Daimyo had his back though. He would have had no problems starting a tiff with Tsume no Kuni over keeping one of his elite guard free and clear to his own will. The man was loyal as hell to the people he liked, and it was a good thing he liked Naruto.

"That's the bad kind…" Asuma mused while Kurenai palmed her face in response, "Well there are no more crazy international women to worry about now. Just the crazy domestic ones." He got a slap to the back of his head from one of those crazy domestic women who happened to be standing right next to him. Naruto nodded in agreement but stopped once Kurenai gave him a chiding glance.

Well Naruto figured he had held them up enough and was about to let off one last verbal jab at his former sensei before letting them go on their way when he heard a ruckus being raised by shinobi that were clamoring towards one of the outlying gates of the village.

Being their duty to be on point for such things as Konoha shinobi, Asuma and Naruto ran off along with them to see just what the issue was, with Asuma lagging behind Naruto to spare a moment to give Kurenai's hand a squeeze prior to leaving.

As they ran and went past many of the shinobi going to get others in order to respond at the gate, Asuma was pleased to realize that keeping up with Naruto was something of a chore. He actually had to try since Naruto was moving so fast… mostly because he was excited to get into whatever action was awaiting him at the gate.

With no need to slow down for Naruto to keep up with him the way he had to when he was younger, Asuma and his former charge managed to reach the site of the gate entrance ahead of basically anyone else… or so it appeared until they stepped outside of the gates and saw several Konoha shinobi littering the ground in a trail with metal needles sticking out of their bodies.

Gritting his teeth, Naruto ran over to one of them and turned them over after making clones to do the same with others. There was no blood or visible wounds on the man's person, but he seemed utterly lifeless. The same went for the others as well. The closest thing to a fatal wound he saw in each of the fallen shinobi happened to be senbon placed in their necks in very precise spots.

Wait. He'd seen that before.

Like a robot, Naruto stood up and looked down the path where the trail of sorts went off into the forests surrounding the village. Without saying anything and not making a sound as Asuma was busy informing the arriving investigative force of what they found, he took off in a burst of speed directly into the trees to chase down the perpetrator of this incident.

It felt like déjà vu if Naruto were to be quite honest with himself, for more than one reason.

He found another person of Konoha citizenry on the forest floor in a similar manner as the previous ones, only strewn with more senbon than they were; the cost of his attempted pursuit it seemed.

Naruto paid him no mind. If he was right there wasn't anything to worry about as far as that went.

But it helped him in the end. In slowing down to put away the persistent previous pursuer, it allowed Naruto the time to catch up and close enough of the distance between them to get sight of just who he was chasing.

This was close enough to do something about it.

Drawing his machete from the sheath that was harnessed on his back, it became apparent that the chain attached to the end of it ran underneath the long blue arm-warmer on his right arm.

Taking careful aim, Naruto hurled the weapon forward in a long, sweeping arc as he jumped forward and spun in a circle, swinging the chain and revealing it to be _extremely_ long and not seeming to stop its extension at all. The entire time though, Naruto had been channeling his finely honed wind chakra through both the machete and the chain and the moment the chain touched the trunk of a tree, it was clear just how much he had progressed.

He wished Asuma could have been there to see it so he could get his opinion on it.

"Setsudanki Hassha (Slingshot Guillotine)!"

Because the metal chain and the machete cut right through the tree trunks in a perfect semi-circle. If one were to be looking from directly overhead with a bird's-eye view it would have looked like a counterclockwise hand of a clock clear-cutting the landscape, before the chain retracted back to Naruto instantly.

Catching his machete back into his hand, Naruto stood upon the stump of one of the trees he had cut into two segments as he looked out at the opposing ninja that he had been chasing.

They wore dull colored body armor tougher than a flak jacket that even protected underneath the groin area. Underneath that they wore a black bodysuit, the sleeves of which went into grey fingerless gauntlet-gloves. They also wore black shinobi pants, sandals with shin guards, and on their face a porcelain mask with thin curved eyeholes, a red wavy design in place of the mouth, and the symbol for Kirigakure on the forehead. Long black hair was held up in a white bun-holder with the exception of two bangs framing the face.

'This can't be who I think it is.' Naruto thought to himself. He didn't want to just categorize all hunter-nin under one particular person that he had met years ago. But that mask.

They didn't make masks of the same type in that design right? They had to use them as some way to identify the separate shinobi beneath them somehow didn't they? Having hunter-nin was a Kiri thing so he didn't know much about their protocol.

Even so, this person had attacked village comrades on gate duty and he couldn't let that slide. They didn't seem to be surrendering at all.

"What did you attack the guys out front for?" Naruto decided that it couldn't hurt to just ask. A fight would make it really hard to get answers, so nothing ventured nothing gained in this instance, "You can't be trying to destroy Konoha can you? You're just one person." He hadn't sensed anyone else around during the chase at least.

He heard the person murmur behind their mask but he couldn't particularly hear them to make out what they had said.

At a second glance though, the person looked like they had been through hell. The armor had smudges of dried blood on it from something that had obviously happened way before that day, their fabrics were torn and ruffled, and the hunter-nin's entire body was shaking steadily, especially at the knees.

Thus he decided to take a more internal look and focused intensely on the person directly in front of him, pulling his goggles up over his eyes to help him do so. Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) had taken a step up as far as Naruto was concerned, allowing him to actually feel a person's vitals; such as the beat of a heart or their flow of chakra.

And his little scan brought up some alarming facts, "Holy crap, how are you still walking around like that?" Naruto asked aloud in an alarmed manner. It was actually the weakest response pulse he had ever gotten back from a living person that was still standing. The feeling he had received was usually received for the dying.

He still couldn't hear anything but the soft murmurs from behind the mask and he couldn't tell what was being said, but the person wasn't aggressive at all. Maybe it was because he had put up his machete by this point, not seeing the use of attacking someone so hurt anyway.

At that moment, a dozen of Konoha's finest sprang from the forest behind Naruto into the cleared out area, standing with him as they had their kunai and weapons drawn. Before they could lunge into action, Naruto moved preemptively and jumped between them and the hunter-nin, stopping them all right there from approaching further, "Wait!" Naruto shouted as he blocked the foreigner from harm with his own body.

They all drew to a swift stop before anything catastrophic could happen, though many of them were noticeably and understandably heated at Naruto for his actions, "Naruto move! This person killed our ninja!"

"If I'm right about who it is then no they didn't…" Naruto tried to reason, still using his body as a shield, "Look, let me just see something okay? We've been here for a few minutes and we haven't fought at all. Just trust me. Please."

They stopped because if Naruto was wrong the ninja behind him would have killed him or used him like a shield by then. They all lowered their weapons and gave their silent consent to allow Naruto to do whatever he was planning on.

Giving them all a grateful smile, Naruto turned around and put his hands on the shoulders of the hunter-nin. He snapped his fingers in front of the masked face before finally moving his hand to remove the concealing piece of porcelain. What he found behind it got him to smile slightly, "Long time no see… Haku-chan."

He'd never forget that face, but now it was paler than was healthy for a person which he expected from what he had sensed from her. Her eyes were completely expressionless as it was a case of the lights being on but no one being home. Despite being able to stand and do all that she had done since arriving at the gates of the village she had been unconscious the entire time.

A sigh escaped Naruto's mouth as the very docile Haku collapsed and would have fallen from where they were had he not caught her beforehand. He looked up at everyone else that had gathered closer after her collapse and explained, "She's an old friend of mine."

At that point, medics that had caught up managed to inform the lot of them that the defeated ninja were indeed still alive as Haku had merely placed them in a false-death state. This got a lot of them to calm down, but rules were still rules, "We've got to interrogate her after all of this." One of the jounin in attendance said.

"I know." Naruto replied, really not wanting to hand Haku over to the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force. Maybe he had a way to keep things from being as bad as they could be though? After all, he did know someone that worked there, "Well I caught her, so I want Yamanaka Ino to interrogate her."

But what was Haku doing there in the first place? And who did all of that damage to her to begin with?

* * *

Jutsu List

Setsudanki Hassha (Slingshot Guillotine). Taijutsu, kenjutsu, chakra flow, offensive, mid-to-long range. Naruto hurls his machete in a wide sweeping pattern, keeping control over it via a very long chain that extends from underneath his right arm-warmer. Naruto's use of chakra flow to funnel wind-based chakra through the two metal tools turns them into a sweeping reaper, cleaving clean through most things that come into contact with them in this manner.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Post-Three Year Timeskip

Guardian Ninja

Sora

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 24**

Konoha Ninja

Team 10

Uzumaki Naruto

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 29.5**

Nara Shikamaru

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 27**

Yamanaka Ino

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3.5 **

**Total Score: 24**

Sarutobi Asuma

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5 **

**Total Score: 32.5**

Kirigakure Ninja

Haku

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 4.5**

**Total Score: 26**

* * *

**And that's that for now. Rather slow, yes, but Naruto and Shikamaru are back in Konoha. There were a few character interactions, and I've set up a bit for what's to be the first big happening of the post-time skip period. Like I believe I said before; Orochimaru and Gato are actually going to be bigger deals than they were allowed to be in canon because I find them to be very good villains, and we're going to have Akatsuki too in some big three-way swirl of violence and treachery with sides against each other and double-crossing and whatnot.**

**And this is just one arc! There's still so much more to touch on damn it!**

**Well it's time, it's time. Time for the next story arc to begin ladies and germs and it promises to be something of a doozy if'n I'm allowed to say so myself. So sit tight and please bear with me as we hash this whole thing out. It should be a good ol' time. Next chapter will get us ready for this even more and hey what the hell, a little more interaction with other Konoha denizens. **

**Why not?**

**Until the next time, Kenchi out.**


	44. Martyr Yourself to Caution

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Now it's time to hit the blender and make some smoothies. With mango… and alcohol.

Everybody loves mango, right? It's fruity.

**Chapter 44: Martyr Yourself to Caution**

* * *

With the wild early afternoon that had just ended, it was figured that everything else that happened afterwards would merely be calming and something of a come-down period after the minute amount of danger at the gates ended and the perpetrator was handled.

That was for everyone not named Uzumaki Naruto and for the people that did not hold positions working inside of the Konoha Intelligence Division building.

"Goldie-kun you… are still… stupid!"

Naruto held back a bit of a tremble at the volume of Ino's voice as he followed behind her through the halls of very plain and unappealing building. He was following her almost akin to a puppy as she strode through with a bit of a scowl on her face. Due to the fact that she was her place of assignment she was wearing her required uniform of the majority of the force; a grey button-up suit with black belt around her waist over the top that went past her waist to her thighs as well as her headband with a black cloth around her forehead.

"But this is your job isn't it?" Naruto defended meekly in order to alleviate some of the anger directed at him that Ino had bestowed upon him since his arrival. Upon the moment he walked through the door, Ino grabbed him and scolded him enough to make him feel eleven again, "And everyone that brought Haku in with me didn't say anything when I told them that I wanted you to interrogate her."

"That's because daddy is a captain of the force only under Ibiki and I'm his daughter/apprentice." Ino bit back without turning around to face him. Two days and he was already putting stress wrinkles on her, "It's because I'm good. That's the only reason anyone was okay with you asking for me, because they expect me to treat her like anyone else. It didn't have anything to do with you. You don't have any pull like that around the village buster."

"-Yet." Naruto mumbled before straightening out once he knew that Ino had heard him, "Come on. I know what I felt out there. Haku was out of it the whole time. You don't have to rummage through her mind or anything, do you?"

"I don't _rummage_ through minds." Ino said in an affronted manner as she stopped and turned to Naruto with her hands on her hips, "It's more delicate than that." She said with a haughty sniff, "Besides… you can't be in the room anyway. You're not authorized to be."

Naruto's jaw dropped, to Ino's satisfaction a bit. Come into her place of work and make things difficult for her would he? He knew she was quitting this job. Oh she'd fix him good when she got the chance to, "What? That's stupid. I'm the one that caught her! I can't even be there to find out why she was here to begin with?"

"That's why a lot of us get specific occupations." Ino replied, more or less expecting this reaction in one way or another, "Because we're just chunin. We don't get to know everything that goes on you know. Genin get to learn all they need to know to become chunin, chunin learn all they need to know to run important missions and pick areas of specialty, then when you become a jounin you get to have more say in things. My specialty is interrogation so I get to, here's the kicker, _interrogate_. You don't."

It felt good to say all of that out loud as it made Ino feel like all of the time she had spent proving that she was good at her job was well worth it since she was being allowed to run interrogation on Haku, but she was expected an explosion from Naruto on the other hand.

To her pleasant surprise though, it never came. Naruto just sighed and rubbed a brow, "You're right. I'm sorry. I'm used to actually being kind of important though, remember? I had a lot of job titles at the capital." He got used to being something of a big shot with his hard-earned and kept position in the Guardian Ninja, now he was back to being a chunin in Konoha and he had to fall back into line.

"It's okay." Ino said, setting a hand on his shoulder as she was calmed down by this point. He had apologized and that was good enough for her, "Look, I'll do what I can in there, but we've got to figure out why she came all this way. Medics that checked her over said that Haku was running off of a near overdose of Military Rations Pills, they were the only thing keeping her body moving by the time you stopped her. For all we know she might have been sent here to attack."

Naruto frowned but gave a stiff nod. They didn't know if Haku was with Kiri or if she was still a missing-nin. Either way they couldn't just sweep this under the rug, "At least she didn't kill anybody." She still fought to disable instead of kill, even while unconscious.

A nod came from Ino before she set her hand on his chest and lightly pushed off so that she could start backing away, "Go home. If you want me to, I can find you once we find out what's going on and if I'm allowed to I can tell you then." She pointed her thumb further down the hall as she kept backing up, "I've got to get to work, so I'll see you later."

Waving goodbye and getting one from Ino before she turned to make her way to the interrogation room in earnest, Naruto turned on his own heels and made his way to exit the building.

He reached for his pocket before he remembered the sign on a wall when he entered and cursed at the fact that they didn't allow smoking in there. He really needed one right then.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – With Shikamaru)

Instead of walking around the village that day with the stir-crazy Naruto, Shikamaru chose to stay home and get reacquainted with the comfort of his bed. There was no way he was taking a mission when Ino had asked him to wait for her because he wouldn't hear the end of her mouth and he didn't need that so soon after his return to Konoha.

Now why did this mean that he couldn't spend time hanging out with Naruto during this time period? Simple, because Naruto would be just as troublesome to be around trapped in the village doing nothing as he was. It would drive Shikamaru straight up the wall, and after living with the guy for three years prior to this he had had enough of that for a lifetime.

Still, when the emergency signal went up a few hours ago he was forced to get up and be prepared to react. It turned out to be nothing really, nothing that required a full-on response of the village's whole force, but hey it woke him up and he wasn't going to get back to sleep. His mom was already riding his case on being lazy… and here he thought going off for three years on the great adventure of his life would get that lady off of his back for life.

So with no more chance to sleep his life away at home he took a walk after learning that Chouji was out of the village on a mission, and with the fact that he ran into someone he knew it was much better to join them than to simply walk around on his own aimlessly… it was way less creepy for one.

"Thank you for helping me carry these books back to the library Shikamaru-kun." Shiho said as she held a trio of books in her arms with a smile and a content red blush staining her cheeks. What great luck for her. He was willing to give her a hand even after so many years away, 'All those exotic and attractive women in the world and he's still willing to give me the time of day to help me out after three years. Yes!' She thought to herself.

Shikamaru nodded as he walked next to her, "No problem. It isn't a big deal." Really she should thank Naruto for making the scroll he was using to lug the tomes around. Ah, at least she was grateful… and normal. Normal enough by his standards. She wasn't looking to kill him or eying him up to wait for a mistake so those were points in her favor, "So how've you been?"

And now he was asking her how she'd been while he was gone! He did care! Sure it could be seen as just making small talk… but where was the hopeful romance in that? Nowhere, that was where. And Shiho believed in the hopeful romance. She believed in it bad, "Ah, I've been fine. Things are just moving along at work like always." She laughed a bit nervously at being put on the spot before coming up with something not so good, "But… it's just Otogakure."

"Oto?" Shikamaru asked, remembering that village from before he had left to work at the capital. Most notably he remembered how that crystal woman tore his team of newly promoted chunin apart, "What's the problem with them now?"

Shiho looked at him with a heartfelt frown as it brought up her situation at work, "They're a step ahead of us in intelligence somehow. It's weird. We've cracked several of their codes, but whenever we do it's already changed before we can even make use of it. They're like ghosts sometimes. We hear about them causing trouble in the northern part of the country, and our border guards seem to be bypassed often. Too often. It's kind of scary."

She had been told that there was a chance that it was because Orochimaru was once amongst their ranks, but even that didn't warrant these things working out so swimmingly for them. Orochimaru hadn't been in the village for over a decade so that point was mostly moot. It wasn't like Konoha hadn't updated the way they did things since then. It was giving Konoha's Cryptanalysis Squad fits whenever Otogakure seemed to come up.

"So that means someone's leaking information to another village?" That was blatantly what the issue just so happened to be. It wasn't to a major village either. It wasn't like Shikamaru hadn't had a run-in every now and then with an Oto ninja while working as a Ninja Guardian, and they never knew when he was coming while working for them, so it was clear that a spy was the problem.

"There's an ongoing investigation trying to sniff the spy out, but we aren't getting anything." Shiho said, turning her eyes in the direction of Hokage Monument, "Hokage-sama is under a lot of pressure to produce the spy by his old teammates the elders Utatane and Mitokado, supporters of Danzo-sama." When she heard no response from Shikamaru she turned back towards him and saw him giving her a dry look, "…Shimura Danzo. He was Sarutobi-sama's chief rival for the title of Hokage back in the time of the first two village leaders."

Then what the hell did he need supporters for? The seat of Hokage? Why would they replace one old-ass man with another? No offense to any of the people being spoken of obviously, but damn… that just didn't make much sense.

While Shikamaru mused on how different things were these days, Shiho's face was burning as she thought to herself, 'Why are you talking about your job so much? Stop dumping your troubles at work on him, he just got home he doesn't want to hear any of that!'

"Thanks."

"Huh?" Shiho stopped her self-berating and looked at Shikamaru confusedly as to what he was thanking her for, only to get a somewhat roguish smile from him in turn.

It was actually really helpful to him to hear these things about his village and what had been going on while he was gone. He wondered what else was happening around him and Shiho seemed to know a lot. Ino would only have gossiped about things that he didn't give two shakes about had she been in the same situation, "Thanks for sharing that with me. I don't know much about what's going on these days and as troublesome as it is I don't want to be out of the loop."

An airy and nervous laugh came from Shiho as she dropped her books to hold her hands over her cheeks, "It's not a big deal Shikamaru-kun, as long as I could help you out a bit. We're friends aren't we?" She then realized that she had dropped books in the dirt that didn't belong to her and scrambled to pick them back up.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at her strange behavior, "Okay…" Strange behavior that he wasn't really unfamiliar with.

Crap. He'd seen this happen before… repeatedly for some reason to both Naruto and himself, and while he had been far better acclimated to bowing himself out gracefully (because unlike Naruto he was well aware of when a girl was acting strangely), this time there wasn't the easy advantage of being able to just leave because he was back in Konoha for good.

But then again he'd never considered Shiho to be a bother like with most girls. She wasn't violent, she wasn't particularly loud, and she was notably smart. Her troublesome traits were few and far between by his standards. He didn't really know her that well, though that was something that could be fixed over time if he really wanted to give it a try.

And just thinking about this whole thing was wearisome in of itself. So that put an end to that train of thought.

'Even when they're not being troublesome… women are still troublesome.'

XxX

(Konoha Intelligence Division HQ – Cold Interrogation Room)

Contrary to what many believed when they thought about being in front of the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force, it wasn't always someone strapped to a table drugged up with truth serum being prodded with painful metal instruments to extract information from them.

That was just a last measure really. It wasn't really used even then unless the possible information was vital to the village's security and the safety of its citizen.

No, more often than not interrogations often took place in a small room like the one Haku sat in currently. Just a plain 10x10 room with solid grey walls and a wooden table with two wooden chairs within, one of which she was seated at.

Haku was grateful that they didn't just go to task on her after her body gave out in the forests just around the village. They actually treated her and allowed her to clean herself and change clothes for the first time in many days. She had been on quite a run from Mizu no Kuni. Had she been awake at the time she would have wasted no time in telling them what they wanted to know about why she was there; it was her main reason for coming in the first place.

The door to the room opened and in walked a man in a gray uniform, a black Konoha headband, and a long black overcoat. He had long blonde hair in a ponytail going down his back and had very stern features on his face. Haku figured that he was going to be the one questioning her until he merely stood by against the wall as a lighter-shade-of-blonde female walked in. She wore the same uniform sans the overcoat and took a seat down across from Haku calmly.

Ino was to be the main interrogator on this day with her father keeping watch for security and for observation of her progress. It was how things normally went. Sometimes it would be Ibiki or another senior member, this time it was Inoichi, "Hello Haku. Do you remember who I am? My name is Yamanaka Ino."

There hadn't been too many Konoha ninja that would ask such a question, and less that were blonde, thus Haku did indeed remember, "Yes. You are that girl that I fought in Nami no Kuni. I believe your name is Ino?"

Ino spared a small smile acknowledging that she was grateful for being remembered, "A close friend of mine asked me to handle this for him. He was the one that stopped you outside of the village. Do you remember Naruto too?" Attention to detail was heavily stressed as an interrogator, and Ino wouldn't have been worth her place in the division if she didn't notice the slight lighting up of Haku's eyes when she mentioned Naruto's name, "He's the one that managed to detain you."

"I see…" Haku said lowly as her face looked pleasantly stiff with a smile that seemed difficult to keep up, "So it appears that I owe him twice now. Once for setting me on the path of my new goal and twice for allowing me to complete my mission." She then frowned, "I'm the only one of my comrades from Kirigakure to make it here. The others were killed just off the coast of the mainland. I was chased for much of the way by an enemy force that must have broken off pursuit when we got too far within Hi no Kuni."

"You're a Kiri ninja now?" Ino asked curiously. The last time they had met Haku had been a missing-nin that had left them with the purpose of fulfilling the ambition of her former master Zabuza. How that ended up with her returning to being a ninja of Kiri Ino didn't know, unless, "Wait, did you overthrow the Mizukage the way Zabuza wanted?"

A nod came from Haku, "In a way. Around three years ago, the Yondaime Mizukage Yagura started systematically hunting down bloodlines again with a different tactic, using an outsourced supply of shinobi from another village to handle the dirty work; Otogakure ninja. Not enough to comprise a powerful direct force, but formidable guerilla and ambush. This led to an underground uprising and resistance that split the country in half with those supporting kekkei genkai users and those siding with the Mizukage's ongoing regime."

'Another civil war.' Inoichi thought to himself as he listened to Haku speak, 'Kirigakure went dark around that time… this is the first time I can say I've personally seen a Kiri ninja in front of my face in quite a while.' He simply listened on to see if Ino knew where to take the conversation from there. Knowing how to steer the interrogation was just as important as getting the information in the first place.

Haku picked up where she had stopped since she was not finished yet though, "The in-fighting petered out with the disappearance of the Mizukage a year ago. He disappeared altogether and without him as the driving force behind the prejudice against those with kekkei genkai the war ended. And with not nearly as many casualties as the first time I'm happy to say. So I became a ninja under the Godaime Mizukage who I aligned with during the troubled times. She really is an indicator of the change in our village all herself."

"But you still have problems." Ino ventured as a guess, lacing her fingers in front of her face that she sat in front of her mouth tersely, "Your mission was to come to Konoha, with an entire team. Instigating a war with us even a year after the official end of a civil war isn't smart. No Kage in their right mind would order that."

The watchful eye of Inoichi was scrutinizing and mentally grading his daughter's performance the entire time, 'Careful Ino… a point like this is crucial. The time when you stop asking so many questions and start stitching together your own analysis of the truth.'

"So you want something else from our village. And your team didn't make it with you, which means that you have enemies that aren't afraid of straight-up attacking you. So you came to us for help." Ino finished, shutting her blue eyes with a sigh, "I'm not wrong am I? Or I'm not too far off base right?"

From her seat, Haku was smiling peacefully at the girl sitting across from her, "You've certainly grown in an interesting way Yamanaka-san. You're correct. I've come to request assistance from your Hokage to assist Kiri's standing forces in expelling the intruders from our islands."

"Intruders?" Otogakure. Ino didn't even need to ask the question to get the answer. Both she and Inoichi knew that was where it was going. Both father and daughter shared a glance before she continued, "You're telling me that they're rooted that deep that even united your village can't kick them out?"

A bitter looking Haku nodded, changing expressions at the thoughts of the vultures that took the human forms of Oto shinobi, "They've remained after Yagura's disappearance and continue to try and capture as many of our ninja as they can get. At first it was only rebels, kekkei genkai users, but now they don't care any longer. They kill and actually have land holdings now. The leeway Yagura gave them in order to allow them to operate against us was too much." Yagura was no fool, but he gave Otogakure an inch thinking he could keep them from taking a mile.

With his disappearance he was wrong. Very wrong.

But that still seemed somewhat sketchy to Ino, "Wait, your last Mizukage enlisted help… but now you're trying to do the same thing with us for a different reason."

"Orochimaru is a pox that was unleashed upon the shinobi world by Konoha." Haku said, balling her fists on the table tightly, "He's a carrion of a man that has ruined more lives than should be allowed by Kami." The hate was evident to say the very least, "We figured that you were the best suited to dealing with your former shinobi. The current Mizukage isn't asking you to dedicate an entire force, just a few key elements. Enough to give us an edge."

Both Ino and Inoichi looked at each other before Inoichi gestured his head, directing Ino that her job was done and she could leave the room. As she did so Inoichi moved towards the door as well prior to addressing Haku, "We'll get a guard detail and you can tell your story to Hokage-sama."

XxX

(With Naruto – Elsewhere in Konoha)

This was maddening.

In order to wait for any kind of word from Ino on what exactly was going on with Ino, Naruto went to the location of the gate where the entire mess had started, splitting his time between pacing around and sitting on the roof of the post for the ninja watching the main road of the gates, a post that had already been manned again by two more shinobi; a man with dark spiky hair and a bandage running over his nose named Hagane Kotetsu, and another man with brown hair combed down able to cover one eye named Kamizuki Izumo.

He'd already smoked through several cigarettes already, disposing of the butts in his own way that left no mess on the ground. Something he did whenever he was nervous, troubled, angry… etc. Anytime he was in a heightened emotional state really.

The two had taken to asking Naruto questions about where he had been as it had been a well-kept secret until he had ventured back. Only now could those that previously knew about his and Shikamaru's whereabouts talk about it.

It was actually impressive that Ino managed to keep that little nugget to herself for as long as she did. Either way, Naruto entertained them and himself by talking about his time as a Ninja Guardian, "…And then they made us their kings and we just left and went to the capital."

Kotetsu laughed and banged up on the ceiling to communicate in a way with the younger chunin on the roof outside, "Mountain ninja-monkeys that stole your stuff? I'm pretty sure Hokage-sama would get a pretty good kick out of that one. You know those were summons right? The kid summons to boot." He informed Naruto that went pale, "Ha! You're lucky you didn't run into the boss summon Enma and that those little monkeys liked you or that little story would have ended a little differently for you."

"Shikamaru said that mountain was too far out of the way for it to be the right direction…" Naruto mused aloud to himself about how he and Shikamaru had gotten lost on the way to the capital three years prior.

"You're one weird-ass ninja Naruto." Izumo chuckled, his feet up on the counter of the booth, trying to relax during the boring job. No one attacking the village would come through the gate. They'd go over the wall elsewhere. The gate was for legal visitors to have their credentials checked and filed for the duration of their stay. Protocol was boring as hell.

Kotetsu sighed and shot a short glare at his partner, "Yeah, it's a damn shame when a kid at least ten years younger than me gets more actiony missions than me." He then elbowed Izumo in the side a few times, "If only someone, and I'm not pointing any elbows here, manned up and let us take some missions outside of guard work or cross-country patrol. Then maybe we'd have some cool work again like a Ninja Guardian."

"If you want to try that murderer's row go ahead and do it." Naruto said glibly, poking his head down in front of the booth opening to give Kotetsu a dry look before blowing smoke inside, "Back to back to back to back missions… again and again. You have no idea how many people want to kill nobles. And then there's the personal stuff you get into that you have to deal with. Oh, and Ero-sensei's stupid ass stuff from his past coming back to bite me in-. Ow!"

Naruto started to complain when Kotetsu reached out and grabbed his nose to tease him for hanging down in front of the booth, "Alright, alright. I hear you. Being a Ninja Guardian is seven different pains in the ass, blah, blah, blah. Man. Asuma didn't complain about it when he got back."

"Asuma didn't even talk about it at all." Izumo said as he broke his partner's grip on their helpless blonde junior, "He didn't tell us any kickass stories either. He just called us runts. We're fucking three years younger than him and he called us brats… the jerk."

"Well the thing is, I'm scarred for life." Naruto remarked convincingly as he took his place sitting back on top of the station, "I can just talk about the stuff that happened to me because if I didn't vent I'd have three stress ulcers by now. I'm pretty sure Asuma-sensei's stories are worse because he was a member back when there were actually twelve." Either that, or they were easier going because there were twelve and the work load per ninja was lighter.

"What kind of a fight scarred you for life?"

"Oh it wasn't any fight that did it. It was the people around me… that I saw every day… that I worked with and trained with." Naruto's eyes started widening and his pupils started dilating as if he were flashing back to something traumatic, "Even our lead medic-nin… Tsunade-baachan. Oh Shizune was the only one that was always cool. And Ero-sennin… that bastard. One time I came back from a mission and I found him in my quarters with some girl from town-."

"Naruto-oniisama!"

Naruto's internal battle with the demons of his past that were all still alive and kicking was brought to a halt when a dark blur slammed into him like a missile and knocked him off of the station to the ground.

He was about to place his attacker in quite the debilitating joint lock for interrogation purposes until he got a good look at the large milky eyes looking at him excitedly and took in the rest of the person before him, 'Hanabi?'

It was indeed Hanabi, still with her long dark brown hair and her sleeveless v-neck shirt with the mesh top underneath, but she now wore a dark blue skirt with mesh leggings that went to her thighs, and the most prominent thing of all; a Konoha headband wrapped around her neck.

She was more grown up than when he had left, looking more like the recently graduated Konoha genin that she was as she got off of him with a pleased look on her face, "You're back! Where did you go? Did you bring me anything? Did you learn anything else amazing? How strong are you now? Do I look stronger? Am I pretty onii-sama? Can we fight again?" All of these questions were asked in rapid succession.

Naruto blinked and got up off of the ground before setting his hands firmly on Hanabi's shoulders, taking a deep breath, and giving her his astute answer, "Good Lord Little Firecracker... how am I supposed to respond to _anything_ you just said? I think that was the longest run-on sentence in the history of mankind! Did you even take a breath that whole time? Jeez!"

Hanabi pouted and crossed her arms over her maturing bosom as she turned away from Naruto, "You're still so mean." She then looked back down the road she had just sprinted down when she saw Naruto in the distance with her Byakugan, "Where's Hinata-oneesama? She's so slow, I swear she was right behind me." She said, ignoring the snickering Izumo and Kotetsu inside of their booth.

Hearing that one of his friends from the Academy actually happened to be in the village, Naruto's face brightened up, "Oh, Hinata's with you? Where's she at? I want to say hi."

Looking around normally, Hanabi couldn't see her sister, but she then turned her Byakugan on and pointed her out for him, "She's over there. Behind that row of trees lining the road. Come out and say hello to Naruto-oniisama!" She finished, shouting towards Hinata who let out an audible 'eep' at being called out.

At this point Izumo and Kotetsu couldn't hold in their laughter anymore and they both let it out, pounding the counter of their station humorously. It was just too much.

From her place behind the tree, Hinata was close to hyperventilating before she bit her knuckle to calm herself down, 'Come on, this is what you've been waiting for isn't it? Go out and talk to him, he isn't going to bite you! But Naruto-kun got so handsome-. Grr… of course he got handsome! You didn't expect him to stay the way he was did you?'

Either way, Hanabi had already told him that she was there, and if she didn't come out soon he was going to think she was weird. She wanted to make a good first impression on him after all. That settled it. This was it. She was going to go out there and charm Uzumaki Naruto and there wasn't anything that was going-.

"Hey." Right at her side Naruto greeted her cheerfully with a wave and a grin, "Long time no see Hinata."

He couldn't help but look her over because it was a night and day difference from how she used to look. She really grew up. Her hair had grown longer down to her waist and her body had a much more adult curve to it. Her outfit had changed as well to a hooded lavender jacket with white sleeves and lavender cuffs unzipped enough to show a mesh shirt beneath it, dark blue pants, and high-heeled sandals. Her headband still sat around her neck the way that it always had, and her face was red. Very red. At least that hadn't changed.

Having Naruto come right up to her instead of her going up to him threw Hinata's built up confidence all out of whack and she simply stared at him owlishly for a moment until she got herself under control, "H-Hello Naruto-kun." She mentally applauded herself for keeping it together long enough to get that out. It was a start, now all she had to do was keep her voice steady. Steady and confident… or at least just steady, "Welcome home. It's good to see that you're safe."

"Aw, thanks a lot. It's good to see you too." Naruto replied as Hinata managed a smile at her small victory of managing to elicit a bit of a conversation out of him without stammering harshly or barely being heard, "Damn it though… all you girls just got super-gorgeous while I was gone. It's amazing. You're beautiful you know."

Telling a girl he thought she was attractive wasn't a big deal to Naruto. If it was the truth then it was what it was, it wasn't like he was Jiraiya just saying whatever he had to in order to charm his way into another free drink or a girl's pants. He was just being honest; if a girl was pretty, she was pretty, and he knew what pretty was. It was that simple. It was mostly Jiraiya's fault for forcibly desensitizing him to the form of a stunning woman.

The thing was though, that this often got him into more trouble than it was worth for the last three years. But that was another story altogether.

For Hinata however, Naruto's attention was firmly on her. She had his undivided attention, and he had openly called her beautiful. She had dreams that started like that.

Hanabi wasn't standing right there smiling sweetly at the two of them in those dreams though.

That actually helped to sober her up and keep her from overanalyzing things and freaking out. She had to give her little sister a thank you gift later, "Naruto-kun is very handsome too." She almost couldn't believe that had come out of her mouth even as quietly as it did, but it wasn't really heard because Hanabi had diverted Naruto's attention again trying to show him what she had learned while she and Hinata had been out on this little training excursion.

Thus she reminded herself to take back her thank you gift she had originally intended for Hanabi for her actions beforehand.

"Yeah, but you still can't beat me Little Firecracker." Naruto chided, giving her some patronizing pats on the head much to her noble chagrin. Hinata could at least take some solace in the fact that Naruto was able to keep her little sister down a notch despite her skill as a genin, "Listen to your sister's advice alright, because you're still a rookie… and Kami knows I needed some advice when I was your age."

Another heartfelt smile came from Hinata, as Hanabi had taken much of Naruto's advice in the past and if he was telling her to defer to her older sister she would probably do it. Such consideration, "Hanabi-chan is training for the upcoming chunin exams. Hopefully her first time with them will go better than mine did." She thought with a sadly reminiscing smile.

"I'll win just like Naruto-oniisama did." Hanabi boasted confidently, "I'll show everyone what the heir to the Main Branch of the Hyuuga Clan is capable of… especially Kono-baka." She unconsciously activated her Byakugan out of anger of thinking of fighting Konohamaru but her expression turned normal again soon thereafter, "Uh, Hinata-oneesama, that girl is coming this way."

'What girl?' Naruto thought to himself, looking at Hanabi curiously. While doing this, he missed Hinata activate her own kekkei genkai and glare at the incoming person that Hanabi had been speaking of. A moment later Ino landed in the vicinity dressed in her usual purple clothes instead of her Konoha Torture and Interrogation uniform, "Ino-chan?"

"You're seriously hard to find." Ino said first and foremost, pointing at her recently returned teammate, "What are you doing all the way out he-?" She stopped asking her question mid-sentence when she saw her chief rival of sorts glaring a hole through her in a Byakugan-enhanced manner, "Hello Hinata."

"Ino. What brings you here?" Hinata responded rather coolly in return as she turned off her kekkei genkai as if Ino didn't matter enough to use it against, "I was just having a conversation with Naruto-kun. I ran into him at the gate."

"Then why are you behind the tree line?" Ino quipped in return, knowing that she must have hidden back there like when they were younger. Some things just didn't change, even if she did become a little lioness over the last three years, "Seems like a strange place to talk to a friend. Anything you want to confess? Or was that actually why you took Goldie-kun back here?"

Without saying anything, Hanabi grabbed Naruto's hand much to his confusion and stepped back out of the way as the two older girls had something of a standoff, "What the hell's going on?" Naruto whispered. He felt that if he did something to disturb the situation bad things would happen, "Are they about to fight?" He knew a fight brewing when he saw one.

"Onee-sama and Yamanaka-san don't really get along that well." Hanabi whispered back to him, glad that at least he understood how precarious this whole thing was, "They're polite about it, but they fight a lot. They won't here though… not in front of us." She was not about to mention the reason for their mutual strife. Exposing her sister's, and by proxy Ino's, crush on Naruto before either of them simply came out with it themselves was against an unwritten code.

Not hearing any return comments, she looked up at Naruto's face and paled at the indomitable look on his face after her short explanation. Knowing what he was about to do, Hanabi quickly jabbed Naruto in the back of his knees with her Juuken and propped him up against her with her shoulder before he could fall, "Little Firecracker what the hell?"

"No." Hanabi hissed out lowly as she continued to bear Naruto's weight against her to keep him from falling, "You are not going to walk over there and say what I think you're going to say. You are _not_ going to make them stop, you're just going to make it worse." She informed him, undoing the damage she did to his legs at the same time now that her point was made, "Just let it go."

"_Never get in the way of women that you know fighting brat."_ He could hear Jiraiya's voice advising him in his head in between one of their training sessions, _"And just because no one's throwing a punch doesn't mean there isn't a fight going on. Whatever you do, just avoid it and let it go. If they don't bring you into it, it isn't your problem."_

The choice was eventually taken out of Naruto's hands on whether he was involved or not when Ino turned on her heel and marched towards Naruto, grabbing him by his elbow and dragging him off back onto the road and towards the gate, "Nice seeing you again Hanabi… Hinata. Goldie-kun and I need to go have a talk… Konoha T&I business… Team 10 stuff. You know."

Hinata just watched them go with a frown on her face and a slight glower in her expression. So Ino had a built-in advantage due to Naruto being on her team? That was okay. It only meant that she'd have to make her own opportunities count when they came for her, "Hanabi-chan, I believe it's time we go home. Otou-sama will probably want to hear about your progress."

'Onee-sama should just take him.' Hanabi thought to herself as she followed obediently behind her older sister as they started walking back on the road and towards the gates, 'That's what I'd do if I were her. What, would he say no? Not a chance.' She didn't care much for all of this roundabout crap when it came to Hinata and Ino dancing around Naruto.

Unfortunately, for Hanabi who despite being a sweet girl had also been taught to be nobility, she had also been taught that if there was something that was rightly obtainable there was nothing that anyone could do to keep her from taking it.

This led her belief of male-female relationships to be not much more advanced than walking up to the person and bluntly saying that she liked them, consequences be damned. Luckily this had never been a point of contention while she was in the Academy or little Hanabi might have wound up quite embarrassed due to a social faux pas.

The two sisters began walking home, but as they departed, a family of black field mice ran from a nearby area where they had been foraging around. Strangely enough though, they all wound up heading in the same direction in an orderly manner, unlike how they had been prior acting like normal mice in a forest.

Eventually they reached their destination of a young man with short black hair, black eyes, pale skin, a high collared shirt with no midriff, black pants, and a black Konoha headband. He sat beneath a tree merely sketching away in a notepad as a large scroll sat nearby.

The mice drew his attention as they turned into words on the ground right before his eyes, recanting what had been seen during their time of existence. The young man read these words with not an inflection of feeling on his face, "Well then. The Kyuubi jinchuuriki… doesn't seem that special to me." He said to no one in particular, "Danzo-sama will probably feel the need to test him to find his value to the village."

XxX

(Elsewhere in Hi no Kuni)

"Such resolve in such a trash ninja." Sakon remarked as he sat against the trunk of a tree. The sun was unable to be seen despite the fact that it was still firmly in the late afternoon. They would get moving again at night when it was safer to do so without being seen by someone that could report the patterns of their movement to Konoha.

It was obvious that they'd be catching enough heat after Haku was interrogated as she had managed to pull too far ahead of them to catch up to.

"I can't believe the fucking ice bitch got away." Tayuya muttered in her own cursing manner as she and Sakon rested themselves along with the remainder of their squad in densely forested area that had been referred to as a blind spot when it came to Konoha's countryside patrol routes; ninja wouldn't take a route like on patrol without reason given to do so; either by rumors from the area or witness accounts that knew of something within in the past.

The reason being because of the limited visibility and unsuitable grounds for combat as well as the large scope of the rest of the country with more important places to cover, making keeping a close watch there superfluous at best as it was really an insignificant and small patch of terrain. Just as much of a risk for those within it as for those planning on heading in.

How did these Otogakure ninja know which of the few places in Hi no Kuni were safe to retreat to in case of a need to stay there for a short time while within the country? Well it helped to have a man on the inside able to feed them this info from noticing the patterns of the ninja around him every single day.

"Now now…" Appearing from the dark edge of the rally point was the purple-clad Kabuto. His appearance hadn't changed a bit at all over the last three years, still wearing the same purple clothing as ever, "There's no need for such vulgar name-calling Tayuya. There's nothing anyone can do about any of it now."

"Easy for you to say." The hat-clad redhead said, averting her eyes away from Otogakure's most prolific spy, "You don't have to go back and tell Kimimaro. That fucker will kill us this time."

"He won't do any such thing." Kabuto replied matter-of-factly, stopping by one of the unnamed Oto ninja to check him over for injuries. Fire and ice. That was what you got when you worked for Orochimaru and any of his underlings; fire and ice. You had to keep the useless ones like the man he was examining thinking that you cared at least a little bit. That would allow hopeless people like that to do whatever you wished to them such as send them on suicide missions or experimentation, "You know that you two are far too valuable for Kimimaro to throw a temper tantrum on. Otherwise Orochimaru-sama will discipline him on wasting resources again. Anyway, she's there now. There's nothing anyone can really do about it."

"Orders?" Sakon asked as Tayuya muttered to herself about how Kimimaro was still going to make them pay for failing, "What do we do now? Do we return to Mizu no Kuni?" Both he and Tayuya were hoping for a no. They seriously didn't want to face Kimimaro again. They hated that guy.

"Return to Otogakure instead of Cha no Kuni and wait there for your next mission. Orochimaru-sama is waiting there and plans on travelling, he requires your bodyguard services." Kabuto instructed them, "Now I'm on the clock so to speak. I've got another meeting to keep not too far from here and then I have to return back to Konoha before any suspicions rise. They've allowed me to leave the village on medic-nin duties to collect materials for medicines, but I can't stay away forever you understand. Don't risk leaving until sundown. My contact would kill you on sight just out of principle."

A nod of affirmation from Sakon and Tayuya before they started chatting amongst themselves as Kabuto disappeared from their sight and his presence left the area altogether, "Jeez." Tayuya said under her breath, "I don't see how that prick can do what he does; dancing between Orochimaru-sama, Konoha, and Akasuna no Sasori. It's like he has a fucking deathwish."

"No." Sakon replied, wondering if he should switch with his lazy-ass brother Ukon for the trip to Orochimaru, "It's more like he gets his rocks off from it. He's like a snake charmer, pushing his luck with three different cobras just for the thrill of it. One slip and it all ends, but the rush has to be incredible."

It was kind of admirable. That man was a real shinobi. He didn't care about living in the light, and one could never tell exactly when he was lying, what was the truth, what was a half-truth, or anything. Yakushi Kabuto lived for the lie. The most powerful weapon that he had despite his skill as a shinobi that he had kept hidden from Konoha for years was not any single ninjutsu or strategy he knew. It was the truth. The truth was the single most dangerous weapon in Kabuto's possession…

Because he knew things that could sink three different forces of the shinobi world: Konoha, Oto, and Akatsuki.

Kabuto was something of an arms dealer in this regards, and Sakon could swear that he was holding his best stuff back from Orochimaru and Sasori because depending on who he was really peddling to he could influence the end of one of them or all of them.

Actually, with that thought in mind…

"Let's go now." Sakon said abruptly, getting up and getting the rest of the squad up and into action, "Right now. We're leaving."

Tayuya was about to berate him about how he was so stupid when Kabuto had just told them to wait until sunset when she realized that it had been Kabuto who had told them to wait until sunset in order to diminish the risk of being seen, "That motherfucker…" She said to herself as she gathered her gear and prepared to leave, "He wouldn't."

"He would and you know he would." Sakon said as they all began to move, "He'd sic Sasori right on us to cover his own ass as a show that he was still under Sasori's control as a brainwashed sleeper agent. Even though he has an allegiance to Orochimaru-sama that doesn't really extend to us."

An annoyed growl slipped from Tayuya's throat as they all started putting more speed beneath them to quickly get themselves the hell out of dodge. The last thing they wanted to do was find themselves going toe-to-toe with the most powerful puppeteer in history.

There was probably a good chance that they themselves would end up in his massive collection of puppets if they did.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Hokage's Office)

Haku usually took great pride in the fact that there was no foe she was unwilling to face down in combat. If properly motivated she could move to battle fiercely against even the most powerful entities in the ninja world, evidence of such being how she wished she could get a fair shot at Orochimaru even though she knew that it would probably end with her death.

Because she was also a realist when it came to her own capabilities in battle.

And that realism had manifested itself in the form of nerves as she sat almost as still as a statue in the office of one Sarutobi Hiruzen. He wasn't scrutinizing her. He wasn't saying anything to her at all. He wasn't even looking at her. As a matter of fact she was certain that there wasn't even a soul anywhere near the office for his security just in case she was dangerous.

He was painting. That was it. All he was doing was painting the afternoon view of the village outside of his window. She was that wary of the 'God of Shinobi' that she was rattled just by him sitting there in his robes and painting, smoke billowing from the pipe in his mouth. And he wasn't even scowling or doing anything menacing, he was smiling serenely the entire time.

"I'm sorry." Hiruzen said suddenly, surprising Haku who jolted a bit in the seat provided to her as she waited for whatever reason she had been taken there for, "I hope this old man hasn't made you wait for too long. It's just, this time of day is good to paint the village. Early morning leaves too much of a glare and I can't make it out too well, but on the other hand I've already done so many sunsets over the years. I haven't really done many daytime pieces."

Haku didn't respond though, merely keeping an eye on the current reigning Hokage as he stood up and moved from the stool he had been painting at and back to his very spacious and cushioned chair behind his desk, complete with crystal ball set in the middle of it and ceremonial hat nearby.

Placing more tobacco in his pipe, silence reigned over the room once more until Hiruzen spoke again. Apparently Haku was not confident enough to say anything given her situation. She was still somewhat injured and still very tired. Her chakra was low and any ninja worth their salt could probably have finished her at the moment, "You chose to land in a very dangerous place. The east coast peninsula of the mainland; Cha no Kuni… it's a very treacherous place nowadays."

"I noticed Hokage-sama." Haku commented a bit smartly before choosing to bite her tongue again in case she had offended him. She did not expect the amused laughter from the powerful man, "I figured that to be neutral lands. That was why it was chosen as the landing place for our exfiltration from Mizu no Kuni."

"With the isolation of your islands due to your own domestic troubles you couldn't have been expected to know that there is a high level of influence that has been procured by the shipping magnate Gato, the head of Gato Company." Hearing of her former employer on the mission that changed everything from Hiruzen got her to pay rapt attention to him, "In Cha no Kuni which is basically a country that's a peninsula commerce reigns supreme, and Gato managed to gain sizeable land holdings to further his own business."

"That doesn't explain exactly why it was a hornet's nest of activity when my ship reached near the shore." Haku said with a frown.

At this point the age on Hiruzen's face could be seen clearer than any other point, the weathered marks of 71 years of age making themselves known, "We've found that Gato has funded the formation of many different hidden bases and other military endeavors for Otogakure in something of a working relationship. Degarashi Port is his main base of operations; a town that has done nothing but go downhill since three years ago. It's more of a fortress now than a town, and it's swarming with Oto shinobi lent out to him as his own private army for 'protection'. It's their gateway to the seas as it were."

"How do you know all of these things?"

"Spies were periodically sent in undercover after a disastrous mission years ago got our attention towards the newest hidden village in the Elemental Nations and their particular interest towards that area." Hiruzen told her as he placed more tobacco in his pipe and relit it, "It's of no concern now. It soon grew too hot for me to safely keep any eyes within that town. But it was never deemed a military move, just a client hiring a large contingent of shinobi to protect his equally large landholdings."

It was a rather brazen move of advancement for one's village, but it wasn't necessarily antagonistic. Nothing aggressive towards Konoha had been done, other than the fact that they had more than likely moved over the lands of Hi no Kuni to reach Cha no Kuni. As a matter of fact it was a rarity when a Konoha ninja engaged an Otogakure ninja.

"You know of my own Mizukage's request Hokage-sama." Haku asked, hands set firmly clenched in her lap, "This is only going to get worse. As I said to your interrogation force; she is not asking for you to commit an army, nothing close. Just a few of your ninja that you can trust in dealing with the treachery of Otogakure and your former student Orochimaru."

A nearly invisible flinch came to Hiruzen's face as Orochimaru was brought up as his former student, "There are very few I would trust with a matter as serious as that."

"We will of course reward you in a most fitting manner that we are able to provide, including the pay of an S-rank mission." Haku added, standing up to bow, "Kiri is prepared to forfeit hosting rights to the chunin exams to Konoha whenever they are scheduled to come our way for the next several years for your assistance in this manner."

A plume of smoke flew from the old man's mouth as he observed the bowing Kiri hunter-nin, "Your name was Haku, correct?"

"Yes Hokage-sama."

"A part of me wants to say that I cannot commit a team to assist you as you ask. That doing such a thing would be reprehensible as the Hokage, to send good shinobi into a situation that they don't endeavor to involve themselves in." Haku's head lifted up from her bow with a rejected look on her face at his words, "That being said, I have no doubt that there are a good few dozen shinobi here that would volunteer to put the boots to Orochimaru if given the opportunity and excuse, of which you have so richly granted us."

If they could indirectly do damage to Orochimaru's hidden village before he did damage to the sovereignty of Mizu no Kuni and its own hidden village system it could only help the rest of the world in general.

The brown eyes of Haku went wide as she observed Hiruzen writing out mission directives on a scroll for the benefit of whichever team would accept the mission. She couldn't believe it had actually worked. She hadn't even been expecting assistance to return to Kiri, let alone an acceptance of the request, "W-Who do you plan on sending if I could ask you?"

Hiruzen chuckled at the fact that Haku seemed so surprised. The pay for an S-rank mission was very high, plus hosting more chunin exams was a very big deal. That wasn't even setting aside the fact that he felt responsible for the things that Orochimaru had done and had continued to do since fleeing Konoha, "I only have two people that I know without a doubt will wish to go. Other than that I have four open spots that I will need to fill."

"If there are spaces open…" Haku ventured to say, "There are people that I would like to request would fill those spots." A raised eyebrow of interest and curiosity from Hiruzen was the unspoken response, "If it is okay with you. I do not wish to be too presumptuous as you have been very gracious to me thus far."

"Run the names by me." Hiruzen instructed of her, "I will see what I can do if they are suitable to the severe nature of the mission." Haku only smiled at him despite his limitation on who she could ask for, "Choose carefully if you are that aware of the shinobi in this village that you can select who you wish to assist you."

"I'm quite certain that they'll be able to help." Haku stated confidently, "One of them was able to defeat Zabuza-sama despite being ambushed, and another one of them happens to be someone who had defeated me the most thoroughly in my entire career." She then decided to add something after the fact, "After all, he also told me that if I ever needed his help I could ask him. Something about how a future Hokage couldn't be weak."

Hiruzen rolled his eyes and stifled a groan, 'Naruto… who else?'

XxX

(Dark Tower Room in an Undisclosed Location)

Nine transparent chakra images appeared in a dark room. The main one in the appearance of a man with spiky hair and strange ripple-patterned eyes spoke first, "It has been quite a while since we've all contacted one another like this. I trust everyone is doing well and have their targets tracked?"

A figure in the form of Deidara was the first to speak up, "The Nanabi is still inside of Takigakure, un." He said, his image fading in and out due to interference, "She's strong, and they like her, something like the village's protector of sorts. She can fly too, and I can't hold her village hostage with a bomb… the tree in the middle of it is big enough to endure my C3."

Another image, this one in the hunched over form of Sasori spoke up next, "The Shukaku is in Suna as you know. The populace is afraid of him, but not like they used to be in his youth. He seems more apathetic towards anything other than missions that take him closer to Konoha ninja. He seems to have an axe to grind with that village or someone in it. I'd send Itachi to deal with him if need be, if only to coax him into fighting. Kisame can help deal with his sand."

The image of Kisame laughed, "Sasori… volunteering us for particular jobs, and even after I was the one that took down the Rokubi. But we'll have to pass on it for now. Itachi-san and I are still searching for the whereabouts of the Sanbi. Old Yagura up and disappeared on us right under our noses."

"You're all fucking useless. The whole lot of you." One vulgar hologram said with what appeared to be a large scythe hanging from his back, "How the hell do you lose a Kage for Jashin's sake?"

"Ask Sasori. He did it before right under a whole village's nose." The hologram next to him said with his strange green and red colored eyes, "Hidan and I just brought in the Yonbi… I'd rather cash in on some of the bounties I racked up pulling that one off."

"You're a greedy heathen Kakuzu."

"The opinion of a cultist doesn't really mean anything to me."

Sasori spoke up once again to cut off the petty bickering, "My spy informed me that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki has resurfaced back in Konoha again. He's back on active duty, and Orochimaru is causing trouble in Kirigakure. There's a chance that he's behind Yagura's disappearance."

"I'll investigate that Leader-sama." A hologram that showed a fully-evolved pair of Sharingan eyes stated calmly and firmly, "Kisame and I will go to Mizu no Kuni and track down the whereabouts of the Sanbi. We still need to find an opening to go after the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, especially if he's grown stronger over the last three years. We don't know what he's capable of. Better to give rumors time to circulate about first."

"We cannot seal the Kyuubi until last anyway or else it will ruin everything." The first hologram with the eerie ripple-pattern eyes said, "Very well. Itachi and Kisame will be dispatched to look into the disappearance of the Sanbi. If someone has destroyed the jinchuuriki we will probably have to wait for it to reappear, but I don't believe it is that simple. We will reconvene at a later date to discuss how we will deal with capturing the Hachibi that never leaves Kumo's territory later."

With that, the transmission of chakra images shut off one by one.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konoha Ninja

Hagane Kotetsu

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Total Score: 22.5**

Kamizuki Izumo

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 22**

Hyuuga Hanabi

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 1  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 1.5  
Hand-Seals: 2 **

**Total Score: 17.5**

Hyuuga Hinata

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 3 **

**Total Score: 24**

Otogakure Shinobi

Tayuya

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 5  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 4 **

**Total Score: 26.5**

Sakon

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4 **

**Total Score: 27.5**

Yakushi Kabuto

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 4.5  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 5 **

**Total Score: 32**

* * *

**Hello all. This is your friend (or enemy depending on your personal opinion of me) Kenchi618 bringing you good tidings from… wherever the hell I am right now because I'm definitely not saying it out loud in case I actually do have enemies out there reading this. **

**Once again this chapter didn't really have any action in it, but things need to be set up. A fight for the sake of a fight solves nothing and I want my battle scenes to mean something. Direction must be established. Right now the way the story is going is pretty up in the air and I can't really leave much unaccounted for because I'm not using any of the manga's Part II storyline as a crutch.**

**Just trying to see exactly what I'm capable of really. What can I say of any value to anyone right now? Let's see:**

**My old man's hairline is thinning.  
An easily affordable new method to power my car for broke people is needed because gas prices are rising and the world is quickly coming to a swift and violent end; Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior style.  
My March Madness brackets are going to fail miserably because I don't really follow college basketball, but my picks on who's going to win during MMA events never seems to fail.  
My younger brother is a rude, reclusive son-of-a-complain with very few redeeming qualities as a human being.  
And I, soon to be leader of the free world, am still better than everyone else alive.**

**Except for Forrest Griffin. He's still better than me.**

**Note to self: dispose of or recruit Forrest Griffin to my side as he is the only man in the world that can stop my megalomaniacal ambitions.**

**Kenchi out.**


	45. No Such Luck

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Take my word for it when I say that the violent outburst that has just occurred because of me having to type that would have gone down in the annals of epic temper tantrums of all time had anyone been there to see it.

Sometimes you've got to just vent.

**Chapter 45: No Such Luck**

* * *

It was hard trying to ignore, but Naruto had been doing a great job of it thus far ever since he had made it to one of Konoha's gates that morning and had met his longstanding running mate of a partner for the mission they had been informed about being dispatched on two days prior.

Still, counting on Shikamaru to stop trying to stare a hole into the side of his head almost the equivalent of trying to get a statue to change its expression, "Shikamaru stop looking at me like that. What's wrong with you?"

"That whole making promises thing that you do… it screwed us over again, just so you know." Shikamaru said as the two of them hung out underneath the arch of the open gate in the shade of the early morning sunlight, "How many times does that make this over the last three years? I've lost count."

Naruto's expression dropped into a frown at his best friend. Was it really such a bad thing to adhere strongly to one's word? And he was sure that Shikamaru was just exaggerating. He couldn't have done it that many times, "This shouldn't even count because it was from the mission to Nami no Kuni. That was like four years ago. We had to take a mission eventually, so why not one that helps out a friend."

Only Naruto could call someone he had waged an all-out deathmatch against a friend, just so long as he had a civil conversation with them afterwards to bury the hatchet. Of course, Shikamaru sharply remembered being put into a fake state of death by Haku so maybe he was just a bit bitter. Well what did you know? He had pride too, "It's S-rank Naruto. That's why. What kind of a chunin goes on S-rank missions?"

In return, Naruto only gave Shikamaru a chiding look and shook his head, "You're going to keep using the 'we're chunin' thing as a crutch to not take hard missions aren't you?"

"You're going to make sure we never take a C-rank mission ever again aren't you?" Answering a question with a question… classic Shikamaru.

Neither boy answered the question of the other and only sighed as that spoke volumes on what their respective answers would have been. By this point they knew each other like the backs of their hands and worked nearly flawlessly together after years of almost being killed and walking away from battle after battle. It was something they both loved and hated at the same time because both of them were stubborn as mules at their own points.

This meant that Naruto was always going to have to keep Shikamaru from trying to take the path of least resistance so that he didn't squander all of his hard-earned talent that could be used to save lives amongst other things, and Shikamaru was going to have to fight harder against or accept the fact that Naruto was not going to be content with him remaining as a middle-of-the-road ninja.

That was the thing about the dynamic of how the two of them worked; they were both reaching the top of the heap in Konoha or they were going to burn out trying, because even though it was Naruto who wanted to be Hokage he was damn sure taking his friends along for the ride.

It didn't take too much longer for Asuma to show himself, the first cigarette of the day sitting between his lips, lit and billowing smoke as he walked up to his two former students and looked them over, "Shikamaru's up this early and he isn't dozing off, yawning, or complaining? Inconceivable."

"What?"

"Nevermind…" Asuma said, patting Naruto's shoulder as he started waiting along with the two for the rest of the team, "So… how's it going being back at the homestead for the first time in years?"

A beaming smile came over Naruto's face at the thought of being back home, "It's great. I mean, I haven't found seen everyone again yet because so many of them are working, but so far I feel good." He then let out a sigh and shook his head, "This mission has great timing too, because I ditched Tsunade-baachan back at the capital." Shikamaru sharply inhaled through his teeth, "I know. I don't want to be here when she comes back to get me for that."

"Why didn't you tell her you were leaving to come back to Konoha?" Shikamaru asked him, wondering how something so simple could have prevented the clear and obvious bodily harm that was inevitably going to befall Naruto once the slug princess did indeed locate him. She was probably storming north from the capital as they spoke. Fleeing east was just what the doctor ordered.

"Why didn't _you_ tell her?" Which was a roundabout way of saying that he had forgotten to do so before leaving. Who could really blame him? He was excited to return home and some things slipped his mind before leaving, "Either way I'm pretty sure she knows now. It didn't hurt anybody."

Asuma smirked and chuckled, listening to the two converse back and forth and casually bicker, "It sounds like it's going to hurt you."

The man continued to laugh until the arrival of two more of their teammates for the mission and their 'client' Haku. Seemingly coming straight from the office of one Sarutobi Hiruzen. The tan trench coat and mesh garb beneath only could have been one person, "Ooh, someone's going to get hurt and it's funny?" Anko said jokingly with a rather devious smile on her face, "Am I involved in some way?"

"Anko. How are you?" Asuma greeted, knowing by now how to ignore the woman's more eccentric personality traits. He spared a nod to the Kiri ninja Haku who bowed slightly to him in her own polite manner as she was back in full hunter-nin garb for her departure from Konoha.

"Fine, fine…" Anko said, lazily stretching for the forthcoming travel at hand as she looked over at Naruto and Shikamaru, "Hello not-so-bratty-anymore brats. Finally back in the saddle I see." In response Naruto gestured to where his blue headband was sitting back around his neck again like a bandanna with the metal covering his throat as Shikamaru gestured to where the metal of his former headband was stitched into the bicep sleeve of his leather jacket, "Tenzo, you're being mean to the kiddies. Say hello."

The third face was a new one that neither Naruto nor Shikamaru had ever seen before as he stoically stood off to the side from the others just observing the scene, "Anko you know you're not supposed to call me that anymore. From this point my codename is Yamato." He had short brown hair, black eyes, and wore the usual uniform of the Konoha ninja complete with flak jacket, only the neck of his undersuit went up to his chin and his headband had a face guard that framed his profile protectively, "It's good to meet you two. I'm looking forward to working with the both of you."

Both Naruto and Shikamaru returned his greeting while Anko let out a huff, "You were given that damn codename all of five minutes ago. I've only heard it once while I've been calling you the other one for years. I got it, I won't say it anymore… sheesh." She then observed the youngest of the Konoha shinobi in their little group, "You two know what you're getting into with this mission don't you?"

"We had to do an S-rank mission eventually." Naruto said with a shrug. Even though he was trying to hide it, this was the kind of thing he had dreamed about as a kid; running high-priority missions of great difficulty and importance for Konoha. That was a sign that you had truly made it as a powerful ninja.

On the other hand, Shikamaru just had a thorough frown on his face and smoothed his hair back as he looked up at the sky, "No, we didn't have to do an S-rank mission eventually. We actually could have gone our entire lives without having to do a single S-rank mission… but what's done is done I guess. Where's Ino?" Hopefully she could be as late as possible. Delay their departure for a day at least so that he didn't have to leave yet.

"_Ino_ had to prepare to leave in a different way from the rest of you guys because I'm a specialist." Dressed in her normal purple summer attire, Ino made her presence known, leveling a bit of a glare on Shikamaru as she continued to speak, "It's too early in the morning to start hearing you call me troublesome Shika, so save it."

"Grumpy." Anko commented as Ino walked into the midst of the group with her bag slung over her back, "Alright, the gang's all here so shall we go escort our new friend here back home?" Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino looked towards Asuma as they had been expecting their old jounin sensei to be the squad leader, but he just shook his head and gestured towards Yamato, "That's right kids. We're all your superiors here, but the main one in charge is Yamato here."

Yamato nodded as he took the head of the group, "I trust that isn't an issue." There were no vocal objections from any of the youngest as they had all worked with multiple superiors in the past over the course of three years and were used to it.

Motioning for everyone else to follow him on out, Yamato led them outside of Konoha's walls and began the trek on their to-be dangerous mission. As they began to move faster and take to the trees for better movement, Asuma looked back at the trio that used to comprise his Team 10, "You're all okay with Yamato running the mission aren't you? I can assure you that he's just as good as I am."

Anko rolled her eyes as she vaulted from branch to branch along with everyone else, "Real humble of you to admit that Asuma."

"I'm fine with it." Naruto said first. What was there to be upset about? He was back on a mission with his team, working with the snake lady that spent the last few months before his departure training and torturing Sasuke, and a new guy. He was back on the job and meeting new people. The day was great so far, "Don't you worry a bit Haku-chan. We'll find out how to break Otogakure's backs so that the new Mizukage can kick them right out of the country."

Trailing behind the others, Haku spared a smile at the reassurance that everything was going to be worked out, but Anko felt the need to let some air out of Naruto's head at least for the moment, "Kid, there's a little something we need to do first before we can ever even set out to Mizu no Kuni, otherwise we'll never make it out there."

Shikamaru let out a groan that got Asuma to thump him on the shoulder. The young Nara genius knew that it wouldn't be simple and straightforward. It was an S-rank mission after all… and Naruto had gotten them into it over three years in advance, "I hate you Naruto… you and your troublesome promises…"

"Oh whatever. It's not my fault." Naruto replied, having heard Shikamaru complain countless times in a similar manner, "And even if it was; if I didn't get us into these kinds of things we'd never get any stronger Shika."

XxX

(Cha no Kuni – Degarashi Port)

Walking through _his_ town was now one of the most favored pastimes of Gato. Nothing made him feel like a bigger man than looking around at all of the property that he had legally obtained by buying it all out. And of course he allowed the shopkeepers and whatnot to remain there… as long as they paid him for keeping their stores in what just so happened to be _his_ buildings.

The two families that used to fight like fools over control of the port were long gone thanks to the quiet intervention of the shinobi force of his favorite ally. At any given time, upwards of one hundred Otogakure underlings would be rotationally stationed in town to 'keep the peace'. All he had to do in exchange was provide free transportation for Orochimaru's men from Degarashi Port out to Mizu no Kuni and bring back whatever human cargo they wished.

This was of no extra cost to him as well. Ah, it was just good business all around.

It had been a long time since a little hiccup like the one that happened the other day had gone down, and while he was far from pleased by it things were going so swimmingly he simply didn't care enough to be angry. Otherwise he would have demanded that every last Oto ninja in his current employ be axed for letting one of the Kiri ninja get away.

"I don't want any mishaps like what happened the other day again." Gato said aloud as he walked through the streets with his entire bodyguard contingent of Otogakure ninja. At his side, the one he was actually speaking to as the others were nameless and faceless as far as he was concerned, was Guren, looking the exact same despite the change in years with a look on her face that was bored and uncaring, "I know Orochimaru sent you back here to make sure that everything stays ship-shape… I'll have to show my appreciation somehow."

Clearly he remembered just how well Guren took care of business back before he took over, back when Konoha first stuck their nose into his at the time budding investment years prior. She didn't care too much however, "You very well should." Her eyes panned about and idly took note of how none of the populace unlucky enough to still be outside even looked in their direction out of fear. As was appropriate, "I'm here now, and no other screw-ups are going to happen under my watch. I won't have the reputation of Orochimaru-sama's Otogakure suffer fools lightly."

Such a brutal woman. Gato would have wagered that if those words were tangible he could have chipped ice off of the bottoms of them. The multiple Oto shinobi around him had to hold back intimidated shivers as they knew she had been referring to every ninja stationed there, including them.

Gato had to clear his throat to shake any possible jitters out of his voice before speaking again, "Well I wouldn't worry too much about it. Thanks to my working relationship with your master this town is mine, the seas around it are mine to the horizon and beyond. Even Konoha's backed off for years." The most lucrative mainland port and it was all his.

"Of course they backed off. They have no right to be here, and trying to make an excuse would just end up in strained relations with the other shinobi nations… they'd see it as Konoha trying to throw their weight around and Kumo most definitely wouldn't let that slide." Guren said with a rather vicious smirk, "Aside from that, this place is a stronghold all on its own."

Only a fool would attempt to pull anything within the confines of Degarashi Port. It just wasn't smart to try.

XxX

(Two Days Later – Cha no Kuni Countryside)

"Okay, so there are three objectives here for the attack on Degarashi Port." Anko said as the entire team sat on the forest floor of the deep woods for a bit of rest before moving out. Between the seven of them there was a map of the town in question and its outlying areas, "And they are to commandeer a vessel to get out to sea, cripple the ability of the enemy to pursue, and capture an enemy that can be interrogated for information on just what Orochimaru's endgame in Mizu no Kuni will be."

Asuma let out a low and impressed whistle at how up to date and thorough Anko's map was. She was really fired up for this mission if she was putting her best foot forward like this, "Sounds reasonable enough. After all, we can't wind up getting ourselves chased from shore to shore by Gato's 'merchant fleet'." Just a band of seafaring cutthroats they were really.

Raising her hand as if she were in school only to get attention from everyone that she didn't particularly want, Ino faltered a bit in embarrassment before asking her question, "So… who does what? We're not all going to be travelling together to do everything are we? That would take forever."

Yamato, who had been content with letting Anko explain how they were going to proceed until that point, took over and began breaking things down further, "Anko and myself will be working on getting a ship for us to use. Asuma has the pair of jobs of keeping our client Haku-san safe and making sure that we can't be chased once we get away-."

"-Lucky, lucky me." Asuma interrupted and cracked sarcastically at being saddled with two mission objectives. Oh well. At least his protection portion of the mission was really a formality. He truly doubted that if Haku could survive escaping a village full of angry enemy ninja that she would need protecting, "You're going to be able to help with this, right?"

All Haku did was just give him a smile that while reassuring, unnerved him a bit at just how calm she was. If time was any indication she was obviously stronger than she had been when Team 10 had tangled with her in Nami no Kuni, and that was definitely going to be a plus.

"That just leaves the kiddies." Anko said, eliciting a unanimous glare from each member of Team 10 that actually got her to chuckle a bit before she got serious again, "Snatch and grab brats. We need you to go get someone worth a damn in Oto's pecking order for Inoichi's kid here to interrogate." She'd have done the interrogation herself, but then again she'd probably have gone overboard with it. That and the fact that interrogation was Ino's job, "Alive of course. Otherwise we'll be walking into the same mess in Mizu no Kuni that Kiri's already in without bringing anything to the table info-wise."

"No sweat." Naruto felt that such a thing was easy enough. Shikamaru's jutsu could stop anyone right in their tracks and then they could just hightail it out, "We'll just grab some guy, knock him out, drag him onto the ship we leave on and that's that."

He was then confused when Anko shook her head, "That's not good enough. You need to take someone that you know for sure knows something, not just any random ninja. Trust me when I say that Orochimaru only tells you enough to get what he wants out of you. It's always been that way. No random jabroni, bottom of the totem pole shinobi is going to know what we want to get out of them."

"Well it's not like any of them are just going to go alive either." Shikamaru muttered, hand in his cheek as he seemed to be quite bored with the before action briefing, "None of them that Naruto and I ever fought went down quietly. They'd rather bite their tongues off and die than let us catch them. We've seen it." Naruto couldn't sleep for two days after they did.

At that point, Ino proudly pointed her thumb at her own chest as she swelled with confidence, "Well aren't you glad that you've got me with you then? I'll just sedate whoever we catch so that they won't be aware enough to commit suicide before we can get them out of town." It was a lot of bluster though as an apprehensive thought nagged at the back of her mind, 'Naruto and Shikamaru spent three years as the daimyo's elite guard. I've got to prove that they haven't left me behind.'

While it might have been a little bit overkill in regards to what she needed it for, this S-rank mission was the perfect opportunity to see if she had really gotten much stronger for their sakes, and also to see just what they both had up their sleeves as well.

After Ino had made her statement, Yamato nodded in agreement of what she said and continued to speak, "While I won't say we have a definite window of time to pull this off, I will say that once we take a ship we'll only have so much time to get away."

"Why didn't we just take a ship from the south of Hi no Kuni and sail around and up?" Shikamaru asked, "This seems like more of a hassle than it should be."

"Because we wouldn't be safe on the open water with a Hi no Kuni ship." Asuma said, giving Shikamaru the information he desired, "I know you've been at the daimyo's court for a few years so you don't know but the seas are rife with privateers, Gato's merchant navy. With Mizu no Kuni locked up in its own thing there wasn't really a large village out that could enforce some semblance of order on the waters."

"That's why taking one of the ships from here can serve another purpose." Anko remarked, tapping her temple to signify that she was some sort of evil planning genius and had worked much of this out before they had even left Konoha, "Big blonde brat Uzumaki can make tons of clones, so all we have to do is fly the colors of Gato Company and if another of their ships get close we can have him make us an entire crew with Henge to keep us from getting busted. Real cloak-and-dagger stuff."

Ino looked impressed and leveled an intrigued and mischievous grin at Anko who returned it in full form, "I like that. I like it a lot. Put that busy body of Goldie-kun's to some good use."

A glowering Naruto only got a few pats on the head from Ino at his temperament over the group feelings on his Kage Bunshin technique. Clearly everyone else felt the same about it since no one spoke up on his dignity's behalf. But what was dignity to a ninja? It wasn't going to keep them alive so who needed it?

Naruto looked over at Asuma with a dry look on his face as Ino continued to pat him on the head, "I'm never going to get any respect from them am I?" He asked, gesturing towards Ino and Shikamaru.

"Your first genin squad never really respects you no matter what you do." Asuma remarked, "They know you too well for that."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Hokage Tower – Hiruzen's Office)

Taking the time to enjoy a nice sitdown and a bit of tea with one's student was something that Hiruzen could always appreciate despite his responsibilities and his busy schedule. Especially since it had been a while since doing so due to the fact that two of them travelled constantly and the third one was… well the third one was not to be mentioned without strategies on how to kill him being spoken in the same breath.

Jiraiya shook his head and chuckled to himself as he looked through an old book with photos of his team's youth, "Sensei… I'm going to have to say I'm sorry. Because if teaching me was even half as hard as it was to teach Naruto, I was probably the most rotten little bastard in the village."

"There were times when I felt like having Enma hurl you off of the Hokage Monument, but I always thought better of it." Hiruzen admitted jokingly, "Why you're telling me this now instead of back when you were training Minato I don't know."

"There's no comparison between the two at all." Jiraiya said, looking at Hiruzen wryly, "They look like each other… that's it. Naruto doesn't do anything like Minato. He doesn't fight like him, learn like him, eat like him, snore like him, nothing. Minato got everything technical that you tried to teach him in a handful of explanations, with Naruto you have to hammer it into his head, sometimes literally. But when it comes to the physical… there's no contest."

"How so?" The curious Sandaime Hokage asked as he took a sip of his beverage, "I asked him about his training when he came to visit me, but all really did was ramble mostly along the lines of, 'I'm awesome, you can count on that old man, so just give me the hat already.'"

Jiraiya rolled his eyes at Naruto's vague and mostly useless explanation to his village leader about his personal growth, "He's not as fast as Minato of course, but even as young as he is Naruto's far stronger physically than Minato ever was." While when Minato hit someone it still hurt, that was mostly because of the speed he would hurl himself at an opponent with coupled with the strength that he _could_ generate creating great velocity.

Naruto was just strong.

He couldn't let Naruto even jokingly hit him for acting like an ass anymore. He always had to dodge now, because he didn't know his own strength. But that was just one thing.

"I didn't teach him that many ninjutsu though." Jiraiya freely admitted shamelessly. That was something that confused Hiruzen a bit. Naruto was specifically his apprentice. What in the world did they do if Jiraiya didn't pass down techniques to him, "I didn't have to. Not after he finished learning his element. He did the rest himself."

Hold on for just one minute.

That only meant one of two things. Either Naruto found his own source of ninjutsu to learn, or…

"He came up with his own ninjutsu?" Hiruzen didn't mean to sound surprised… but it was surprising. Naruto was sixteen, which would have meant that anything useable would have needed a year to develop first before putting it into anything that was useable.

A pleased Jiraiya that was happy with how he managed to stun his sensei with his own student's progress got him to laugh smugly, "Sarutobi-sensei he abused the hell out of the clone training method. After he worked out the mechanics of his style he had them do the real heavy lifting. The first part still took a year after he finished his elemental training though."

The clone training method? That was the secret to Naruto coming up with his own branch of ninjutsu? Of course. The use of one clone let someone train in half the time, "So how many did he use a day?"

"Kami… it depended on what he needed done." Jiraiya said, trying to think back as he ran a hand through his hair, "A lot of the time he couldn't make more than a hundred or so because he didn't know how much chakra one of his new techniques would take until after the fact. He was stumbling around in the dark most of the time. He's smarter at using clones to fight now too. Doesn't just waste chakra on them anymore since all of his moves take so much of it. His lazy-ass teammate rubbed off on him a bit in that regard at least."

That was all well and good, but it still left the most important question that Hiruzen never got answered, "How strong is he Jiraiya?"

Ah, and that was the question of the hour. Before Jiraiya could open his mouth and answer in his own honest opinion, both of them felt a small rumbling. Looking down at his mostly untouched tea, Jiraiya could see the liquid in the cup quivering as the tremors got more intense, sounding out with the consistency of footsteps.

Jiraiya's eyes showed pure fear as they seemed to get closer and closer to the tower and he scrambled for the open window, making sure to take his teacup with him lest it ruin his cover, "I was never here, and you haven't seen me since I've gotten back. I'm not taking the heat for the brat doing something stupid. Later sensei." Without even waiting for a goodbye, he jumped out of the open portal with extreme swiftness.

And a moment later he would find out why when the doors to his office were thrown open, a pleading Shizune holding a shivering Tonton as they stood behind a very upset Tsunade who looked like she would maul the first sight of the color combination of yellow, orange, and blue that she saw, "Where's the brat Sarutobi-sensei?" She asked sweetly despite the look on her face.

The Hokage had to be a problem solver, thus Hiruzen did the only thing he could do.

Since he couldn't pass the buck he had to postpone the inevitable blowup for as long as he could. Have mercy on Naruto's wellbeing upon his return, "A mission. S-rank. I'm sorry, but I can't give you more details for security purposes." He then lifted the pot holding his prepared heated beverage of choice in the hopes that he could calm her down, "Tea?"

Maybe he could still salvage his calming afternoon?

Tsunade raised a delicate blonde eyebrow as she knew what Hiruzen was trying to do, "Do you have any sake on you instead?" Oh well. No use wasting all of that anger for being ditched at the capital if Naruto wasn't there. She was patient enough to wait for him to come back, 'An S-rank mission?'

XxX

(That Evening – Cha no Kuni – Outskirts of Degarashi Port)

Standing on the misty road leading outside of the seaside port town, a uniformly masked Otogakure ninja stared into the surrounding forest with purpose as another came up behind him and got his attention, "Hey, what are you doing just standing there? Why don't you patrol somewhere that you can actually see?"

"I don't know. Does this mist seem weird to you?"

"Weird like how exactly? We're right by the ocean genius. It gets misty and foggy in this town all the time."

The first, more suspicious ninja shook his head, "No, it's just… does it feel colder than the normal mist around here to you?"

"No." The second masked Oto ninja said with a laughing snort, "You temperature sensitive big baby. The sun's going down, no shit it'll get a bit nippier. Stop doing Gato's drugs… you know that crap is no good for you."

That last comment seemed to snap the first ninja out of his suspicious mindset due to the nature of the jibe as he went along with the other man to patrol elsewhere with him, "Fuck you. I don't touch that shit. I'll just piss off Guren if I want to commit suicide with more dignity thank you very much."

XxX

(Forest Surrounding the Town – With the Konoha Ninja)

"You know how to do this Haku-chan?" Naruto asked, commenting on the thick mist that had descended over Degarashi Port courtesy of the resident ice-wielding shinobi, "Now that it's not being used on me, I've got to say that this jutsu is pretty cool."

He didn't notice a rather envious Ino muttering in the background about how her jutsu was good too, 'Don't crush his mind… he's just a nice guy. You'll show him how much stronger you are the second you get the chance.' She thought to herself.

A gracious bow came from the Kiri hunter-nin representative at the praise, "Zabuza-sama taught Kirigakure no Jutsu (Hiding in Mist Jutsu) to me after teaching me the basics of his Silent Killing skill." Haku commented on the use of her jutsu, "I'm not as good at the latter as he was, but I should be well enough so that I do not hamper Asuma-san while we move to sabotage the enemy's pursuit capabilities."

Since none of them really had Zabuza's ability to navigate the mist without their eyes at all, Haku didn't make it as thick as she could have for their benefit. It was enough to move around with some semblance of cover though, and that was what it was meant for.

Yamato seemed to be quite pleased with Haku's use of the famous jutsu, and at the seaside it wasn't out of place either. He turned towards Naruto, getting the young man to be attentive towards the team leader now that his attention was on him, "Naruto, what do the clones you sent out have on the town?"

Naruto furrowed his brow in thought, trying to dredge up the thoughts that his dispelled clones had gotten on the layout of the town's outskirts, "There aren't a lot of guys on patrol. Maybe twenty or so? And none of them are really stationed outside the town limits." It wasn't a military town, it was just a town that Gato lived in and he had a large amount of ninja bodyguards. A lot of the ninja were at bars or resting and doing their own thing because of being off the watch shift, "Most of them are centered around where the mansions are."

At Gato's mansion to be specific. He couldn't really get his clones much closer though because of the mist since they couldn't see that far over the distance and had to make sure they didn't get close enough to be spotted. Using their sensor technique wouldn't help as it required too much chakra to distinguish actual forms in what was being felt, and doing so would make anyone with decent awareness feel out the chakra waves, no return sensor jutsu needed.

"What about the docks?" Asuma asked. That was the most important part. They had to make sure they could commandeer a ride out of there or their mission would be delayed… at worst it would end right there.

"There are a few there for routine guard work, but there's no one extraordinary out trying to get anything out of Degarashi Port so it's not heavy."

Even with a stronger set of thugs to do his bidding, Gato was still overconfident, at least that was what Shikamaru saw. Now that he had hired from an actual shinobi village and had a standing manpower worth of guards he was falling into his old habits from Nami no Kuni. Back then he just figured that there would never be any problems for him because of what his money could do for himself.

Same here, only there was more muscle. That was just fine. They had more muscle too. If six genin and two jounin brought down his force in Nami no Kuni, what could the seven of them do now? They were about to see.

"Okay, brat brigade, go get us a VIP." Anko ordered with a shooing gesture, getting the annoyed Team 10 to prepare to set out to do their part, "And don't make it a crappy one. Every Oto ninja in a full facemask is a nameless loser. That's why they wear them; because their identities don't matter." Naruto almost fell over prior to jumping off with his team as they all stopped at that.

"I haven't seen a single one of them _without_ a facemask!" Naruto replied to the purple-haired snake mistress, "Not a single one. Just how elite are we talking about here, because I know none of these guys are genin."

Asuma shook his head with a frown on his face, "We might not know much about Otogakure's movements, but we know a bit about their sociology. Orochimaru wants his troops uniformed; more than other hidden villages. Only those that have proven themselves and survived his demands get to vary themselves with special exceptions."

"Remember the kids from the chunin exam that were from Otogakure Goldie-kun." Ino reminded him. Those three were pretty uniform in their appearance with their matching pants and scarves too, but as genin they weren't important enough to be given full loadouts on their gear like the adults that were somewhat proven.

Rolling his eyes at how things could never be straightforward and clear, Shikamaru's wheels inside of his head were already turning in regards to working out a solution to their prisoner problem, "Come on. Let's go." He said, getting both Ino and Naruto to fall in with him as they left to begin, "Naruto, show us a hotspot or two so we can locate a mark to capture."

"And we'll get started on stealing a ship. We'll have a signal planned when it's done. We're clearing out when it goes off, no buts about it." Yamato said as he and Anko then departed to start on their leg of the assignment.

Eliciting a sigh, Asuma stood up from where he had been resting and stretched his shoulders out, "That Yamato… he's a great ninja, but he's kind of a wet blanket. He's trying to hide it better than Anko, but he's just as jazzed up for this mission as Anko is." Of course, Yamato's attitude was probably better for running an S-rank mission like this than Asuma's and he knew it so it wasn't a problem, "Maybe he'll loosen up when we're not sneaking past a town that's one hundred strong in a ninja force?"

Haku was still smiling pleasantly like normal outside of battle as she gave her immediate supplies one last run-through to make sure she was ready, "Your village certainly has a varying range of attitudes in its shinobi. It's interesting." She then placed her white and red porcelain mask over her face to disguise her features, "Shall we begin as well then?"

XxX

(With Team 10 – Hills of Degarashi Port)

No such look on locating anything other than a grunt roaming the streets. Just how many in Orochimaru's organization happened to be considered strong and skilled enough to be given sensitive information. There was a difference between a chunin or a jounin of Otogakure and an executive so to speak, and that was clear when the conversations between them went up.

A great amount of them were prisoners that were held by Orochimaru's bases for future experiments that showed some kind of talent in the shinobi arts to save their asses before they met the cutting tables and laboratory trials, and from there they were given uniforms and missions. What were they going to do, say no? They'd be killed, or even worse be sent right back to their cells to wait to be turned into human lab mice.

They weren't given info and they didn't care. As long as they weren't behind bars hearing the screams of the unfortunate bastards taken to be gifted with one of Otogakure's physical modifications or mutations. Hell, the ones that survived those were given places in Orochimaru's forces as well.

It simply wasn't good enough for the three interlopers. What were they supposed to do? They had until the signal to head to the docks went off to find one or else they'd be sailing into Mizu no Kuni without good information. That would be no good. Haku only knew so much, and all she knew was from the Kirigakure side of the scenario, which meant no enemy secrets, so when they landed on one of Mizu no Kuni's islands they could be landing right on a hidden Oto stronghold.

There had to be more than a few if they had such a vicious foothold in the country.

Some deducing needed to be done in order to get some information on which waterways to use, where to avoid, and maybe just what was going on with Otogakure.

The first idea brought forth by Shikamaru was to steal some shipping manifests from the docks, but that plan was a no-go. Gato owned the ports of the town completely. It was his property. Who the hell did he have to keep records for legitimate business for? There was no real law enforcement anywhere in the Elemental Nations outside of the martial settlements like ninja villages and other military towns.

Ino then chimed in snarkily once their thoughts brought up nothing worth any substance, "Geez. Why don't we just grab that little toad Gato then? I'm pretty sure if he saw a Konoha ninja up close again he'd crap a brick after what Goldie-kun and Team 7 did to his men on the bridge last time."

All three of them stopped in the middle of tracking another groups from their hiding place on the rooftops and both males of Team 10 stared at Ino blankly, getting her to fidget a bit uncomfortably at the attention.

Shikamaru was the first to blink himself out of the stupor as he more or less figured that they didn't have any better ideas, so why not?

That actually wasn't a bad idea. Shikamaru was kind of stunned that it came from Ino. Nothing against her, but the last thing he remembered about her was that while her personality was strong her clutch tactical value left a bit to be desired.

But back to Gato; he was the number one man of the waterways of the world… and he was on Konoha's shit list anyway so they would have been good there.

Upon reaching Gato's mansion, both Shikamaru and Ino had to pay attention to something that Naruto had neglected to mention. Gato actually had the gall to move into the abandoned Wasabi Family mansion after he had chased the two warring groups out of town upon buying up most of Degarashi Port's property.

The mansion grounds were split between three buildings set at the edges of a beautiful center garden a quarter of a mile around. They already knew which one was the main house as well because they had stayed inside of it during their last venture in the town as guests of their client.

While Naruto would stay outside and make sure that things stayed cool out there in case something went wrong, both Ino and Shikamaru went inside to capture Gato without a fuss.

Upon their infiltration, Ino broke off from Shikamaru to clear the house and quickly dispose of any posted sentries of which there were over a dozen. Her poison-covered senbon were perfect for that approach and her aim was as impeccable as ever, rendering Gato's closest protection detail useless with quick pricks to the neck for quick circulation.

Shikamaru's approach through the house was notably more peaceful. All he did was ensure that all of the rooms on the way to the master bedroom were clear of any guests. He doubted Gato had anyone that considered him good enough company to stay in his home anyway, so it was really just for safety's sake.

The pair reconvened outside of the closed and locked door of Gato's master bedroom, "I really hope he's asleep." Ino whispered as she began picking the lock, "The only way him being awake would have been funny would have been if Goldie-kun had come inside with us and he remembered what he looked like from three years ago." Aside from that possibility, Gato being awake would just be annoying.

The lock softly tumbled open and Ino had a senbon with sleeping poison prepared as Shikamaru opened the door and led the way inside. After subduing Gato and preparing him to leave they'd be out of there just like that.

Naruto would probably impatiently complain that it took too long, but three to five minutes wasn't that long when they were taking care.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Outside of Gato's Mansion)

Ino and Shikamaru weren't going to blitz the place. Shikamaru like to take things nice and easy and he'd be a stickler for making sure the site was clear before moving forward to extract Gato. That was all well and good, but it was going to take up to five minutes to completely check the entire place. He should have sent in a clone with them. A clone's repeatedly heckling would have made things go faster.

In the meantime he was playing a human sonar system on the large roof that sloped upwards on all sides to a single steeple point in the middle of the mansion. It was the trademark of the mansion and what made it so easy to find from anywhere in town, because it was such a tall piece of architecture. It had been done by Gato, probably to signify that it was him that lived there.

'Why do we like high places so much?' Naruto idly wondered to himself as he stood on the very pinnacle of the roof looking down through the mist that covered everything. Even though he couldn't use his eyes, he still had Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) to help him out. He could keep watch over the area just fine from where he was standing, 'Well, it does make it easier to use my jutsu, so I guess there's that.'

A recent use of the chakra pulse technique let him on to the fact that there was something sailing through the air right at him. In response, Naruto drew his machete and quickly blocked a series of small projectiles that had been sent his way. Wasting no more time as a sitting duck, Naruto dropped from the steeple and slid down the tiles of the massive roof to a more level position, his eyes fixed on the direction that the weapons thrown at him came from. He had to bare his teeth in something of a snarl at the person he saw on the roof with him.

What were the chances? It was none other than Guren.

"I haven't felt that much chakra from one person in a long time." The powerful crystal-creating woman said with a smirk at Naruto, "My crystal ball picked up on your signature when you started letting those little pulses of yours go. I was on the grounds as well so it's not like it was hard to find you. Way to survive our last little meeting sweetie."

She was there too? Why was she in the same damn town right when he had come back for his mission? At some point coincidence stopped and divine conspiracy began.

"Guren…" Naruto was never going to forget the person that dealt him the most savage beating he had ever endured in his entire career, maybe his entire life, "You still look the same."

"You definitely grew up though." Her smirk widened when she saw his hands twitching down at his side, "You're still just the same old little boy though. It's nice to see that some things never change eh?" Apparently the asskicking that nearly took his life hit home all those years ago, "Kill him."

He was scared of her. And the multiple Otogakure shadows that leapt into the air from underneath the sides of the roof were willing and able to take advantage of that, planning to pounce on Naruto at once and end him without delay, per the orders of their mistress.

Guren's deduction of Naruto wasn't really correct though. Not really. Fear wasn't why he had been shaking.

A nice guy? Yeah, there were a few people in the world that could and would label Naruto that.

Only people that liked him, and there were only so many of those.

On the other hand, Naruto was also one to hold grudges, and he never forgot the bad things that happened to him even if he was better at hiding the effects of some than others.

Some of those bad things, such as how he watched his friends nearly die at Guren's hands while he was trapped inside of a crystal, or how she seemed to toy with them as if they were nothing when they were giving her their best shots… things like that tended to stand the test of time and stick with him.

So at heart he was actually pretty vengeful when it came to hurting the people he loved. Not nice, and not afraid. Definitely never afraid.

As the Otogakure attackers landed and proceeded to stab into Naruto with their kunai they were in for a rude awakening when it was revealed that they had actually stabbed one of their own; one of the men that had actually been jumping through the air along with them intent on killing the Konoha ninja that was their target.

On his body on the chest of the recently killed man, a seal with for diagonal markings in adjacent corners with a pair of bars in the middle of them appeared before jumping off of his body around all of the Oto shinobi that had launched the attack to begin with.

"Ura Shishou Fuinjutsu (Reverse Four Symbols Sealing Technique)!"

Everything caught within the range of the expanded seal markings got drawn into the dead Oto shinobi's corpse, including a big portion of the roof and his comrades that had been responsible for striking with the deathblows that killed him.

Guren meanwhile had never lost track of Naruto's movements, keeping her eyes on him as he moved to a different portion of the roof, glaring at her seriously, 'So that Uzumaki in his name isn't just for show. He didn't look a thing like that clan with that yellow hair of his, but with a fuuinjutsu like that… there's no question that he's got some kind of connection. The Four Symbols Sealing Style was supposed to be the telltale trademark of the Uzumaki Clan. Very difficult.'

Well he just used one like it was his trademark sealing style.

That one was supposed to be a suicide seal, only activated upon expiration of one's life, meant to take one's enemy with them immediately in case victory was unobtainable and death was the only option available. It was difficult to understand and apply, and usually had to be prepared well in advance. Not only did he apply it to another ninja in the middle of battle, but he did so while he had used a Kawarimi with the very same person.

"Well it looks like someone's been putting some fertilizer on their balls for the last few years." Guren quipped, downplaying just how impressive Naruto's opening move was, "But you should know, I'm not as easy to trap as the scum you just rid me of."

"I know. You're an Otogakure elite." Naruto said, remembering just like yesterday how all of the brute force he could muster wasn't enough to stop Guren from stomping a mudhole in him last time around before another thought came to mind, "…Just what I need."

"I'm not your type kid."

Naruto let out a grunt to acknowledge her witty remark as he placed a cigarette from the pack in his supply pouch in his mouth, "You don't mind do you? Do you want one? I roll them myself." He asked casually, extending his arm with the pack her way, "…Well the clones do anyway."

"No, I don't smoke." Guren replied with a smile on her ruby red lips. This cheeky little punk had a set on him, that was for sure, "I'll let my prey enjoy one last cigarette though. I'm not heartless you know."

"Great." Naruto chirped happily as he gleefully lit the stick up in his mouth and took a few deep breaths of smoke that he then exhaled, "Good for you that you don't smoke too. It's a nasty habit. A lot of people think it's annoying in public, girls don't like it, and not to mention what I heard it does to your health. _Your_ health. Not my health. I'm a bit different from other people when it comes to that."

A few laughs came from Guren as she crossed her arms over her chest and let Naruto smoke away, "Well then why do you do it? It can't be just to flaunt your little regenerative powers that you're gifted with through the Kyuubi." Bantering with him was definitely fun now that he had lines other than that he was going to kick her ass, "You didn't really give me a reason why."

"Well it's kind of soothing. It calms my nerves a bit, kind of like right now. I need it before fighting someone like you, heh." Naruto admitted, "But that's not a really good reason. There's lots of stuff that's soothing that doesn't piss off so many people. No, I do this for a different reason now."

"Let me guess… you're a pest, so you do it just to pester others around you?" Noticing that Naruto's cigarette had finished burning down to the very butt of it, she was through sparing an old enemy any other concessions, "Time's up."

She made a move to start her hand-seals to begin a jutsu and Naruto did the same though he only needed one, "Moegara Nagare no Jutsu (Cinder Stream Jutsu)!" Holding his hands in the horse seal, Naruto took a deep breath and exhaled a hot plume of ash from his mouth in the direction of his foe that covered his movements and forced Guren to look away lest her eyes be injured by the tangible debris in the cloud.

"Grr!" Guren didn't take too kindly to such a jutsu. The grimy makeup of the technique's physical attributes were disgusting to her. She didn't want to be covered in ashes even if they _wouldn't_ hurt her. These most certainly would from the feel of the fire-less heat coming from the jutsu that she dodged. Forming four hand-seals, a blade of crystal formed on her forearm.

Her reason being that she eyed Naruto's movements from behind his own cloud. It was only one too, and this guy never used just one clone to fight. Why would he when he had so many more that he could make. Deducing that it was real she sped over and quickly sliced through it only to find her blade covered with sticky black ash.

A clone. A clone of substance; ash to be exact. But ash wasn't that sticky, so why was it stuck to her blade? Trying to wipe it off smudged her hand and made it somewhat sticky. Ash wasn't really sticky either. What the hell kind of ashes were these?

"So you've just spent the last three years getting weirder?" Guren asked as she saw Naruto prepared to charge her down. He delivered a kick that she blocked with her forearms, but it sent her sliding back across the roof, damaging and busting up tiles until she came to a stop, "What kind of techniques were those? Ashes from wood, ashes from volcanoes, no ashes are like yours."

"Nah, volcano ash would be hotter, but I don't need it to be hotter." Naruto said, watching her warily in case she attacked him again, "No, my ashes are a bit more common. I bet you didn't notice how the entire time I smoked that cigarette I never tapped it off but you never saw any burnt up ends on it." The eyes of the wickedly strong woman widened in realization, "Yep, they're like super-hot cigarette ashes."

That was why the ashes were sticky. The reheated tobacco residue and chemicals in the ashes gave it that kind of consistency. But there was only one way he could actually do something like that to himself.

Shaking her head, Guren couldn't believe what she was hearing, "That's insane. You can use the crap that smoking puts in your lungs to help you fight?"

"Why not?" Naruto said, "All I had to do was figure out how. It doesn't really poison me because of the Kyuubi, and if it doesn't kill you it just makes you stronger! Those are just a few of the moves I've come up with too…"

It didn't matter in the end though. When push came to shove a few little nifty tricks like that wouldn't get through to her in the end. Her crystals could still defend her. He'd never get through to her directly with any of that. It was cute that he'd learned something new, and it probably would have been effective on others, but Guren wasn't weak like them.

"Your seals and your ashes are useless against me." Guren said with more confidence than ever now that she had seen Naruto's new techniques, "You still don't have what it takes to get through my crystals, and that means your fate is sealed. I'll make sure you don't escape and survive this time." Because he was dangerous. Uzumaki clansmen were notorious for many reasons and Naruto had just exhibited a few of those reasons.

If he really was of that clan then she had to kill him. There was a reason there were so many that were afraid of them at their height.

Not backing down an inch, Naruto just prepared himself to fight for as long as he needed to. No matter what he had to make this quick before Shikamaru and Ino made it outside with Gato, and especially before the signal to reach the stolen ship went up.

Because he was pretty sure Guren wouldn't accept a tactical retreat or any kind of outcome other than complete victory. And a Pyrrhic victory was no good for Naruto. He needed to win and be fit to carry on with the mission. He couldn't fight like a reckless idiot this time.

No, not tonight.

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 1

(Three Years Ago – One Day after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

"This training is lame." Naruto said with a thumbs down as he and Shikamaru stood outside in the front of the Guardian Ninja Quarters. Both of them stood before the two other members of the group; the blind de facto leader Sadao, and the clinically insane yet very pleasant songstress assassin Suzukuro Kotoko, "I thought Ninja Guardian training was supposed to be like boot camp from hell."

"Well, it's definitely not supposed to be easy dear." Kotoko said, still smiling with her eyes closed as they usually seemed to be. Her head tilted slightly in cute confusion at what Naruto's problem was, "What's wrong with the training?"

Wordlessly, but with a twitching eye, Naruto held up a watermelon half his size. Both he and Shikamaru had been given large watermelons and had been told to protect them as if they were clients. This struck a nerve with Naruto… considerably so as a matter of fact, "Really? You're asking me that?"

Sadao rolled his eyes behind his dark sunglasses, not that anyone could see it though, "Listen, your standards for 'protecting' your clients on your little C-rank missions before this might have flown back in Konoha where you were nameless, faceless chunin, but here we need you to be better than that. These are nobles. If you fuck up protecting someone here and they get hurt you might end up starting something huge. Do you want to be the reason the Fourth Shinobi World War starts?" Naruto stared at the young man owlishly and shook his head no, "Then you're protecting the watermelon."

At that point Shikamaru lazily waved his hand to get some attention, which Kotoko gave him by pointing over at him in a bubbly and animated fashion, "Yes Shika-kun! Do you have a question for your lovely senpai?"

That woman seriously gave him the creeps. There was just no getting around it. Ugh, "So what happens if we can't keep the melons safe? And how long are we doing this for?"

A rather malicious grin formed on Sadao's face at Shikamaru's questioning, one that sent chills down the pair of Konoha ninja's spines, "You have to keep the melon safe for 48 whole hours. If you sandbag your shit and fail on purpose or if you suck so bad that you can't keep the melons safe for two whole days then you don't get to move on to the next stage of the training."

"-You do get to eat the melon though." Kotoko added in what she thought was a helpful manner.

Sadao palmed his forehead at how Kotoko broke his swagger. She was a fantastic shinobi and probably the best pure killer in the country, but damn it if she wasn't the grandest airhead he had ever met in his entire life, "…Yes, you get to eat the melon… but not only do you not move on from here, your first missions will be a protection detail."

Both Naruto and Shikamaru looked at each other before turning back to their seniors. That didn't sound so bad. Then he pointed over to a long row of twelve tall posts that stood out at the very front of the Ninja Guardian property.

"You get to protect the wooden posts outside since you clearly can't be trusted to handle something as important as a watermelon." Sadao said seriously even though a small smile started to form on his face, "You're going to do it with your bodies… because we're going to tie you to the stumps in your underwear…"

"Wait. That's what those stupid things are for?" Naruto asked aloud. He just thought that they were supposed to be there for a big fence or a wall of a gatehouse. Just something or another that they hadn't built yet.

"Oh yeah." Sadao said before whispering loudly, "And I'll let you in on a little secret. Soldiers hate wooden poles. They throw eggs and tomatoes and stuff at the posts all the time… or is it just the tied up rookies that they don't like?" With a hapless shrug he let the point drop, "And you get to do that for two days straight before you have to repeat the test until you get it right. And if you fail again the same thing'll happen. And so on, and so on."

Oh, so now they could see the 'boot camp from hell' aspect that they had been missing so far.

"I had to do it like twelve times because I kept killing my 'client' by accident." Kotoko reminisced with a giggle, "Yep! Again, and again, and again, and again…" Kotoko repeated in a sing-song voice as she did pirouettes around both Naruto and Shikamaru, "And again, and again, and again-."

"Kotoko stop. I think they get it." Sadao said, getting her to stop next to him obediently as if she had never moved.

"Hmm, it wasn't that bad though." Kotoko commented as she tapped on her chin, "At least it left me alone with my thoughts." That was a scary thought for everyone else out there with her.

"Uh… huh?" Idly Sadao wondered if his conditioning of Kotoko as a Ninja Guardian was part of the reason she was so horribly imbalanced, "So anyway, just go about your business like normal, but don't let those melons out of your sight because if those melons take any 'fatal damage' you fail."

Getting tied to a post for two days and having jerk soldiers haze you by throwing crap at you sounded horrible. That was enough motivation for Shikamaru who started thinking of what he was going to do during meal times, and how he was going to rest since he'd be damned if he was going to sleep for the next two days. Just how hard were they going to try and go for those melons? And when they started were they going to be attacked immediately. There were so many things unaccounted for with this test.

"You can try and get my melon, I'll kick your ass every time you try!" Naruto exclaimed before the large fruit slipped from his grasp and went splat on the hard ground beneath him, "Um… doesn't count?" He ventured desperately.

Both Sadao and Kotoko shook their heads and wordlessly pointed towards the stumps, one with a far more pleasant disposition than the other, indicating that Naruto was to walk over there and wait for them to get Shikamaru situated with the rest of his briefing.

Then they would tie his ass to a post for two days.

Well he wasn't about to just lay down and take that, and prepared to run until he heard some chilling laughter as Kotoko plucked a few notes out on her shamisen, "Fufufufu… Sadao-kun take a look at little Naruto. He thinks he's going to run. Please run Naruto. _I want you to_."

'Don't do it man.' Shikamaru thought to himself. He was about to try and catch Naruto with his shadow to keep him from making a break for it because even after knowing her for only one day he swore that Kotoko would probably get too over-stimulated by the chase and kill him by accident when she tried to bring him back alive. Especially if he tried to use clones, 'I already know how this story ends.'

It was probably the longest ten seconds that Naruto had ever taken to think about doing something, but eventually he conceded and walked over to the stump with the most hangdog look conceivable on his whisker-marked face, "Alright." Two days. He could do that, he was tough enough. He had to be, "You guys are gonna feed me right?"

The two senior Ninja Guardians had differing outlooks on that inquiry.

"Maybe… if I care or remember to give you food or water. Meh, you'll live."

"Yes, yes, yes! He's so cute and I get to feed him like a puppy! A big orange tied up puppy! What's a good name for a puppy? I know! I'll call you… Naruto!"

"For the love of Kami Kotoko, do you ever listen to yourself talk?"

"Why would I do that? I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to you silly!"

Shikamaru just looked at Naruto slogging away and then down at his melon, then he looked at his two senior members of the Ninja Guardians and felt something inside of himself break, "Oh… I made a mistake. I seriously made a mistake…" He said to himself miserably, "We never should have come here Naruto!" He yelled at his friend who seemed to be trying to find the most comfortable position against his post of choice to be tied to.

* * *

Jutsu List

Moegara Nagare no Jutsu (Cinder Stream Jutsu). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive, supplementary. The user of this jutsu lets loose a chakra-infused cloud of heated ash from their mouths. The jutsu works as a heavy smokescreen and as an attack equally due to the consistency and heat of the ash. It will stick to an enemy and weigh them down as well as burn them. Taking the devastation that the jutsu can cause one step further, Uzumaki Naruto smokes special cigarettes with traces of crushed glass to further weaponize his ash to cut into an enemy's body when sprayed at them directly with his wind release.

Kaibunshin (Ash Clone). Ninjutsu, clone technique, supplementary. This technique is used to create physical clones using ash as a medium. While still mobile and able to fight, an Ash Clone is not as versatile as a Shadow Clone as it cannot use chakra. It has many applications as a lure or a decoy just like any other clone, but it is most dangerous in physical combat as any contact with it burns due to the heat of the ash. An Ash Clone can take some damage before dissolving as it can convert itself to ash and trap a foe. When ruined and forced to dissolve it is still dangerous as it can stick and clump onto whatever destroyed it.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konoha Ninja

Yamato

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 31**

* * *

**Chapter done, and the mission is on! Rematch time ladies and gentlemen. Will Naruto get his win back from Guren from three years ago? Is she going to finish him off once and for all after witnessing his growth and realizing that things could get far worse? What other techniques are up Naruto's sleeves?**

**I know all of this already of course, I'm asking these questions for your benefit. If you care you'll read next time. If you don't… well I don't know what to say about that.**

**Next chapter will be the rest of the leg of the mission in Degarashi Port and more stuff to go with it.**

**Later all, and to all a good night, or morning, or whatever it is in your part of the world.**

**Kenchi out.**


	46. Youth Revolution

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I can convince an aggressive drunken enemy of mine to get tattoos of whiskers on their cheeks during my last year in college I'll be able to die happily… which is what will probably happen when he comes at me for revenge and brings all sixteen of his friends to murder me afterwards when he sobers up.

**Chapter 46: Youth Revolution**

* * *

Haku's mist-creating jutsu had been a godsend. While she claimed that Zabuza hadn't taught her much about his Silent Killing technique, she was clearly adept enough at the technique to easily avoid any people that could possibly detect her or her direct accompaniment in the mission at hand, Sarutobi Asuma.

Asuma had taken the lead, with comments from Haku on how to avoid patrols and areas choked with people. It was kind of unnerving for him to have the student of a Silent Killing master being his eyes and ears in the mist. If Haku had held on to any bitter feelings to how he had killed Zabuza in battle years ago all she really had to do was just take a moment and try to take him out.

Or try to anyway.

But that was still stupid for a different reason other than the fact that he was sure that he could take her on and win quite handily. They were in the middle of no man's land in Port Degarashi, and getting busted before they even got to sea was going to keep her from ever getting back to Kirigakure. What would she have done to do to reach out for assistance if the Konoha option fell through, go to Kumogakure? Good luck with that.

"Haku-san." Asuma whispered as they had reached the docks by that time. Anko and Yamato weren't too far away procuring a ship somewhere, but they weren't necessarily close either, "We need to prevent any of the other ships from leaving the harbor. That's how we're going to make sure there's no way we can be followed."

The quiet sound of the water ebbing and flowing actually managed to sound over the conversation being had by the two ninja concealing themselves in the mist and the dock supplies they were hiding amongst.

That eerie mask turned his way to let him know that Haku was indeed looking his way and listening to his request, "Of course Sarutobi-san, but do you already have a plan on how you're going to go about this?"

Asuma nodded and pulled out a large fistful of explosive tags, "Plant these in the sweet spots on the ships and blow those things right out of the water. They can't chase us without a vessel to follow with can they?"

Haku merely pulled off her mask to reveal a good-natured smile as she shook her head, "Asuma-san that is too noisy. We want to be able to escape before the enemy ever realizes we obtained a ship from them."

With a dry look on his face, Asuma just stared at the young woman as she reaffixed the porcelain mask to her face and looked around their surroundings as best she could in the mist of her own creation, "Since you said that I assume you have a plan to do this without making a boom?"

Haku didn't speak, instead creating several hand-seals before hopping off of the dock and landing as light as a feather on the surface of the ocean water. Light ripples emerged from the water where she touched down until it quickly frosted over and froze solid. Asuma watched from his point of view as Haku began to freeze the entire bay solid around the ships in sight. Frost even began to form around the bottom of the hulls of the ships.

Once she felt she had frozen enough of the area's water over, Haku jumped back onto the dock and looked at her handiwork with a nod, feeling that she had done enough to that area to detain the vessels there from being able to break free and pursue them once the time came, "Hyoton: Hyogen no Jutsu (Ice Release: Ice Field Jutsu)." She said calmly as she rejoined the Konoha jounin, "Shall we proceed to the next area and continue?"

Asuma just shook his head and lead the way to the next station of the harbor to continue their work. Kids were just getting scarier and scarier these days. He hoped his own child would end up being a terror, because the stuff some of these brats could do… well he or she would definitely need to be.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Degarashi Port – Wasabi Family Mansion)

Guren was not going to screw around with Naruto. Not for a moment. She was going to go for the kill immediately. Outright ignoring Naruto's testing move of sending out five clones to check her defenses, Guren wasted no time in ridding herself of the nuisances as she advanced across the main mansion rooftop towards the original, "Shouton: Suishouhari (Crystal Release: Crystal Needles)!"

She seemingly created multiple long pink crystals from nothing and fired them at Naruto's clones. The attacks pierced them and returned them to smoke and even one to ash and impaled themselves in the roof.

Without a beat being missed, Naruto's machete came careening through the air with its extremely long chain attached. Guren hit the deck, dropping to her belly on the rooftop as she could feel the ripping air of the chain swing over her head. Nature manipulation had been added into those two tools. She didn't want to risk trying to block such an attack with her crystal defenses yet since if he were willing to attack her after his previous defeat he probably assumed that his technique could break through.

From her place on her belly, Guren formed several crystal shuriken and hurled them at Naruto as his machete was pulled by the chain back into his hand. Naruto blocked the solid pink projectiles and sheathe the weapon before shoving his hands into the surface of the roof, breaking through just underneath it, "Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!" Naruto twisted his hands and ripped them both from beneath the roof.

The action and the concentrated pressure of his wind technique started carving a grinding path through the roof to where Guren was lying down for cover. She quickly pushed herself up and dodged the path that was running right towards her before she found herself caught up in it.

Guren could see that Naruto's jutsu had ripped up enough of the roof that she could see the underlying support beams for their top level of the building, 'That would have stripped the flesh right off of my bones.' What a simple attack though. It was just him using wind-based chakra with pure brute force. There were no technical mechanics involved whatsoever.

The attack from the Konoha chunin didn't subside though, and Naruto was right there attacking Guren with his machete once more. First with an attack from the sky that missed and sliced cleanly into the roof. By then Guren was ready to fight back with her ever-present blade on the back of her wrist. The two traded strikes back and forth, but not only did Guren find that gaining ground in a melee fight with Naruto was exceedingly difficult, her arm blade eventually broke due to the constant barrage of Naruto's machete.

Gritting her teeth, she allowed it to shatter from one of Naruto's swings and planned in advance to deliver a retaliatory kick to his stomach that landed, knocking him away from her far enough to let her get some distance with a small retreat.

Naruto held his torso and growled as he watched Guren get some distance. That wasn't going to be good for him. He'd seen full well in the past what Guren could do if given a bit of space and time to prepare. Not this time.

"Setsudanki Hassha (Slingshot Guillotine)!" Letting fly with his machete and chain once more, Naruto targeted Guren mid-retreat as she ran up the gentle and then harsh slope of the mansion's steeple. She was fast enough to avoid it, but Naruto's machete and chain milled right through the building architecture and sent it tumbling over.

Guren cursed under her breath as the structure fell and jumped onto one of the exposed beams that Naruto's clear-cutting of the steeple exposed. Destructive little shit wasn't he? Dangerous.

"This was a nice home before you got here." Guren said, somewhat tauntingly, "It's a good thing I don't live here though, so I don't really care about it." Her face then twisted into a scowl as she made three hand signs, "Shouton: Suishou Kyou (Crystal Release: Jade Crystal Mirror)!"

Naruto watched a mirror in the form of a snowflake form directly in front of Guren. He didn't understand why she had created it though. He could break that easily and he knew that she was aware of that. It wasn't a sturdy defense at all, thus Naruto was prepared for an attack.

But it wasn't supposed to defend her from anything, nor was it a direct method of attacking him either.

From the mirror, several clones of Guren climbed out from what seemed to be her very reflection itself. Not illusionary copies either. He could feel their presences and they moved independently of each other and of Guren herself who just continued to stand behind the mirror looking quite smug.

"You didn't think you were the only one with a high-level clone jutsu did you?" Guren asked as her clones spaced out, all positioned across the roof, "Suishou Bunshin no Jutsu (Jade Crystal Clone Jutsu). Lovely aren't they?" The real Guren from behind her mirror tapped it with her finger and shattered it into pieces as her clones lunged at Naruto directly to attack him at once.

A quick lunge from three of the clones had them bearing down on Naruto swiftly. He was able to dodge the punches of two of them before he cut straight through another with his machete and shattered it to bits.

Naruto had to shut his eyes and pull his goggles down over them to protect his vision as pieces of sharp crystal cut his face and clothing, even through his arm-warmers as he continued on to the next set of copies, 'I can appreciate a good clone jutsu.' As he reached the next two clones, Naruto avoided a punch from one by simply cutting its arm off. While the other one attacked his unarmed side, he formed a Rasengan in his free hand and shoved it straight through his enemy.

Thank you Jiraiya. Actually, thank you Yondaime Hokage.

An interested Guren stood back and watched Naruto handle her clones, trying to observe his patterns and what she could determine of his preferences. Seeing him take down five had been enough for her and with a snap of her fingers the other clones that had been moving into position to engage Naruto next all burst into particles of crystal, "Shouton: Shuriken Ranbu (Crystal Release: Shuriken Wild Dance)!"

Naruto found himself surrounded by a storm of crystal particles that began cutting into his clothing and flesh as he covered himself up. Guren merely cackled as she saw Naruto simply defend himself as best he could by curling up. Not so tough after all was he?

"Fuumon no Jutsu (Wind Ripple Jutsu)!" From his curled up position, he abruptly stood straight up and thrust his arms out, pushing away the crystal pieces in all directions with a low boom. Guren's hair got blown back a bit as pieces of her own crystal attack flew past her.

All she did was dust the bits and pieces that got onto her clothing off, "I see what you specialize in." Guren said as she confidently placed a hand on her hip and observed a slightly bloodied Naruto stare her down, "You hide it well enough with some of your other techniques like what you do with the ash… but you're still just a close-range fighter."

He could dress it up all he liked with his little machete and chain trick. At its core that was still a direct melee attack. And his sealing techniques, he had to be close enough to make full palm contact with at least one hand, two for the stronger ones. She wasn't even going to bring up the Rasengan itself that he had just used.

"Yes… you're more comfortable in close." Guren continued with a smirk, "That's unfortunate for you, because I don't plan on getting within fifteen feet of you again until I'm checking over your corpse to make sure you're dead." The one who could dictate the range of a battle had the control of the entire situation, "I don't need to stay close to my enemy to tear them apart."

The bulk of Naruto's ninjutsu that had range were dangerous, but the true treachery of the ranged machete attack or the hot burning ash or the Giga Impact that he used to rip up most of the roof in a straight line just so happened to be that Naruto didn't expect those moves to land. He used them to corral an enemy into a position where he could deliver his more subtle but notably devastating moves like the Rasengan, the famed melee jutsu of Namikaze Minato.

She only needed to see it once to know what it was. Orochimaru was rather interested in the pure chakra manipulation before he left Konoha. He never got a piece of the knowledge on it though before he departed the village.

Naruto's lips quirked in a moment of amusement before setting his face back to a serious visage, "You got me." He said with a bit of a sheepish chuckle, "I'm just a straightforward idiot. But then again, it's like standing in the middle of a road with a stampede of oxen heading right at you. Just because you know what's coming, does that mean you can stop it?"

"I did the first time easily enough didn't I jinchuuriki-boy?"

"That was a long time ago."

Indeed. Guren was aware that the danger of being struck with Naruto's wind-chakra through his machete rendered her crystal armor useless. He'd break clean through it and cut into her or through her. She was wasting chakra just trying to find a way to hurt him. He wasn't mindlessly plowing full-steam ahead the way he had the first time years ago, and he hadn't even drawn upon the chakra of the biju within him either.

That was what really irked her. That he was matching her without drawing upon a secondary source of power, and he was confident about it. Those cuts despite being numerous were mere trifles to him and she knew it full well.

Naruto's foot moved a step and Guren was right on him to attack again because as she knew, no matter which direction he was planning on moving in he was coming straight for her, "Shouton: Kesshou Seichou o Toge (Crystal Release: Growing Crystal Thorns)!"

A large jagged branch of crystal grew out from a portion of the roof and speedily expanded towards Naruto, branching off in multiple directions that he would possibly dodge in when he chose to try and evade the technique. With the numerous portions of it moving in all directions unpredictably, Naruto was going to get cut to shreds without knowing which way he'd wind up getting it from.

Naruto once more let fly with his machete, but instead of using it to clear-cut through anything as it wouldn't have worked in that scenario, he used it as a makeshift grappling hook and yanked on the chain attached to him under his arm-warmer, forcing it to retract and reel him in before he could be impaled on multiple sides.

The machete had impaled itself on the edge of the roof and due to the lack of safety that the top of the mansion now held, Naruto wound up hanging over the edge by his chain and dropped to the ground of the property, waiting for Guren to make her presence felt again.

Many long, large pink crystals started falling from the sky and spiking themselves into the ground all around Naruto as he began to get mobile and dodge the crystalline javelins that seemed to keep falling and falling.

Amid the many deadly projectiles, a large hexagonal shuriken flew through the air, independent of the javelins. Naruto saw it coming right before it reached him despite its flat hard-to-see shape and the speed it had been thrown to reach. Naruto used his machete and the dense mineral grinded against the well-worn metal of his weapon of choice, driving him back over the ground before Naruto could swing his own body around and redirect it elsewhere.

Mere misdirection. All of it.

Guren began weaving along the ground through the mess that her upright crystal javelins had made of the mansion grounds until she reached Naruto with her arm-blade drawn back and ready to run him through.

Naruto was barely able to turn around and prepare himself to retaliate, but Guren simply burst into shards of crystal once he sighted her, 'A clone?' That _was_ annoying. Kami, was that what he had been doing to people for all of those years? He was an evil bastard.

But now Guren had him dead to rights and could finish him. He didn't even need to turn back around to know he was screwed. He could sense her there with his echolocation jutsu. That only left one option to try. His trump card to deal with Guren, "Shikamaru now!"

'What?' Guren quickly ended her attempt to kill off Naruto mid-step, a large crystal lance formed around her right arm. She had forgotten about the boy's damned teammates. The most irksome of them was the smartass Nara. He had been lying in wait the whole time just letting Naruto fight to lure her into a trap? 'Where could he have been-?'

With a big grin the moment Naruto felt her hesitate, he wasted no time in whipping around immediately and grabbing her free arm with his nigh unbreakable grip, yanking her right into him as hard as he could where he smashed his forehead right off of her face, "Bam!" The sudden stunning attack allowed Naruto to draw back his machete for a cleaving strike, though his head was a little fuzzy after the headbutt.

The reason being that Guren had her fully transparent crystal armor on as well. That stupid brat tricked her by making her think his backup had arrived and got close enough to actually headbutt her, hard enough to stagger her even with the armor on. It was absolutely humiliating.

Guren managed to block Naruto's machete shot with her crystal lance that shattered from the slash. Her now free hand grabbed Naruto's wrist to subdue his machete arm, thus the two of them were locked in a struggle with one of them controlling one of the other's arms with their own.

The combat carried on to an equal stalemate as the two used their knees and feet to throw off the poise of their adversary's instep to compromise their balance. Again, nothing came of this and they were stuck locked together in a test of strength that Naruto was slowly winning.

"Give it up." Naruto said as he started overpowering Guren. She was no Tsunade by any stretch of the imagination, but she was strong for a woman.

Not a chance that Guren was going to let him go. They were danger close. If she let him go all it would take from Naruto would be a slight of hand and there would be a chance that he could fix her with some sort of crippling fuuinjutsu. She wasn't even thinking about letting him go and allowing him to use the Rasengan. She doubted her thin sheet of crystal armor would protect her too much from that attack, "To a scummy Konoha ninja like you? Ha. A shinobi of Otogakure never surrenders. We fight to the death."

"Okay." Naruto grunted out as he crisscrossed his arms and turned a direct about face before shouting in effort. Much to her surprise, he jumped and hefted Guren clean off of the ground before slinging her over his back and head and slamming her right into the ground with crushing force, "Raaagh! You think I need a weapon? My hands are my weapons!"

Just because she had subdued his ability to cut her temporarily didn't mean he still couldn't hurt her. He had a hundred ways to do that with his entire body, and he had just shown her one.

The armor didn't help her from feeling the consequences of the crashing slam and all of the breath left Guren's body upon impact. Her eyes went wide with panic when she saw a Rasengan begin to form in his left hand from where she was on her back. No way would she be able to deal with anything like that as she was. It would be an impossible feat to get hammered with such a jutsu in her prone position.

"Kesshou: Rokkaku Shuriken: Crystal: Hexagonal Shuriken)!" Shooting her arm up at Naruto, Guren created several snowflake-looking crystal shuriken aimed at Naruto's neck and head. He leaned his head back out of the way to avoid a grisly death. The slight opening was all she needed to ensure her survival and Guren rolled up into a headstand and a mule kick that smashed Naruto right in the chin the moment he looked back down at her.

He had been knocked up off of his feet, but he landed and kept standing. He'd been hit harder. Both Jiraiya and Tsunade had made certain of that for differing reasons. But he had missed his chance to finish Guren off. She had gotten her distance from him without wasting a step. Apparently even though she herself had said that the only way he could beat her was in close, she had seemed to underestimate just how quickly he could put an end to things if he caught her slipping.

She was definitely not going to do that again. And the lying about Shikamaru or Ino was not going to work for him again, stroke of genius though it was. It worked for what he needed it for at the time and that was all that really mattered.

Guren was hiding it well through her hateful glare, but she was sweating at this point. He had come within an eyelash of finishing her off. If she hadn't made him flinch with her sudden creation of crystal shuriken they would have had to scrape her scattered brains up off of the ground come sunrise.

Encasing him in crystal was useless in an attempt to kill him. She had tried it before and all he did was protect himself and break free with the Kyuubi's chakra. He wasn't such an easy out this time.

Enough of that thinking! She had the experience edge! She was one of Orochimaru's elites! She could beat him! All she had to do was settle down and outthink him. He was just a blonde brute with some slick tricks. He couldn't have too many of them left up those arm-warmer sleeves of his to pull out and fight with.

XxX

(Moments Before – Inside of the Mansion Main House)

Shikamaru finished tying up Gato as Ino applied the last sedative senbon to him to make sure he wouldn't wake up until they were rightly out at sea where he wouldn't be able to stage any sort of hijinks to try and weasel his way out.

A pair of female assassins lay defeated on the floor of the room wearing Otogakure headbands. It hadn't taken anything more than a minute or so to dispatch them handily enough and from there all they had to do was knock out Gato. It wasn't a bad thing that Ino took pleasure in that part in particular was it?

It was an act of mercy on their ears to put that shrieking banshee of a man under just to get him to stop yelling and begging off. Neither of them could blame him really, he wasn't a fighter, but did he have to be so annoying about it?

Hefting a thoroughly bound and gagged Gato up over his shoulder, Shikamaru frowned as the mansion shook once again. He was focused on his and Ino's fight against Gato's personal protection detail and figured that all of the rumbling around the house was in his head that he needed to focus on not getting taken off of his shoulders at the time. Now he was definitely feeling something, "We need to get back outside. It's retreat time."

"Yeah, yeah." Ino said, making sure that the Otogakure pair of kunoichi weren't going to be able to pursue even if they woke up anytime within the next 48 hours, "It sounds like a warzone out there. Is Goldie-kun alright?" She couldn't help but think of him fighting off a whole army of Otogakure shinobi, even though she knew that was very farfetched.

"He's probably the reason it sounds like that to begin with." Shikamaru said, shifting Gato on his shoulder with a grunt, "Come on. Let's-." The mansion shook terribly and the pair ran outside into the hall to see that a large portion of the ceiling above had been torn off somehow and left the beams clearly visible as well as the night sky, "Damn it… subtle as a rhino Naruto."

"Restraint definitely isn't the word of the day tonight is it?" Ino asked no one in particular as the two of them traversed upwards to go out through the roof. Whatever Naruto was doing, he definitely wasn't sandbagging it. Or maybe he just couldn't?

Upon being touched by the moonlight once more, Ino's eyes widened at the completely ruined roof that was basically nonexistent at this point. But there was no Naruto in sight. Shikamaru tapped her on the arm and pointed towards the center grounds at the back side of the mansion and came upon the sight of two fast moving combatants chasing one another on the flat ground around many crystals that were impaled in the earth.

"Crap." Shikamaru said with a frown evident on his face, "Naruto's fighting Guren? What is she even doing back in this town?" Didn't she get redeployed anywhere else? Talk about returning to the scene of a crime…

Guren's eyes noticed them standing on the roof and saw Gato with them, 'Feh, of course he didn't come alone.' As loathe as she was to protect the slimy toad she couldn't let them get away with an affiliate of Otogakure. Who knew what sensitive state information that undisciplined bastard was privy to?

But Naruto noticed this as well, and placed his body between Guren and the main mansion building as they continued to fight. She wasn't going to get Gato back, not while he had anything to say about it. And the two continued their fast-paced ballet of violence amongst each other.

Ino quickly brandished a handful of senbon, narrowing her eyes on the scene before them, "We should help him then. She can't handle the three of us at once. Not a chance." She stopped when she remembered something important and shot her eyes towards Gato's unmoving frame on Shikamaru's shoulder, "…One of us has to take him though."

Shikamaru knew that Ino wished to fight, if only because she felt that she had something to prove. And to be honest they could have used the help if only to make it so that they could leave as quickly as possible before the signal to evacuate went up. But there was a chance that they wouldn't be able to get Gato out even if that was their mission, and aside from that he and Naruto were more accustomed to working together than any combination of the two boys and Ino at that point.

He had a bit of a solution though, but it was a crappy one.

"Ino, can you interrogate Gato here?"

Surprised by the sudden request, Ino almost balked at it in response, "Here? I mean… I could, but it's going to take a while by myself, especially without the mind reading amplification machine. It's not a quick process." That was why they were to capture someone and take them away on the ship to begin with. A decent interrogation would take time, and that wasn't something that they had in spades at the moment.

It wasn't a technique that one could use under fire either. Ino would need her focus to dive into Gato's subconscious and she wouldn't be in any sort of position to defend herself while doing it. Certainly not something that could be done on the frontlines of a battlefield.

Fine then.

Shikamaru passed Gato off onto Ino who took him while Shikamaru shook his arms out, "Take Gato to the docks where Anko-sensei and Yamato-taichou are. We'll be right behind you. All of us can't stay and fight this time."

"I know. I'm an information specialist." Ino said, more or less consenting to the idea, "The intel is more important than some pride of mine in a fight. You two had better hurry up." She said before choosing to leave the mansion in the hills and begin making her way back to town.

'We'd better finish this in five minutes.' Shikamaru thought to himself as he saw Guren break off from fighting Naruto to try and stop Ino, "Not a chance. Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!" From Shikamaru's body, shadows materialized in the thinner shape of extending threads that rushed out towards Guren along the ground to try and stop her.

In mid-motion, Guren saw the shadows coming along the ground and gazed upon them with some interest, 'So he can make his shadow that much harder to avoid now can he?' And it was faster as well. But it was still on the ground, and she could dodge it just as aptly as she did the first time.

Until the tips of the sharp shadows leapt off of the ground and effectively became a three-dimensional attack that was meant to stab her instead of capture her movement.

Because she was already moving through the air with the momentum of her jump, Shikamaru's shadow threads stabbed against her. But it wasn't good enough for him because he didn't feel his shadow tendrils take hold, 'Tch… that damn crystal armor of hers.' He had to stab her so that he could sew her stuck to detain her… or kill her. Whichever one was easier.

Thank goodness that kid's shadows weren't strong enough to bust the crystal armor. That was all Guren could think to herself. But then there was of course still Naruto that had been given a golden ticket to attack by his partner's intervention.

Who wouldn't cash in on such a thing? Certainly not Naruto… with his wind-enhanced bladed weapon. He was a damnably well noted opportunist of the highest magnitude.

Naruto took a clear, wide-open swing of his machete at Guren's back, only to find that he had cut through a crystal doll that had been made in her image. She shed her crystal armor and Kawarimied with it. Of course she did. Why wouldn't she have seen his attack coming? A seven year old would have seen it coming.

But from the blood on his machete, Naruto thought to himself that the most obvious method of attack could still get results, "Sorry Shika. Just a half a second faster." They hadn't been directly countered yet though, "Which way did Ino-chan go?"

"This is why I hate fighting the good Otogakure ninjas…" Shikamaru complained as both he and Naruto went off in the direction that Ino ran towards, off of the mansion grounds and back towards the town, "…Their troublesome gambits throw off my plans."

Probably something they pick up over time from Orochimaru. Hey, they need some good traits to have them break out of the mindless drone/cannon fodder level of being an Oto shinobi. Still, not particularly good in this case, because both Naruto and Shikamaru didn't need to be master tacticians to know where Guren was going.

Especially when they saw a small trail carved out in the ground made up of mashed little chips of crystal mixed in with the torn dirt and grass, reminiscent of a tire track.

XxX

(With Anko and Yamato –Degarashi Port Harbors)

"That is seriously one useful hunter-nin." Anko said aloud from her place looking over the side of their modest-sized vessel. Her reason for being rather impressed was because with the exception of a clear and easy to use path for the ship that she and Yamato had commandeered every other ship that could be used to pursue was trapped by thick ice, "These kids are starting to make me feel old."

Haku had almost completely frozen off any chance for them being pursued.

Yamato had to agree to say the very least, "The Hyoton kekkei genkai is versatile." He said, and as someone that had a pretty damn high-level bloodline limit technique himself that was high praise, "It's kind of why the whole anti-bloodline sentiment took off so easily in Kiri all those years ago. They made the people without them feel inadequate and threatened."

Turning around with a dry look on her face, Anko pointed at the portions of ocean that were frozen solid, trapping the vast amount of ships there at Degarashi Port until it melted, "Seeing that would make me feel safe if anything, knowing that it was on my side. How'd the brat brigade even beat Haku the first time?"

A soft set of footsteps landing on the deck alerted Anko and Yamato to Asuma's presence, and on his back he had Haku held up piggyback. That was strange. Haku didn't seem to be the type to allow herself to burden others on her team.

As he walked over he already knew what his colleagues were going to ask him and Asuma explained before anyone could inquire, "She was thorough. Thorough enough that she had to take a soldier pill to keep going." Of course, because that _had_ to use up a horrendous amount of chakra, "She probably hasn't even fully recovered from the state she was in when she made it to Konoha."

"I'm fine." Haku said, her face still concealed by her mask. At least it was until Anko walked over to her and took it off to find her face paler than normal and sweating, "…Honestly. I can still help."

Shaking her head, Anko took Haku off of Asuma's hands and proceeded to carry her inside to find a spot for her to rest, "You're going to take some down time now. Or do you want to be completely exhausted by the time we reach Mizu no Kuni? That's where you're going to be needed." The purple haired kunoichi reasoned as they headed on in.

Putting too much effort into just the first leg of the mission? Well for someone that had no problem being the willing tool of another person it didn't seem to be that unbelievable. That was a good mindset for one-shot missions, but for S-rank missions with multiple parts to it that kind of operating could be treacherous.

…How many S-rank missions had his team been on again?

Damn it.

Asuma palmed his face hard and turned towards Yamato, "We can call for my team now right? I think the quicker they get here the better." Yamato nodded and unsealed what looked to be a long bamboo tube that he slammed against the ground. From the top of it a bolt of lightning shot out of it into the sky, visible from anywhere in Degarashi Port, "How much time do you think it'll take"

"I have to give them two minutes and then I'm casting off." Yamato explained with a frown, "Otherwise we'll have Otogakure enemies all over us, making your sabotage mission worthless. We can't sit here trying to defend the ship for them until sunup." He and Asuma began to prepare the ship for a quick departure. Luckily by intention Yamato had obtained a ship that would be easy to get ready, "They have standard procedure memorized in case they get left behind don't they?"

"They won't get left behind." Asuma assured him as they got to work.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Degarashi Port)

Ino had cleared the hills where Gato's Mansion had been situated with the little man himself over her shoulder the entire way, 'Kami, why couldn't he pick somewhere closer to live?' Ino thought to herself, 'I am so out of active mission shape… being stuck in T&I all day.' But if nothing else she had covered significant ground on the way back through the village and had managed to avoid any unwanted run-ins with the enemy ninja populace. That was something that she attributed to having already been in the town for a significant mission in the past.

Hopefully this time around it ended better.

That was then and this was now though, and thinking about such things would do nothing to ensure that she reached the harbor with Gato in tow. Especially when she saw the hard to miss shot of lightning streak up through the sky from just over the water. That was the cue to get gone.

As if those in control of time and fate were getting a kick out of Team 10's situation, Ino found herself deposited back around the shipyard. The same chunk of territory in the town where things had come to a close the last time.

The sound of quite a ruckus alerted her beforehand to any trouble, and it was a good thing as well because Ino was then forced to dodge for dear life when a nearby building wall was smashed through with reckless abandon. It could have been infinitely worse.

"Found you princess." Guren had plowed through the wall while standing within a jagged wheel comprised of crystal, "You did a pretty good job of avoiding those trash 'sentries' all over town, but I'm not the absolute bottom of the barrel. It's easy to consider where you were going to go. No way would you be fool enough to try and escape over land on your own." Guren's eyes twinkled seemingly in delight at the fact that she definitely seemed to be alone and had Gato right there over her shoulder, "You had an exit strategy."

"Ooh, someone needs to give you a gold star for figuring that one out all by yourself." Ino jabbed sarcastically much to Guren's displeasure. Not particularly the best idea for someone in Ino's situation, but being demure wasn't going to stop Guren from trying to kill her. Thus being a bitch was preferable by her standards.

Guren's crystal wheel shattered of her own volition and she started walking towards Ino trying to scope out the best way to deal with the little nuisance before she could turn and run somehow again. Ino couldn't fight because she was holding up Gato and only had one arm free at best, "You know, I just don't get why you Konoha idiots keep trying to pick fights against Otogakure. We've made you look foolish time and time again and you still just keep on running your heads against the wall. Is it merely because you know by now that Orochimaru-sama commands us?"

"Hokage-sama isn't petty like that, even though from what I've heard Orochimaru is a nasty guy that screwed our village over." Ino said as her eyes darted around to look for some kind of opening to take advantage of. She'd take anything at that point. Just keep Guren talking, "Your village steps on too many toes. You prolonged a civil war and you're still taking advantage of the devastation it caused in Mizu no Kuni. You're going to start another war somewhere else if you keep doing things like that."

"It's the faults of the idiots in Kiri that let Orochimaru-sama too close." Guren explained with a smirk, "But don't worry your pretty little head about it. It's not your problem anymore. Die."

As Guren lunged forward, Ino evaded away from her and shifted Gato from her back to hold him up in front of herself at the pursuing Guren like a human shield. She saw a change in Guren's eyes as the woman got close and saw Ino's intention to avoid her attack.

Not a bad idea. She figured that since Gato was a VIP, Guren wouldn't risk his health. She was his bodyguard after all. But that was incorrect.

Guren was not in Degarashi Port as a part of Gato's security detail. She was there to merely oversee the dispatching and the arrival of ships that contained Orochimaru's interests such as his experiment subjects. Gato had nothing to do with anything involving Guren's mission. She didn't care about him at all.

Besides… Orochimaru didn't need him anymore anyway. He had gotten everything he needed out of Gato Corporation. At this point Oto and Gato Corporation were closely interwoven enough that anyone beneath Gato's station in the company could be used as a mere puppet figure under Orochimaru's command. That was the eventual plan anyway, this was just speeding it up a bit. The fool actually thought that his money was keeping him as an important figure to Orochimaru… as if money couldn't change hands easily.

"Shouton: Suishou Rou no Jutsu (Crystal Release: Jade Crystal Prison)!"

Once Ino and Gato were within hand's reach of Guren, Ino saw the devilish smirk on the woman's face and mentally cursed. She had no choice but to let go of Gato or pay the ultimate price, which left the man to the fate of being encased entirely in crystal. Sometimes it was easy to underestimate just what many of these people were willing to compromise in regards to morals to win.

She stared at Guren standing next to the crystallized Gato, still smirking before she punched the statue and shattered it entirely. Gato's body went right along with it, disintegrating with the crystal particles, "Oops." She disingenuously said, seeming to take pleasure in the look of anger on Ino's face, "I'm sorry, did you need him for something?"

"Didn't you?"

"Not really. He served his purpose. We were just looking for a good time to take him out. At least now we can blame it on you if it comes to it."

How callous. Allies were expendable and allegiances changed like people changed clothes in the Elemental Nations, but really? Just like that? The second it became a tad bit inconvenient to have him as an ally anymore she was cleared to kill him, and she'd get away with it?

And she had the nerve to feel like the superior ninja because of it. If Ino didn't have to run away, she would have stopped to fight just out of principle. Actually, Guren was probably going to make her stop and fight regardless. Right on time, Guren chose to attack her next and finish her off as intended, but at least Ino's hands were now free to fight.

"You made me fail my mission bitch!" Ino shouted as she made hand-seals and prepared to attack a charging Guren.

Before the two could clash though, Ino without warning phased through the ground. A thoroughly confused Guren was even more so when from the exact same place in the ground a grinning Naruto leapt out with a blue spiraling orb of chakra in hand. There was absolutely no time to react, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"

The sound of shattering was from the front of Guren's armor being destroyed by Naruto's Rasengan as it was slammed directly into her chest. The force of the jutsu slammed her back through the air straight through the wall of a warehouse.

The confusion didn't end with just Guren. Ino blinked in confusion as she emerged up from the ground yards away from where she had originally been. She turned around and saw Shikamaru breathing a sigh of relief with his hands held in a strange hand-seal different from his normal shadow possession seal, "Shika? What just happened?"

"Kawarikage no Jutsu (Shadow Replacement Jutsu)… I hate that jutsu." Shikamaru said as he stood up from his position, "It looked like you needed the help though."

Ino nodded and saw Naruto standing on the pile of crystal debris from Guren's cruel execution of an equally cruel man. She wasn't going to shed any tears over it, but damn it, Guren really messed things up, "Guren killed him. It was my fault." Sure, it was either let her freeze Gato or wind up being crystallized along with him, but that didn't clear her of responsibility.

Able to hear Ino's admission of guilt, Naruto just cracked his knuckles as he stared at the hole that Guren had created with her body after his Rasengan, "Then we'll just catch her first." He said as if it were that simple.

Pointing at the sky in the direction of the ocean, Ino raised a point of importance, "Goldie-kun, the signal went off. We need to leave."

"This'll only take a minute." Naruto assured her. They weren't going to fail the only assignment given to them and botch the first mission Team 10 had been handed since its reformation. Ninja Guardians couldn't fail their missions or the worst could happen to the entire country. Well that mindset carried over to that moment too, because the home of a friend needed help, "I promise."

"You wish! Shouton: Hashou Kouryuu (Crystal Release: Tearing Crystal Falling Dragon)!"

Four large dragons comprised of crystal broke through the warehouse walls surrounding the trio of chunin with Guren riding on the head of one of them. They couldn't dodge them all and they couldn't defend themselves from them all.

Each and every one of them were annoying for their own reasons, and they had failed their mission. The only thing left for her to do was finish them off. Maybe if she delivered their heads back to Konoha that would get the intended message she wanted to express across to them?

Gritting his teeth, Naruto was about to see just how big of a boom it would take to break those dragons down, but he was quickly reminded that he wasn't fighting by himself anymore.

Shikamaru sighed in exasperation and rubbed both of his wrists over the sleeves of his open black jacket, "Right then…" He thrust his arms out in two separate directions and from beneath his sleeves shot a pair of blades.

It made Guren wonder what he was aiming at because they went nowhere near her, even the one that flew her way. But she found that she was unable to control her dragon or her own body, 'No way! I was watching! He never made his shadow even budge again!'

"Kagemane Shuriken no Jutsu (Shadow Imitation Shuriken Jutsu)." Shikamaru said, smiling slightly at how things managed to shake out for them. Thank goodness he took the whole chakra-infused blades thing from Naruto and Asuma. It used _way_ less chakra to catch his enemies even if he only had two shots, "Now finish."

"With pleasure." Ino said as she brandished a small pellet that she threw right at Guren's head. The immobile woman was unable to do anything as it burst on her face and sent blue gas right into her breathing passages. There was nothing she could do but glare hatefully at the lot of them as she began to go under slowly but surely, "Nighty-night now."

Her eyes finally drooped closed and her crystal dragons collapsed, sending Guren falling to the ground. Naruto blinked and rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around, "Wow… that was easy." Infinitely easier than taking Guren on one-on-one had been.

"Of course it was." Ino replied matter-of-factly as she started pricking Guren with separate poisonous senbon to try and keep her sedated until they could properly bind her, "That's teamwork Goldie-kun. Thanks for saving my ass you guys." She said with a brilliant smile as Naruto stayed away from the dangerous enemy kunoichi until he was sure she was out and while Shikamaru placed his special blades back onto the wrist attachments beneath his sleeves.

"It's definitely an ass worth saving." Naruto mumbled to himself just out of Ino's earshot. Shikamaru heard him though, and shook his head at his friend's idiocy. As they prepared to head for the water Naruto then scowled at the sound of forthcoming enemies, "Great." He said to himself, "We didn't take that long that they caught up did they?"

They sort of did. But even with the method that they had used to defeat Guren, they hadn't caused too much of a ruckus in town. They could probably get away, but they had to go right then or they were going to be in serious trouble.

Taking the initiative for once, Shikamaru picked Guren up off of the ground and hoisted her over his shoulders as he and Ino took off to try and make themselves scarce. They could follow where the signal to leave came from easily enough, and now they even had a captive. One that would admittedly be harder to break than Gato, but one that would more than likely have better information.

"Yeah you guys go." Naruto said, reaching through his equipment rapidly as his teammates led the way and left, "…I'll be right there."

XxX

(Onboard the Confiscated Ship)

Asuma's fingertips drummed the railing of the ship rhythmically as he peered out impatiently towards shore. The last preparations to leave were being made by the older team members from Konoha and it had been past two minutes since the signal went up, "These kids are going to be the death of me."

"Man Asuma." An amused Anko pointed out as she leaned against the same railing as they waited, "I remember back when you hated kids. Right before you had this team as a matter of fact. And now look at you. You're taking care of foreign teenagers, you worry over your old genin squad like a mother hen, and you're even having your own brat in a few months." He shot a treacherous look her way that she just shrugged off, "You really think you've kept it that good of a secret to where nosy people don't know _something_?"

He of course assumed that Anko was referring to herself when she spoke of nosy people.

And if she did indeed know, he only had one thing to say, "Well then where's my gift?"

Anko scoffed and gave Asuma a few pats on the cheek, "The to-be mother is the one that's supposed to get the gifts Smokestack. But I'll tell you what. Your gift is me having the good grace to not tell the entire village that you and Kurenai are more than special friends." As if everyone with half a brain didn't know already.

"That's a crappy gift. I'm taking it back." A bark of laughter left Anko at Asuma's reply.

Yamato looked out towards the warehouse-laded harbor as he dropped down from the mast after finishing his last assignment prior and made his way to the ship's wheel to begin steering it, "We can't wait any longer. I could see it while preparing the sails, they're swarming over the harbor.

Neither Asuma nor Anko really argued as they couldn't, but before anything else, both Shikamaru and Ino's feet landed on the deck and with another guest in tow as well. It was one that both Anko and Asuma knew because of the outburst from Orochimaru's first apprentice, "What the fuck? I thought you were getting Gato, not Otogakure's resident queen psychopath!"

"She killed Gato." Shikamaru said informatively, unceremoniously dropping Guren onto the deck now that he didn't have to carry her anymore, "We needed to take someone useful or we would have been behind the eight-ball to start the mission, and Naruto was fighting her anyway so we just all jumped her and took her. She wasn't expecting us to have even half of the techniques that we did."

He modestly made it sound so simple. A lot of positioning was needed to work out the way that everything ended up and the planning from the moment that he switched out Naruto and Ino's positions with his shadow to the second he pinned Guren's shadow with his blades had been painstakenly set up.

In her chase to catch Ino, Guren couldn't have given them an easier area to trap her in either. Seriously, in a junction of warehouses? Consider that capture gift-wrapped. She threw Shikamaru a soft ball for that one.

With the ship finally moving out of its placement in the port, Yamato walked over and picked Guren up with one hand by the rope tied around her waist with a satisfied look on his face, "I'll take that. We'll put her in the hold and restrain her for Yamanaka-san to interrogate once we leave." While he was pleased at how things had worked out there was one thing left to worry about, "Where is Naruto?"

A decent question as Asuma would have figured Naruto to be faster than Ino and Shikamaru if it came to them having to race to the ship, especially since Shikamaru had been carrying a prisoner at the time.

And then a chain of explosions started moving through the shoreside warehouses to deter any enemies from venturing any further towards the ocean, especially with the large pluming cloud of ashes that shot out from them. From the fire of the blasts a rather bulky figure flew from the harbor and made a crash landing on the deck.

The attentive group from Konoha flinched at the landing but looked again to see a very large orange toad bigger than a full grown human wearing an open blue vest. He was slightly singed, probably from the series of explosions, but he was otherwise alright, **"Yo."** Gamakichi said, lifting a webbed hand to wave at the lot of them, **"Long time no see for most of you jerks."**

That was Naruto's favorite toad summon creature, Ino would have known that brazen way of speaking anywhere. The last time she'd had seen him he'd been a little puny thing. Puberty must have hit more than just them if Gamakichi looked like that now, "Where's Goldie?"

From Gamakichi's back, a soot covered hand was raised and waved to reveal Naruto who slid off of Gamakichi's back. He was covered in ashes and coughed a few times, "The special explosive tags need more work. Thanks 'Kichi. I wasn't going to be able to jump that by myself." He said as he pulled his goggles from off of his eyes back up onto his forehead. It seemed that the area around his eyes was the only place that wasn't absolutely filthy.

"**You owe me Naruto."** Gamakichi said, as he watched Naruto shake the soot off of himself, **"You had me test out those stupid tags back on the mountain. Do you know how much of a mess those ashes make?"**

"If you tested it then you should have told me how they blew up before I used them here! I thought they worked the way they were supposed to when you never answered me back about 'em!" Naruto yelled back at his most familiar toad, "Now I need to wash and change my clothes to get this crap off."

Gamakichi flicked his tongue out at Naruto and slapped him across the face before gagging once he retracted his tongue, **"Bleh! Damn it that tasted gross! That tasted like licking the ashes off of a cigarette!"**

Well that was because it was basically what he did… along with some toad oil as well that Naruto used to mix the concoction. Naruto cackled in response to the backfired prank and gave Gamakichi a few victorious pats on the back, "I'm covered in my own ashes dumbass. What'd you expect? Alright go home."

"**Whatever you jackass… don't get yourself, the cute blonde little sweetheart, or your lazy teammate killed. I like them. Later."** Canceling his own summoning in a puff of smoke, Gamakichi vanished back to the mountain that he and the others of his ilk called home.

"Your summons really don't respect you kid." Anko commented, poking at the sticky ashen mess that was Naruto, "I thought I walked the line with mine, but I think if your toads were snakes I think they would have tried to eat you by now."

"Nah, the toads are cool." Naruto said, swatting the tokubetsu jounin's hand away from him, "It's not just me though. I think they treat Ero-sensei like a bigger idiot. They don't take him seriously at all. I get respect from most of them except for Gamakichi and Gamabunta."

It was quite noticeable by that time that they were out in the open ocean and hadn't been pursued yet. Haku's little tactic of freezing the outlets of the harbor worked like a charm. Ships weren't getting out of there for a while, and with the panic accidentally caused by Naruto blowing up a few warehouses it would probably disguise their departure for a short time as well.

As they sailed away from the burning and smoking seaside of Degarashi Port it was next on to the islands that comprised the lands of Mizu no Kuni, and whatever nasty surprises awaited them upon their arrival.

A short reprieve at sea, and then onto the next challenge. They were all quite certain that there would be more than a fair share of those once they made it.

"Good work so far everyone." Asuma said in Yamato's stead as the leader of the entire team could currently be found down in the hold restraining their captive,  
"You altered your plan once the parameters of your mission changed and depending on what Ino can get out of our new friend Guren it might have been for the better." He gave Shikamaru a pat on the shoulder and was about to do the same for Naruto when he saw how much of a mess he was, "…Take a shower and put on some clean clothes Naruto."

"Bah." Naruto spat as he waved Asuma off and walked inside to do as requested. It wasn't like he didn't want to be clean as well.

It took a moment of just standing around before Ino subtly tried to follow him in, failing as Anko, Asuma, and Shikamaru spotted her before she reached the door inside. Noticing all of the eyes on her, Ino turned around slowly and smacked her lips as she pointed toward the depths of the ships, "I'm just going to go help Goldie-kun find somewhere to clean himself up. Then I'm going to sleep."

"In separate bedrolls please." Anko chimed in with her cheek in her palm, "We're not running that kind of ship here." Oh, messing with the kiddies was so much fun. What great downtime entertainment while on a mission like that one.

A raised middle finger from Ino was the response, flipping her ponytail over her back as she went inside. So what if she was probably only going to use that situation to try and see what Naruto was working with underneath most of those clothes after three years? There wasn't anything wrong with that. For all she knew he'd do the exact same thing if given the opportunity.

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 2

(Three Months after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

The training for the Ninja Guardians turned out to be just as demanding as had been anticipated. Increased physical training was par for the course, along with the technique training required for each member. Psychological torment was also quite commonplace, but that wasn't supposed to be a part of the intended curriculum for new recruits.

It just happened.

A lot of the times not even from the senior members of the team. The imperial doctor was a major contributor to most of it.

"You certainly rolled back into town fast..." Naruto said with a grin as he sat on the observation bed inside of Tsunade's rather spacious office, "…Again. I thought you were never supposed to be here." In Tsunade's own famous last words, 'Just how sick or hurt could a bunch of straight-laced, neat-freak nobles get?'

The answer was of course more than had been first assumed by the legendary ninja medic. It turned out that nobles, especially the young ones, seemed to like dangerous situations or enjoyed putting themselves in harm's way for a rush in the middle of their largely boring lives. And she would get summoned back to the court for anything above a boo-boo level injury.

She had been back eight times in the last three months for at least three to four days each time.

"Oh hush up Naruto." Tsunade grumbled as she filled out the last dregs of paperwork, describing her last recorded patient's idiotic injury (A young teenager's attempted ninja activities without supervision or direction. He attempted to jump rooftops like the Ninja Guardians and failed miserably after slipping on the tile of his intended landing zone), the treatment prescribed, and her own personal comments on the matter (Moron, should be kept on a leash for the foreseeable future until he shows some maturity), "Aren't you supposed to be training?"

"Lunch break." Naruto held up an empty cup of ramen that he then shot into the trashcan closest to Tsunade's desk. Like a bad sport, Tsunade swatted away the container with enough aim and force that it flew back across the room and bounced off of Naruto's forehead, "Oi, that was going in." He said, not even flinching, "Where's Shizune?"

"Out doing the legwork for today…" Tsunade ran a hand through her hair with a desperate sigh. That was exactly why she hated being called back to the capital; because then any little sniffle would be the responsibility of her and Shizune. It was flattering because it was basically the noble population saying that every other doctor was completely inadequate when compared to the greatness of Tsunade, but it was still annoying, "Do you want to do me a favor?"

"Not unless that favor gets me out of evening training with the Guardians."

"I could put you through that wall. I'm sure that would buy you a full day off of training."

"That's not how you ask for a favor Tsunade-baachan."

If they hadn't been alone he definitely would have been going through the wall for calling her that, but as it was no one heard it but the two of them. Thus she let it slide this time, "Please help me you damned brat."

Now that was better. When Tsunade asked him for things without the added threat of bodily harm in the instance of his refusal of her request he felt far more inclined to assist her. The 'brat' part didn't even matter to him because he had been called brat so often he automatically turned his head when he heard anyone random yell it in the streets.

"What do you need me to do?" Naruto asked, hopping off of the examination table and walking over to his fellow blonde for whatever she wanted, "Is it something hard?"

"It's something that involves you anyway." Tsunade told him as she got up from her desk and rolled her neck out to rid it of the stiffness. That breast size of hers did damage of its own over the years, "I need you to inform all of your Ninja Guardian comrades that I'm going to need to run a physical on all of them before 5 pm. And make sure to drag your little lazy friend here so I don't have to do this tomorrow."

As long as she was there she might as well get one of the responsibilities of her job out of the way and do her routine checkups of the Ninja Guardians. There was no time like the present.

A nod came from Naruto as the two walked towards her door, "Right. Go get everybody and tell them they need their checkups done. Got it. Easy." Tsunade opened it up for Naruto to leave, but she raised an eyebrow when he just made three clones to retrieve his teammates, "There. Done."

"I can see that." How convenient for him. Maybe she could use him as a medical gofer more often? Tsunade pointed her thumb back towards the examination table indicating that Naruto was to go over there, "Alright then, since you're here already you're first. Ditch the orange clothes so we can get this over with." The door was shut to preserve Naruto's modesty.

"Do I have to get any shots?" Naruto asked, shedding his gear as requested to leave himself in his boxers without a second guess. So much for caring about his own modesty. She was a doctor though, so it was cool.

"We'll see. Now wait here while I go make copies of these forms to send off." Tsunade said, glaring hatefully at the stack of forms in her hands. Even when she shut the door behind herself to leave Naruto alone in the office he could still hear her muttering angrily all the way down the hall.

With nothing to occupy himself in the meantime while waiting for Tsunade to finish making copies, something that he thought would take a while when he heard a crash from down the hall in the direction that she went, Naruto just leaned back on the examination bed and tried to get in a quick snooze.

This failed when he got the memories from his clones back. The ones sent out to retrieve Shikamaru and Sadao just dispelled like normal following a routine delivery of a message. The one sent to Kotoko's room to do the same though, not so much.

The way Naruto's clone worded the need for the checkup, Kotoko took it as Naruto being the one endeavoring to administer the examination then and there. This was something the semi-insane kunoichi apparently had no issues with when she shrugged her shoulders in response and casually disrobed of her kimono on the spot.

Needless to say, Naruto's clone had no idea what to do, and it merely froze in place staring at her for well over four minutes before finally having slowly lost enough blood through its nose to register a dispel.

When Tsunade walked back into the room she was confused by the fact that Naruto was unconscious with blood drying from his nose to his chest. Also confusing her was why his boxers looked a touch tighter than they should have otherwise.

* * *

Jutsu List

Hyoton: Hyogen no Jutsu (Ice Release: Ice Field Jutsu). Ninjutsu, kekkei genkai, defensive, supplementary, short-to-mid range. Haku will use her body and chakra as a medium to quickly freeze anything beneath her feet; the point of expulsion for the jutsu. Haku uses this jutsu for multiple purposes; to manipulate battlefields to her liking, to increase the difficulty of pursuit when she is being chased, even for surprise movements in the midst of combat.

Fuumon no Jutsu (Wind Ripple Jutsu). C-rank ninjutsu, offensive, defensive, close range. Taking the same principle of Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) in how the chakra is released, the user of this jutsu adds their elemental affinity to the jutsu and creates a shockwave. The closer to the jutsu the enemy is, the more dramatic the damage will be. Up to a range of four feet the shockwave will cut an opponent and cause internal damage, outside of five feet to the farthest range of the jutsu which is twelve feet the attack will merely knock an opponent back with varying intensity.

Kawarikage no Jutsu (Shadow Replacement Jutsu). Hiden, ninjutsu, supplementary, mid-to-long range. A technique of Nara Shikamaru developed out of his clan's ninjutsu style. With the use of Shikamaru's shadow he can direct the quick transportation of people or objects at the opposite ends of his shadow as long as there is something in both places to switch with. This can be used for surprise attack countermoves with skilled teammates. *note* Shikamaru cannot outright switch himself with people and objects at the other end of his shadow, but at times overcomes this by using a previously created shadow clone with the ability to use the same techniques as him at the other end. This enables him to switch himself back and forth via his clone, but at a major cost to his own chakra.

* * *

**How's everyone feeling today? Youthful and sassy I hope? The meat of the mission begins next chapter along with some other storyline elements.  
**

**Not much to say this time around. I hope this was a decent way to sidetrack you from real life for a bit; that's the goal in all of this after all. So until the next installment I'll catch you on the flipside. Now I need a nap before I have to walk back into educational purgatory tomorrow.**

**(Don't ever take a five-week summer course, let alone one backed up by two more three week courses at the same exact time.)  
**

**Time to catch some z's. Kenchi out.**


	47. Island in the Fog

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I had Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku kekkei genkai I would be the single most naturally gifted mixed martial arts fighter to ever live. You couldn't knock me out because my skull would have the density of iron and if you broke my arm so what? Big deal, I'd just replace it with a new one. And if you were able to get me to the ground and you started smothering me I bet you a few sharp rib bones poking out of my torso and stabbing you would make you hop up in a hurry.

And Anderson Silva would still find a way to feed me my own pancreas.

**Chapter 47: Island in the Fog**

* * *

"Ah, home sweet home… what a dump." A blue skinned man said with a grin on his face. The telltale black cloak with red clouds covered his body and the straw hat of Akatsuki sat on his head as he walked through the misty Mizu no Kuni island roads with his partner at his side, "I still say you should have just let me kill all of the fools on that ship we took Itachi-san."

"There was no need for such a drastic act Kisame." Itachi said, his Sharingan eyes visible underneath the brim of his hat. With his high-raised collar it was the only portion of him that was really visible beneath his attire, "My genjutsu more than aptly handled it. While things are going to get very busy for Akatsuki soon, it would be best to keep ourselves off the radar for as long as possible still."

Kisame let out an irritated sigh but agreed nonetheless, "Yeah, real cloak-and-dagger. That's going to be really possible when we're fighting with a gigantic death turtle when we finally track it down." He said sarcastically.

Itachi's eyes panned towards the larger former Kiri ninja upon detecting the obvious skepticism in his voice, "You don't believe that the Sanbi is still inside of its jinchuuriki somewhere in hiding?" There had been no word on the fate of the 'current' jinchuuriki in two years since the war in Kirigakure was still going on, "You really believe that Orochimaru has taken him the way Sasori figured from what his spy told him?"

"Do the math." Kisame chuckled in return, "The simple fact that we don't know where Yagura is, knowing what you know about the previous Mizukage position, should tell you all that you need to know as far as if he still has the Sanbi in him. Yagura's long dead, I can assure you of that." People getting 'sprited away' was not uncommon ever since the civil war and Otogakure's involvement. It was usually people of notably interesting skill as well.

That was a point that Itachi had to concede to the shark-like man, "True enough. Knowing the cause of Yagura's instability during the latter portion of his rule it would be obvious to say that if his location isn't known to _us_… that would mean that unsavory characters have their hands on him or the Sanbi."

Kisame reached up over his back and drummed his fingertips on the handle of the massive bandaged sword he carried with him in an impatient manner, "So do we have a plan of action?"

A nod came from the covered up figure of Uchiha Itachi to confirm that they did, "Scour the countryside until we run across an unlucky troop of Otogakure invaders and force them to give us what we need to know to begin infiltrating strongholds."

"…" Kisame just remained silent as they kept walking, but Itachi knew that he was unhappy with how they were going to go about working their angle. There clearly wasn't enough bloodshed in that equation for him.

"And then you can begin destroying them… I guess."

"You see Itachi-san, that's the thing with us. It's a real give/take relationship here. We get along well."

XxX

(With the Kiri Relief Team – Onboard Commandeered Ship)

Guren really didn't have a good night's sleep being stuck down in the hold of a ship that had been captured by the people that had kicked her ass. To rub salt in that wound the people that had kicked her ass had been a team of brats that three years ago she gleefully put the boots to.

And to pour alcohol on that salted wound not only had they taken a ship, they had taken her too.

All she knew was that whoever restrained her did a damn good job of it. She had been put in a wooden stockade with wood coverings over her hands tight so that she couldn't make hand-seals. Also, whether it was intentional or not there was a leak dripping right on top of her head. Sadistic fuckers, that was a good one.

The door to the hold opened up and in walked the blonde girl in purple that she had almost killed in Degarashi Port. Aw, wasn't she adorable with that serious look on her face like she was going to do something, "Oh, I get someone to take my breakfast order on this cruise? Konoha is really nice to their prisoners. What, do you charm information out of them?"

"If Ibiki was here and you said that to him you'd have screws in your tits by now." Ino said matter-of-factly as she walked closer to Guren and stooped down in front, "Alright it's early and I'm cranky, nobody is awake to make any breakfast so I'm going to be hungry really soon, and you killed the guy that would have been easy for me to break, so to be nice I'll only ask you once to cooperate. Otherwise I'm just going to do my thing, and I promise you're going to feel _really_ violated when I'm done."

"I'm so sure princess." Guren said with a disbelieving smirk, "If you're going to do it you should just hop to it. I'm very busy as you can see." The two just stared at each other for a few empty seconds at that point, "See? Look how busy I am. I'm swamped."

"You're not scared." Ino said pacing circles around Guren while making a show of stretching her arms and pushing her chest out, "Honestly I don't blame you. I mean, I'm not Ibiki. I don't do all of the screwed up stuff that he does. I mean I learned how to do some of it because I had to, but I don't do it in my own interrogations after I learned how to do something else… because I'm a Yamanaka." She finished with a grin and Guren's eyes widened, "Surprise."

Damn it she should have seen that coming. When it rained it poured, and why wouldn't it be an interrogation specialist Yamanaka there to poke around in her head? That made just as much sense as anything else at the moment.

Still, Guren had a strong front. Nothing had been divulged yet, "I've got mental blocks that you'll never get through. You think Orochimaru-sama would send his elites out without making sure we had a preventive measure on us to keep us from spilling state secrets?"

"That's interesting." Ino said, reaching into her supply pouch as she idly continued to walk around Guren, "Because I'm also a poison specialist, and I've got drugs." She then threw a senbon that hit Guren right in the forehead.

"Ow, bitch!" Great, now she had a needle in her forehead. And it paralyzed her body. No struggling was at all possible.

"I'm not as good as daddy with this jutsu, but that's what the poison is for." Ino admitted as she set a hand on top of Guren's head and pulled out a small red orb that she squeezed in her fist until it broke in front of Guren's face. The gas that emitted from the orb was breathed in by Guren and dissipated into the air, "You see he can work past most mental defenses. It's really impressive. I can't yet, so I cheat. It's kind of like bringing a set of lockpicking tools to break into a house."

"I hate you." Seethed the red-lipped Oto kunoichi as her eyes glared up at Ino past the palm of her hand, "I'm going to get out of here and kill every last one of you on this tub."

"I don't care." Ino shrugged as she shut her eyes and began focusing on her link to Guren's mind, "Now I hope you're comfortably numb for your pending blackout because this is still going to take forever to find what I want." Her love of gossip and secrets were the main reason that Ino didn't outright hate her job. The time it took to sift through someone's memories, especially by herself, she absolutely despised it.

XxX

(On the Deck)

It had been all quiet since the trouble at Degarashi Port the previous night. As early as it was, as the sun had barely risen into the sky at that point, it was time to get up since Ino had seen fit to rise and shine.

While Naruto wanted to spend a little bit of time while there was time to be had catching up some more with his lovely Yamanaka teammate, she had gone right to work on trying to yank some good information out of Guren after getting herself prepared for the day. There had been barely enough time to give her a good morning after she had come out.

In return she just yawned one back in response and fondly ran a hand over his cheek before going down to the hold, all the while mumbling complaints about how she was going to be down there all day at least.

Once Naruto was awake there wasn't really anything that could get him back to sleep, so he just decided to sit up on deck and smoke a cigarette while waiting for anyone else to wake up. Footsteps eventually reached his ears from behind and he extended his senses to get the signature of who it was, "I didn't think you'd wake up anytime soon if you didn't have to Shika."

"I blame you." Shikamaru said, learning forward on the railing of the ship that Naruto was sitting on, "Well yesterday went well, even with the whole trouble of you blowing up the entire warehouse front to cover our escape."

"I think it did too." Naruto agreed, blowing smoke into the air and manipulating it into patterns with his chakra, "I mean, other than the warehouses we didn't annihilate the town at all. I knew my new tags would make fire-free blasts that burned. And you said it would never work." He said with a smug grin.

"Yeah, yeah, you're a prodigy of demolition." Shikamaru said in a patronizing fashion before looking at the ocean ahead of them, "So… elephant in the room that we've been ignoring for the last six months… do you think you're ready for what you left to get ready for?"

An exhaled breath of smoke from Naruto took the form of Konoha's leaf insignia in the air before dissipating into nothing, "To be Hokage? Yeah, sure. I'll just wait for Hokage-jiji to step down and I'll get a body of work behind me. And if I'm not the next Hokage I'll be the one after that. And if I'm not _that_ Hokage I'll be-."

"You know what I'm talking about and it's not that." Shikamaru cut him off before he could go on a useless tangent, "Don't skirt around this thing Naruto. Do you think we're ready or not?"

Blue eyes panned over to the right and Naruto caught sight of Shikamaru giving him the same impassive, bored stare that Naruto was giving him in return. Behind it though, Naruto knew that Shikamaru was deadly serious. The entire reason they had left to expand their horizons for three years was so that they would not be caught off guard by the pending threat of what was supposed to be a group comprised of the ninja world's resident boogeymen.

"Does it matter?" Naruto asked glibly as he shrugged his shoulders, "Time's up. How would we know? I've never seen any of these guys. You've never seen any of these guys. All we know is that Ero-sensei's old teammate Orochimaru used to be one of them." And they had the strength kick him out, "Take that any way you want to Shika, but when or if they ever come I'm not laying down for them. If they beat me, and I do mean 'if', you're gonna know I was there."

That seemed to be enough to get Shikamaru off of his back as the young genius turned his eyes back towards the ocean. But then he opened his mouth again, "If I was that kind of person I'd shove you into the water for saying something that stupid." He said, getting a surprised look out of Naruto, "Seriously Naruto? 'We're gonna know you were there?' What kind of crap is that? If I find out that I wasted three years training my ass off with you just for you to go down swinging…"

"I don't plan on going down at all. You know that." Naruto interjected sharply before his friend could finish his statement, "You got on the topic to start with, so if you don't like my answer you shouldn't ask me the question. I'm being real, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. We've had three years to shake that baby shit. It's not like I can strike first instead of waiting for them to come to me, so all we can do is wait."

"So until then all we can do is just try to act like everything is cool and you don't have a big red beacon in your belly?"

"It works for every other marked man in the Elemental Nations so it's good enough for me."

"Troublesome."

"You keep saying that. I'm starting to think that's your verbal tic."

"You would know wouldn't you?"

Back and forth banter aside, the two simply kept on looking out at the ocean. They still had a few days of sailing before reaching their destination where the mission would truly begin. That was what they needed to worry about. Naruto had a point. Akatsuki didn't matter right then.

One issue at a time it seemed. Prioritization was the word of the day.

XxX

(Mizu no Kuni – Hidden Otogakure Base)

When he walked through the halls people wisely moved out of his way. The nameless, faceless, masked Otogakure grunts would only bow and greet him with a curt 'Kimimaro-sama', which was well advised, because he didn't suffer fools that would waste his time with petty talk idly.

He had been in full control of Orochimaru's ambitions to procure peoples of interest in Mizu no Kuni, and there had been plenty of opportunities to snatch up experiment subjects for his master with the ongoing war that had been happening at the time.

The end of Mizu's civil hostilities though, put something of a damper on that. after the disappearance of the Yondaime Mizukage Yagura the war effort in the resident hidden village sharply declined and petered out altogether. The village of Kirigakure reunified under a Mizukage that had been recognized by the Water Daimyo.

That was Otogakure's mistake.

An opening presented itself during the civil war, and Orochimaru saw to the double-crossing, the defeat, and the capture of Yagura himself. Kimimaro had of course been there assisting in the battle personally, along with his closest friend with a hair-trigger berserk switch, and victory had been a foregone conclusion. Orochimaru's combat prowess against the jinchuuriki Mizukage had been glorious, and everything had gone off without a hitch.

The Sanbi had been extracted and confined until a suitable new jinchuuriki had been found. And one had been presented in the form of the youngster walking beside the pale-haired bone manipulating shinobi through the dimly lit halls, "Yukimaru. I told you when you first arrived here that your unique abilities would be valued under Orochimaru-sama, and now you have been recognized for your importance."

The boy next to Kimimaro was younger, under the age of thirteen from the looks of things. He had magenta eyes and very long pale olive hair. A plain long grey kimono top adorned his frame with dark green pants and a purple rope belt tied around his waist in a bow over his back. From the bright look in his eyes he seemed to revere Kimimaro and took pride in hearing those words from him.

It had been eight months since the Sanbi had been sealed inside of this boy Yukimaru, who had abilities that were able to somewhat control the creature. Whatever connection between the two there happened to be, they were compatible enough that there was no backlash dealt to the boy's body due to the sealing, "You will have a home with us as the jinchuuriki of the Sanbi. Orochimaru-sama will keep you close to him forever as long as you continue to serve your all-important purpose."

Closer than Yukimaru would ever be aware of as well. With the Sanbi in his body, Yukimaru had become a leading prospect to house Orochimaru's soul next once the time came for him to make the switch. Whatever Yukimaru's bodily composition was comprised of either physically or chakra-wise, it was able to tame the mighty biju within him.

A jinchuuriki body without the fuss of losing control over the beast within? It was simply too much for Orochimaru to overlook. And who could blame him? Kimimaro certainly wouldn't.

While Kimimaro wished to serve the snake sannin as best he could, and he saw no better way to do so for all eternity than to be the shell for the man's soul, he did have to admit that he realized that he could serve his lord more efficiently and completely as his outlying vassal, enforcing his will out of Orochimaru's reach.

"My home is here with all of you and Orochimaru-sama now, right Kimimaro?" Yukimaru said with a heartfelt smile to the ever-stoic Otogakure elite. Sure, he had started out as a prisoner and a test subject with that strange person Kabuto, but when it was deemed that he was so special he was treated exceedingly better after being sent to Mizu no Kuni.

Yes, it couldn't be ignored that Kimimaro was something of a cold person, but Yukimaru liked him. And he liked that woman that he had met in that town Degarashi Port, that Guren lady. He wondered when he would see her again. She was pretty and treated him just as well as Kimimaro did. Even when he said that he didn't want to be a ninja and train to fight, that was just fine with all of them. For him to find a home with a roving hidden ninja village without needing to fight, that was wonderful for him.

Upon hearing Yukimaru's words, Kimimaro peered over and down to him before allowing the minutest of smiles to move his lips as he looked away once more, "That's right."

Yukimaru noticed that the amount of Oto manpower was starting to get thinner and thinner in the direction of the base that they were walking, and to him that only meant one thing, "Are we going to see your friend again?"

A nod came from Kimimaro as they came upon the door that they intended to enter. The entire wall around the steel door was steel as well, and it sported the most complete security measures in the entire base as far as it went in the door remaining closed to whomever was inside. It was like the ultimate solitary confinement cell.

Lifting out an arm, Kimimaro stuck his arm into a slot meant for it and began manipulating the bones in it in certain specific patterns that unlocked differing tumblers of the thick door until every lock was removed. As he pulled his arm back out and the bones slid back underneath his skin, Kimimaro turned towards Yukimaru, "Stay back and out of his sight when I open the door. I don't know what kind of mindset he'll be in when I do."

Obediently, Yukimaru moved aside and allowed Kimimaro to pull the door open and walk inside without an ounce of fear on his face. The same could not be said for the new young jinchuuriki who could only stand back and watch.

Once inside, Kimimaro looked around and saw a very tall young man with spiky orange hair, black pants, and a tan shirt, sitting down facing a corner. Slowly walking inside, Kimimaro eventually stopped just out of reach of the large inhabitant of the room, "Juugo." He said, to get his attention. He really hoped that he wasn't in one of his 'moods'.

Juugo didn't answer though, and eventually Kimimaro reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Kimimaro prepared to defend himself when he felt Juugo tense up, but calmed down when Juugo turned around and looked up at him in surprise, "Oh, Kimimaro. Good to see you." He said, revealing that he had been playing with a small mouse to occupy himself.

"You as well." Kimimaro returned with an actual smile at seeing that his good friend wasn't in a murderous state of mind at the moment. He then frowned at the sight of the mouse in Juugo's hands, "You do know that those animals carry disease don't you?" He shook his head when Juugo ignored him and just put the small creature onto the floor to scuttle off elsewhere, "Do you feel in control enough to make rounds of the base with Yukimaru and myself?"

Looking towards the door, Juugo saw Yukimaru peering his head into the room once it was more or less confirmed that it was safe. He got up from the floor to tower over a full foot in height over Kimimaro as they both began to walk to the door to leave the room, "Yes. I'm fine today. Even if I wasn't, I'm certain that you can stop me. Besides, being around a spirit like Yukimaru helps me remain calm."

"Shall we go then?" Kimimaro said, getting agreement from both Juugo and Yukimaru. With that, the three of them left to observe the day-to-day proceedings of the Otogakure base. There was always work to be done, and Kimimaro trusted no one else as much as Juugo.

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Konohagakure no Sato – Naruto's Apartment)

It was definitely the good life for Jiraiya. Why pay money for a hotel when he could just bum a place to sleep from his apprentice while he was out of town on a life threatening mission. He never needed to keep his own place; he was never in the village for long enough.

Naruto's bed was awfully comfortable due to seeing no use for three years, but truth be told the brat would need a bigger one if he ever planned on entertaining any female company over there. Hey, that was a good idea for a birthday present. A large and sturdy bed. A man's bed one would say.

…But that could be done later. Way later. After a very good nap.

BANG BANG BANG

…A nap that would come later as well, because someone had apparently not gotten the memo that Naruto wasn't in town.

Begrudgingly, Jiraiya sat himself up and stood to walk out of the room and to the front door groggily. Upon opening the door he woke up very quickly at the sight of the rather displeased blonde woman standing out front, "Hello Tsunade-hime." Jiraiya said dumbly, blinking as he tried to think of something else to say, "Naruto's not here right now."

"I know that Jiraiya." Tsunade said in a deceptively sweet voice, "I've known for quite a while now, though I didn't find out until two days _after_ he'd already left. And then that led to me having to dismiss myself of my contract with the daimyo without using Naruto as an excuse. That was a fun conversation to have with the man." It clearly hadn't been a fun conversation at all.

"I didn't know anything about that." Jiraiya assured her as he backed away into the apartment, "But you had to know that the exact day that his contract ran out he would be out of there. Seriously, did you really expect those two kids to hang around any longer than they needed to?"

Tsunade's eye twitched at the thought. Consideration for others that would have left at the same time would have been nice, "It's clear that being a Guardian didn't beat thoughtfulness into their heads."

A derisive snort came from Jiraiya as Tsunade sat down on a chair and Jiraiya went to the kitchen to scrounge up some refreshments for the guest. It wasn't his house, but he'd reimburse Naruto somehow (yeah right), "I don't think there was much time for that when they were whipping those kids into killing shape. Did you ever sit in on any of the earlier sessions they had with Naruto and the Nara kid? I did. That was some brutal stuff."

It was admittedly almost as bad as the physical training that he made Naruto do when he trained him for the chunin exams only the Guardians did it every single day. The only thing that kept it from actually being worse was the fact that Naruto's body was already durable. Shikamaru hadn't been nearly as durable and he suffered a ton in the beginning because of it.

While Tsunade had never gotten a chance to watch the training in the early days of Naruto and Shikamaru's tenure, she or Shizune repeatedly had to receive Shikamaru as a patient from whatever they had done to toughen them up.

But it had obviously paid off in dividends because within three months they were running missions like they had never missed a beat at all. As if they had been members all along.

As a matter of fact as the months carried over into years she saw both of them less and less for medical reasons. So either they were getting hurt and never coming to her, or they simply weren't getting hurt enough to justify using a medic-nin's time. That was something she hadn't thought about with as busy as her work kept her over the last three years, and it wasn't like she never saw either of them. Tsunade and Shizune saw them a lot, just to spend some time with them, never for anything important unless one of them needed a favor.

So that begged the question, because they were running back-to-back B-rank to A-rank missions and seemingly never racking up any wounds severe enough to require serious attention, "…Jiraiya, how strong are those two?"

Jiraiya just shrugged out of Tsunade's line of sight as kept looking for something to serve as a good host in the home that wasn't his, "Beats me. Why are you asking me?"

"Because you trained one of them jackass." Shouldn't that have been obvious?

"I didn't teach Naruto everything he knows how to do though. I couldn't." And Shikamaru? Forget about it. He didn't teach that kid anything really, "The seals he somehow taught himself after I was through teaching him those, and his jinchuuriki training; he took some time off to visit Takigakure's jinchuuriki to learn some helpful tricks from her after some unpleasantness happened when I tried to get him to use more chakra than he was ready for." That reminded him to show Tsunade the scar on his chest later. Maybe she'd pity him and from there… who knew?

"So what did you teach him?" Tsunade asked with a raised eyebrow.

Jiraiya turned and pointed towards the sky, "How to be a man! How to look the devil himself in the eye and make that bastard blink like he'd gotten a lemon squeezed in his retina! How to get the women to-!" Hearing Tsunade growl at his eccentricity, he quickly cut his spiel short, "I completed his ninjutsu theory. Who do you think finished his elemental training? And then there was the helping him learn how to use the ash-ninjutsu that I know you know about. I kind of taught him the theory of how I work with toad oil in my own fire release jutsu."

Tsunade let out a grunt of understanding. She wasn't a fan of the whole ash thing because of where the idea came from, but it was a pretty versatile wrinkle to his game, "Anything else?"

"Ask him yourself. I'm not his walking, talking playbook. You should have been paying attention to all of that crap yourself anyway." Jiraiya stated tersely, finally giving up on procuring refreshments for the two of them, "Wanna go get lit at a bar?"

"How irresponsible can you get Jiraiya? Honestly." Replied Tsunade sternly, as the two seemingly had a stare down prior to breaking down in loud and raucous laughter, "Oh, that was a good one. Come on let's go." Tsunade said, getting up and allowing Jiraiya to open the door for her, "I couldn't even take that one seriously. I mean who am I, the Hokage?"

"Hah!"

XxX

(With the Kiri Relief Team – Onboard Commandeered Ship)

"Oh… that feels so good Goldie-kun." Ino said, sitting down on the deck, leaning back into a crate that Naruto was sitting on behind her. She never thought that a back, neck, and shoulder rub could feel so damn heavenly, but when she had spent the last two days with the exception of a four-hour napping shift running through every corner of Guren's mind for intel on the state of the island nation it did. It was also a lot harder to do when she didn't even know where to start looking, "Where did you learn how to do this?"

And it wasn't like Naruto wasn't enjoying it either. A license and a pass to freely have hands on Ino? Not a bad way to spend a boring boat ride to say the least, "Adapt to survive Ino-chan, that's all you're getting out of me. But I will say that it helps to calm down crazy musician girls that throw wind blades from their instruments, so I definitely know it'll help you feel better."

Ino was in such a blissful state she wasn't even going to try and bring up the almost comparison between her and the crazy musician girl that he was talking about. That was just some drama that would stress her out further.

"Ahem."

The two were then forced to pay attention as at the time Naruto had sat the tense girl down to relieve some of her stress, Ino had been addressing the amassed party that would be entering the territory of Mizu no Kuni. It had been mostly incoherent rambling because she had been so stressed, but there was still the matter that Asuma, Shikamaru, Yamato, Anko, and Haku were still waiting nearby for some news.

"If you are through with the intimate groping-." Anko said, amused though she was by the byplay she was still ready to figure out how to stick it to Orochimaru the moment that they got to some land, "-We have an actual briefing to do. Before we land and have no idea what we're getting into please."

Both Naruto and Ino glared at Anko as there had been no aforementioned groping going on the way she had so brazenly stated, but she had a point. It was time to get to work, "Okay fine." Ino said, a bit perturbed as she got started, "I think Haku should tell us about Mizu no Kuni for the sake of background and why getting anything out of Guren was so important in the first place."

Blushing at being put on the spot so suddenly, Haku, dressed in her hunter-nin garb once again for the chance that she would be returning to her village and getting right to work once she did, got up to take her impromptu course in public speaking, "Well, Mizu no Kuni is a nation comprised of hundreds, possibly more than one thousand islands of varying sizes. Many are inhabited with towns and villages, but most of them are not. Many are not large enough or have worthwhile resources for settlements worth setting up."

"But… they're big enough and have the resources for 'other things' right?" Shikamaru finished for Haku as he understood why it was important to pick Guren's brain for Oto information, "Just because the islands are too small for towns for the general population doesn't mean that they're useless."

"Exactly." Haku continued, glad that they were following along. Maybe she wasn't as bad at speaking to others en masse as she thought, "There is a reason that the civil war in Kiri didn't peter out no matter how harshly the Mizukage pressed to stop us, a reason why we have an abnormally high number of missing-nin, and a reason that we created the hunter-nin corps for dealing with them in particular within our nation. The islands are Kirigakure's greatest strength in comparison to other nations with hidden villages, but also a massive detriment to us."

Way too many islands without names. Way too many islands that hadn't been mapped or even discovered yet. It was just too much. The amount of places to hide and retreat to were impossible to fully count.

And that was a major problem when there was a smart and fully organized force of smugglers, raiders, pirates, whatever one wished to label the Otogakure forces leeching off of the lands. They made self-sustaining hidden bases on the mainland to begin with. In a place where there were so many islands that constituted natural places to hide it was even easier to set up shop. Yagura had royally screwed up when he partnered with Orochimaru to end the civil war.

What was meant to be a symbiotic relationship ended up as a parasitic one.

"Otogakure has been bleeding this place dry." Ino said, going back to referencing what she had gotten from Guren, "Throughout the civil war they worked as freelance marauders for the Yondaime Mizukage, attacking rebels on his paid request, but they captured anyone from either side that they found interesting. And then it ended, and they never left."

Yamato and Anko looked at each other, knowing exactly why they never left. Mizu no Kuni was lucrative for Orochimaru's ambitions to know everything about ninjutsu in the world, "Orochimaru has a thing for experimenting unique bloodlines and ninjutsu styles." Anko stated matter-of-factly, "This place has to be a gold mine for him as far as that goes."

The ANBU member of the group, Yamato could only look at his hands before he looked out amongst his team, "I know firsthand the kinds of things that Orochimaru likes to do with the special bloodlines of others. And he had three years here… dear Kami."

Asuma wordlessly rested a hand on the younger man's shoulder, knowing Yamato's whole origin story and the root of his secret techniques, getting a nod of acknowledgment from Yamato in return. While the kids were left out of the loop so to speak, Anko and Asuma knew what was up in that regard and knew that it cut Yamato deep to think about. Anko especially could relate.

This returned attention back to Ino as she proceeded, eyes closed blissfully as Naruto's hands continued their dutiful work, "Guren didn't come here much. There was someone else stationed here to head up the entire operation and she was only sent here once in a while when there was something that needed her touch-. Ooh, right there Naruto, stay there." As Naruto did as instructed, Ino let out a hum before someone cleared their throat, "Oh! Ah, apparently she needed an escort to navigate her way to the island that they used. She never came herself."

So if she needed help to get to their base just what did Ino pull out of her head worth a damn, "Did you get anything that we can use?" Asuma asked, "Anything at all?"

"Don't insult me Asuma-sensei." Ino chided at the attempted slight towards her interrogation skills, "Of course I did. I spent two days getting way more than I wanted and I narrowed it down. It's not a wide area, but the map says that there are numerous islands there clustered. Does anyone have a map?"

Haku quickly produced a map of the Mizu no Kuni landmasses that were sprinkled throughout the waters of the region. Setting it down in front of Ino, Haku's brow furrowed when the blonde Yamanaka girl pointed out a clustered area of islands to the south, on the outside of the barrier of islands that comprised the core of the country.

The further away from the mainland island of Mizu no Kuni there were just so many smaller fragmented islands that without being able to trail someone back to the hideout it was impossible to determine where they were coming from. It was common knowledge that Otogakure would have had a hideout on one of the too numerous to count islands on the outsides of Mizu no Kuni's jurisdiction.

But it had to be there didn't it? In the south. Haku had suspicions, but never enough reasoning to bring such concerns forward before then, "It was estimated that. I suspected as much, but that area is disputed territory between several countries. No large military operation can be done there without it being seen as an aggressive move to the nearby countries."

That was a good place to hide for those that could get away with it.

Kirigakure did not want to be the initiators of a regional war after years of dealing with a civil war within their own borders and years of purges in the meantime. It was most certainly not the time for them to be throwing their weight around without something to back it up yet. Maybe if this had happened a short time later after a potential strong showing at the upcoming chunin exams, but without anything to give them any bluster there could be no reasoning or bullying the other regional powers into dealing with it and shutting up.

Asuma just grunted and lit himself a cigarette as he listened. He hated politics. It was one reason why he was never keen on his father's position of Hokage despite the honor and prestige of the position.

Just too much b.s. for his liking, even when it wasn't sent his way. Screw all of that. The politics just muddied the water too much for his taste. Subterfuge had its place and whatnot, they were shinobi after all, but seriously… it was like a massive chess game using human pieces, which was a wonder why he didn't have more of a taste for it because he happened to love shogi.

"So if Kiri actually sent out an expedition force to hunt the dozens and dozens of little clustered islands in this region…" Naruto started to reason as he looked at the map and all of the markers around the unmarked location that Ino had pointed out, "…All of the other 'powers' of the area like Benisu Island, Umi no Kuni, and Nadeshiko Village will piss and moan and bitch and cry and try to swell up on Kiri, and you can't afford to deal with that right now?" Haku nodded and frowned, sharing Naruto's apparent distaste for the situation, "…I hate this kind of crap."

"It certainly makes the job harder." Yamato agreed, stroking his chin in thought, "Harder but still not impossible. We just have to be a little inventive when the time comes. We need to go to Kirigakure first to see what resources the Mizukage can spare for us before we can actually work out a plan of action. Ino, do you have more?"

Still with Naruto rubbing her shoulders, Ino was more or less at his mercy, "I'm just getting started Yamato-taichou… you should all get comfortable because this'll take a while." Yeah, get comfortable like her, because if Naruto kept things up like that she could talk all afternoon and evening long without a problem.

XxX

(Some Time Later – Main Island of Mizu no Kuni – Kirigakure no Sato – Mizukage's Office)

A large village that always seemed to have a thick mist casting out the sun within its borders, Kirigakure was a rather hilly place, surrounded by mountains outside of its limits and containing many cliff faces and ledges within.

Many large, cylindrical buildings of various sizes with trees at the tops of them and elevated roads and bridges strewn about the village comprised some of the more prominent infrastructure that had been amicably rebuilt and restored once peace had been restored and the rift between the armed forces of Kiri had been healed.

In the largest of these buildings in the center of the village, therein lay the office of the leader of the island-borne ninja settlement.

Staring out of the full-sized windows that comprised the end wall of her office, the Mizukage looked back at her desk at all of the files of shinobi that sat upon it with a frown. All of the files had at least one thing in common; the stamp of missing-in-action right across the front of them.

The Mizukage was a gorgeous woman with exceptionally long auburn hair in a certain spiked pattern down her back and a topknot, bangs going down over her face with one actually covering her right eye. She wore a long-sleeved shoulder dress that went past her knees, left open on the right side going down past her hip. Underneath she wore mesh leggings and high-heeled sandals with shin-guards that went up to her knees.

"Mizukage-sama."

Her attention was turned towards the entrance to her office where she saw one of her elite shinobi Ao, standing there patiently dressed in a garb similar to Haku's; by way of his different-styled blue kimono and turtleneck undershirt.

"The mighty Terumi Mei Taking a break?" Ao pointed out joking as he was beckoned forth to enter the office of his superior. Upon reaching the desk he looked down at all of the files and frowned, "I can see why though…"

"It is difficult to keep going through all of these." The Mizukage, Terumi Mei said as she retook her seat at her desk, "Five more this week captured while out on missions. What did Yagura do to us?" It had been years at this point since she had been accepted by the Water Daimyo as the successor to the Mizukage seat and the problem of Otogakure plaguing the countryside still prevailed.

Ao sighed and ran a finger over the bridge of his nose, taking care to avoid the right eye of his that was covered by the patch, "I'm as certain as I've ever been Mizukage-sama, Yagura was under the influence of a genjutsu. He was being controlled. I just couldn't get close enough to prove it before I was accused of treason."

She knew that much back during the civil war days, and that was why Ao was so important as a sensor to the village, not just for his attentive nature and his already impressive ability to feel out chakra signatures, but for the secret that he concealed behind his eye patch. If he swore to her that Yagura was under a genjutsu, the man had been under a genjutsu. It would also have given weight to his sudden disappearance as well, because no one knew what had happened to him.

But still, Ao wasn't one to visit just for the novelty of it. That meant that he was there for something important. At least important enough to bring it to her attention, "Is there anything you've come to report to me Ao?"

"Yes. Haku has returned from her mission to Konohagakure to request assistance from them." Ao informed Mei who smiled at the touch of good news, "She was the only one of the squad that we dispatched to return though." And there went the wind right out of her sails, "Only one returned out of a team of four. They truly didn't want us to get word to Konoha."

But one did return though, and hopefully with good results, "Did they agree to assist us?"

Ao nodded with a small smile, "Thankfully. They sent two high-level people that are probably more qualified to deal with Otogakure short of one of the sannin or the Hokage themselves; Mitarashi Anko and Mokuton no Tenzo. In addition to that they've sent us the son of the Hokage himself, Sarutobi Asuma, as well as three chunin… but two of them wear the sash of the Twelve Guardian Ninja group as well." They looked awfully familiar to Ao as well, but he could look in on that later. Facts came first.

Mei was actually quite surprised that Konoha was willing to dispatch such assistance to them. Kirigakure and Konohagakure had never particularly been close before. Aside from a skirmish here or there between forces working on conflicting missions once every so often they didn't really have any kind of relationship with each other, antagonistic or otherwise.

The surprise was of course pleasant, because after the end of the civil war two years ago, Kiri needed to extend some olive branches, and having one seemingly extended to them from Konoha was the best thing they could ask for at the moment. Still, Yagura had gotten them burned before doing something like that with Oto years ago, so she had to play this carefully. It was only six people, but caution still needed to be taken.

"I would like to speak to them as soon as possible." Mei requested, in the same vein asking Ao to retrieve them and bring them to her. He bowed, understanding what she was asking without needing to be further prompted on that front, "I'd like an eye to be kept on them for the time being though." She didn't want to seem ungrateful, but village security was village security.

Ao just smirked though, "Haku is still with them and seemed to have no designs of leaving this mission alone, but I was already way ahead of you when it came to that Mizukage-sama."

XxX

(Elsewhere in Kirigakure – With Konoha Relief Team)

The entire Konoha team walked through the village being led by Haku at their forefront as she intended to show them around. Perhaps even find somewhere to stop and eat before things got busy for them. Times weren't exactly the most settled down, but for Haku who had been dealing with the civil war since returning to the motherland so to speak, having a foreign enemy was something of a dream situation to bring the village together.

"You'll love meeting Mizukage-sama." Haku assured them as she continued to walk them down one of Kiri's elevated constructed paths, "She is a very kind and wise person. She was the person that believed in me when I said that I had returned to achieve Zabuza-sama's dream of bringing down the Yondaime Mizukage."

Anko stroked her chin in thought, now very interested in meeting this new Mizukage the more she heard about her, "The first female Kage in history. That's seriously interesting. She's got to be much stronger than any male shinobi elite just to be considered for the position with her gender."

"She's the strongest woman in the world I believe." Haku said in a heartfelt and adoring manner while Naruto and Shikamaru moved near each other to talk out of earshot.

"I don't think Tsunade-baachan would like hearing that one too much." Naruto whispered, getting a nod out of Shikamaru. Asuma heard them and snickered at the thought, "I think a lot of stuff would get turned to rubble before she'd let that one go."

Asuma just kept snickering, "Tsunade-sama traumatize you too much while you were gone Naruto?" All Naruto did was whistle innocently while Shikamaru acted like they hadn't just brought up 'she-who-should-not-be-referenced-from-afar #1' "Well imagine growing up with her as your dad's student. Man I've got some horror stories for you two…"

Since they hadn't really talked too much, even when they had first run across each other in Nami no Kuni, Ino decided to take the moment to get to know the kunoichi closest in age to her at the moment in Haku, "So you came back here after the mission where you fought us?" Haku nodded yes to the question, "What was that like?"

"It's hard to explain the concept of war deeper than the surface if you've never been involved in it yourself…" Haku said with a frown. It was an understandable question, "Any battle you've ever fought… there is no comparison as far as scale. You see things happen all over that you have no control over, no matter how strong you believed yourself to be prior to it. I don't wish such a thing onto you, but if you don't fight in one I can't make it clear to you just what I mean."

"It's okay. You don't have to if it's that difficult." Ino was just curious. She had heard her father talk about it for years. It was just a thought that someone closer to her age could give her a comparison. Konoha had never fought a war within her generation. But both Inoichi and Haku had said something similar, about how no battle she had ever fought would compare to a battle in war no matter how powerful the enemy.

An overhearing Yamato interjected for the benefit of his younger underling on this mission, "Just hope that a war doesn't occur within your lifetime, but be prepared for when it does. The Elemental Nations always go through a pretty vicious cycle." He had already fought in the Third Shinobi World War by the time he had been thirteen so if anyone knew it was him, "Don't worry about that right now though. Be prepared to recant to the Mizukage everything that you told us on the ship."

Ino's face was fixed in understanding determination as she had never been in such a prominent position on any mission before, let alone an S-rank mission. Wow, way to jump back into the saddle with her teammates in regards to working. They certainly didn't do anything halfway, probably much to Shikamaru's chagrin.

Hearing 'information' brought up another thought from Haku though, "What of the Otogakure captive Guren?"

"We're going to keep her as a prisoner and take her back to Konoha for more interrogation when we have more time. She's still supposed to be ours." Naruto answered for her, throwing an arm around both Haku and Ino in a friendly chipper manner, "Me and Shika know just how hard it is to take one of them and keep them alive, and we've got an elite ninja that knows a lot about the mainland stuff that they're into, so we can't just hand her over. Sorry."

"As long as we can cast Otogakure out of Mizu no Kuni I don't think the Mizukage will care what becomes of a prisoner that you captured to begin with." Haku said with a smile.

This was certainly a different Team 10. The first time Shikamaru seemed to be the only one that had his ducks in a row, but he didn't have the drive to do anything with it. Now Ino seemed to be in charge of information, trusted with it over her actual superiors, and Naruto seemed to be an all-around cool hand operator instead of a jittery brawler, apparently completely at ease with a timed stipulation-laden battle behind enemy lines with their overall commander.

Naruto just let out a laugh and shook his head, "I've got a clone on the boat guarding her until we get back there just in case she finds a way to break free. Even though we have what we need by now I can't really use my toads to ferry her back to Konoha because they can't stand saltwater, so we've got to keep her the old fashioned way."

The entire time that Ino and Naruto seemed to be getting along with Haku and Asuma and Yamato seemed to be taking stock of the situation, making preliminary plans of action to pitch to the Mizukage once they had met with her, Shikamaru was being kind of quiet. Something felt off.

"You feel like we're being watched, don't you kid?" Anko asked him, as the trench-coat clad kunoichi moved to walk closer to the uncharacteristically silent genius. Even by Shikamaru's standards of avoiding troublesome conversation he was being quiet, "What do you think?"

"It's not the atmosphere of the village, not the villagers." Shikamaru said, looking around, "I don't feel like we're being followed by an enemy either, because it doesn't have that feeling to it. But I do feel some bloodlust in the area. Killing intent maybe?"

"Are you sure it's not just me?"

"Your bloodlust is mostly for show and we all know it."

"Well, well, well. Check out the big brains on the brat."

"Whatever."

As the continued to walk and passed over a crack in the road, from inside of it, water seemed to gush out and take the form of a person directly behind Naruto, stopping the moving convoy right in its tracks. A lean young man with straight white hair and purple eyes that wore a purple sleeveless shirt, bandages around his neck, and grey pants along with a Kiri headband tied around his forehead and what looked like Zabuza's old sword strapped to his back.

"Well isn't this a pretty little picture that I can't help but want to cut apart?" The white-haired young man said, grinning to show pointed teeth like Zabuza as well. He positioned a finger against Naruto's head in a gun-like gesture, "You Konoha ninja should know to watch your step in a foreign village no matter what."

"I did." Naruto said before dispelling in smoke, revealing himself to be a clone.

Instead of being angry, the young man was amused and saw Naruto standing not too far away, glaring at him, "Not bad." He admitted, "I can't believe that you had that substitution planned in advance so that was some quick moving on your part to pull it off without me noticing."

"Yeah it was planned." Naruto said, not taking his eyes off of the seemingly hostile person in front of him, "I'm not too shabby of a sensor and even if I wasn't I can sense your kind of killing intent from a mile away. Zabuza's was worse. But that might be because I was a kid back then too."

It looked like it was going to be a standoff of sorts as another Kiri ninja ran up, "Suigetsu what are you doing? These are the people sent to help us." Another young man arrived, only this time he looked rather meek with short blue hair, glasses connected to what looked like earphones, a long-sleeved blue pin-striped shirt, camouflage patterned pants, and a unique-looking large sword covered in bandages on his back, "You can't just jump them."

"I wasn't jumping them all." The aforementioned Suigetsu then pointed at Naruto, "I was just jumping him. I don't like him."

As Naruto pointed at himself dumbly, Asuma gave Naruto a few pats on the shoulder, "Most people don't. But still though, you aren't just going to attack our team member unprovoked when we've been sent here to do a mission requested by you. Are you trying to start a war?"

Any response Suigetsu would have possibly given was cut off at a rather high-pitched squeal that put a big grin on the swordsman's face as he turned to meet a flying glomp from Haku, "Suigetsu-kun!"

"Glad you're alright Haku." Suigetsu said in return before giving Haku a peck on the lips, much to the surprise of the younger Team 10, "What? You got a problem?"

By now Ino was rubbing her temple at all of the things that had been presented to them over the last couple of days, "You're telling us that you're her boyfriend." Sure, why not? There was probably a story there, but for once Ino felt that she'd be better off without it. She had received all of the information that she could stand.

And after having spent an exorbitant amount of time around Jiraiya, Naruto knew exactly why Suigetsu had been sending killing vibes his way before springing the surprise attack, "Ohh, my bad." Naruto said, holding his hands up defensively, "That hug was a friend kind of thing, not a trying-to-get-into-her-pants kind of thing."

He might have been trained by Jiraiya, but he had standards and he drew the line solidly at putting moves on another guy's lady.

Suigetsu nodded, content that Naruto had recognized what was up, but then he felt Haku's touch turn cold and looked at his pleasantly smiling lady friend and knew that spelt trouble, "Suigetsu-kun I would appreciate it if you didn't attack my friends again. They've come to help us get rid of Otogakure you see."

"Ah… got it." He said in an effort to calm her down. The last thing he needed was to be frozen solid. It wouldn't have taken much from Haku with her kekkei genkai, "Well. This is Kirigakure. I'm Hozuki Suigetsu, and the pansy swordsman over there is Choujuurou. Two of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist."

Choujuurou walked up to Yamato and adjusted his glasses on his face nervously, "Sorry about Suigetsu. He's a bit… well I really shouldn't say. But we were sent to make sure that you got to the Mizukage's office without any problems-."

"-Because that's been going swimmingly so far." Shikamaru chimed in dryly, pointing out Suigetsu's little jealous snap. He was sure there was more to it than just escorting them, but for the time being he'd keep his mouth shut, 'Probably a show of force to let us know that they're not as weak as the world would think they are after the end of their war.'

Because those swords weren't just regular weapons, they were national treasures. The sword Suigetsu had was Zabuza's old weapon Kubikiribouchou, and he was guessing that Choujuurou's weapon on his back was another of the famed swords of Kiri's most infamous fighting force. No matter how Suigetsu acted and how Choujuurou seemed to outwardly be they were still strong enough to be selected, and to send them just to escort them to the Mizukage's office. Well, message received loud and clear as far as Shikamaru was concerned. Don't screw around with Kiri.

Either way they were heading to the office of the most powerful ninja in Kirigakure now.

Let the true S-rank mission begin, for better or for worse.

XxX

(River Inlet of the Main Mizu no Kuni Island – With Konoha Team's Confiscated Ship)

"Well what do we have here?" Kisame said with a predatory grin. He knew what one of those ships was supposed to be. From Gato Company. Gato was just one of Orochimaru's puppets on a string, and it was this far inland. He'd bet money that it was meant to be a ship meant to raid for more test subjects for the snake sannin's experiments, "Shall we investigate Itachi-san?"

Itachi and Kisame stood outside of the ship just looking at it as it sat calmly just anchored offshore in the river, "I believe I should investigate on my own. No offense of course, but your kind of investigation would possibly destroy whatever information we could possibly obtain from this."

Kisame let out a good-natured scoff, but was mostly fine with it, "Fine with me. If it's not time for me to cut loose and cut something up there's no need getting me involved anyway. I would probably just ruin whoever was inside of there. Information is golden after all…" He finished with a cryptic chuckle, "Go on ahead." By the time he looked to his side towards his partner, Itachi was already gone to get onboard, "Heh. I don't know whether it's lucky I'm not getting on with him, or unlucky because Itachi-san is going to be fishing for some info."

XxX

Onboard the ship, Itachi looked around on the deck to find no one. Not that he really expected anyone to be there. Gato's ships were only really sent in this far to ferry Otogakure ninja close enough to snatch up captives.

Walking inside he ventured down to the hold where he could feel the presence of others. How many he was soon to find out. Hopefully they would be Oto forces instead of just some of Gato's hired hand sailors. They were useless when it came to any kind of information.

"You can glare at me all you want to Guren." Itachi stopped at the door to the storage room when he heard the voice of a young man inside of it, "This is as much your fault as it is ours that you're in this situation."

"You'd better hope I never get out of here brat." Itachi could hear a second voice, one of a female belonging to the 'Guren' person within, "You'd better just kill me now because I'll spend the rest of my life just waiting to get you back Uzumaki."

"I'm so scared." The first person in the room said in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Look. Look at my face. Look at how scared I am. Don't you see it?"

The door then slowly creaked open and Itachi caught sight of who he presumed to be Guren, restrained quite totally, utterly unable to free herself or move. And from the abject look of horror on her face she knew who he was from his attire alone, or at least who he represented. His attention wasn't quite set on her at the moment.

Itachi's attention was on the other person in the room, someone who had initiated eye contact with him off of sheer instinct once the door opened. Poor unfortunate young man, how was he to know what awaited when he did so? The blonde hair, the blue eyes, whisker marks, and the attire that included the sash from the Twelve Guardian Ninja.

"Hello Naruto-kun." He said calmly to the paralyzed, genjutsu-hazed Naruto, "How unexpected to find you here of all places."

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 3

(Five Months after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

Shizune had been gifted with a smaller office than Tsunade's own, but it was good for what she needed it for. She was never really there anyway because most of the time when nobles needed medical consul they sent out for it. Unless it was serious enough to require Tsunade, no one really came to the offices.

But on a rare slow day as far as workload went, Shizune allowed herself a moment of rest to take some reading time to herself. Sitting at her desk, she had to admit that despite being a pervert of the highest caliber Jiraiya could spin one hell of a literary yarn. The sex scenes weren't half bad either.

"Shizune-nee, I need your help!"

That shout preceded Shizune's door being thrown open forcefully, stirring her from reading her copy of Icha Icha so that she could quickly hide it in her desk because she knew the voice of the person that opened her door. The last thing she needed was for him to catch her reading that book. That was something she didn't want to explain.

"What's the matter Naruto-kun?" Shizune asked, jumping up as she was ready to treat any bump or bruise that he felt had been serious enough to bring to her, "Did you break your arm trying to screw around with that bigger Rasengan again?"

Naruto gave her a confused look before blushing in embarrassment. The way he entered it did seem like he was legitimately hurt, and that just wasn't the case, "Uh, no. Sorry, but I'm not hurt." He did still need her help though, "I have a question."

Oh, he just wanted some advice. That was something pleasant. It was good that she didn't have to deal with any injuries today, "I have an answer." Shizune replied in turn, sitting back down at her desk and gifting Naruto with a warm smile, "What do you need?" Such a nice boy.

A skittish looking Naruto looked down at the ground and seemed rather hesitant to talk about whatever he wanted. Eventually coming face to face with Shizune raising an eyebrow in curiosity, Naruto figured that it was time to fess up. He was wasting her time after all, and he had work to get back to, "Fine. I need help getting rid of someone."

"You can't kill any of the nobles." Shizune frowned at Naruto and rested one of her cheeks in her hand with a sigh, "I know sometimes it seems really appealing. And I know that sometimes you've got it worked out to the very last detail about how you can sneak that odorless, tasteless poison into their food if they proposition you and grab your butt one more time during the 20th damn health screening they schedule in four months just to hit on you, when you keep telling them that you're a professional and not interested! And you know you can get away with it because, oh who's going to run the autopsy? That's right it's you-!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Naruto stopped Shizune and reached over her desk to grab her shaking hands as she got more riled up than he had ever seen her before. Where the hell did that come from? That was scary, "Calm down okay? Take some deep breaths, count to ten. It's alright." A nod came from the raven-haired medic-nin as her breathing stopped coming out so erratically, "I don't want to kill her though."

"Her?" Shizune asked with a raised eyebrow. Okay, now she was really interested, if only to be nosy anyway.

A shiver went down Naruto's spine and he nodded before getting back to his reasoning for being there, "Naho." Now he didn't want to say that he hated someone, but damn it that girl was pushing it really close, "That girl is so aggressive it's creepy. And how does she keep reserving either me or Shikamaru for guard duty when she goes into town? She's thirteen. She shouldn't be able to do that herself."

Aggressive girl troubles? She must have been outright forceful in how she informed Naruto of her outright desire for him if it actually spooked him that badly. The poor thing probably didn't know how to handle it, especially because he clearly had absolutely no interest in this Naho girl.

Well that was where older sister Shizune could give some help. Naruto was entirely uninterested in learning how to take care of himself medically since he was incompatible with learning medical ninjutsu, so advice was definitely where she could contribute heavily. The fact that he came to her instead of Tsunade spoke volumes, "Why are you asking me instead of Tsunade-sama?"

Naruto opened his mouth to give a well thought out and rational explanation as to why he was coming to Shizune instead of Tsunade with something like that, but any answer he could have given would not have been as good as what the world gave to him at that exact moment. From slightly down the hall, crashing and rumbling could be heard from where Tsunade's office was.

"I know I have one more bottle of sake here somewhere! I am _not_ sending to town for more without one bottle left, those attendants they send out take forever!"

That was pretty much all the explanation that Naruto needed to give. Life experience didn't really translate into good advice on all fronts. He'd ask Tsunade about dealing with mission preparation and things like that. He'd save the more delicate social advice questions for well-mannered, even-tempered Shizune. Life would be safer for everyone that way.

With an understanding nod, Shizune got up and put an arm around Naruto's shoulder as they left her office, "Walk with me Naruto-kun, I need the company. We're going to town, and we'll see if I can't help you out on the way." As they left the building, Shizune threw a shout into Tsunade's office, "I'm going to get you more Tsunade-sama, and you hid your last bottle around Tonton's neck."

As they passed by, Naruto got a look into the warzone that was now Tsunade's office and saw the now calm woman enjoying a drink with her pet pig in her lap. As if she hadn't just rendered her office to shreds. How was Shizune so used to such a thing that she didn't even register it?

Without saying a word, but with an all-telling thousand yard stare on his face at the thought of going to _that_ woman with anything intended to be sensitive, he merely hugged Shizune around the waist as they walked and got a few reassuring pats on the head for the gesture.

Yes, Shizune would proceed to be Naruto's ever-present and sturdy rock of good sense in the tumultuous and unforgiving sea of crazy that came with his life led while he was a Guardian Ninja. And he would love her dearly for it.

Someone had to be there to keep him from being driven to drinking… and she was the woman for the job when it came to helping him keep what was left of his sanity.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Otogakure Ninja

Kaguya Kimimaro

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 4.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 32**

Juugo

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Total Score: 27.5**

Yukimaru

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 4.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Total Score: 21.5**

Kirigakure Ninja

Terumi Mei

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 4.5**

**Total Score: 32**

Ao

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 4.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 29**

Hozuki Suigetsu

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 27.5**

Choujuurou

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 26**

Akatsuki

Uchiha Itachi

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 5  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 5**

**Total Score: 35.5**

Hoshigaki Kisame

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 32.5**

* * *

**Yes! With the end of my summer bad times comes the dawn of an actual vacation… that I still have to work during, but it's better than nothing. I'll take what rest and relaxation I can get after six weeks of killing my brain in quick order.**

**It is so going to be on. On like… something that rhymes with 'on' in a smart and articulate pop culture reference manner.**

**Kenchi out. **


	48. Trouble Comes Running

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Want to feel like a failure? Do what I did when you turn 21 and think about all of the people that have done something useful by now. I'm getting mad just thinking about it right now.

**Chapter 48: Trouble Comes Running**

* * *

Guren's eyes were stuck firmly on the form of one Uchiha Itachi, even as her warden of sorts remained frozen in a statuesque manner right in front of him. Knowing what he had done to freeze him in place, she shut her eyes tightly so that she wouldn't fall victim to whatever torturous illusion he would try to ensnare her in next, "What is Akatsuki doing here?" Guren said. Damn it those Konoha bastards could have put a flaw into her restraints so that she could do something about things like this, "You've got no business in Otogakure affairs."

"Don't be so foolish." Itachi said, moving past the unaware Naruto that he had ensnared in an illusionary world inside of his own head, "Otogakure affairs are Akatsuki affairs due to the fact that your leader used to be one of us. We still require his ring back by the way. Did he keep that hand I took from him?"

The struggling kunoichi eventually stopped and laughed, bitterly resigning herself to her fate, "So it's either me or the kid jinchuuriki over there that you want. I would have figured that he would be your priority what with your almighty goal to capture all of the world's biju." She spat venomously, "How's that going by the way?"

"It is of no concern to you." Itachi walked closer to Guren and pointed back at the still frozen Naruto, "And that one is merely a stand-in by the way. Even if I were here to capture the Kyuubi jinchuuriki all I would be getting would be a substitute for the real thing." Why would the real Naruto be on a ship by himself? That was not how any Konoha ninja acted, it would be leaving someone alone and vulnerable.

If that Naruto hadn't been a clone, neither he nor Guren would have been on that ship. They would have risked taking her out into the open and moving her through potentially hostile territory before leaving only one of their ninja alone with her on a ship with just one person watching over her. The Naruto in the room being a clone was the only thing that made sense, especially since Naruto was kind of famous for using the Kage Bunshin technique.

Damn it. Guren hoped that she could swerve Itachi out of possibly doing something to her by taking his potential attention away from her. And that meant it was her he had been interested in. Having Itachi interested in you was not supposed to be a good thing.

"How did you know I was here?"

"We didn't. It was mere chance."

Another bark of nasty laughter came from Guren as it would have been just her misfortune to be caught by not one but two of her enemies in short order, "Sheer dumb luck. You don't say? I would have figured that the almightily fearsome Uchiha Itachi would have used his all-seeing eyes to get my trail all the way from back when I was a little girl to now and followed me across the sea just to interrogate me."

"That… or you could always be coincidentally trapped aboard an out of place vessel of our target enemies that we were going to take down regardless." Itachi seemed to tower over her, of course that could have just been the stockade she was trapped in, "People often overlook luck as a deciding factor in the lifespan of a ninja."

"Right… because when I think of Uchiha Itachi I think 'lucky'." Guren witnessed Itachi kneel down and look her in the eyes, and that was that it. The next thing she knew she found herself bound in a shifting ethereal realm of black, "Oh great. I still have dregs of Yamanaka girl's homemade truth serum in me, and you're in my head so that already gets past any mental defenses I have to keep me from talking. So what the fuck do you want?"

Coarse language aside, Itachi was still in firm control of the situation, "My question is simple. Where is the Sanbi?" A twitch of Guren's eye let him know that she was fighting his request to answer him, "Please answer or else."

"Heh… I've had my mind cavity searched and violated by some mouthy blonde girl and now I've got to deal with you." Guren said, looking to physically struggle to hold back from talking, "Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned physical tortures huh? People just don't have the stomach for it anymore do they?"

A sigh came from Itachi before Guren began to feel hot around her feet. Like a slow-burning strip of paper, her feet caught on fire and began to burn. Sadistic bastard, "Apparently you didn't have enough of whatever serum is inside of you to answer that question so I will attempt to ask you again. The location of the Sanbi please." He asked while Guren fought the urge to scream out in pain.

Guren's pained and struggling grunts persisted as she looked at the genjutsu avatar of Itachi that was just standing over her staring at her as she suffered the effects of his attempt to interrogate her.

XxX

(Inside of the Naruto-clone's Genjutsu)

Naruto-clone stood in another ship setting like the one that he had been in prior to looking into the eyes of the person dressed in a black cloak with red clouds. He refrained from trying to power through the genjutsu because if this fool was really going to take him away, all that would do would be to show the original Naruto where an Akatsuki hideout was.

It would actually be more beneficial to be taken than to actually try to fight it, so the Kage Bunshin merely tried to get a handle on just what the situation was, "Well, you guys. I wondered when you would find me."

"Hello Naruto-kun." Genjutsu-Itachi said calmly, waiting for this Naruto to try and struggle and fight him to drive himself deeper into the illusion. But it never came, "I assume you know who I represent." Naruto-clone just nodded stiffly, "I am not here for you yet. I merely stumbled across you at the wrong time. You are still free… for now."

"Why so generous?" Naruto-clone asked with a joking grin, but the tone behind the words were serious, "I didn't peg Akatsuki for the type to let someone like me go."

If genjutsu-Itachi let on to the fact that he knew that this Naruto was a clone, the clone could have merely dispelled itself right then and there and the effort of it all would have been useless, "Do not consider it generosity. Consider it merely inconvenience. Your time will of course come, but as long as you are being civil I would like to ask you a question."

"I don't feel very talkative, but ask away." Naruto-clone said tensely, "You might get an answer, but you might get my fist in your mouth and my foot in your ass. Just because you're willing to wait doesn't mean I am. If it's gonna happen let's just get it over with."

"Do you know who I am?"

"Of course I do. I only know one person with Sharingan in two eyes so if you're not Sasuke that would make you Uchiha Itachi."

Well good for him, he knew the actual identity of his attacker. That was something, "How is my little brother by the way?"

Naruto-clone frowned at his Akatsuki adversary, "I haven't seen the guy in three years but last I saw he was dealing with a nasty seal on his neck. Other than that he was good though. I haven't seen him since I've been back, but I can only imagine though."

Genjutsu-Itachi nodded as if he were satisfied by that, "Good. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to make Orochimaru suffer for branding my younger brother with his disgusting cursed seal. I truly doubt he is in this country so ruining whatever he has planned with the Sanbi will have to do. Until the next time we meet Naruto-kun."

XxX

Naruto-clone found himself instantly snapped out of Itachi's genjutsu and cursed mentally when he found himself still in the hold. Itachi wasn't there for him, and Itachi had to know that he had been a clone, otherwise he would have just captured him either way as the Akatsuki member that he was. It wasn't like if they had caught Naruto right then they couldn't simply keep him imprisoned until they needed him.

No, his identity as a clone had been known from the moment Itachi, the real Itachi, had seen him. And he looked over at Guren to find her forehead beaded with sweat and her breath coming out heavily, "Way to play prison guard brat-clone." Guren said, as the fact that it didn't feel like her body was on fire anymore was a magnificent sensation of relief, "Sucker for a genjutsu are you?"

"Oh shut up." Naruto-clone said as he walked over to make sure that Itachi hadn't harmed his prisoner past the mental trauma that he had inflicted, "I didn't break it because I thought he was there for me and I had a plan. I could have just dispelled too you know. Then you'd be here by yourself."

Guren wished she could get free just so she could hit the clone, "Yes, because you're such fantastic company. I'd rather be Itachi's prisoner. Then at least I'd have something handsome to look at or he could at least trap me in a pleasant genjutsu for being good."

Still, it was weird though. Itachi killed his entire clan in one night with the exception of Sasuke. Naruto-clone understood why Itachi didn't kill him because he might have known about the Kage Bunshin memory secret, but he didn't get why he didn't kill Guren. He had gotten what he had wanted from her. Getting rid of her should have been as easy as flicking out his wrist at that point.

She had to have given him something pretty damn good if it came to letting her go. A clan slaughterer didn't seem like the merciful type just for the sake of morality.

"What did Itachi do to you?" Naruto-clone asked Guren as he wiped the sweat from her face, "You had to have told him something while I was under. What did he want to know? He said something about the Sanbi. What the hell did you know about it?" That had to have been what Itachi was there to take. Akatsuki was all about taking the biju after all.

Guren just growled at Naruto and glared at him. Did he really think he was going to get any help from her just because they had shared a similar predicament? Hers was far worse, "Oh, well while your little Yamanaka girlfriend was diving through my head you should have had her check in on that." The Oto kunoichi bitterly taunted.

There was nothing she could do from her position to stop Itachi, so in the instance that she couldn't get away and give ample warning to those that she needed to warn about the coming Akatsuki storm, she could at least make it so that the situation didn't get worse for Otogakure's base in Mizu no Kuni by keeping Konoha's nose out of it as much as she could.

They didn't need to know anything more than they already did, especially when it came to a question that they had never asked. Hopefully Kimimaro and his people could handle it.

Admittedly, Naruto had no personal stake in anything that happened to the Sanbi outside of the loose affiliation fact that he was a jinchuuriki with the Kyuubi within him. Sticking it to Akatsuki by keeping them from getting their hands on a biju, while keeping them from their overall goal in the grand scheme of things, didn't apply to him as a Konoha ninja at all.

Still though, the enemy of your enemy could be your friend… or just another enemy depending on how things worked. Especially if things moved in a triangle the way that it did in this scenario.

Konoha was in Kiri for Otogakure, but Oto had problems with Akatsuki for when Orochimaru was kicked out for whatever he did, and in turn Akatsuki was never going to be on Konoha's friendly side for their marked and alarming goal of trying to amass all of the biju in the Elemental Nations and the fact that they had formerly had two of the most infamous missing-nin that the village had ever produced in Itachi and Orochimaru.

Nothing good could ever come of that.

Before Naruto-clone could really get in on trying to yank some impromptu information out of Guren somehow, The ship began to quake terribly before a grand groan came from the vessel and a hole was punched into the hull as water began cascading in.

Well there went that whole atypical mercy idea about Itachi, straight out the window.

XxX

(Outside of the Ship)

Kisame chuckled to himself as he observed the damage that he had just wrought upon the ship after Itachi told him that they were done there. He stopped laughing though when he saw Itachi simply staring at him. Was he mad? Kisame couldn't tell, "What?"

"We are trying to keep a low profile." Itachi said in a monotone fashion as he stared his partner down.

"I know." Kisame contended with a shrug, "That was why I didn't blow it up. Look." He said, pointing at the steadily sinking ship, "That thing's heading to the bottom of the river. No one that didn't know it beforehand would even know it was there, and also by default us." He finished with a shark-toothed grin.

In his defense he didn't know what had been onboard. Since Itachi told him that he had gotten what they needed he figured that it was just some expendable Oto body… or several.

Itachi just stared at him for another moment before turning and moving along, "Come. We have work to do." Apparently, Itachi had been truly indifferent to it, because he simply let it slide, "Our destination is south."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Kirigakure no Sato – Mizukage's Office)

The Konoha party stood calmly in front of the desk of the first female Kage in the lands, flanked by Haku, Suigetsu, Choujuurou, and Ao for security purposes as they waited on the Mizukage to return to the office.

As they waited, Shikamaru found himself standing closest to Suigetsu, and as troublesome as it was his curiosity was getting the best of him, "Hey." He said, getting the silver-haired swordsman's attention, "How did you end up with Haku? You two don't seem… compatible I guess."

Suigetsu just chuckled and scratched his nose, "She says I remind her of Zabuza-senpai somehow. That pisses me off by the way." He intentionally said loud enough for Haku to clearly hear, only to get a wave back to show that she didn't care, "But I'm into her too. I owed her at first because she saved my ass from Otogakure in a raid on a small lab, but what can I say? The ladies in this country love the strong swordsmen. The Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist are like rock stars in some places, right Choujuurou?"

Choujuurou muttered bashfully that he wouldn't know, but Shikamaru was more interested in something else, "Wait, they caught you before?"

Suigetsu angrily thought back to what had happened two years before, "Damn right they did. The fuckers put me in a sealed off tank so I couldn't escape and experimented on my body to try and break down my clan's jutsu. That's what they do to everyone. Everyone else isn't as lucky to have a body like mine though…" He barely felt anything.

He had seen some things done to others in that hellhole with some of the sick-ass scientists though, especially from that prick in purple with the glasses that showed up once every blue moon.

"There's a special spot reserved in hell for people like them." Ao said as he had borne witness to some of Otogakure's scientist's human experiments in small facilities on the mainland that they had discovered, "Our Seven Swordsmen are usually like Suigetsu here, pretty brutal in battle. But those people don't have any excuse other than trying to play God for an egomaniac."

"Which is precisely why we need to put a stop to this here and now."

Turning around, the entire gaggle of shinobi parted as Terumi Mei, the Mizukage, walked coolly through the office and sat down at her desk with a beautiful smile on her face, "It is wonderful to meet you all." She greeted with her hands folded underneath her chin, "As you have probably guessed I am the Godaime Mizukage."

Taking the initiative as team leader, Yamato bowed to her and took the head in regards to speaking, "We're ready to do what we can to help rid you of Otogakure's influence on your lands."

"I'm certain you are all up for the task." Mei stated, gesturing to the lot of them, "You all have reputations and are famous for your own reasons. Sarutobi Asuma, son of the Sandaime Hokage and a man that boasts a 35 million ryo bounty placed on his head. Mitarashi Anko, Orochimaru's only apprentice that broke away from her master's dark influence. Yamato-san, better known by the previous codename of Tenzo, the holder of the Mokuton kekkei genkai and a genius ANBU ninja."

"_Well when she puts it that way…" _ Ino thought to Naruto, and he was able to hear her due to the telepathic link that the two had established to chat in silence while waiting for the meeting to begin, _"I'm feeling kind of inadequate right now. Why aren't we famous?"_

"_I'm actually kind of famous…"_ Naruto mentally admitted through the link, much to Ino's shock which showed on her face, _"Yeah… I found that out while I worked with the Guardian Ninja group. Some people knew who me and Shika were before we even did anything for them. You too actually."_

"_What in the world are we famous for?"_

The question was answered by Mei who caught on to the little bit of psychic play going on between the two kids, "And I know about you three as well Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Uzumaki Naruto. Don't think that people have forgotten about your victory in the largest chunin exam in the history of the unified system. It was only three and a half years ago."

"_That's why."_ Naruto thought to his blonde teammate as Mei confirmed what he had been saying. Apparently it had been just as big of a deal as it had felt like it had been at the time if people were able to identify them solely off of that. It did open some doors though, "Heh, it's kind of weird that the Mizukage knows my name… kind of cool." Naruto admitted, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck at being put on the spot.

"It's kind of troublesome really." Shikamaru said in return, "I don't want people to know who I am. Who wants to be a big illustrious target for some wannabe to try and take out for name recognition? Not me."

"Peh. You're nobody until somebody tries to kill you kid." Ao said matter-of-factly, "Every strong shinobi has enemies. You can't say you're a good ninja if no one wants you dead."

'No one wants you?' Was how the Mizukage misheard and perceived Ao's words to the youngsters in the room. She simply looked at him with a brightly pleasant smile and addressed him accordingly with what she thought he said, "Ao, shut up or I'll kill you."

Ao scratched his temple confusedly, but did as requested. He didn't want to be melted in the middle of the floor. Suigetsu just snickered while Choujuurou and Haku simply acted as if she hadn't threatened one of her own shinobi with extreme physical violence.

Carrying on with the meeting as planned, Mei got things back in line once more, "We can't commit a decent strike force to the southern island territories to try and take on Otogakure's main facility." She said with a frown on her face, "It will be seen as an act of aggression with some of the neighboring countries and they'll use it as an excuse to move forward and try to take some of Mizu no Kuni's islands as recompense."

"…I hate politics." Asuma mumbled to himself, wishing he could smoke inside at the moment. He hated briefings and meetings like this, "Fucking backstabbing, under-the-table, sleight of hand crap…"

"Indeed Sarutobi-san." Mei returned, letting out a bit of an airy giggle when she saw Asuma rightfully embarrassed at being heard, "I don't have a taste for politics either, but my village needed me and it had to be done. There was no one else suitable for the position of Mizukage after Yagura reign and the war both ended. But enough about me, we can speak more personally later when there is time." She finished cryptically with a smile.

Both Naruto and Shikamaru just turned to stare at Asuma who was trying to act like he didn't pick up on the underlying point that Mei had just made, 'Did she just hit on Asuma-sensei?'

'Why didn't something like this happen _years_ ago?' Asuma thought to himself as he tried to ignore the looks from his male students. Damn it he was in a committed if not semi-secret relationship and had a kid on the way. This was no time for infidelity, even if it would have possibly the most beautiful woman he would ever have a shot with, "Ahem… of course. Business first."

Taking pity on Asuma and willing to save him from further scrutiny, Shikamaru spoke up, "So, if you can't send anyone in why do you think it would be any easier for us? It can't just be because everyone thinks that Konoha is strong."

"Logistically none of these countries can afford hostilities with Konoha." Haku chimed in helpfully, "Even if they felt the need to press against Kiri and Mizu no Kuni, if we appear to be allied with Konoha that would be a major deterrent. Not that we don't wish for an alliance of sorts, because we do. But if you refused to officially sign a treaty with us, the mere appearance of a small group such as yourselves it would seem diplomatic. And that would force them to back off in theory to keep from involving Konoha in the affairs of the region."

Because no one wanted to fight Konoha.

Actually that wasn't true. Tons of people wanted to fight Konoha, it was just that no one thought it was smart to fight a war with Konoha, and no one felt that it was worthwhile to go to war with Konoha. Not by themselves, and no one powerful enough got along well enough to coordinate any ill intent towards the village. Especially since it was also loosely allied with Takigakure and Sunagakure… even if the treaties that bound them weren't even worth the paper they were printed on.

Mei gestured toward Haku to state that what she had said was exactly the point, "Of course there is a reason why we sought out Konoha as well. Sarutobi Hiruzen is not an imperialistic warlike Hokage, so letting Konoha know of Kiri's current weakened state of affairs has a low risk of your village trying to take advantage of ours. Couple that with the geographic deterrents keeping your village from offensively pressing ours, as well as your village's ever-standing grievance with Oto's leader and this is why you were asked to assist us."

Because there was no reason to mess with Kiri, because trying to fight Kiri on their turf was way more trouble than it was worth for a village like Konoha, and because of the responsibility they had for unleashing Orochimaru on the world. Those were the reasons that Konoha was selected to request assistance from.

That was good enough for Anko, who was doing a decent job at hiding the fact that she was chomping at the bit to get that party started, "Well, let's work out how this is going to be run. Our kids here caught an Oto prisoner and extracted the information on the general area where the island is located toward the south."

Yamato as team leader picked up from there, "Now I know you can't commit a strike force Mizukage-sama, but we're willing to go and see how bad the situation is ourselves if you'll send us someone that can guide us."

"You're willing to do this yourselves?" Mei said in a slightly skeptical tone of voice. It was just six of them from Konoha and they were willing to undertake something so dangerous? All they wanted was a guide to assist them, "You're certain of this?"

A unanimous series of nods came from the guest squad. Yamato gestured to his team surrounding him, "We're a specially structured infiltration and reconnaissance party. Uzumaki-san is our sensor, Mitarashi-san is a skilled tracker, Yamanaka-san is here to extract information as needed, Nara-san is capable of planning our approach for observation in case we locate our target, and in case battle is necessary Sarutobi-san and myself specialize in direct combat."

Konoha had just as much interest in getting information reports on any Otogakure strongholds as Kiri did.

Naruto was about to raise his hand and interject that he specialized in direct combat as well, but Shikamaru elbowed him in the stomach to shut him up and got a glare that could melt steel in return that he ignored.

As the reigning Mizukage, Mei wasn't certain if sending out a ninja good enough to guide the Konoha contingent to their target safely was worth the potential loss. She wasn't going to draft anyone to partake in this mission. She had too many important shinobi out and about around the countryside protecting villages near hotspots where civilians had been kidnapped by the enemy.

Aside from that, the southern islands were numerous and infamous for housing all sorts of nasty folks. Pirates, raiders, and there was even hearsay of a community of missing-nin but that had always been thought of as a legend that got passed around the hunter-nin rookie ranks for kicks.

"I'll volunteer for the task." Haku stated with a bow to her village leader, "Please allow me to do this Mizukage-sama. I swear I won't let you down. I know of the southern islands well. During Zabuza-sama and my own escape after his failed coup that was the route we selected to flee the country and elude the hunter-nin. I know how someone hiding in that area would conceal themselves."

Suigetsu raised a lazy hand as well, "I'm in too. Those pricks poked and prodded at me like a guinea pig and humiliated me for too long. And besides…" He said with a roguish grin showing his sharpened teeth, "I can't let my lady go out island hopping by herself. That's dangerous."

So the party seemed to be set. Six from Konoha, two from Kiri, eight in all. Not a bad small squad for something this big. More would be better, but the known lack of manpower was half the reason that the mission was ranked S-rank to begin with.

As everything looked to be falling into place, Naruto's eyes widened and he ground his teeth for a second before he held his head in a bit of pain, "Ugh… we're going to need a new ride too. The boat we hid on the inlet got sunk."

"Oto?" Ino asked, putting a worried hand on Naruto's arm only to get him to shake his head no, "Well who then?"

"Uchiha Itachi… Akatsuki…"

The room grew silent and everyone just stared at Naruto as if he were insane, waiting for him to retract that last statement. When it never came a loud smack noise attracted everyone's attention to Shikamaru who was palming his forehead, "Of course it is."

_(Flashback – Onboard the Sinking Ship)_

_There was a horrible grinding noise and then water started pouring into the room from the doorway, 'Crap, they hit the ship hard enough to sink it?' Naruto-clone thought in a panic. What was the point of that other than to just ensure that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki had one less way to leave the country that they knew he was in?_

_He couldn't save the vessel and he knew it. There was nothing he could do for it._

"_Damn it, I'm really going to drown here?" Guren said to herself in disbelief as she tried to struggle in vain to free herself, "This is bullshit!" That's right! He had been trying to pry a bit more information out of her before the ship started to sink._

_How much time was left? One minute the clone wagered and then they'd be underwater. He wasn't any kind of interrogator, but there was something important that he needed to know, "What did Itachi ask you about the Sanbi for?" Guren glared up at him and remained quiet, "He already knows so you might as well tell me too! Do it and I'll let you escape!"_

"_You're full of crap you liar!" Guren shouted back at him as the water was rising up to the standing Naruto-clone's knees and getting higher rapidly, "No matter what I do you're just going to leave me here to drown, so kiss my ass!"_

_In response, Naruto-clone drew his machete and held it to Guren's stockade as a show that he was serious, "Listen stupid, I'm being dead serious. Akatsuki wants the Sanbi and that's something we can't let happen, whether I'm from Konoha or not because they want all of the biju and that's bad. So if Oto is going after it tell me where it is so we can do something to try and stop them!"_

_Guren just glared up at him and bit her lip as she thought, 'Uchiha Itachi and whoever his partner is are S-ranked badasses. Yukimaru… he'll die if they get to him. But I can't betray Oto by letting a Konoha ninja find out what we did with the Sanbi even if there are bigger fish to fry!'_

"_If you don't do it Itachi and whoever he has with him are still going to tear apart whoever they find to get to the Sanbi. At least if you tell me there's a chance we can stop them. You've got ten seconds."_

_She wasn't banking on six random Konoha ninjas to do a damn thing to stop a man that destroyed the most famous clan in the ninja world on his own. But if Naruto did indeed let her go once she told him as he claimed that he would, she would have a chance to get there before Akatsuki did and warn everyone that Orochimaru's sworn enemies were on their way. _

_There was a chance to salvage this. And if he lied it wouldn't matter anymore anyway because she would be left to drown and die. It wouldn't be her problem._

"_Fine!" Guren shouted loudly as she tried to lift her neck to keep water from getting into her mouth before she was done speaking, "We don't just know where the Sanbi is, we have the Sanbi in our possession, inside of a jinchuuriki that we made! That's who they're going for, now let me go!" Guren said just as the water rose high enough to cover her mouth and begin getting into her nose._

_All of a sudden she was able to flail her arms and legs around and stand up as the wooden stockade that held her was sliced clean through. She stood up in the now waist-deep water only to see a puff of smoke as a sign that Naruto's clone was gone. _

_(End Flashback)_

"You let her go?" Ino asked with a twitching eye after Naruto had recanted to the lot of them what his clone had done, "Are you insane? After all the work we did to capture her you let her go!"

Naruto backed away from the angry Yamanaka with his hands held up defensively, "Ino chill out! It was either let her go and find out what Akatsuki are here planning or leave her to die and find out nothing! My clone made a judgment call!" That did little to soothe the savage beast behind Ino's eyes though, "I had a good reason!"

"I like it actually…" Ao said with a thoughtful look on his experienced face, "Yeah… if he hadn't let her go, Akatsuki would have gotten the full drop on the Oto base once they found the correct southern island. But now, even if they find it I can almost be sure that this Guren will beat them back and she'll warn them of the Akatsuki approach. That's the more pressing threat."

Asuma put a hand on Ino's shoulder to stop her advance on Naruto who had his hands up prepared to defend himself, "I see good reasons too. If it was an ambush, Akatsuki would flatten them in short order _and_ leave with a biju to further their plans. That would just get them to turn their attention on trying to catch Naruto that much sooner. But this way if Guren gets back and warns them they'll have to fight a full-on battle against an entire base and a pissed off jinchuuriki to boot."

Shikamaru nodded and finished his sensei's thought for him, "And since we have to find this place anyway we can not only use the battle as a way to find the base easier, we can use the confusion from the battle to get closer without a fuss." For as long as the battle lasted anyway. It depended on just how strong Akatsuki members were and if they could live up to the hype, "This is actually really good if we do it right."

Looking into Ino's eyes to check for mounting danger, Naruto calmed down when he found nothing of the sort any longer. Thank goodness, "See? Judgment call." Not bad for a decision made by a chakra entity in the span of under a minute as far as he was concerned.

Without saying anything else, Ao looked over at the Mizukage and noted the gleam in her eye as she nodded almost unnoticeably. This was a better situation than they had ever expected. It was by far the best opening they had to get at Oto since they gained their foothold in Mizu no Kuni for several reasons.

The rest of the mission specifics were hammered out in short order now that all of this had been presented. Yamato's squad would gather reconnaissance with Haku as a guide and Suigetsu as good faith support. Kiri would provide transport to the southern islands of the Mizu no Kuni border area, and once the location of the enemy was found they would mark the coordinates and send immediate word to Kiri who would have ANBU at the ready to send in under the radar of the other countries in case that was still an issue.

Of course there was something else important that had been dictated to both Haku and Suigetsu. Both of them had a secondary mission if the opportunity presented itself that they were to keep to themselves; to capture the Sanbi jinchuuriki that had been made by Oto and bring him/her to the village. The ANBU sent out after the position was confirmed would provide assistance if there was a need.

At a time when Kiri was building its strength back up from the damage incurred from the civil war it was a possible deterrent and wartime resource that they had been forced to cover up losing after Yagura's disappearance. A military asset of that sort could not be overlooked as important to the village.

XxX

(Ocean South of Mizu no Kuni Mainland Island)

'I can beat them there!' Guren screamed to herself in her mind. After making tons of ground on land, when she finally reached the sea she sped up her travel time by surrounding herself in a ring of crystal that she moved like a wheel, 'If I can just make it back first…'

Itachi had managed to get the location out of her verbally via his genjutsu, complete with landmarks to help him find it but without someone that knew the country like the back of their hand it would take him a long time to traverse the multiple islands and find the right one. None of them were named, and all of the maps of that portion of the region were generalized and not exact due to the difficulty in doing so.

Even with someone that did know the area… without someone that could lead him straight to the island, and that could only be someone that knew of the location of the Oto base by heart, it would still take a fair amount of time to find it.

She knew exactly where to go, not just a general area, 'Yukimaru is going to be Orochimaru-sama's future body, and I can't let him be lost to those bastards!' They only had a five minute head-start on her at best. It would take her another day to get there, but since she had practice in getting to the rather complex location conventional logic would say that she would make it first.

Guren threw even more effort behind her speed transport and pushed herself along faster than before as she cut a path through the water. This wasn't over yet. Her master's ambitions were worth her life.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Team 7 Training Ground)

"An S-rank mission." Sakura said to herself in a somewhat worried manner as she sat by the training posts that marked the site of her squad's final exam under their jounin leader years ago, "…Ino-pig really doesn't know how to ease back into active duty does she?" And all the way to Kirigakure to boot. That was much too far to request any kind of backup from Konoha.

Sitting on the ground in front of her was a slightly scuffed up Chouji, allowing Sakura to practice her medical techniques on him and simultaneously patch him up before their monthly exercise against their old sensei. It had been something that Team 7 set up after all of them were finally promoted to chunin; they would meet up at least once a month if nothing else than to take on Kakashi and measure their growth.

He was late as usual, thus Chouji had gotten in a bit of training beforehand and wished to be in top form when the time came.

Chouji was now much more robust physique-wise than he had been when he was younger. His hair was now longer and spikier down his back, he wore his headband normally around his forehead, and he wore a red suit with armor plating on his torso, arms, and legs with the kanji for food emblazoned right across his chest and stomach, "Oh come on, you know how much she hated working T&I. She probably jumped at it. And with Naruto there too I don't think Shika had a chance to turn it down. It wasn't like he'd fight too hard to do it anyway."

"Hey, how much stronger is Shikamaru these days anyway?" Sakura asked her large teammate, "I know you two kept in contact with letters sometimes while he and Naruto were gone, and you hung out all day the day after he got back." Yes she was curious. Who wouldn't be? He had been a Guardian Ninja, and his lazy attitude hadn't gotten him or the daimyo killed. That had to mean major strides were made.

"He's alright I guess." That wasn't the answer she was looking for. Luckily the green chakra surrounding her hands didn't slip after hearing it, "We didn't talk too much about that stuff. I don't have to ask him about it to know that he's stronger. Shikamaru might be lazy, but he's not _that_ kind of guy."

"Who's on an S-rank mission? Is Kakashi on one?"

Sakura looked ahead and her face lit up at the person that strolled into the field, "Sasuke-kun!" Some old habits died hard, but her voice wasn't that loud when she saw him. Chouji didn't even cringe which meant that it wasn't so grating, "Oh, no one here. Ino-chan got sent on one with Asuma-sensei and her team. I think Anko-sensei went too, but no one can say what mission it was."

As time passed, Sasuke was now adorned in a grey high-collared t-shirt with his clan crest on the back and dark blue pants with a blue cloth wrapped around his waist like a belt. On his back he carried a steel gunbai war fan half his size, "I'm assuming that when you say 'her team' you mean Shikamaru and the dumbass." A small smile placed itself onto his face, "They'll be fine. The Guardian Ninja group is supposed to be a team of outright killers, and if they're back to even take an S-rank mission that means something by itself."

"You just want to fight Naruto again." Chouji interjected if only to get a rise out of Sasuke as he stood up with a grunt, "You two are weird like that. It's like you're the measuring stick for each other or something. You've never had a finish since we graduated."

With Chouji mended to the point where he was once again fighting fit, Sakura placed her hands on her hips and looked around with a scowl, "Where is Kakashi-sensei? He'd better not be ducking out again after we beat him up so bad last time."

Sasuke just rolled his eyes at his teacher's perennial tardiness and Chouji's previous comment. Of course he wanted to fight Naruto again. It was a magnificent way to see how strong he was. So what? Having a rival was the best way to mark his progress as he continued to prepare for his eventual day of reckoning against Itachi.

And speaking of marking his progress, "I want to fight Kakashi by myself today. You two sit back since I know you don't like fighting anyway." To beat a master of the Sharingan one needed to practice against one, and since there were no other Uchiha Clan members around Kakashi was the best he'd have in that regard.

"Not a chance Sasuke."

"We're supposed to fight as a team Sasuke-kun. There's no reason to do that."

That was the expected answer. Oh well, he'd have to somehow corner Kakashi later and set up a one-on-one match sometime later. He had to be ready anytime now. For all he knew Itachi could be just about anywhere.

As he thought about this, from the corner of his eye he caught a small black field mouse scurrying away getting him to narrow his eyes.

XxX

(Southern Island Border of Mizu no Kuni)

"You're so lucky you're with someone that knows these waters like the back of his hand Itachi-san." Kisame said as the two of them walked on an island that could be crudely described by Kisame as a big-ass rock with trees on it, "You'd be searching these islands for days before you found anything."

He seemed proud of that fact, or something like that. Itachi wasn't going to comment on it though. There was a time and a place for everything and it wasn't the time to one-up his partner with a snarky comment.

No, he was paying attention to their surroundings. They were in the belly of the enemy now and he knew it. Both of them did, but they both had different ways of doing things. In situations like this, Kisame would get more excited and expectant for the battle to begin. Itachi would be hypersensitive to everything around him and would clam up, even more so than usual.

Without warning they both came to a stop in the stillness of the forest. Kisame slung his bandaged sword down from his back and slammed it on the ground, "Go on ahead Itachi-san. I've got this." He said with a wide grin, "Something like this won't tire me out."

Itachi didn't even turn to look Kisame's way, still looking straight ahead in the path that they were travelling, "If you're certain Kisame then you can take him on alone." He was as cool as a cucumber while Kisame seemed to be getting even more riled up once Itachi seemed to be clearing him for action, "I will locate the Sanbi jinchuuriki in the meantime."

At that utterance, a single indistinguishable projectile flew into the air overhead and exploded before dropping down countless tiny white daggers from the sky that fell quickly and with accuracy enough to avoid the trees and hit nothing but visible ground. Mutliple blades impaled Itachi, seemingly annihilating him before he broke up into multiple crows that flew away, distinguishing himself as a clone.

Kisame was real though. He held up his sword that covered his entire body and blocked the ambush before lowering it with a grin on his face, "You're a vicious one aren't you?" He asked in an excited tone of voice, "Got to try harder than that though."

That Itachi was a sly one. If he hadn't known the man he might not have noticed the moment when he switched himself out with a clone. Smooth.

Out from the forest walked Kimimaro with his shirt already set down and ready for battle, sharp bones already extending out of his torso, "I'm aware of both of you, and I hope that you don't think I should fear you because of that. If that is your hope I'm afraid that you are to be sorely disappointed."

"No. It's better this way." The blue-skinned man admitted openly as some of the bandages on his sword fell away to reveal the scales beneath it, "When they're scared they don't really fight. But with the fact that Orochimaru has you so turned around you're going to throw your life away against me, and the fact that Itachi's going off to do something that might cause him to work a bit I've got all the quality time I need to enjoy this battle all the way through."

"You're mistaken." Kimimaro said as long sharp bones extended from his palms, elbows, shoulders, feet, and knees, "Your reputation has you so turned around you're going to throw your life away against me 'Monster of the Mist'. Yanagi no Mai (Dance of the Willow)."

A close range opponent? This really was Kisame's day, he could almost laugh at his good fortune. And against one of Kirigakure's ultimate clan of war during its previously embattled past to boot. The Shikotsumyaku of the Kaguya Clan.

Kimimaro dashed at Kisame suddenly, and without missing a beat Kisame shifted his sword to block him before he could get close. In a blindingly surprising show of agility even for a ninja, Kimimaro stepped one foot on the blade of Kisame's sword and propelled himself into a backflip, the bone extending from his foot being used to cut or stab through his face.

Kisame leaned back out of the way of the attack, barely keeping his nose from being torn from his face as he simultaneously lifted his sword for an upward swing, but that missed the nimble Kimimaro in return who landed on the ground and spun away like a spiky top before coming to a stop in a strange ready stance prepared for round two.

"Feh. Nice taijutsu. It's a little busy though isn't it?" Kisame said as he stripped the rest of the bandages away from his powerful sword, "Sure it's *technically* magnificent. I mean you know how to not trip over your own feet and all, but I doubt you can keep that up for as long as you need to. Eventually I am going to land something and then you'll be like wounded prey in the water." In response, Kimimaro just extended his visible bones even farther.

Kisame was going to find it quite difficult to wound someone like Kimimaro in the conventional manner.

XxX

"Foolish." Itachi said to himself as he left dozens of Otogakure ninjas littering the branches and the ground all around him. He looked like he hadn't broken a sweat to handle them, but then again he never seemed to, "But then again Orochimaru has a penchant for attracting that sort to his cause."

They had broken off from Kimimaro's command to try and prevent him from reaching their base. The enemy had admittedly been better prepared for his genjutsu approach this time around, probably due to his letting the last batch live, but in the end it hadn't taken too much actual effort to defeat them.

He swore that Kisame's Samehada had sensed a more powerful presence amongst the group that had broken off to fight him, but if he whoever it was wasn't going to double team Kisame along with Kimimaro it wasn't important. And that didn't seem to be the case.

He had more than ample amounts of chakra left to subdue Yukimaru when he came across him. A new jinchuuriki was raw and unpredictable, but that was what genjutsu was for; to neutralize the brute force of an adversary.

Since the entire island's location was subtle and discreet, Itachi felt that he could understand why the entrance to the base itself was a gigantic stone snake's mouth.

Knowing Kisame, he was probably going to take his time with Kimimaro since he had been given the green light to fight an enemy like that to a finish for the first time in quite a while. It was fine though. Itachi didn't need his help for something like this anyway.

If history was anything to go by, he was going to be there for a while. That was good. Time was exactly what he needed to get what he wanted out of this mission.

He was going to take his sweet time and wait for everything to line up in his favor. No rush whatsoever as he slowly walked inside of the base without fear. As he did so, from underneath one of the bushes and trees concealing everything from view on the island, a small toad hopped out and back underneath cover elsewhere outside.

XxX

(Elsewhere on the Island)

A successful enemy stronghold infiltration from this end.

Even though Ino seemed to be boring a hole in the back of Anko's head with a glare that could probably weather solid rock, the higher ranking ninja didn't seem to care too much, "Alright, we're in. Hopefully everyone else made it on as well and we're getting some good dirt." She said quietly and in good spirits.

Ino on the other hand was not. Successful infiltration or not, "…You put my body in a snake's belly while I was off in a bird making sure that this island was safe… without my consent. Do you have any idea how gross that was to wake up to?"

"Yes princess I realize that. It's why I didn't get your consent before I did it. It was the easiest way on. We weren't seen, and even if we had been who's going to think a snake is suspicious on an Oto held island?"

"Not the point."

Anko just rolled her eyes as the two continued to move through a stony-cliffed area of the island. There was a steep waterfall nearby that dropped directly into the rocky ocean and they had been checking around there because a waterfall was a good place to hide an entrance or emergency exit. As they gathered intel they needed to make sure all bases were covered for the eventual attack that they were compounding info for.

"Don't be so sensitive." Anko continued with a grin mounting on her face, "You work in the T&I department. I'm sure you've done nastier things than ride in a snake's mouth. And I'm sure you want to do nastier things with-."

"I swear if you finish that sentence with what I think you're going to say I'll take over your body and make you walk through Konoha naked." Ino threatened. And even though it silenced Anko for the time being it didn't pull the grin from her face, "Honestly. You people. And whose business is it anyway-?" A hand held up by Anko as she froze in place stopped Ino completely, "What's the matter?"

Instead of answering at first, Anko grabbed at the Cursed Seal on her neck and turned toward the forest that was near them, "Something that feels familiar is coming this way." She didn't know how she figured that. She wasn't a sensor, and no noise was being made, she just knew, "Not the good kind of familiar either. Hide now."

Both did just that, and it only took another minute or so until a very large young man with wild orange hair strode out of the forest with a small bird on his finger.

He walked around aimlessly as if he was searching for something before holding the bird up to his face to speak to it as it chirped to him, "The people around when you lost control of your body are somewhere here aren't they?" Juugo's eyes looked around until he seemed satisfied despite the fact that there was nothing in sight, "Yes, I can feel the presence of one of my copies nearby, a strong design. My influence is suppressed though."

The bird flew off of Juugo's finger and in the next second his expression turned murderous. His right arm transformed into an ugly, bulky, and grey form with a piston at the elbow that he punched into the ground hard enough to shatter the rock. His piston snapped down simultaneously and drove a crack that trailed straight to the edge of the cliff.

Before it made it there and broke the cliff edge off, both Anko and Ino made it back over. Having chosen over the edge of the cliff as their hiding place, they found having to fight a far better alternative than getting dashed against the rocks in the ocean via a rockslide.

Upon making it over, Anko stopped and stared at Juugo. His body looked a bit like those afflicted with the Cursed Seal, only more stable and natural, "…What the hell is this?" She heard him call her his copy. What did that mean though? And why did he look so pissed off?

"This isn't good is it?" Ino asked aloud, holding up her hands in position to fire her consciousness at the first opportunity it presented itself.

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 4

(Eight Months after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

"Kid I like drinking in the dark as much as the next person…" Jiraiya started to say before he did just as he had been talking about and downed some of his adult beverage as he sat next to Naruto from their place in the corner of a dimly lit bar, "But if you're going to spend your two weeks off drinking you should do it in a gentleman's establishment so we can hang out around some women."

Naruto sat at the table with his head down in his arms as he scrutinized the entrance of the bar with a snort, "Drinking? I'm fourteen." This was said with a lit cigarette hanging idly out of his mouth, "I'm here for training."

Jiraiya looked around at their surroundings and shrugged. A dingy bar at the northwestern border of Hi no Kuni where organized gaming and the acts of the debaucherous reigned supreme. In all actuality it was his kind of place… but some training, "You're going to have to stop getting your ideas for vacation spots from Tsunade-hime. What are you here to train, your tolerance for alcohol? Really… because we can do that if you want."

Anything else that could or would be said was prevented when Naruto saw his target person come through the door of the bar, looking around for something, "Not that kind of training Ero-sensei." With that he got up and Jiraiya's head almost popped out of his head when he saw Naruto get up and go toward this new person.

His fourteen year old brat of an apprentice was walking up to the cutest damn thing in that bar, which admittedly wasn't saying much considering who was in there, but in this case it was. Tanned skin, mint green hair, and a lithe built little body that fit with the somewhat revealing white clothes she wore. And she was at least three or four years older than him.

Shoot for the stars!

"Go brat go!" Jiraiya loudly hissed under his breath as he watched Naruto walk on over to the girl across the bar, "_This_ is the kind of training he was talking about and he didn't even ask me for pointers? I don't know whether to feel proud or slighted that he didn't ask me for advice." The two seemingly talked for a bit before Naruto grinned widely and wrapped the girl up in a hug. Jiraiya then cringed when Naruto got flung by the girl hard enough to fly into the bartender's counter, "Ooh, too forward."

The rest of the bar cared for about five seconds and went back to drinking the afternoon away. Jiraiya figured that at least the girl didn't punch him hard enough to nearly rip his head off of his shoulders like Tsunade. Goodness, were all kunoichi getting stronger like that or what? Jiraiya unconsciously cracked his neck just thinking about it.

Laying upside down, all sorts of askew, Naruto saw an inverted view of Fuu walking toward him.

"You got one of those for helping me earlier this year." Fuu said, hands on her hips as she walked over to the stunned Naruto, "One does not mean hug me once every time you see me. It means once in a lifetime or you get flung to the moon."

Naruto coughed and stood up with a rubber-legged effect to his stance before he got his feet back under him, "Nice to see you too Fuu. Did you make it here alright?"

"Just fine." She said, dusting him off as he got his awareness back under him, "It's a way easier trip for me than it is for you Mr. Guardian Ninja." Getting a letter like that from him was certainly a surprise, "So how much time do you have to train?"

"A week and a half left. It was supposed to be two weeks but it took a few days to get here." Naruto said as he shook any possible dirt off of his guardian sash and adjusted his goggles on his forehead, "How's that work for you? Think you can teach me some jinchuuriki tricks?"

A frown was evident on Fuu's face, but she just waved it off. It was basically supposed to be a crash course with her throwing as much at him as she thought would stick in short order, "That's not enough time for you to get anything concrete down, but I guess we can get started and you can have some exercises down to do on your own." She gestured toward the door and started leaving, "Come on Naruto, let's go make a serviceable jinchuuriki out of you."

Over where he was sitting, Jiraiya heard the girl say that she was 'going to make a _ out of' Naruto, but didn't hear quite what she said from his eavesdropping. When Naruto left with her and turned back to him to give him a thumbs-up, the universal sign for don't wait up, Jiraiya fell out in the floor and almost had a heart attack on the spot, "N-No way!" He wheezed out, "Impossible! I haven't been surpassed yet!"

* * *

**Done. Long-ass AN time, so if you don't care about… anything I do outside of the part that actively entertains you close the window now. Just a warning for anyone not attentive, you're about to waste your time.**

**Alright, so about the ranking thing for the umpteenth time. It is **_**not**_** a basic indicator that someone is going to kick someone's ass should they fight. I don't see why I have to go through this every single time I put up one that seems to raise the hackles of some people that take it far too seriously. It makes me have to do things like this to explain my reasoning. Not cool.**

**The topic of point this time being Mei in comparison to Kimimaro and how I put them both at 32. Note how a five is the **_**maximum score allowed under the system**_** for the simple logical reason that the scale has to max out somewhere. Just because two people are fives does not mean that they are equal in a certain department. It is because 5 is as high as it goes. Come on now, it's not that difficult a concept.**

**Ninjutsu: Both of them are a 5. Whoo, someone call the cops, what a crime. Kimimaro is a five because his Shikotsumyaku kekkei genkai is versatile and strong in combat, very strong (see instant forest of bone spikes). The same is true for both of Mei's kekkei genkai techniques and her water release, hence the damn 5. But she has two different bloodline techniques and strong water release, so what do you want her to have, a goddamn 15? She can beat him in straightforward ninjutsu anyway because she uses lava and acidic vapor that can melt his bones, and bones are the crux of Kimimaro's ninjutsu repertoire.**

**Taijutsu: Kimimaro is flat out better, period, end of discussion. I'm saying that with full 100 percent confidence. Give me one good reason that he wouldn't be even without the three years after Itachi's scare tactic of a warning against Orochimaru and by default Kimimaro as well, inspiring him to get better. What? Bad guys can't train too? Only good guys get any better at anything?**

**Genjutsu: Who cares? Neither of them use any so it doesn't f'n matter. We all know that in the instance of these two fighting it would be a landscape-changing ninjutsu battle, let's not pretend otherwise. Mei's better even though she doesn't use any just off of the fact that she is a Kage which holds a lot of weight. Next.**

**Intelligence: Kimimaro is not combat-stupid, but once again Mei = Kage. No brainer. I suppose she could have gotten a five instead of four and a half, but I've never seen her plan anything exactly so I wouldn't know where she stacks up in that department. If we were ranking the Raikage here though he wouldn't even have gotten a 4 from what I've seen of him. Seriously I like him but damn. Anyway, next.**

**Strength: Mei does not seem that physically strong from what I've seen, but Kimimaro is only overwhelmingly strong when he taps into his seal so they both get 3s.**

**Speed: Kimimaro is wicked fast. Mei's fast too from what I've seen, but I perceive Kimimaro as faster since he specializes in taijutsu. For God's sake he helped Orochimaru kill the Kazekage and his bodyguards when he was fully healthy. That means something. **

**Stamina: Not just chakra, not just vitality. It is also the ability to take punishment, it is durability. Do I really need to say anything else? Let's move on then, I'm wasting word space.**

**Hand-Seals: People scoff at this one, but since the vast majority of techniques are activated by the damn things they must be pretty damn vital to know. Seeing as how Itachi was famous for people not even being able to see his hands move and that was something notable I rest with that. Anyway, Mei's significantly better because I never see Kimimaro use any damn hand-seals for any of his moves.**

**This being said, it is all irrelevant though. Mei would still whip Kimimaro's ass in a fight no question about it. He can't beat her. It's that simple. She can counter anything he does. I'd love to see him take being buried in lava the way he took being buried in Gaara's sand. Let's see how that would work out for him. Or how about taking a face full of acid that would melt his skull no matter how hard it was.**

**As mentioned at the top of this long rant that you probably wasted two minutes of your life that you'll never get back reading: the scores aren't an indicator of who can beat who. All 30s and up are not created equal.**

**Okay, so after all of that we're to the violent part. Three cheers for written violence between fictional characters? Yeah cheering for violence after the retarded crap that happened at the midnight opening to the Batman movie in Colorado is kind of screwed up so nevermind.**

**Enough from me. It's the Urijah Faber vs. Renan Barao UFC ppv tonight and I'm going to find takers to gamble on Hector Lombard vs. Tim Boesch fight because I can see myself winning some money off of that one.**

**Hopefully the next time you hear from me I'll have a fuller pocket than my paycheck would normally allow. Kenchi out.  
**


	49. Blood in the Water

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I consider myself something of a drug dealer. My drug is fanfiction, and business is booming to the extent that I might as well be a damn cartel kingpin at this point.

And wasn't that some cocky b.s. to say?

Oh… and drugs are bad. Most of them anyway.

**Chapter 49: Blood in the Water**

* * *

"Never again." Suigetsu hissed at Naruto quietly in the dingy light of the Otogakure base that he, Naruto, and Haku were all inside of, "Don't you ever make me do something like that again. That was completely gross." They had managed to infiltrate the island after breaking off from the others via the inside of one of Naruto's toads.

"Shut up." Naruto replied, gesturing to Haku, "She was cool with it, and consider it payback for trying to attack me when we first met you jerk." Honestly, he had a toad jutsu that could obstruct their chakra from within and protect them from being detected and Suigetsu was more concerned with how nasty it was.

"You shouldn't treat animals like that either man, that's cruel. I'm sure it was uncomfortable."

"That's what he's meant to do! And I give the toads stuff all the time out of gratitude!"

Haku shushed both of them before they could continue arguing any further. Focus was needed because they were deep in the belly of the enemy now. It was surprising that they hadn't run into any enemies yet, since the last one of these that had been discovered by Kiri had been teeming with bad guys, but as much as she didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth it would have been pure negligence not to.

"What should we do from here on out?" Haku asked her current teammates as they moved through the halls, "Naruto-kun can you feel any life in here?"

A frowning Naruto shook his head, "Not a chance. Too many walls in the way to get a feeling past a few feet. Maybe if I had to feel something behind a wall in a room right next to me, but it's like an anthill down here, just a bunch of tunnels." The sonar effect of his sensory jutsu was affected by walls.

"Real smooth Konoha kid."

"I will suplex you on your head." Naruto said to Suigetsu following his remark until they came to multiple splits in an open corridor. What was with the whole labyrinth thing that this place had going on? Did they set this place up to travel underneath the whole island?

Four directions. One to the prisons, one to the barracks, one to the labs, one back the way they came. And Uchiha Itachi had gone down one of these paths because Naruto's toad had seen that he had beaten them there. And since he hadn't ambushed them yet it was the only option.

"Okay…" With a sigh Naruto crouched down to one knee on the ground to take a minute to think. It was a different style, but it was a little something he had inherited from working with Shikamaru so much and watching him stop in the middle of a mission to plan, "How long did you say it would be until your message gets to those ANBU waiting on us?"

According to what Haku and Suigetsu had told the team on the way there, the ANBU that the Mizukage dispatched to support them would have to remain in definite Mizu no Kuni lands until they were summoned as ANBU couldn't be risked being discovered in disputed territories like the southern islands. The moment their boat came into view of the appropriate island, Haku sent off a messenger hawk that they had taken with them.

That had been thirty minutes ago, "Another hour until the strike force arrives I believe." Haku informed Naruto, knowing how fast the hawk she had taken for the mission was, "I don't think we should hold up and wait though." Because their secondary mission deemed that they had to return with the jinchuuriki of the Sanbi. If they waited they would probably miss their window to obtain him before Akatsuki did.

"Well then we'll have to search to make sure we can trap these guys in here." Suigetsu said, taking Kubikiribouchou from his back and pointing down one of the pathways, "We'll look down these things one by one, but someone needs to stay here because I think this is a good choke point."

Naruto was about to suggest using clones to sweep the area but realized that in a close quarters environment like this his clones wouldn't do too well without space to move around and avoid being damaged. And trying to fix that by sending them in en masse would only end terribly.

If she were here Guren would cut a swatch straight through them with her crystal release without even having to try, and Itachi would only have to fire one decently sized fireball down a tunnel and he'd wipe them all out. As far as he knew between both Haku and Suigetsu's abilities they could deal with the flames, and if they were weak they'd have never been dispatched to do this mission.

He'd have to trust in his comrades to handle themselves, "I don't like the idea of splitting everybody up more than we already are… but an hour's too long to wait for backup." Naruto stood back up and shook his head, "Okay. You guys can check these three tunnels one-by-one, I'll keep this spot locked down."

"Holler if you're about to die." Suigetsu quipped as he and Haku took off running down the path leading to the barracks, "We'll be right back if we get wind of something."

As they left him behind, Naruto let out a sigh and decided to try and find a place to hide and get the drop on anyone that might wind up coming his way, just in case, "…People from Kirigakure are weird."

XxX

(Elsewhere on the Island – Kimimaro vs. Kisame)

"Hold still punk!" Kisame demanded as Kimimaro seemed to dodge every swing of Samehada, even in some of the most inescapable positions. It wasn't a just a matter of speed despite the fact that Kimimaro really was that much faster than he was, it was the general flexibility that the abnormal body possessed by the Oto ninja that made him so hard to make contact with, "Damn taijutsu virtuosos…"

The way Kimimaro was dodging was incredible. It seemed as if he didn't even have a spine at times, because that was the way he had to bend himself from time to time to avoid being cut into two. But he wasn't long enough to take advantage of this and respond by stabbing or slashing at the blue-skinned man with the bones sticking out all over his body. The length that Samehada gave Kisame in terms of his attacks was simply staggering.

Kimimaro backflipped on his hands out of range of one of Kisame's attacks and pointed his hand at him fingers first, "Teshi Sendan (Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets)!" From his fingertips flew small bone projectiles with the consistency of metal. He was using only one hand instead of two, but there was a murderous rate of fire being sent out Kisame's way, uncountable as bones were being replaced and shot out.

Samehada was set down straight up on the ground and fed chakra straight from Kisame's body, shirking off some of the bandages that covered it allowing more scales to show through. It grew a bit, allowing Kisame to take refuge behind it to protect him from being shot and riddled with bone bullets by Kimimaro, "Heh, I can't tell whether I hate this guy or I like him." He said while holding onto a snake hand-seal to build his chakra properly for his next move.

From his slight distance away where he was trying to slowly move around Samehada to target Kisame, Kimimaro still had his one hand outstretched to fire at the nearest availability to gun his foe down, "It doesn't matter what other people in the world seem to believe you to be. Even if someone like you is perceived as S-rank, all that makes you to me is S-ranked trash."

And when it came to dealing with the trash of the shinobi world, Kimimaro would count no one better than him in that department.

"Suiton: Bakusui Shouha (Water Release: Exploding Water Colliding Wave)!"

Kisame turned his head from around the cover provided to him by his trusty sword and opened his mouth to let loose a torrent of water as if someone had just opened a set of floodgates. A massive wave started advancing toward Kimimaro who found that he couldn't outrun it and wound up being swept off of his feet as Kisame seemed to ride the current. The engulfed Kimimaro was left a sitting duck as Kisame passed near him.

With a chuckle and a massive grunt of effort, Kisame finally managed to strike heavily at Kimimaro and slashed at him repeatedly in the water before he was carried past him by the water, "Finally got you! Your fancy little moves don't work when you can't even stand on your own two feet do they?"

Much to Kisame's displeasure however, Kimimaro's lifeless body didn't float up to the surface of the newly made lake. He climbed out and stood on the surface of the water, clothes shredded to tatters and flesh rendered to the same state via the scales on Samehada. While he was a bloody mess, underneath the surface of his flesh there was a white shell.

"Oh…" Kisame said, seemingly annoyed by what he saw, "That's right. That damn Kaguya kekkei genkai lets you do anything with bones." Even create an armor of bone beneath his skin. That was going to make him annoying to kill. Thank goodness it was a rarity even within Kimimaro's lineage, "Yeah, I'm from Kiri, I should have thought about that."

In his defense though, Kimimaro was the only one that had been noted to have it in well over a decade.

That's not to say that he wasn't up for the challenge though. He was quite certain that if it came down to it he could make that young man's body break somehow, and if all else failed he had never heard of a tough skeleton keeping someone from drowning.

From Kimimaro's point of view though, things had taken a turn for the negative. With all of this water around, Kisame's repertoire of techniques available to him doubled. Even so he would not be deterred. This battle was far from unwinnable.

"You think transforming our area of battle to your liking puts you at that much of an advantage do you?" Kimimaro asked, casting away the remnants of his shirt, leaving his mangled upper body bare, "You underestimate my power."

Cruelly smirking in return, Kisame gestured for Kimimaro to come toward him with his hand, "Come show me then boy, or are you just mostly talk like your master was?"

From the small seal mark on his clavicle, black marks began to spread all across Kimimaro's body as he glared hatefully at Kisame, "A worthless, traitorous brute such as yourself would know nothing of the things that Orochimaru-sama desires to achieve. One day he will crush you Akatsuki fools, and with the very power that you seek for yourselves." And he was going to be right there by his side, leading the way and drenching the path in the blood of his master's enemies.

Kisame opened his mouth to make a snide remark, but when Kimimaro moved whatever he had to say died in his throat as he had to block a thunderous kick from Kimimaro that sent him sliding back across the surface of the water.

So this was what those freaky seals that Orochimaru's top pawns possessed did to them? Interesting. That chakra seemed to be getting Samehada a bit excited. Well he would simply have to indulge it then.

He didn't have much time to ponder however when Kimimaro didn't let just one kick be the end of things. As Kisame slid back, Kimimaro ran and kept pace alongside him, sharp bones extended from his torso and legs as he began to spin like a top once he moved past the sword that Kisame had just used to block his first kick.

Samehada automatically bent itself to protect Kisame's side, but Kimimaro nimbly jumped directly over the weapon trying to defend its wielder and delivered a brutal kick directly to Kisame's face that sent him skipping across the surface of the water like a stone on a pond.

"Do the world a favor and die." Kimimaro said coldly as he pursued his adversary's body to follow up on his opening.

Kisame flipped himself back upright and as the entire time he had been making hand-seals while flying away. The second he got back on his feet he finished his last two and slammed palm on the ground, "Suiton: Amesuikouha (Water Release: Rain Water Shark Wave)!" He slapped a large amount of water into the air that fell and formed into multiple small sharks for an aerial bombardment.

Not willing to hang back any, Kimimaro destroyed the sharks with rapid-fire shots of his finger bullets, but had to cover up as best he could when he realized that even when destroyed he simply couldn't directly move through this attack. The water droplets formed from the destroyed sharks fell onto him and cut at his flesh like tiny blades.

Still moving forward, unwilling to let his advantage fade, Kimimaro put his arms down from his face just in time to see Samehada incoming from above that he then had to take while holding his forearms up as a method of flimsy protection.

Kisame slammed Samehada down on Kimimaro with a jumping overhand slash that drove up a splash fifteen feet high. His body probably cratered the floor that was only twenty feet down, "No way you're dancing your way out of this one twinkletoes! Suiton: Suikoudan no Jutsu (Water Release: Water Shark Bullet Jutsu)!" In the water a shark was formed from part of the lake that went down after Kimimaro.

Beneath the waves Kisame could see his shark snatching up something and chewing away on it, thrashing it around and maiming it in its powerful jaws. No matter how strong someone's body was, good luck standing up to a shark's bite.

But as the jutsu-comprised shark dissipated, there was no blood where the body was starting to drop to the lake floor. And why wasn't it floating to the surface?

No. It couldn't be a tangible clone that he replaced himself with. Clones were supposed to dispel when taking a certain amount of damage, and how much more damage could you deal someone than having a shark go to town on them?

Feeling a presence behind him due to Samehada's ability to feel the intense chakra radiating from the cursed seal, Kisame turned around to see Kimimaro rise from the water, completely unharmed, with his attack attempt neutralized due to being felt, "What in the world was that? You keep copses on you just to substitute?"

"That was no dead body." Kimimaro stated cryptically.

A confused Kisame stared at him until he felt something grab him around the ankles. Looking down he saw two pairs of bony hands holding onto his legs, leaving him a sitting duck. Now that the figure was closer and more visible, it was apparent that his shark had attacked a skeleton. Kimimaro's skeleton to be exact. And there had been another one down there.

That had to be the freakiest thing ever. A true skeleton, animated by Kimimaro's chakra and toughened by his kekkei genkai to the durability of steel.

"You are the sickest kid I've ever-." Kisame started to state dryly before he was dragged underwater by Kimimaro's skeleton and wrapped up tightly, leaving Samehada floating on the surface.

A scoff came from Kimimaro as he made to leave before noticing Samehada. He slowly walked over to it and picked it up by the handle before spikes jutted out of the grip and tried to impale his hand, only managing to break the skin.

The real threat though was the fact that it was trying to suck out his chakra, and Kimimaro threw away the wretched weapon as if he were touching nothing but filth. He planned on bringing that weapon into the Oto fold as a gift for Orochimaru, but if it was really that picky about its users to the point that it wouldn't even let him hold it then it was worthless to them.

Besides, it would have to choose a new wielder soon enough because even though Kisame looked like a fish, he was still a man, and being held down by his animated skeletons that were just as strong as him he would drown before they ran out of the chakra that allowed them to move.

XxX

Underneath the water, Kisame grew angrier and angrier as he tried to struggle against Kimimaro's clones trying to keep their death holds on him. He couldn't move his hands to make any hand-seals and even if he could there wasn't anything down there that he could substitute himself with.

They had managed to drag him to the bottom of the lake that he himself had created due to the sheer density of their bone structure, weighing him down with how they had his arms and legs bound.

'To hell with this crap.' These things were allowed to move due to the visible chakra running through them. Well he didn't need Samehada to absorb chakra. All he needed was a water source and contact. He had both. Pulling the chakra straight out of Kimimaro's skeletons, they fell uselessly to the side and freed him up, 'The little shit!'

Kimimaro had already started walking away as if he had been leaving Kisame for dead. That upset him like nothing else. Who did he think he was? With that in mind, underwater Kisame decided to roll through hand-seals and show Kimimaro just how 'dead' he was.

'Suiton: Daibakufu no Jutsu (Water Release: Great Waterfall Jutsu)!'

XxX

Now back on regular land again after leaving Kisame behind to die, Kimimaro was thoroughly on his way back to the hidden base to take care of Itachi before he got there, but stopped and turned around when he heard the sound of crashing water weaving its way through the trees.

Without saying another word, he turned and ran away from the sound as fast as he could as a massive wave came his way, high enough to break some of the flimsier trees up at their heights.

Even with his best efforts, there wasn't going to be any outrunning that water once it decided to descend and crash down the way it looked like it was going to, and Kimimaro knew it. But he didn't have to run that far. At the risk of dead-ending himself, Kimimaro ran towards a cliff wall with a small fissure in the rock. A death trap in a situation like this, as once the water hit it, it simply pushed on through.

He ran until he finally reached a small opening in the ground and slid for home, depositing himself inside before he could be effectively smashed to oblivion by the raging waves against the rocks and the cliff walls around him.

XxX

Asuma, Shikamaru, and Yamato were all thoroughly soaked and panting heavily at what they had just managed to avoid thanks in part to some quick thinking and the special abilities of Yamato. When a wave began pouring through the forest they were getting recon on, the Mokuton saved their collective asses and allowed them to ride it out.

"What the hell just happened?" Asuma asked, a bit bewildered at what he had just dealt with. There hadn't been any warning or anything. Who had discovered them? They had been very quiet as they moved along and hadn't come across a hostile soul yet.

Shikamaru spit out a good amount of water and dragged a hand down his drenched face with a scowl replacing it afterwards, "I don't know why you're asking us. We were right here with you the whole time. No one else saw anything you didn't Asuma."

Taking note of the fact that the team was alright, Yamato just shook his head at Asuma beginning to bemoan the loss of the pack of cigarettes he had stashed in the pocket of his flak jacket, "There's a chance that one of the other teams were discovered and that was an attack from that battle."

"Or…" Shikamaru said in return, "Maybe Akatsuki is already here? Naruto said that they were supposed to be on the way too, just like we were." He should have stayed on the ship. But then again, his friends were there and his sensei was too. No way he'd let them walk onto that rock of doom without him, "So what's the call taichou?"

Yamato already had a plan of action, as they were only meant to observe and report to the Kiri ANBU team when they finally arrived within the hour, but he heard the splitting of a tree over in the direction that the wave had come from and turned that way to see something fast coming their way, "Scatter!"

Through the trees there was a path being made that seemed to be turning the ground into some kind of fluid, making it easy for whatever was inside of it to pass through it and toward the Konoha group quickly, as if it cutting straight through.

Appropriate because Samehada was sticking out of the ground like a shark fin sticking out of the ocean as it moved inside of the jutsu. After getting close enough, Kisame burst from the ground up at the evading Yamato, spinning like a top and intending to slash through him had Yamato not been quick to act with three hand-seals that he had prepared the moment he became aware of the threat, "Moku Bunshin no Jutsu (Wood Clone Jutsu)!"

A wooden dummy emerged from Yamato's body in front of him and was then rendered to splinters by the attack of Kisame, but that was what it had been meant for the entire time so that Yamato could get himself farther away from their new assailant.

"Heh." Kisame looked around at Yamato, Shikamaru, and Asuma who were all ready to fight in their own particular ways, "Well I was looking for some Oto punk that tried to cut loose from me before we were done, but when Samehada started searching for him you guys where what we felt closest." The scales on the massive sword twitched and Kisame looked over at Yamato, "Samehada really likes the cut of your chakra friend."

All of them took note of the red clouds on Kisame's black cloak, and all of them knew of Kisame's description from the bingo books. It was obvious to anyone ninja-savvy who he was. He didn't have features that were hard to distinguish.

With what stood before them, Asuma voiced the concern that all three of the Konoha ninjas felt at the same time, "Crap…"

"I'm not sure, but I think I'd rather have to fight Uchiha Itachi." Shikamaru commented as things seemed to have slowed to a bit of a standoff.

This was not a mere standoff though. While Kisame would never dazzle anyone with his general intellect, he was one of the greatest shinobi ever produced by Kirigakure, and he got to that level with an intellect molded for the battlefield, 'I'm facing a Nara that probably won't fight me directly, Sarutobi Asuma who could be a bit of a threat here, and Mokuton no Tenzo… enough said.' He thought about his chances for a split second before grinning sharply, "I like these odds."

Itachi could handle capturing the Sanbi. If Kimimaro retreated to the base he would just wind up getting himself killed anyway.

Great, so there was going to be a fight regardless.

"That makes one of us." Shikamaru quipped before feigning a move forward. Instead of him stepping forth, Asuma was the first to lead the way in attacking Kisame. Trench knives in hand he was set to launch a punching attack that Kisame seemed prepared to defend against before at the last second he jumped over Asuma's head out of the way completely.

"Wind chakra eh?" Kisame remarked as he avoided the move, "Thought you could try to get me with an invisible blade at the end of those knives of yours? It would have gone right around Samehada's guard." Once his feet touched the ground he immediately set himself after Shikamaru, "Best to kill of the brain first!"

"Doton: Doryuusou (Earth Release: Earth Flow Spears)!"

Spikes shot out of the ground and diverted Kisame's path away from Shikamaru who moved seamlessly with the opening presented to him. Making the rat seal he quickly snaked his shadow through the spikes and wound up getting Kisame in a trapped position. Asuma moved to immediately close in for the kill the moment that Shikamaru immobilized him.

It was not to be though, as Kisame stabbed the top of Samehada right into the ground to cut Shikamaru's shadow before it attached to his own. Much to Shikamaru's surprise it actually worked, and Kisame immediately turned around and punched the attacking Asuma in the face before he could behead him.

The fact that Samehada could absorb chakra wasn't exactly a mystery to those that were studious enough to know of such a dangerous man's abilities, but Shikamaru never knew that it could do such a thing to the chakra that allowed his shadow to stretch, 'His sword can cut through chakra-based techniques even if the chakra's been nature transformed…'

Asuma was floored from the shot and sent flying back from the impact of the punch. His body rolled about on the ground until he came to a stop and looked up at Kisame with a wince and a heavily swollen jaw, "Oh man… I haven't been punched like that in a long time."

Gritting his teeth at their difficult enemy, Shikamaru switched his rat hand-seal to a bird one and altered his shadow ninjutsu, "Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!" The shadow that had been cut off by Samehada warped into several sharp tendrils and sped at Kisame again to try and get an angle on him to stab into him.

"No chance kid!" Kisame began dexterously fending off Shikamaru's shadow threads with Samehada. The sword managed to cut through them, but it did nothing to keep the attack from continuing, as more shadow stretched from where he had cut them, "You're not getting around my guard and Samehada is having a good day eating your chakra like this!"

'Damn it.' Shikamaru pulled his shadow back, looking a bit winded, 'He wasn't just stealing the chakra I was putting into the attack.' So how was he going to detain him then? His shadow was not working here. As long as Kisame had a hold of Samehada even if he managed to latch his shadow onto the other man's, Samehada being in his hand made the sword's shadow a part of his own.

And that was basically the same as touching it.

Yamato had been scrutinizing the scene near Shikamaru and noticed the look of tension on the younger man's face, "What's on your mind Shikamaru?"

"As long as he's got that sword I can't get him." If Kisame could defend against his Kage Nui that just outright stabbed him, and regular shadow possession didn't work, something had to change or he was no good in this battle, "There's not much I can do from here."

Yamato saw Asuma get back up, ready to fight again after getting his clock cleaned just a moment ago, "Yes there is. I believe in you, you're smart. Just watch us while we fight him. You'll find an opening. I know you will." Looking over at Shikamaru he saw the genius glaring at him over his plan of action, "I know you hate being put in situations where someone has to get hurt for you to find an advantage, but in ANBU you don't always have the luxury of saving everyone. I know you can do it, and Asuma does too."

"…"

"Would it help you if I said that this was a direct order?"

"Troublesome…"

Not waiting for an actual answer, Yamato went to go and fight Kisame along with Asuma, locking eyes with his fellow jounin to let the man know that it was time to attack. He got a grim nod in response and both of them looked over at Shikamaru almost unnoticeably.

But Shikamaru did notice, and he had to bite back a groan. He really was going to have to wait for his shot wasn't he?

XxX

(With Ino and Anko)

Just because her abilities dealt with the mind more often than not, this didn't mean that Ino had to be the one to deal with the crazies. But here she and Anko stood, facing off with some lunatic by themselves… by a huge cliff.

"So should we, I don't know, run?" Ino said quietly to Anko nearby.

Well it was just supposed to be a reconnaissance mission. The real fighting wasn't supposed to take place at least until the ANBU team arrived from their position within Mizu no Kuni's undisputed borders.

"I don't think this guy is much for letting people get away." Anko's words were then echoed when Juugo seemed to be tired of just staring at his prey and made to make his move on them, "He's a big one though, isn't he?" She asked rhetorically before both she and Ino had to separate to avoid being impaled when his right arm transformed into a bulky, grey multipronged spear that jutted out at them.

Upon clearing Juugo's attempt to skewer them, Ino saw that the large and unstable young man was seemingly targeting Anko as his priority in this battle, at least for now. Who knew what he'd do later? But for the time being she could take advantage of that.

Risking getting close enough to hit him with Shintenshin no Jutsu or Shinranshin no Jutsu was a no-no for now. Not until she was certain one or the other would land, and she wasn't about to project her spirit at a time like this. Not without certainty that her actual body would be safe.

But she had other avenues of attack. She just had to make sure she had a clear line that would avoid Anko first.

"Dokusei Tanki-sha (Toxic Spitfire)!" Ino shot multiple rapid-fire black balls of some sort of fluid from her mouth at Juugo. The poison projectiles missed, but the area on the ground where they hit started to melt, "Damn it, how'd I miss him? He's huge!" And he managed to dodge her jutsu while focusing on getting nearer and nearer to Anko.

After making a pair of hand-seals and jabbing out with a hand, snakes flew from inside of Anko's coat sleeve right at the advancing Juugo, "Sen'eijashu (Hidden Shadow Snake Hands)!"

He merely cleaved the serpents away and kept coming toward his target, not willing to let her live any longer than it took to kill her, "Die! Die! Die! Die!"

Anko meanwhile was grateful that Juugo's attacks were so slow. His right arm was now an axe and he seemed dead set on splitting her into two, but he found it quite difficult to make contact with her. Hate him or not, the simple lessons that Orochimaru taught her as a child held strong; if you get hit you die, so don't get hit. Yeah, he was the best at that.

She managed to retaliate with a punch to the face to make him cease his assault, but it was like punching a rhinoceros when her fist smacked off of the grey flesh on the right side of his face. Seriously, it felt like leather and it didn't even faze him. It just left her open for the tank of a man's large ax arm to cut down on her.

With no chance at moving out of the way it was left to Ino to tackle her out of the way as the weapon split the ground, "Ugh…" Anko groaned as she was pulled back up to her feet, "Why didn't you take him out?"

With a roll of her eyes, Ino set herself back at the ready to fight alongside her senior kunoichi, "Right, because stopping you from getting axed was the wrong move and all." A damn thank you would have been nice, but of course that wasn't Anko's style.

"Whatever." Anko said, dusting her overcoat off as best she could, "We're going to need to hit him together to put this guy down." Yeah, definitely. Working in tandem would definitely take this guy down. For all of that size of his he wasn't exactly the fastest.

Many engine propulsion-like protrusions formed on Juugo's back that began building chakra before he suddenly rocketed himself directly at both Anko and Ino, plowing his entire body into them both and bulldozing them off of their feet, sending them flying toward the cliffside, "Both of you die already!"

Both ladies slid over the edge, seemingly falling into the rocky ocean to their deaths. Just to make sure though, Juugo walked to the edge and looked down to see nothing hanging onto the side, nothing sticking to the walls on the way down. He really knocked the wind out of their sails when he plowed into them.

His partial transformations faded and the killer expression on Juugo's face faded, going back to the normal and peaceful look that usually accompanied him. There was a bit of remorse in his eyes, but these people were there to try and harm Kimimaro or Yukimaru, and this was to help his friend.

As unfortunate as it was that they had to die, if nothing else at least his bloodlust was sated against people that were supposed to be enemies anyway instead of against allies.

Turning away from the cliff and walking back to the forest nearby he resolved that he had to get back to the base. These were not the Akatsuki members that Guren had warned them of, which meant that they were still at large as a threat.

Juugo found his legs ensnared by a pair of hands wrapped around his large ankles, keeping him from leaving the area, "Doton: Shinjuu Zanshu no Jutsu (Earth Release: Double Suicide Decapitation Jutsu)!"

While yanking Juugo underground, Anko pulled herself back above ground with Ino in tow. Both of them looked extremely ruffled from the nasty impact they suffered from Juugo's attack, Anko favoring one of her arms that she now held at her side and both breathing heavily.

A confused Juugo was still wondering what happened, barely given any time at all to register his newfound lack of freedom when a needle was placed in his neck that shut his systems down in a matter of seconds.

Anko looked down at Juugo as he nodded off and turned toward Ino, "I was going to just break his neck, but that works too I guess." She placed her foot on the top of his head and shook his head around, "What was with this guy?"

Ino just shrugged in confusion and looked down at Juugo as well until things grew too silent and she realized that Anko was looking at her expectantly, "What? You want me to find out? Do you know how long that could take?" A smiling Anko was all the answer she needed, "Fine… I should have been a medic."

Not saying a word, Anko placed a hand on her neck where her seal was located, "Focus on looking for memories that have to do with the Cursed Seals until we get summoned to meet back up with the others. I'll keep guard."

Obeying the request of her superior with a nod, Ino kneeled down and placed a hand on the unconscious Juugo's head to begin sifting through his memories. At least he didn't have any blocks on his mind the way that Guren had. This wouldn't take that long then.

But due to the fact that his hands were concealed underground, neither of them noticed that only after a few seconds of being subjugated to Ino's poison, Juugo's fingers twitched.

XxX

(Inside of the Otogakure Base – Laboratory)

Itachi looked through a distorted set of clean beakers placed in a row according to content size on a table. He had come to that portion of the base in order to search for the jinchuuriki that Orochimaru had created for the Sanbi; Yukimaru. Given Orochimaru's penchant for experimentation it wouldn't have surprised him to find the boy strapped to a table and sedated for docility.

But the area was empty. The lab had samples of blood, strange machines with massive wires running from the tops of them that seemed to have chakra samples coursing through them, and many other things. However it also seemed as if no one had been there in months. Apparently the lab was off limits to everyone other than an extremely select few.

Interesting. So that had to mean that Orochimaru hadn't been there in a few months. He probably found it too bothersome to come all the way out there himself those days now that his human trafficking system was set to ferry people back to the mainland from Mizu no Kuni. There was nothing there that he could use though. Damn it, Orochimaru wasn't much for working on things that were medical.

Either way, the target wasn't there.

Well… the intended target wasn't there at least.

"Hello Naruto-kun." Itachi said, not even bothering to turn to the entrance of the open room to address the blond chunin standing there. He wasn't being attacked, so there wasn't much reason to attack in return, "Are you certain that it was wise to come and confront me here?"

Naruto just remained in place where Itachi had discovered him, his goggles down over his eyes in preparation for a conflict, "Well process of elimination. There are friends of mine checking another place in the base which left this part and the jail area, and I sent a clone that way to leave this part for myself."

"Why didn't you send a clone here as well?"

"I did. It found you. I'm not going to make a clone to fight you and blow my cover. I know who you are."

Itachi was amused, but one couldn't tell from the look on his face. It looked just as stony as always, "I wonder why I was able to sense you and not your clone then." Naruto just shrugged in response, "It doesn't matter. You are not our target here. You should wait and take your time to prepare for what will inevitably be coming your way." Was he warning him?

Even so, whether he was or not, Naruto didn't want to have to hear any of that, "I've been preparing for years already." Naruto said, slowly lowering himself to prepare for a fight, "If I'm not ready by now then I guess I just wasn't good enough." Admittedly though, Naruto had better ideas in the past than taking on someone like this, "It doesn't matter, because when you came back the way you got here to begin with we would have fought then."

With a raised eyebrow, Itachi took Naruto's words into account before paying attention to something else, "Are you looking into my eyes right now? That is a grave mistake."

"These lenses are special." Naruto tapped the sides of his goggles, "I've done a lot of work on these for years, and put a chakra dampening seal on them… so that I could definitely kick your brother's ass when we fight again." If you suck at genjutsu why go there? Hide it and avoid it coming into play altogether.

Naruto could break them, but he hated it and the chance of getting stuck in one from mere eye contact was a pain that he just didn't need. Luckily as a kid Sasuke wasn't much for the eye tricks, but as he got older and stronger he would be, and they were still rivals that hadn't fought it out in a definite match yet, something that was still pretty important to Naruto.

This was before he knew that the only other remaining Uchiha Clan member alive was in Akatsuki. Now he felt like a damn prophet for modifying his eyewear. Kami knows that it took long enough to work down the necessary seal to the size it needed to be for each lens without blocking his actual vision.

"You're friends with Sasuke?" Itachi asked, seeming actually interested in something that Naruto said for the first time since they'd met up. He got a sheepish rubbing of the back of Naruto's own neck in response, "So I'd take that as a no."

Hey, it was kind of complicated, "Well we are, but we don't really act like it." There had to be a word created for that kind of thing. It would help him explain it better, "I mean we have our moments. We don't hate each other, I think, but are dead-set on proving that we're better than each other." Come to think of it he hadn't seen that bastard since he'd come back to Konoha.

Nodding in understanding at what Naruto was saying, Itachi deactivated his Sharingan to Naruto's confusion, "I think you'll find that all Uchiha are not created alike. I fight nothing like my brother. I'm certain of it."

'He turned his Sharingan off?' Naruto thought to himself. Damn it, he was banking on random up close flashes of his sonar jutsu to throw Itachi off. It was the template for battling doujutsu users that he'd set up back as a kid. While it would bother a Sharingan user instead of flashbanging a Byakugan user, it was still a weapon and an advantage he had held. But not if Itachi was willing to fight him without it, "You might need that to beat me."

"We'll see." Itachi said before he threw dozens of shuriken at Naruto, utterly shocking him with the raw hand speed displayed. It was as if his hands hadn't even moved from his side. It wasn't even enough time for Naruto to draw his machete to parry, he had to actually move and dodge the metal projectiles, "What a strange weapon."

Almost freezing up in sheer shock, Naruto still managed to jump as far away as he could, turning around to find Itachi at his back, 'That was incredible! Even Ero-sensei isn't that fast!' He didn't even allow Naruto the time to muster a counter-effort after missing with his shuriken. Naruto put his hand up to take his machete from his back, but Itachi was right in his face before he even touched the handle.

His hand lashed out like lightning for Naruto's neck, but Naruto's reflexes and experience with people trying to overpower him in the past allowed him to catch Itachi's wrist short of his hand grasping his throat. Naruto held tight in an iron grip that Itachi couldn't pull away from.

Once more, surprising Naruto with his speed, Itachi lashed out with a kunai utilizing his free hand that Naruto had to lean back and let go to avoid. He never even saw Itachi reach for or draw the weapon, and it came before Naruto could even make a fight-ending move. Itachi managed to lash out with a kick to the chest that hit Naruto and knocked both combatants away from each other, spinning from the separate impacts before they faced off again.

Finally given an opening to draw his weapon of choice, Naruto pulled out his machete and went forward to attack Itachi head-on, but when he didn't move to dodge or react Naruto stopped his approach and leapt away just as Itachi blew up, "Exploding clones! Oh you bastard." He almost got too close to avoid that move.

Retreating from the laboratory, Naruto made his way back down the hall and found Itachi not far behind him. Naruto let out a pulse of his sonar jutsu to make sure that Itachi had his Sharingan deactivated before jumping off of a side wall in the corridor and turning to face him after concealing his hand-seals, "Moegara Nagare no Jutsu (Cinder Stream Jutsu)!"

Naruto spewed a billowing cloud of hot ash from his mouth directly at Itachi who had no way to go around the attack due to the constrictive hallway that they were in. There was no advancing his way from the lab for Itachi. Not unless he wanted to be burned to the bone.

A lack of further pursuit prompted Naruto to turn around and venture a daring move, spinning his machete like a fan blade, "Suishinki Haretsu Bunkatsu-sen (Propeller Burst Splitter)!" With wind chakra he blew the ash in Itachi's direction, placing some slicing force behind the gale as a little extra for him. His offensive rush ended when a flock of crows flew through the ash and the wind past Naruto.

But following them there came a large fireball that filled the hallway and flew directly toward Naruto. Turning on his heels Naruto ran in the exact opposite direction to escape flaming death. Damn those Uchiha and their kickass fire ninjutsu. Why were they so good at them?

Eventually though, the hall split into a fork and Naruto dove toward the left turn, letting Itachi's fireball slam against the wall and engulf it in flames that continued to burn. Getting up from the ground where he dove, Naruto got near the corner of the wall and stuck an explosive tag there before backing away and preparing for Itachi to make the turn to face him, his hands in a ram seal prepared to remotely activate it the second he did.

To Naruto's surprise, the tag fizzled out on the wall, getting him to growl lowly. Itachi was really troubling. How in the world he deactivated his tag without even touching it Naruto would never know, but he wished he did because that just didn't seem fair.

Taking his machete in hand, Naruto channeled wind chakra through it and hurled it at the wall trying to take an angle on the corner that separated both he and Itachi from one another, "Setsudanki Hassha (Slingshot Guillotine)!" It sliced right through the wall like it was butter and with a jerk of the chain attached, Naruto sliced out an entire segment of the wall that Itachi had to leap into view to avoid.

While yanking his machete back into his hand, Naruto dashed toward the visible Itachi and caught the weapon just as he got within range. A clash of blades followed, with Naruto meeting his machete with Itachi's kunai.

Itachi tried to knee at one of Naruto's legs to knock his balance off, but Naruto's taijutsu wasn't too shabby at all and he merely blocked him, instead turning Itachi and pushing him against the wall as he slowly started overpowering him, "What does Akatsuki want with the biju?" Naruto asked Itachi as he slowly started gaining a pushing edge, moving the blade of his machete closer to Itachi.

"It is of no importance." Itachi said, struggling in return. It was lucky Naruto was only using one hand, "You've grown quite a bit from the chunin exams all those years ago Naruto-kun. Several of your moves have been quite surprising." Making small talk during a death struggle that he was apparently losing? Powerful ninjas were weird.

"You're really good too." Naruto begrudgingly admitted, "If you fight this good without even pulling out your Sharingan, it's kind of hard to think about what you'd do if you had it on." But that was neither here nor there. It wasn't on, and with that in mind Naruto still had one free hand to use while pinning Itachi to the wall with his machete. A spinning blue ball of chakra formed in his left hand that he then slammed forward, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"

The wall behind Itachi was rendered to rubble via the attack making contact, but as the debris and dust flew, both Naruto and Itachi jumped away from each other, separated by the midair rubbish. The Akatsuki cloak of Itachi was filthy as was Naruto's own attire.

Naruto stared at his left hand and then at the stuff in the air hindering his view of Itachi. A small amount of blood dripped from the tip of Naruto's machete onto the ground indicating that he had indeed scored a wound, but not nearly the kind that he wanted and had skillfully set up, 'He took the cut so he could free up a hand to knock my Rasengan arm off.'

If his Rasengan had connected they probably would have had to peel Itachi off of the wall. But ifs didn't win battles, fretting over them while you were still fighting just managed to get you killed.

Itachi's bicep had taken a pretty nasty injury to it, bleeding down his arm and onto the ground, but other than that his face didn't show any worry. It was clear that Naruto would have rather taken that arm home with him if he'd done that much to force him to choose an ultimatum.

"That was a good try." Itachi said, holding up his arm and showing Naruto how much it was bleeding. Damn it, if he could do that then all of that blood was just for show. Nothing serious had been done to it, "Making me choose either option A or option B. Too bad I created an option C for myself." His reflexes just weren't fair.

Before choosing to proceed forward and continue fighting, Naruto stopped completely and took notice of the side of the hall that he was on. Without saying another word, Naruto placed the flat of one of his palms onto the wall, much to Itachi's confusion.

He didn't make another move until he started breathing slowly and his whisker-marks seemed to darken and deepen on his cheeks. A red aura began to form around his body in the outline of a fox with one tail and he twisted his hand against the wall before suddenly clinching it into a fist and pulling it away, "Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"

A deep fissure formed in the wall and spider-webbed to the roof and to the floor, cracking them both and beginning to cause a cave-in of the hall.

'He utilized the chakra of the Kyuubi to generate the power he needed to destroy the entire pathway in one move.' Itachi thought to himself as he saw things beginning to come down around them, 'What is he doing?' He then watched Naruto grin with his extra sharp canines before vanishing in a red blur in the opposite direction, 'He's trapping me?'

The last place Itachi wanted to be was trapped inside of the underground base of Orochimaru. He would be damned if he found himself trapped underground to be crushed in that tiny little corridor. He turned his Sharingan on and dodged the falling rocks to head off in the same direction as Naruto in pursuit. He was fast enough to catch up and see the bright red beacon that was Naruto's chakra as the place came down around them.

As they ran Naruto could feel Itachi's presence behind him and turned to see that he was actually catching up, 'How fast is this guy?' He thought to himself before turning back ahead and lashing out with his chakra tail to strike at the walls and help it come down faster. It did little good as Itachi still kept advancing. Even thrusting the tail out at Itachi directly did nothing as he jumped and stuck to the roof while running until it retracted.

Light at the end of the tunnel came and both Naruto and Itachi shot out of there like bullets just as the entrance to it collapsed, leaving them both in the main chamber that led to the three paths where Naruto had started from.

Both Itachi and a Kyuubi-charge Naruto stared at each other tentatively, "That was a dirty trick Naruto-kun." Itachi said as Naruto's tail swished behind him impatiently, "Trying to bury me alive."

All Naruto did was shrug in return, "You're trying to kill me and capture the Kyuubi. I'll fight fair when I'm in a situation where I won't die painfully after I lose."

"How do you know it will be painful?"

"You're seriously telling me it wouldn't be?"

"No… I was just wondering how you came to the conclusion that it was."

A visible frown came upon Naruto's face while Itachi remained deadpan, but that didn't mean anything. Naruto was quite certain that Itachi was messing with him verbally. Damn it he was good at mid-fight banter. Totally unflappable. Nothing shook the guy, and nothing seemed to surprise him no matter what Naruto tried, "So… round two?"

"If we must." Itachi said in consent to continuing the fight. For someone that killed his entire clan and was after Naruto's still-beating heart or however they were going to extract his biju, he wasn't such a bad guy. He definitely wasn't an outright jerk.

Too bad that didn't mean anything. They were still on exact opposite sides.

Naruto's muscles tensed in preparation for the next move to be made, but before anything else could happen, countless sharp bones rained down on both of them from above, busting through the ventilation shaft in the ceiling meant to provide air to that part of the facility.

Both Naruto and Itachi stuck to the walls of the chamber as Kimimaro dropped down, covered in the marks from his Cursed Seal, "It seems as if we have an infestation problem." And in response to the little problem that had befallen the base that he was in charge of, Kimimaro let his seal spread.

Naruto's eyes widened at the sight of it, 'That's like the seal that's on Sasuke.' Naruto noted in remembrance as he watched Kimimaro transform, "What the hell?"

Kimimaro's skin grey dark grey with six large bones sticking out of the sides of his back and a long thick tail with bones sticking out of it forming on his backside. Both Naruto and Itachi could only stare at the sight of watching Kimimaro's body composition change entirely.

'This…' Itachi thought to himself, visibly alarmed at what he was seeing, 'Orochimaru put _this_ on my brother?'

After finishing his grotesque metamorphosis, Kimimaro held out his hands at both Naruto and Itachi as the sharp tips of bones emerged from his palms, "Tsuin Kussaku Hassha (Twin Drilling Missiles)!" More of the bones poked out to reveal that the tips were to tight spirals, which were how the bones had been manipulated, and just like that they both fired at Naruto and Itachi each with speed as if they were shot from cannons.

Each bone utterly pulverized the wall that it hit on impact, turning them to rubble. But both Naruto and Itachi moved, seeming to take offense to Kimimaro interrupting their ongoing tiff, as both moved to incorporate him into the fray if he was so dead set on interjecting himself.

Naruto hurled rudimentary balls of sheer wind chakra compacted by the Kyuubi's chakra using his hands and chakra tail while Itachi threw a handful of shuriken while simultaneously breathing fire on them and infusing them with fire release, "Katon: Housenka Tsumabeni (Fire Release: Phoenix Sage Flower Nail Crimson)!"

Both attacks were aimed at Kimimaro and mixed to cause a fiery explosion that filled the chamber and rocked the base to its core.

XxX

(Elsewhere in the Base)

The sounds of battle reached deeply inside of the barracks area of the hideout as Guren felt like things were closing in. If she could hear the battle from all the way where she was, that idiot Kimimaro was going to probably go overboard which would result in the entire place coming down. When that asshole chose to go all out and kill someone he didn't know when to stop.

"Come on Yukimaru, we've got to get out of here." Guren said, leading Yukimaru along, running and allowing the younger boy to keep pace with her so that she didn't lose him, "We need to take the back way. I'll get us somewhere safe. We can't let them get you."

Orochimaru needed this boy's body. A jinchuuriki host was far too valuable to be allowed to slip out of his grasp. A body that potentially strong could do anything he dreamed to with his physiology.

Struggling to keep up with the kunoichi that was his keeper for the time being, Yukimaru felt a sense of dread inside of his chest, "Is it the Akatsuki group?" He had been around in Otogakure long enough to know that that group was the absolute worst of the worst, and he knew exactly what they wanted from them. They wanted him, to take his life and steal the Sanbi from within his body.

From where they were in the base they could see the ocean through the openings carved out in the wall to somewhat resemble windows. It was still a rough one hundred foot descent to the jagged rocky water before they could make it there.

"It probably is." Guren told him, not seeing the point in hiding the truth from him. There was no need to sugarcoat it, "It could also be Konoha, it could also be Kiri. Don't worry about that, you just worry about getting out of here." For some reason the air began to chill sharply, but it was ignored until she pulled Yukimaru out of the way of a pair of needles aimed for the both of them. At that point a thick wall of solid ice inexplicably formed in front of them, blocking them from continuing on their path.

Narrowing her eyes, Guren turned around and found Haku and Suigetsu standing behind her. Haku's hand was on the wall with a frost trail leading to the point where an ice barrier blocked them off.

"Sorry." Haku said, actually sounding apologetic about what they were doing despite the hunter-nin mask on her face, "But we can't let you just leave with that boy." She remarked, getting a flinch out of Yukimaru, "He needs to come with us back to Kirigakure."

Guren let out a scoff and stood in front of Yukimaru, shielding him from possible danger, "So that your village can have that military superiority it needs to save face from that war of yours? You're just going to use him as a weapon."

Both Haku and Suigetsu looked at each other momentarily before the latter shrugged and addressed Guren's point, "Yeah, and? It's better than making him into a human trench coat like how Orochimaru's going to do." He heard Yukimaru gasp and lazily cleaned out his ear with a finger as if he were just shooting the breeze, "Yeah kid, you didn't know? That's not too surprising since I doubt that snake wants you going full biju freak out on him when he tries to take your body."

"Stop talking." Guren demanded sharply, narrowing her eyes at Suigetsu before speaking to her young charge, "Yukimaru, if these people wind up taking you they'll just try to condition you, and if that fails they'll just take the Sanbi out of you and place it into another. Everything that Orochimaru-sama saw that was special in you will be wasted."

Yukimaru's eyes quivered at the thought of dying after finding a place like Otogakure where he had finally been able to fall in with others that found something in him worth taking stock in, "No… this is my home. My place is here."

Haku just shook her head and Suigetsu let out a sigh as he slung Kubikiribouchou from his back and the blade of the massive sword hit the ground with a clang, "Listen kid… that thing you've got inside of you, it used to be in Kiri's Mizukage until Orochimaru took him out, so it's ours anyway. Now we'll take the whole package deal of you with it and treat you like a Kiri ninja with the full concessions, no stress, but if you're gonna be a pain I can just kick this chick's ass and Haku-chan here can flash-freeze you so we can take you back. Either way works just fine with me."

While she wished that Suigetsu had a more subtle way of putting things into perspective, Haku wasn't about to lie and claim that they weren't going to do exactly that if it came to it. It was a mission, one of great importance, and it didn't necessarily involve killing so it wasn't one she was about to fail on purpose.

A crystal blade formed on Guren's forearm, but Haku didn't seem alarmed by this, "You have a rare kekkei genkai too. From what I've been told of your abilities by my friends you can crystallize things down to their cellular level can you not? I think you'll find that this presents you with no advantage in a battle with me."

"Don't spoil the surprise honey." Suigetsu joked, holding up his legendary sword with two hands as he prepared to fight, "Let her find out the fun way if she really wants to keep the brat from us like this."

A growl came from Guren's throat at the prospect of fighting these people two-on-one. She wasn't accustomed to being on the wrong end of a numbers advantage, she normally had hordes of flunkies to throw at the enemy to fight, but all she had here was Yukimaru, and he was strictly VIP status.

But that didn't mean he was entirely useless either, even if they were technically cornered.

"Yukimaru." Guren said lowly, "Have you progressed farther in your control of the Sanbi since the last time I was in Mizu no Kuni?" She asked, getting a nod out of the youngster, "Well I want you to cut loose as much as you can."

"What if I lose control?" Yukimaru asked worriedly. His powers let him tame the Sanbi by sheer will and call upon some of its abilities, but he was afraid that if things got too intense he'd slip up and get Guren hurt. He didn't want that, he actually liked her a lot, "You might get-."

"Who do you think I am kid?" A confident-looking Guren said, putting up a front to get him to fight with her, "If things go bad I can bring you back under control. There's a reason I spent all of that time with you back when it first got sealed inside of you." Emboldened a bit from her statement, Yukimaru prepared himself to fight while Guren turned back to Haku and Suigetsu, "You both made the last mistakes of your lives coming here. Yukimaru has the Sanbi now, you lost it, your village should have just dealt with it."

"Oh but it did." Haku said, brandishing more senbon for use in battle, "Or should I say it is… because that of course is why we were dispatched; to handle Otogakure's thievery and kidnapping accordingly."

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 5

(Nine Months after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

Another day, another protection detail for a traveling noble. Most of the job was obviously protecting others as the name of the group was the Twelve Guardian Ninja, but most of the time they never really got to protect anyone that tended to get into many scrapes.

Naruto was promised that there would be more trouble when the daimyo took his yearly tour of the country, and it was always fun when they'd travel with him on his trips to the chunin exams twice a year, so there was that to look forward to.

But at the moment he was walking alongside a carriage rolling down a countryside road slowly. He was one of three guardians on this mission. It was him taking point and walking out in front with his clones securing the perimeter off-road, the colorful kimono-clad Kotoko who was sitting on the roof of the carriage above the driver's seat seemingly without a care in the world as she strummed at her shamisen serenely.

The third member of their team taking the rear of the carriage was someone that had been in the group before Naruto. A monk of some sort named Kenta. He was older than both Naruto and even Kotoko, being a grown man, and he towered over both of them. He was an extremely muscular dark-skinned man that wore a wicker helmet covering his entire head and keeping his face from view. Not even his eyes were visible. He wore no shirt, just loose lavender pants with his ankles bandaged down at his sandals and the guardian sash around his waist. In his hand he carried a long staff with multiple golden rings at the top of it.

A pretty scary looking guy really.

It had been the first mission that Naruto had ever gone on with this particular member of the Guardian Ninja group, and he had only met him once back during his training. He had been gone on a long mission and had stopped back for a week or so to meet the new blood before going off on another one.

"Man…" Naruto complained aloud, "Why do I have to take point?" He asked, craning his neck to look back and up at Kotoko, "My clones are all over the place keeping track of what's around us." If Shikamaru had been there he'd have been bitching from the very start about having to walk. They'd been travelling for two days.

"It's standard operating procedure Naruto-kun." Kotoko chimed melodiously, eyes closed in her permanent smile, "You're down there and I'm up here because I am a virtuous lady of refinement and purity. And you are a ragamuffin with a foul mouth that I had to clean out with soap." Seriously, she took a bar of soap to his mouth after he cursed them following a rather brutal training session, "Aside from that, would you really force me to walk all the way to the town we'll be stopping at for the night?"

He would. Without question he would, and he'd smile while he did it. Chivalry didn't mean jack when you were a ninja.

Still, he would not stop harping on her about why he couldn't sit on top of the carriage. She could go inside. That was where she had been when they had started, right along with their protectee until a few hours ago, "Well why can't Kenta take point and you go inside while I sit on the roof? He's huge! He'll be fine. He's like three of me."

Kotoko just laughed slightly at his query and shook her head, "Oh, but Naruto-kun… compared to Kenta-chan you're brand new. He's done this a million-billion times so he's earned the right to take the cushier assignment. He is your senpai. He already knows how this goes. You're the one that needs seasoning. The only reason he's not up here too with me is because he's massive."

Naruto looked back at the silent and hulking brand new guardian and just stared for a bit. He was well over twenty years old and probably had twice or three times the experience he did. It was surprising that with everything Naruto had been saying for the past three hours trying to start up some conversation he hadn't responded or cracked him in the head to get him to shut up.

As far as Naruto knew Kenta never talked. The imposing man had yet to say more than two words to anyone, and apparently none of them had ever seen him without that fucking basket on his head.

"Besides." Kotoko continued idly while beginning a new song on her instrument of death, "I think if I go back inside I might wind up killing one of the nobles of the court. He's a little handsy. I told him that he was a married man, but no that didn't seem to matter. So I knocked him out."

That prompted Naruto to look at the borderline insane woman with an owlish expression before he moved back and opened the door to look inside. And indeed the fancily dressed noble was out cold with a contusion on his noggin. Probably from where Kotoko had dinged him with her shamisen. Also in the carriage was the frightened attendant of the noble seemingly frozen in shock or fear of Kotoko, either one or the other.

"Nobuyuki's not gonna like this." Naruto mentioned under his breath as he retook his position at the front, even though he really didn't care other than how it affected his job, "…Shizune-nee will though, she hates that guy." And that made him feel better. Anything that made that sweet dark-haired medic smile was great.

Kenta just kept walking behind them, not seeming to have an opinion on what they had both just learned, but then again with that damn basket on his head who really knew what he was thinking.

"You don't talk much do you?" Naruto asked Kenta, only for the man to continue walking as if he were ignoring him, something that annoyed Naruto greatly, "Oi, don't think just because you're huge that I can't-."

"He's taken a vow of silence Naruto-kun." Kotoko mentioned, keeping Naruto from bristling up too heavily for no real reason. He was so easy to rile up, like a big orange-clad puppy. As cute as she found it, this was not the time or the place, "He can't speak or take that helmet off while the sun is up. Though I do think he should carry a notepad or something to communicate with. Ooh, or we could all learn sign language! But Sadao-kun is a monk of a different sect and has his own things that he can't do too. He just muttered something about stupid when I brought it up and walked away."

Naruto's mouth formed a silent 'oh' and he turned back to Kenta with a sheepish grin, "Sorry about that. If it makes you feel any better you can yell at me later when the sun goes down." Kenta just nodded in acknowledgment. Naruto didn't know what that meant, but at least he assumed that the man forgave him.

"Aww, that's so cute." Kotoko remarked, starting a new tune, more upbeat than the previous one, "Naruto-kun and Kenta-chan are friends. I will play us a song commemorating the occasion!"

"Play one that commemorates us getting suspended when we get back." Naruto spoke up over the sound of Kotoko's next song, hands placed behind his neck a bit lazily, "Because you knocked out the guy we're supposed to be protecting."

It was unknown what was weirder... the fact that she stopped and took Naruto's clearly sarcastic request, or the fact that Kotoko apparently did have a song that she played to commemorate getting suspended. That meant that this kind of thing happened enough for her to endeavor to learn it.

So when it came to seniors to defer to on this mission he had to pick between a scary-big functional mute and a beautiful homicidal maniac. It had to be a cold day in hell, because Uzumaki Naruto was currently the sanest member of his squad.

For how long that would last was to be determined.

This job man…

* * *

Jutsu List

Kutai Bunshin no Jutsu (Skeleton Clone Jutsu). B-rank ninjutsu, kekkei genkai, clone technique. With the power of the cursed seal increasing the regenerative power of Kimimaro's Shikotsumyaku bloodline he expunges an entire skeleton from his body. It is just as durable as Kimimaro's own skeleton due to the chakra passing through the bones animating it temporarily and is extremely difficult to destroy, but it is unable to utilize ninjutsu. A weakness of this technique is the time it takes to generate the clone due to the fact that it must keep Kimimaro's existing skeleton in mind while it is being formed. It takes five seconds for a complete skeleton to fully emerge from his body.

Tsuin Kussaku Hassha (Twin Drilling Missiles). Taijutsu, kekkei genkai, offensive, mid-to-long range. This jutsu melds the ulna and radius bones of the user, twisting them into a spiral pattern before firing them from the arms via the palms. The design of the attack is constructed so that the sharpened bones spin for added speed and accuracy. While the rate of fire is lower than Teshi Sendan (Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets), the potential destructive power of this jutsu is frighteningly high, easily able to obliterate rock on contact.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Guardian Ninja

Kenta

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 4.5  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 26**

* * *

**Hey all. Life raking you across the coals? Well I hope this short reprieve was good to take your mind off of things for a while at least. I hope you enjoyed.**

**Alright, I'm out of here. I've got to work tonight so I'll get back to you all at another time. Until the next meeting that the universe directs for us all…**

**Kenchi out.**


	50. United We Stand

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I checked underneath my bed and everything. I don't have it. I did find my old Super NES system and all of my games in a huge box though. That was fun day of nostalgia. Legend of Zelda: A Link To the Past _still_ holds up.

**Chapter 50: United We Stand**

* * *

With a cough, a haggard Naruto pushed a slab of debris off of his body and stood up, his body no longer glowing red via the Kyuubi's chakra. As he looked around the chamber he had been fighting in it looked like an excavation site. The place seemed to be positively bombed out. Volatile balls of pressurized air combined with hot ever-burning Uchiha shuriken equaled massive explosion.

For some reason it seemed oddly disproportionate to the size of the techniques, but never judge a book by its cover when it comes to a jutsu.

Wiping the soot from the lenses of his protective eyewear, Naruto then let out a groan as the lenses had been cracked by the strength of the explosion that he and Itachi had created, "Fucking great…" He muttered to himself as he pulled them off of his head and tossed them aside, "It took years to make those."

Okay, he was still standing and a little beat up, but he was fine for the most part. And it was a good thing too, because it wasn't over yet. A slab of fallen wall fell to reveal Itachi back on his feet. Even as bedraggled as he was he still looked unnaturally calm and cool.

Similarly to Naruto's own blue ones, his red Sharingan eyes were scanning Naruto's form as if-…

"Crap!" Naruto shouted aloud as Itachi's body seemed to disappear in a flock of crows and the world around him seemed to distort and transform into a vast desert with some large dome-like structure in the distance. That was in Kaze no Kuni.

What a weird setting for mental torment. What, was he going to have massive scorpions sting him to death or devour him alive? Or maybe he'd have them crawl out of his mouth, ears, and nose? Screw that.

Without missing a beat and while he still had control of himself, Naruto pulled a kunai from his thigh holster and stabbed himself in the leg, breaking the genjutsu and simultaneously firing up his anger to jump back into using the Kyuubi's chakra.

But instead of snapping back into the real world in a cold sweat the way Naruto had anticipated himself to after causing physical harm of that extent to himself, he merely found that Itachi could double-layer his genjutsu, and that the trigger was breaking the first one. That was some crap that he needed to talk to Kurenai-sensei about when (if) he got home because he sure didn't see that coming.

Maybe talk to Akira from the Guardian Ninja group too… she was good at them from what he remembered. Anyone was better than him.

Much to his surprise though, instead of a fantasy world constructed only to deal him pain and misfortune, Naruto found himself in the boiler room that was his mind, in calf-deep water right in front of the large cage that housed the Kyuubi behind it, "What? I didn't want to come here."

"But I did."

Standing right next to him, Itachi seemed to be looking at the cage instead of at Naruto, who lashed out with a Rasengan and struck him only for the body to break into multiple crows and reform directly behind him. Wait, he could do that? There was no way Itachi had any kind of clue what Naruto's subconscious looked like, so the only alternative reasoning would be that he was actually projecting his into Naruto's own.

"You shouldn't do that." Itachi chided Naruto, starting to dodge as Naruto threw punches at his head trying to knock him out, "Have you ever been in a genjutsu this strong before Naruto-kun?"

Jiraiya was serviceable at best at genjutsu, and he was the only one that tried to train Naruto directly by trapping him in them. But this was an entirely different level altogether. So no, Naruto hadn't been in a genjutsu that powerful before, "Get out of here!"

Behind them inside of its cage, the Kyuubi had its eyes closed to prevent anything Sharingan-related from happening to it. This was definitely worst-case scenario. It was absolutely the worst thing that could have happened to Naruto in a battle with an Uchiha. Thank goodness there were only two.

As he continued to dodge, Itachi's eyes widened and he took a punch to the face from Naruto, letting out a warning just as he burst into countless crows, "Watch out!"

"Sawarabi no Mai (Dance of the Seedling Fern)!"

It felt like a deep daydream or something had suddenly ended when Itachi's genjutsu was broken intentionally and Naruto abruptly regained full control of himself. This was just in time for thousands of bones to rise up from underground all over the floor, spiking up to impale Naruto and Itachi indiscriminately.

Naruto had survived by instantly hurling his machete up at the ceiling and yanking himself into the air via the chain attached to both the handle of it and the gauntlet underneath one of his arm-warmers. In turn Itachi was kept aloft by a large crow that he had summoned quickly after breaking his genjutsu with Naruto.

It flapped around the room as both men looked down at the spike pit that had almost ensured their deaths. But then Naruto looked over at Itachi's crow, taking care not to look directly at Itachi himself lest he find himself ensnared in another illusion so soon after the last one. But Itachi had warned him to act. He had made sure that he hadn't been run through by any of Kimimaro's bones.

'He only did it because if you died he wouldn't be able to get the Kyuubi.' Naruto thought to himself trying to reason out why Itachi saved him unnecessarily. This changed nothing. It was only done for Akatsuki's and therefore Itachi's own benefit, 'But it's still weird. He broke me out of his own genjutsu for that?'

"**Don't look a gift horse in the mouth boy. Your enemy, whether foolishly done or not, presented you with an opportunity. Take it and make the Uchiha pay for his cursed bloodline."** Not being suppressed by Itachi didn't warrant any looking into by the Kyuubi since as long as it didn't happen everything was fine by its standards.

With his mind forcibly settled by his absurdly powerful tenant, Naruto started pulling his way up the chain as if he were climbing a rope in physical training back in the Academy.

From his position on his crow, Itachi hurled several shuriken at Naruto. His climb was interrupted and Naruto quickly tangled his leg in his chain before letting go with his hands and flipping down to avoid the projectiles while making hand-seals.

As this occurred, Itachi's crow was grabbed around the neck by a black whip and sharp white spikes on it that dug into its flesh, forcing it to let out a mighty caw. Both Naruto and Itachi looked down and saw that Kimimaro's body was sticking out of the tip of one of the bones, his body one with it. In his hand was the long whip in question, "Tessenka no Mai: Tsuru (Dance of the Clematis: Vine)!"

In Kimimaro's other hand was a very large and extremely gnarled-looking spiral bone wrapped around his forearm like a shield and a weapon combination. With a mighty jerk of Itachi's crow not wishing to be pulled down, Kimimaro's body slid out of the bone he had become one with and was pulled into the air with the ascending avian.

"Die!" Allowing himself to be yanked into the open airspace of the chamber, Kimimaro stabbed straight through Itachi's crow with Itachi on its back via the horrid-looking weapon in his hand. All of them went flying up to the ceiling where they crashed.

Itachi's crow dispelled in a puff of smoke and Itachi himself managed to avoid hitting the top of the chamber where Kimimaro had punched a divot with his body, his attack, and Itachi's now dispelled and probably mortally wounded crow.

Kimimaro started falling back down to the bone spikes sticking out of the ground when he saw Naruto hanging from his chain and machete and aimed a hand at his Konoha enemy, "Teshi Sendan (Ten-Finger Drilling Bullets)!" Gritting his teeth, the upside-down Naruto then decided to cheat and formed a ram seal to build his chakra and expel it in the form of a gust from his mouth.

Blowing himself into a swing out of the trajectory of the shots, Naruto leaned up and grabbed the long chain, allowing his feet to press against the wall and stick safely as Kimimaro seemed to be about to wind up skewered on the tips of the bones of his own creation.

This was not to be though, as his body just melded back with the bones and he vanished in the field of them once more.

"Fuck this." Naruto muttered, annoyed at Kimimaro and his ability to alter the battlefield to such an extent and make it his own, "I'm sick of all of this aerial kickboxing crap." He started rolling through a fairly long chain of hand-seals and took a deep breath.

Itachi, still sticking to the ceiling watched Naruto's fingers carefully, interested in the jutsu that the young man was utilizing. But he was soon to learn that this wasn't a jutsu that his eyes merely allowed him to copy, 'What a strange manipulation of chakra. I haven't seen a color of that element before, and it's not just pure shape manipulation.'

"Kura Taifuu no Me (Eye of the Dark Hurricane)!" From Naruto's mouth spewed an obscene amount of his own kind of ash, sending it down in a pattern beneath him that seemed to swirl around in a cloudy circle that covered up the deadly bone forest beneath him in murky black billows that seemed to move like the above-view of an actual tropical storm, "Come out again in _that_ and see what happens asshole!"

'Very impressive Naruto-kun.' With his gaze aiming downward, Itachi noted with his Sharingan intuitive ability that the jutsu wasn't just meant to cover every area where Kimimaro could come back out again. Naruto had set it up so that there was a soft spot purposely placed in a corner, 'There's my target.' Itachi said, knowing what his next move would be, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

From his mouth, Itachi spat a huge fireball out and down at the ashen field below them. The toad oil inside of Naruto's ash concoction went up like the flammable substance it was and the entire cave was covered in flames in the blink of an eye. It even surprised Naruto at how destructive that combination was, 'Note to self… find Sasuke when I get home and work this combo into the ground.'

Naruto spared half a glance Itachi's way wondering why they had just seemed to do an impromptu team-up. The enemy of my enemy is my friend it seemed. Nobody was going to walk away from that. Though he did seem to be a bit stunned to find that Naruto's ash was flammable. Ancient toad oil secret.

A single massive spire of bone rose up suddenly from the center of the bone forest covered in ash and crashed through the ceiling, punching a hole straight through it and sending chunks of rock coming down all around.

This knocked Naruto's machete down from the ceiling as a ceiling no longer existed and the young man caught it back in his hand to sheath it on his back before turning up the heat once more and coaxing more of the Kyuubi's chakra out of his system to cover his body in a boiling red fox silhouette again.

Both he and Itachi headed outside through the gaping hole in the roof that was created by Kimimaro single massive spike, trying to get at each other all the way through until they made it outside onto the rocky summit of the island. For the first time in quite a bit since entering the dingy hideout, fresh air filled everyone's lungs and seemed to give them all second winds. It even seemed necessary for Itachi to cough a bit while filling taking his breaths of fresh air.

Shooting out of the tip of the bone spire into the air, Kimimaro aimed himself back down like a missile at Naruto, missing him and causing a cloud of dust to kick up where he landed on the ground. Naruto's improved speed allowed him to easily dodge more of Kimimaro's bone bullets as he rushed in to attack him and hurl him off of the mountain.

Naruto's strikes missed, even with the chakra cloak to aid him due to Kimimaro's mastery of his taijutsu and his body. Whipping around one time allowed Kimimaro to drill Naruto in the head with his hard tail, knocking him to the ground on his butt.

A growl came from Naruto who lifted a single hand and formed a larger than average Rasengan in his hand with the help of his chakra tail to help shell it together, plain for all to see. Even so, Kimimaro faced it down without much of a care, "Feh, a larger version of the Yondaime Hokage's signature attack jutsu… you'll never make contact with something like that. Haven't you noticed by now that trash such as yourself cannot hope to hit me with a melee-?"

Another tail burst from the ground behind Kimimaro, with a normal Rasengan actually formed at the end of it as if it were a normal hand. Naruto hid his formation of splitting his cloak into a second tail that he had used to burrow near his overconfident foe. There was nothing Kimimaro could do but take the heavy attack in the back that sent him flying at Naruto who revealed another new trick.

Naruto stretched out the chakra cloak surrounding his arm into a claw that still held the massive Rasengan along with the tail that kept it stable and raised it up high into the air to smash down hard on top of Kimimaro who had been hurtling toward Naruto through the air.

"Odama Rasengan (Great Ball Spiraling Sphere)!"

Itachi had to turn his eyes away due to the fact that Naruto's more powerful variation of the Rasengan caused a massive explosion of pebbles, chunks of solid rock, and dust, all of which could have damaged his extremely important eyes. The ground mercilessly shook due to the fact that it was slammed directly into it from above, adding the force of a downward strike from a raging jinchuuriki behind an improved Rasengan.

'The strength and dexterity of the Kyuubi's chakra is frightening.' Itachi surmised after seeing just what Naruto could do with it, 'It's not just an extension of his body and will.'

"I'm sorry… but were you saying something?" Naruto said over the crumbling rock noise coming from where he pulverized Kimimaro, panting a bit at the effort exerted from the battle, "…I think I missed it over the sound of me hitting you with a goddamn melee attack you son of a bitch!" Naruto shouted loudly down into the pit he hurled Kimimaro down into. Talk about feeling vindicated.

But he wasn't alone, and his gaze snapped toward Itachi right before the ground beneath the two of them abruptly collapsed as the entire island summit started coming down. What was this damn place made of, limestone?

XxX

(Elsewhere on the Island – With Ino and Anko)

Ino had been scanning through Juugo's defenseless mind for the past several minutes, making a concerted effort to find what Anko required of her as quickly as possible. A lot of it was a jumbled mess. He'd be cool and calm with everything easy to make out one second, and then everything would be as if he were a bull seeing red the next. The latter was usually when multiple people wound up brutally killed by him.

How bipolar of him. And people would tend to say that from time to time about her, the jerks. If Shikamaru ever said that again after she had met this guy she'd punch him in the face.

"Uh oh…" Ino said under her breath, getting Anko's attention while the older woman kept watch over their surroundings.

Curiosity getting the better of her, Anko walked over to Ino and looked down at their sedated 'prisoner' of sorts who still sat with his head the only thing aboveground with Ino's hand resting on it, "What? Did you find something worth talking about?"

Not knowing quite how to explain what she had seen, Ino just shook her head and gave up on trying. There was another route to take in that respect, "It'd be easier to just show you. Put your hand on my shoulder and relax."

Anko did just that with a hapless shrug, and the moment that she did felt her brain swell with the sudden rush of mental pictures that filled her mind. She was only able to take three seconds of that before she let go and backed away. She felt like vomiting, "Oh Kami…"

"I know. I told you to relax didn't I?" Ino said, taking her hand off of Juugo's head to turn and face her fellow kunoichi who was doubled over and looked as if she were about to be physically ill, "Why do you think more people don't know how to do that? It's just daddy and some handpicked elites." Using the mind-reading technique was like watching the movie that was someone's mind close-up in the quickest form of fast-forward that existed.

Learning that technique gave you a crash course in how to handle nausea to say the very least, especially when you can't control it at first. It was very intricate, hard to learn and harder to master, and not very battlefield applicable, which was another reason why most shinobi didn't learn it.

But after the pile-up of thoughts in her brain ended, Anko got a clear memory that didn't belong to her. The things that came from Juugo's mind. The basic principle of the Cursed Seal came from this man. Not the idea, but the powerful partial and complete body transformations imbued in users of the seal. Enzymes from his body were used in conjunction with Orochimaru's chakra in order to produce the transformation of a person's physiology via a powerful outside power source.

"It came from him?" Anko asked herself aloud, sending a look of disbelief down to the mostly buried Juugo who was still as docile as a lamb, "How old could he have been when Orochimaru got a hold of him? I didn't get this thing put on me until I was fifteen."

"He was really young." Ino said, having seen as much inside of his mind, "Even when he was a kid, he was strong enough to kill an entire village of people when he lost control of himself." That was probably what attracted Orochimaru's attention to him to begin with.

Despite his state of unconsciousness, Juugo could still feel the presence of those around him. The haze in his head did little to block out his more subtle senses, such as his indistinct connection with those that had Cursed Seals.

Even as far away as he was, he could still feel the seal of his closest friend in Kimimaro. He could also feel that Kimimaro was in dire straits. Whatever was going on with him was killing him. Could it be that he had actually run into the real Akatsuki members that Guren had warned them all of?

That meant that Yukimaru was in danger as well. As strong as a jinchuuriki could be, he was still extremely raw as a ninja.

His eyes suddenly snapped open and the entirety of his skin darkened over as a black stripe formed on his forehead going down his nose, "I'll kill the both of you!" His body blasted out of the ground as if he hadn't been held in place by solid packed earth just a moment ago that kept him from budging an inch.

Both Anko and Ino jumped away from him as he landed on the ground with a resounding crash, boosters on Juugo's back exuding chakra like an engine waiting to be fired up.

"I sedated him! Even for a big guy like him he should have been down for at least four more hours!" Ino shouted angrily at seeing Juugo back up and about. It was an insult to her skills in that facet of her ninja arts that he was able to shrug it off the way he did. Well her poisons didn't account for freaks of nature.

"Well apparently you didn't tell him that!" Anko said, not looking forward to seeing what Juugo would do now, 'That's got to be a full transformation. Something like that has to be what Orochimaru told me I didn't have the will to access with the Cursed Seal of Heaven.'

Full transformation or not, Ino was now close enough to Juugo without being torn apart yet to risk taking a chance against him. She lifted her hands up in a reverse of each other and forming a square with her index fingers and thumbs, aiming at Juugo, "Fine! Shinranshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Disturbance)!"

She was too close to possibly miss on her very worst day.

Before his foot could take a step forward, it froze in place as Ino stopped his body dead. Slowly his hands started to move up to his own throat and clasped around them tightly enough to begin strangling himself with shaking appendages.

Anko knew that jutsu. It was one of Inoichi's. She'd seen him use it to mess with others by taking control of someone's free will to smack someone else he was having problems with. Well Ino was using it to make her enemy choke himself to death with his own massive strength. That had to take some serious power.

She spared the intensely focusing Ino a glance and raised an eyebrow. Who knew that queenie had a mean streak like that in her? But then again she worked in Konoha T&I, so she had to have a bit of a sadist edge to her to make that work, "I really like the way you work, but less talk more kill." She said as she disappeared in a Shunshin and reappeared directly crouched at Juugo's stomach with a kunai in hand.

"Anko no! He's strong enough to fight my control! It's not complete!"

The warning came too late as Juugo lashed out with one of his legs and kicked Anko away from himself forcefully, still choking himself with his bare hands all the while.

He hadn't ceased to move forward because Ino had stopped him cold. She sort of cheated on that front in order to go for the kill. He stopped walking because she diverted her control of his whole body all to his upper portion instead of spread evenly thorough his entire person. Had she not done so she never would have obtained any kind of control at all. He would have broken it immediately.

On his chest, Juugo formed several clustered hollow cylinders that extended out like cannons and built up chakra in them, aiming in Ino's direction.

Eyes widening, she dropped the hand-seal for her jutsu and let it fade while getting out of the way and picking up Anko to move aside just as Juugo fired his pure chakra blast right at the two of them. Both women narrowly avoided as a trench was carved out of the ground.

Anko cringed in pain and let out a cry expressing this from where both she and Ino lay in the dirt, "Ah, goddamn it Yamanaka a warning would have been nice!" She complained, holding her torso as blood trickled from her mouth. She lifted her free arm and pointed her index and middle fingers at Juugo who seemed to be just about to pounce on the grounded ladies, "Kanashibari no Jutsu (Temporary Paralysis Jutsu)!"

Both of them wasted no time in getting up and away, and it was a good thing too, because Anko only managed to stop him for a single a half-second with that low-level jutsu. Even though it was one of the most basic of the basics of ANBU techniques it should have knocked him off guard due to how rudimentary it was for such a heated confrontation, but it didn't do a thing. He still almost crushed them underneath his fists.

"Now do you know how hard it was to do even what I did to him?" Ino said as she slid to a stop from their combined dodging attempt, "I had to focus my ass off to stop him as much as I did!"

"Stop complaining maggot!"

"No! I fight better when I gripe!"

Catty working relationship between the Konoha kunoichi aside, Juugo was too much of a threat for them to really get into it properly, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!" A sudden large puff of smoke that concealed Ino and Anko stopped Juugo's rage for a moment until it cleared and he saw the women standing on the head of a very large python, "Try being proactive like this brat! You need some sure-fire sure-kill power!"

Ino just muttered 'showoff' under her breath at her boisterous superior's attitude to turning the tables. Of course she didn't have many sure-kill moves, she was a damn interrogation specialist. That kind of required her to be better at taking her enemies alive and in the condition to talk than flat out dead.

Juugo was not impressed with Anko's giant snake however. His right arm formed several boosters at the elbow that exuded chakra for added power and leapt directly at Anko's snake, "Kassokuken: Isshiki (Piston Fist: Style One)!" The punch slammed off of the front of the snake's body, and it was as if the entire frame of the creature seemed to vibrate as if there was a quake going on inside of its body.

It let out a hiss and splayed itself out on the ground with blood pouring from its mouth as Anko and Ino jumped from its head before it fell down dead. He killed a summon animal with one punch. He didn't even hesitate.

What was this man?

Juugo kept angrily punching and punching into the snake even after it was dead, cutting it in half with his fists and just making a bloody mess of it at that point while Ino started a chain of hand-seals, "We need to get away from this guy." She said quietly before looking up into the sky over Juugo, "How's this for sure-kill? Sansei Ame (Acid Rain)!" She spit a wavering orb of black and purple into the air that audibly popped into a cloud that began pouring fluid down onto their enemy.

The dark precipitation fell down onto Juugo from the temporary cloud and got him to stop mauling the dead snake to look at one of his arms. As the liquid touched him his skin started to hiss as if it were melting due to the fact that it was.

By the time that they heard Juugo's voice yelling in pain as he rushed to get from underneath the deadly rain, both Ino and Anko were retreating their way through the nearby forest to get elsewhere in a hurry, "So now what?" If he survived that Ino didn't know what else she could throw at him to finish him off. That was her strongest poison that would incur death on a target, so much so that skin contact was even treacherous.

"Let me think." Anko replied, turning her head around to try and catch sight of if anything was behind them after they heard crashing sounds and falling trees originating from the direction where they left Juugo, "I think I'm going to have to carry you while you do your thing. What's your limit for that cute little ghost jutsu you do now?"

Cute little ghost jutsu? She'd definitely get her back for that later when they weren't about to be killed by a superpowered berserker, "It's only 1000 feet." Ino informed her with a frown, "I mean don't get me wrong, it's better than the 150 feet that it used to be, but that's still too close to _this_ guy to be comfortable with it."

Anko nodded in consideration of Ino's words, "We'll have to hide your body then, because I'm playing decoy."

There were several things wrong with that idea from Ino's point of view, the most important of which in her point view she had no problem with bringing up, "Hide my body you say? I don't like that idea. Too much of a chance of getting randomly blown away in a crossfire."

"You could play decoy for me instead of me doing it for you." Anko suggested sarcastically, "I don't think I've got anything up my sleeve that can stop him without killing me too so you might wind up getting caught up in whatever I do any-."

"Fine, hide my body… but if you put me in another snake's mouth I'm possessing you next."

XxX

(Shikamaru/Asuma/Yamato vs. Kisame)

'Why do I have to be the one in close?' Asuma thought to himself, ignoring the fact that out of everyone there he was the best at taijutsu and gritting his teeth as he remained in the pocket to duel with Kisame and Samehada. All the while, Yamato was picking his spots just out of range, but nothing he'd tried had been able to throw Kisame off of his guard, 'Kami, this guy is a machine! It's three-on-one, tire out already!'

But he hadn't, and despite the fact that he wanted to back off and use a jutsu, Kisame would just use Samehada to absorb it if he did just like with Shikamaru's shadow earlier. As long as he had that sword in his hand there was only so much that they could do.

Standing back a touch and observing the battle looking for a spot, Yamato suddenly made several hand-seals and barked out instructions accordingly, "Asuma break off!" He shouted as he placed his hands onto the ground, "Doton: Doryuukatsu (Earth Release: Earth Flow Divide)!"

Asuma jumped as far as he could in Yamato's direction, not caring if he fell onto the ground in the process. It was better than not making it out of the way at all, though could he have cut it a bit closer?

The ground underneath Kisame fractured apart before it folded inward like a rotating block. To keep from getting crushed and to prevent himself from falling into the chasm created by Yamato's jutsu, Kisame used Samehada as a wedge to hold things open and keep them from crushing him. That was one very sturdy sword because it stopped the jutsu cold without budging an inch.

"Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!"

Several shadow tendrils raised from the ground, quickly struck across the land, and punched into Kisame, taking great aim and care not to touch Samehada, leaving it stuck in Yamato's earth-splitting technique. The sharp tips of the shadows stabbed through his body in the multiple places that he wound up hit in.

The force of Shikamaru's attack drove Kisame out of the spot he had been caught in via Yamato's jutsu and knocked him onto the ground, flying off of the thin needles and landing on the ground, flat on his back, "Grr…" Kisame growled to himself, shifting on the ground to touch at his wounds, "They'd better not think that's enough to beat me."

On the other side of the massive eyesore of raised earth done by Yamato, Shikamaru frowned as his shadow tendrils returned to their unstretched range around his body. He couldn't see through the amount of battlefield that Yamato's jutsu redistributed. Though it had been useful and made Kisame a prime target that he managed to hit dead on, he couldn't finish off something that he couldn't see.

That really stuck in Shikamaru's craw as he tried to compound all of the information he had managed to compile thus far while watching Kisame fight, 'Keep him away from that sword.' It was still stuck in between the two crushing folds of solid earth that Yamato had created, "Yamato-taichou get rid of that sword!" The man in question nodded and started more hand-seals to bury the weapon underground and be rid of it.

From the other side though, a massive dragon of water rose up and aimed directly at Yamato before crashing down at him. He managed to jump back out of the way miraculously as it bored a hole directly into the forest floor, but right from the place where it crashed and burst apart into pulsing water three separate Kisame clones leapt out. One of them reached Yamato easily and trapped him inside of a sphere of water, "Suirou no Jutsu (Water Prison Jutsu)!"

Asuma was able to easily kill the unarmed water clone that went his way with a few well placed trench knife strokes, while Shikamaru had defeated the one sent his way by pinning its shadow with one of the hidden projectile blades he kept in the sleeves of his black jacket, allowing him to finish it off almost casually and retrieve the weapon to place it back in its firing mechanism.

"Heh…" The short distraction allowed by his clones gave Kisame the time to retrieve Samehada. Standing at the top of the two sides of earth previously meant to squash him he held up the imposing sword in one hand and a loose explosive tag in the other, "I found the wire you attached to the hilt with your damn shadow brat." He said, directing his comment at Shikamaru, "I didn't see it until I picked it up. It's too bad Samehada absorbed the chakra right out of the active tag and turned it into a dud."

"What the hell is it going to take?" Asuma shouted out loud, by now thoroughly exasperated. Yamato was stuck in a water prison, and nothing they did seemed to be able to put this bastard down for good. Before he went to lunge out in an attempt to free Yamato he saw Shikamaru smirking. A look like that on Shikamaru's face never boded well for the recipient.

"That wasn't an explosive tag. You fell for a five ryo trick like that?" The look on his face didn't seem as if he felt they were in a do or die situation at all.

It was almost funny. But it was something that he managed to learn whenever he watched Naruto try to fight against Jiraiya, who Shikamaru noticed never took his eyes off of the boy. For all of Jiraiya's taunts and posturing he never for a moment allowed Naruto to achieve any sort of advantage over him, no matter how much improvement he showed from the last time. He never chose to give Naruto's ego the slightest boost with a comment on how well he had done, nor did he ever drop his guard for a second.

This was something that the enemies they battled as Guardian Ninja members didn't share, no matter how strong they were. The more powerful they were, the more they seemed to overlook minute details when they had the advantage. They took their good fortune in battle for granted.

Jiraiya subtly forced that habit of the 'elites' out of Naruto, made him understand that anyone you could possibly fight is always dangerous, and taught Shikamaru a trick to use against his enemies even if the old perverted legend never learned of his hand in developing a facet of Shikamaru's strategic thinking. The S-rank superiority gambit.

Kisame looked at the 'explosive tag' in his hand and saw that the piece of parchment meant to be written on was attached to the edges with weak staples that fell off to reveal a completely different array beneath it, "What kind of-?"

Shikamaru formed a ram seal and in a puff of smoke, Kisame felt himself stabbed through both of his sides. Looking directly down he saw another Shikamaru in front of him with his palms placed on his sides, the blades attached to his wristguards underneath his jacket sleeves impaled inside of him.

"A clone?" Kisame asked, feeling blood and anger well up inside of him, "A clone? I got stabbed by a clone? A shadow clone…" He sounded completely astonished by this fact, but the proof was right there before him, holding a pair of blades inside of him as he spoke, "That's impossible that anything managed to sneak up on me… unless."

Samehada was unable to sense the presence of the clone because it had come from the scroll itself. But that was impossible. Shadow clones lived and died like people did, the existence when left alone was basically the same. There was no way something like this that was prepared well in advance would hold a clone for the necessary amount of time without it expiring inside.

"My teammate studies sealing and summoning techniques and has probably done more experiments with clones than anyone alive." Shikamaru said with a stern look on his face, "It's way too troublesome to study, but you tend to pick some of that stuff up by contact no matter what. I barely understand how it works though, I stopped listening when he tried to explain it once. You'd have to ask him."

With a merciless and angry look on his face, Kisame reached down to the Shikamaru clone and proceeded to break its neck to brutally dispel it, "You just don't get it do you?" He asked as a chakra outline appeared around Samehada and the wounds he had suffered from Shikamaru's surprise attack seemed to close right up, "It doesn't matter how strong my enemies are. It doesn't matter what they think they can do to stop me. I never tire, and I can't be beaten!"

'All of that work…' Shikamaru thought to himself, glaring angrily at the renewed form of Monster of the Mist, 'What is it going to take to kill him?'

When he actually managed to check this guy and put him in grave situations that should have led to his death nothing happened. This was twice now. They had even gone as far as to separate them from his weapon, but he was able to divert enough attention with a double-feint to get it back, and even survived Shikamaru's continuity plan for just in case he managed to do so.

What did you do when someone had enough sheer brute force to power their way straight through any plan you could come up with? Even with two jounin, one of whom was an out-of-uniform ANBU, they still couldn't kill him.

Having taken advantage of the short time allotted by Shikamaru's move to win the fight, Asuma freed Yamato from the Kisame clone's water prison only to see the severe blow dealt to the man healing right in front of their eyes, "Come on Yamato…" Asuma said, sweat visible on his brow by this point of the battle, "You've got the Mokuton and we're in a forest. Can't you just bring these trees to life and send them after this guy like an army to kill him for us or something?"

Despite having just been sprung from a watery jail, Yamato still spared a rather chilling deadpan glance Asuma's way, "What in all of the years that we've known each other and fought together makes you think that I'm capable of something like that?"

"The Shodai Hokage could probably do it."

"Well go get him to do it then."

"…Are you sulking?"

"No! Now get ready to aim, you'll know when!"

Taking a shift in the way the battle had been going thus far, Yamato was the one to move forward and attack Kisame who jumped back onto level ground to continued fighting his Konoha enemies, "Mokuton: Daijurin no Jutsu (Wood Release: Great Forest Jutsu)!" His right arm turned into pure wood and speared out in several jabs at Kisame with sharp tips.

"You guys just don't know how to lay down and quit do you?" Kisame asked with a grin on his face as he cut through the forked attack with Samehada. To his misfortune though, it didn't harm Yamato whose arm turned back to normal, but the moment it turned back into normal flesh and blood his hands were already positioned to attempt another hand-seal, "You think you'd have learned by now! It doesn't matter what kind of jutsu you try to attack me with, if it's pure chakra Samehada can cut right through it!"

He tried to preempt whatever Yamato was trying and had him visibly flustered with how close some strikes came to cutting into him. He had to roll underneath one swing aimed at his neck in order to wind up at Kisame's back, but it only wound up with him getting mule kicked hard enough to be knocked a bit through the air. Landing on his feet and feeling like some ribs had been bruised from the open shot he never dropped his hand-seal.

"Doton: Doryuu Jouheki (Earth Release: Earth-Style Rampart)!"

Around Kisame, large walls comprised of the earth rose up around him in a semi circle underneath Yamato's feet, taking him high off of the ground. Suddenly whipping around, Kisame found himself staring down Asuma and Shikamaru, both glaring at him intently.

With a smirk, Kisame spaced his body out, prepared to deal with an attack from both sides, one from above and another from the same level as himself. It seemed as if they were getting sick and tired of everything they tried not working, "Bringing out the bigger guns I see? But come on. Double teaming me hasn't worked so far. Hell, triple teaming me hasn't."

It looked as if Asuma was shaking his head resolutely as three hand-seals were made prior to him placing overlapping hands in front of his mouth, "Fuuton: Fuujin no Jutsu (Wind Release: Dust Cloud Jutsu)!" From his mouth he shot a frighteningly quick stream of particle-filled wind at Kisame, moving just as fast as Shikamaru's shadow was going across the ground at him.

'You think I'm cornered?' Once again, Kisame stabbed the blade of Samehada into the ground to sever Shikamaru's shadow attack before it latched onto his and took cover behind the flat of the weapon as it absorbed the chakra from Asuma's jutsu, "Hey, Samehada finds eating wind ninjutsu to be a bit crispy!" With Asuma's wind jutsu blocked he turned around to prepare for whatever attack Yamato was going to use from atop his rampart, but where Yamato was standing he saw… Asuma? "What?"

On top of the high walls there Asuma stood, already halfway through another chain of hand-seals, finishing as quickly as he could to take advantage of the opening provided to him, "The first attack is always a feint." He said dryly, getting a half-hearted indignant 'hey' from Shikamaru for stealing his line, "Katon: Haisekishou (Fire Release: Ash Pile Burning)!"

Asuma shot a cloud of dark powder from his mouth down at Kisame while on the other side where he had originally been standing, Yamato now stood with Shikamaru and used his previous earthen jutsu to raise the level of the ground to a similar level in another semi circle, trapping Kisame inside of a circular pit.

Due to Asuma's jutsu not being a direct attack, Kisame's attempt to use Samehada to absorb it only worked slightly. It was a powder that hung in the air around him without really touching at the sword. Spinning in a circle while swinging the sword he cleared out a decent area for himself to breathe though, "What was that supposed to be?"

A smokescreen? Were they trying to corral him somewhere in that pit to be finished off? Were they covering for another attack of Shikamaru's shadow from an unknown angle?

But then the smell hit his nostrils. The smell of the powder wasn't poison or anything like that. It smelled just like gunpowder.

With a flint placed on his teeth, Asuma created a spark on the leftover gunpowder trail hanging in front of his mouth and ignited the gunpowder in the pit for a massive explosion that filled it out and shot flames and smoke high up into the air via the walls that surrounded the intended target within. A yell from Kisame filled the air, but was mostly muffled from the sound of the blast.

Everyone standing on the walls had to turn away from the heat and the flash of the incredible blast, save for Asuma who had seen this play out similarly a hundred times before. All seeing this did was made him want a cigarette, "Absorb that."

"Mokuton: Jukai Heki (Wood Release: World of Trees Wall)!"

Thickly braided tree roots ran along the rim of the earth walls, closing off the smoky, fiery inside as if it were an oven. Both Yamato and Shikamaru coughed and waved smoke away after becoming visible on their side of the wall.

A smile came from Asuma as he walked along the edge to get to their side. He proudly clapped Shikamaru on the back, "Thanks for the switcheroo with your shadow. He looked like he'd seen a ghost or something when he saw me on the other side." Even Yamato had to admit when he found himself captured in Shikamaru's shadow and falling into pure darkness he didn't know what to make of it.

It was only when an instant later he found himself at Shikamaru's side he knew what was going on. A little warning would have been nice, but then again when exactly was there time for that? He had told Shikamaru to use them as pawns and wait for an opening anyway, so all the pineapple-headed young man had been doing was following orders really.

Shikamaru rubbed his neck as if it were sore and bothersome, downplaying his own move, "Well as long as he was holding onto that stupid sword I couldn't trap him with a Kagemane no Jutsu, and Kage Nui no Jutsu wasn't going to work again the way it did before so I couldn't sew him down…"

That left Kawarikage no Jutsu to switch Yamato and Asuma's places along his connected shadow, something that he was able to hide in the shadow of Yamato's first wall. Thank goodness it was late afternoon and the forest was bathed in shadows as it was to assist him.

"Kirigakure's going to want Samehada back." Yamato stated, pointing down into the enclosed pit. The sword would have easily survived that explosion and the fire as well, even if its user didn't.

"They can come and get it themselves then. Their ANBU are on the way as it is." Asuma said, sick and tired of that weapon and anything having to do with it. He was still on guard because he was expecting some horror movie moment where Kisame would suddenly burst from the ground and drag one of them to hell, "We can't touch it anyway can we?"

There wasn't time to care about that. They'd come back when they had adequate backup to secure the area. For now they needed to make sure that the other members of the squad were okay.

If they wound up in battle when they hadn't even intended to infiltrate anything, it was only a wonder as to what happened to everyone else. Taking charge, Yamato led the two men off to locate their teammates and link back up.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Escape Route of Otogakure Base)

"You can't take us both and keep the kid from getting caught at the same time." Suigetsu said, noticing that Guren didn't back down a bit despite the knowledge of this, "But let's see how you plan on doing it." He said before rushing straight ahead with Kubikiribouchou to be met with Guren's crystal arm blade, "Huh, these crystals of yours really are sturdy aren't they?"

"You'll see how sturdy they are when you've got one buried in your chest!" Guren threatened, pushing Yukimaru back to the wall before stepping forward to trade blade strikes with Suigetsu. Sparks flew from their respective weapons each time they met in the air, though Guren found that she was not going to be able to defeat one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist in a direct conflict of edged weaponry.

The first move Haku made to go for Yukimaru, Guren temporarily turned her attention away from Suigetsu enough to point out an arm and fire several large crystal needles at Haku that missed and stabbed deeply into the rock wall that the escape path was built into. She never thought that they were going to hit, but she needed to guide Haku into her direct field of vision along with Suigetsu which that technique allowed her to do.

She nearly lost that offending appendage though when Suigetsu almost lopped it off in swift retaliation for both taking her eyes off of him and attacking his girlfriend. Sword stroke avoided, she wasn't prepared for the punch that followed with a significantly bulked up arm, "Suiton: Gousuiwan no Jutsu (Water Release: Great Water Arm Jutsu)!"

She hadn't expected such a dangerous taijutsu anomaly coming from him, having forgotten that he could do things like that. That's right, they had managed to capture a Hozuki Clan member for a short time back a few years ago for Orochimaru to experiment on, so was this him?

Probably from the way that he seemed really pleased after he hit her, and even more pleased when her body smacked off of the solid ice wall that Haku had formed to keep she and Yukimaru from escaping.

"Guren!" Yukimaru instantly jumped in front of her and took several needles meant for her to the back, crying out in pain. The way Haku had aimed them they would have put her out of commission, but for Yukimaru they just hurt like hell, "You didn't have to do that brat, you're just making it easier for them to catch you."

"I'm supposed to be your partner aren't I?" He said with a pained smile as Guren pulled the needles out of his back quickly, ignoring the muttering of 'stupid' from the kunoichi.

Haku had past experience battling with a young and inexperienced jinchuuriki in Naruto. Despite the fact that he had never told her as much about his powers, after what she had learned after the fact looking back on that battle and outright beatdown he gave her she learned that even with things well in hand an emotionally distressed jinchuuriki was a touch dangerous.

She had meant for Yukimaru to step in and defend Guren, he seemed to like her a great deal. The more willing he was to risk himself to make sure that they didn't hurt her the simpler he would be to subdue than if he was just willing to let Guren defend him. Both she and Suigetsu had methods to subdue an opponent no matter how powerful they would get. If he started to rage, that would make things more treacherous, but also easier.

Suigetsu attacked with his massive sword once again, but Yukimaru came forward to meet him instead with an angry look on his face. His hand was open and he sent it forward to meet Suigetsu's blade. Hey, if he wanted to lose an arm that would just make catching him that much more straightforward, "Sangoshou (Coral Palm)!"

The shot from the sword knocked Yukimaru back harshly, but he was not cut and he did not lose an arm. The reason being that now there was a layer of coral that had grown on the top of the blade of the sword much to Suigetsu's shock, "What the hell?"

Behind her mask, Haku's face got a touch grave, 'Damn it, that was how the former Mizukage neutralized Zabuza-sama's swordplay during his attempt at a coup and forced us to flee.' "Get rid of it now before it spreads over the whole sword!" Haku warned aloud, not wishing her last link to her previous master to be encased in coral.

Suigetsu quickly lifted the weapon above his head and smashed it on the ground, breaking off the brittle coral along with the tip of the sword. It was a sacrifice that was an easy choice to make.

'Good work Yukimaru.' Guren thought at the quick action of her young charge, 'A broken sword won't do him much good even if it is a national treasure.' The scramble to rid himself of the coral left him wide open for Guren to close the distance between them, an evil look on her face as she did so, "Shoton: Suishou Rou no Jutsu (Crystal Release: Jade Crystal Prison Jutsu)!"

As he dropped Kubikiribouchou in surprise, the same technique that Guren used to crystallize and kill Gato at Degarashi Port encased Suigetsu and trapped him, freezing him inside of the crystal.

Or did it?

While his body wasn't moving, his face wasn't stuck in a horrified look of shock. He merely looked extremely displeased to be stuck in his current situation, even looking toward Haku with a beckoning look to get him out. That was enough to elicit a slight laugh from the ice-manipulating hunter-nin as she seemed to be prepared to make a move to free him.

"Make a single step and I'll shatter him like a glass mirror." Guren threatened, holding up a sole knuckle to the crystal prison. She didn't see what was so funny. But when Haku indeed moved forward, Guren scoffed and made good on her threat, casually shattering the crystal into multiple particles and breaking Suigetsu apart with it. And why was Haku making hand-seals?

"Sensatsu Suishou (Thousand Flying Water Needles of Death)!"

Inexplicable moisture from the countless crystal particles formed into long thin needles in the air all around Guren and quickly flew at her from all sides, forcing her to instantly jump up to avoid being stabbed to death. She didn't trust her thin crystal armor to stand up to anything sharp moving that fast, not after it had been broken in the past by other recent enemies.

The water needles reformed the moment that they missed, into Suigetsu's body as he lunged at Guren who had stuck herself to the ceiling. The surprise attack thoroughly shocked her, but she still dodged, and Suigetsu's attempted punch hit nothing but the rock, "Damn it Haku-chan I hate when you do that to me!" He shouted at her, only getting more laughs for his trouble, "It's not funny! Just because I can turn into water doesn't mean I like consenting to being used for jutsu when I do!"

"But it's such a good method for a sneak attack." Haku defended in return, "It was either let her break you and then do what I did, or fight to get to you, freeze the crystal, and then find a way to break that." She was not physically strong enough to do that on her own, even if Kubikiribouchou was around for her to use.

A bark of laughter came from Guren who was back with Yukimaru, "You can't break my crystal techniques, even if you swung at it with your giant butcher knife before Yukimaru broke it."

Suigetsu and Haku shared a look before turning back to her, the only one of them with a visible face sporting a deadpan look on it, "Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Haku'll freeze cracks into anything you can make. You can't crystallize her either."

This wasn't good. She didn't expect those two to be as good as they were at working in tandem, to the extent that Haku could and would use Suigetsu's own body as a weapon depending on the situation at hand.

Gritting her teeth, Guren made a set of one-handed hand-seals before waving out her hand to send forth a pink wave of chakra. Both Haku and Suigetsu dodged it, but they weren't the real target. The wall at their side leading to the ocean found itself petrified in crystal before Guren made her move.

The wall leading to the cliff outside of the base shattered into pieces like a dinner plate and Guren leapt out of it with Yukimaru tucked under one arm while she slid down the slope, slowing her descent with a blade of crystal on her arm.

Dangerous? Yes, but not any more so than fighting with an inexperienced partner against two skilled enemies that were ready for them and could apparently counter her jutsu style. Cornered as they had been they wouldn't have stood much of a chance had they started using Yukimaru opportunistically the way they had been at the start.

On their dynamic exit from the base, Guren had reformed the hole she had created with a crystal substitute. That would slow down their pursuers enough for them to begin making their way elsewhere.

At least it would have if portions of the wall didn't frost over, cracks appearing in parts of it before it shattered. Both Haku and Suigetsu stood behind it, the latter with an abnormally bulky arm and fist outstretched from busting down the previously frozen over crystal wall.

"I tried to warn her that this would do her no good." Haku said as she watched Guren begin to make her and Yukimaru's escape in a crystal wheel on the surface of the water that was speeding away, "We can't let her get away."

Suigetsu looked down at the long way to the water with a frown and sighed, "Alright, I'm on then. Catch up soon though would you?" He said before diving straight out, aiming for the water despite how rocky the landing would be even if he landed in it, "Suika no Jutsu (Hydrification Jutsu)!" His entire body turned to liquid as he landed in the ocean and disappeared.

From up above, Haku watched this and looked at Guren's method of quick escape rolling out, cutting through the waves as it made for the horizon. She was going to have to follow Suigetsu's lead very soon, but it was best to lag a bit behind in this case, lest she get herself caught up in what he was about to do. Depending on how far away the two managed to get, he was going to wind up going a little overboard.

"It's for the best if I'm a little late to show." Haku said aloud before vanishing in a misty Shunshin.

XxX

(With Ino and Anko)

Juugo's rampage didn't seem to be subsiding. Not until he killed something, and that something was a pair of Konoha kunoichi that had been able to evade him thus far. Shrieking and shouting he continued storming through the forest in pursuit of Anko, whom he could sense lightly due to her Cursed Seal.

In his rage he didn't notice that he had entered a booby-trapped square of terrain within the trees until the explosive tags marking the corners of the field blew up with him inside of them. Anko was very accustomed to setting up traps and had used Fuubaku Houjin (Sealed Bomb Square Release) to try and contain Juugo, with help from the personalized tags that had been given to the team members by their creator.

The strength of the blasts from Naruto's powerful tags felled trees that weren't even meant to be caught in the square limits of the barrier, but for as strong as they were it didn't stop Juugo who passed right through the smoky aftermath looking around, "You think that'll kill me? I'll rip you apart when I find you!"

"Aww… you promise?"

The murderous view of the massive man swung upward to where he could see Anko standing in the branches above with a confident look on her face despite the situation. With one hand on her hip she casually tossed a kunai in the other.

"Did you mean what you said?" Anko continued to say as she looked down, "About ripping me apart I mean. Because, I have to be honest with you, that seems like a good time. Watching you try to do something like that to me. Why don't you come up here and go for it?"

"Die!" Juugo's boosters on his back shot him into the air at Anko. She immediately dropped down from her spot in the tree as Juugo punched clean through the trunk and split it into two. Due to a strand of ninja wire she prepared in another tree, Anko swung down to the ground and dodged the falling chunk of foliage before it could crush her into a pretty little stain on the forest floor.

'Any day now Yamanaka.' Anko thought to herself as she had to dodge Juugo landing on the ground leading with his fist and using enough force to smash a large crater into the ground, 'This guy's like an animal. Am I going to be able to stop him if she blows her shot?' In another concerted effort to stall, Anko hurled a shuriken his way before flashing through hand-seals that she never got to finish before Juugo exploded from his landing place.

The surprising show of speed allowed him to deliver a crushing punch to Anko's head that seemed to make it explode, only instead of gore it was mud that was sent flying as the top half of a mud clone was obliterated by his actions.

At first he seemed confused by the lack of Anko's actual presence, but after taking a moment to feel out his surroundings he grinned viciously and drove his fist directly into the ground, burying his arm into it up to his elbow.

All over the immediate area, wild and random spiking tendrils popped up all over, seemingly branching off from their origin point before one finally bore substantial fruit and wound up taking Anko out of the ground, having stabbed her through the thigh before it retracted quickly to pop up elsewhere like all of the others.

'Damn it that hurt!' Anko thought to herself, biting her lip to keep from crying out at the neatly placed puncture through her leg, 'Right, things like that aren't going to work for me. When he's transformed he can sense out my Cursed Seal like a beacon or something. Thanks for screwing me over again _sensei_.'

But now her mobility was completely shot to hell. A sloth could probably run up on her and take her out as she was at that moment.

Preparing herself to fend him off with whatever she had left on her to fight with, Anko kept waiting for the worst to happen. Juugo didn't charge her though. He didn't even move, and his head was hanging low.

With a raised eyebrow she stood up with the help of a tree and warily tried to get some more distance just in case when she saw Juugo's body return to normal, "Sorry about that, I've got a lot to sort out up here." Was that Ino? "Shinjoueishin no Jutsu (Mind Body Projection Jutsu) was a success." Yep, that was Ino.

"Yamanaka?" Anko asked warily, "You're in there?" A nod from Juugo's body was the answer, "For how long exactly?"

A sheepish laugh as if it was coming from a girl came from Juugo's form as Ino explained, "When he started really getting into that attack after realizing you were underground. I possessed him, but that's when it got weird. It's like this guy has split personalities. I had to deal with the wimpy one and suppress him first before the crazy one realized what was happening."

"You couldn't do that before I got stabbed in the goddamn leg!" Anko shouted, waving her arms around indignantly and subsequently losing her standing stability to wind up with her falling onto her backside.

"Hey, I went as fast as I could! No one ever trained us on having to deal with deposing two conscious minds controlling a single body! I never did that before!" Ino then stopped and thought about it, "Hey, if I studied it and wrote a good thesis on multiple personality disorder do you think I'd get promoted for it? Or paid at least?" It would only be good for Yamanaka Clan members really, and those that dabbled in subtle interrogation, but that was still good for someone.

"I don't care! Sedate and fix my damn leg before I wind up losing it or you _will_ be living in a haunted house tonight! This shit hurts!"

Fine. Geez, for being so tough Anko was a big baby when it came to being wounded. Ino hoped she didn't complain like that when she got messed up in battles, "You're going to have tough it out and help me make sure this guy is really out for the count this time before I do anything about that."

XxX

(Elsewhere in the Ruined Otogakure Base – With Naruto)

"Go to Kiri and help a friend…" Naruto said to himself as he clawed his way up the side of a wall. Looking down he caught sight of the entire mountaintop ceiling that had crashed down on the inside of the once grand hidden base. He almost wound up falling in and buried along with all of those massive chunks of rubble, "…A big S-rank mission for your first job back is a good idea, best to jump right into it." He continued to mutter to himself as he looked up at the big open sky. The sun had almost fully descended by this time, "Oh Gato's involved? Sign me up. Stupid."

Finally pulling himself back to the top he peered over the side back down into what used to be the main chamber of the hideout. There were still specks of Kimimaro's bone forest that could be seen, but it was mostly just enormous chunks of the island summit that had fallen in after all of the devastation that he, Itachi, and Kimimaro had dealt that exact area with everything they did.

Okay, so it was mostly him and Kimimaro. Itachi was more subtle with his destruction than they were. Between Kimimaro sending pulverizing bone missiles, and stabbing a massive bone spire straight through the roof along with Naruto carving up the foundation of the summit with a chakra tail before slamming a superpowered Rasengan down into it, that place wasn't standing up to see sunset one way or another.

Good news; the summit mostly collapsing put out the raging, self-sustaining death inferno that he and Itachi had started all over the base due to their unknowing team-up collaboration jutsu.

…And that was pretty much the only good news he could think of.

Well there was the fact that he couldn't see either Kimimaro or Itachi, but he considered that to be a bad thing. He wanted to see them, see a body. Otherwise who knew if they were dead?

There wasn't a single motion down in there. The only noise that could be heard was the crackling of some of the still present flames down within and the rocks that were still crumbling all over the place.

Forming the ram seal, Naruto dropped his Kyuubi-cloak and extended his senses to try and scope out any signs of life. The fact that he could do this was the only thing that saved him from being speared through the chest from underneath the ground. He moved his body and pulled his machete in order to instantly retaliate to what was coming his way. Instead he was stabbed clear through the right shoulder by a long, thin bone sticking out of the rock beneath him, "Doton: Moguragakure no Jutsu (Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Jutsu)."

Naruto shouted out in pain as Kimimaro emerged from the ground and knocked the weapon from his hand. The bone spear had severed the metal chain, showing off just how hard Shikotsumyaku allowed the user to make one's bones. The blue and orange clad jinchuuriki managed to remove himself from the bone spike by jumping back, leaving a gaping wound in his shoulder as Kimimaro spun through in one clean motion and kicked him smoothly, knocking Naruto off of his feet and to the ground.

The dull eyes of Kimimaro ignored Naruto writhing on the ground and clutching at his wound to shoot a short glance at Naruto's weapon that was well out of range. Moving forward he kicked Naruto's good arm aside when he made a move to fight back and stepped his foot on the injured arm to pin it in place while he held a bone sword at Naruto's throat.

Parts of skin and muscle were missing from the visible portions of his body. Even one of his eyes were missing due to half of his face being completely gone, "You've ruined Orochimaru-sama's base, but that means nothing. We still have all of the cards here. And now… you're going to die like the trash that you are."

"You sure do like to call people trash." Naruto said, voice straining due to the pain. If he even started to show that he was trying to dredge up the Kyuubi's chakra Kimimaro would just finish him off, "Why'd you have a jinchuuriki to begin with?"

"Because Orochimaru-sama desired one. It's as simple as that." Kimimaro said. He had Naruto dead to rights. There was nothing he could do and Itachi wasn't there anymore. That only left the two of them, "All he wished was to better himself for the organization by obtaining Uchiha Itachi's Sharingan, and that was grounds for dismissal to them. He thought that if anyone would understand his desire to improve himself and make himself the ultimate being it would be a group of his elite peers, but they were just as fickle-minded as your weak village."

"Won't taking a jinchuuriki just make him a target?" Naruto asked aloud, trying his damndest to stall for time. It was almost like he was feeling around for something, but he wasn't moving an inch, "I know about your boss, but there are supposed to be nine of these guys. Having a biju with him is just going to mark him down for them."

Straight to the top of their hit list indeed. But this didn't seem to concern Kimimaro a bit, "Do you know why Orochimaru-sama elected to utilize Yukimaru as a jinchuuriki instead of a younger child as is the custom?" He could tell from Naruto's silence that he didn't, "Yukimaru's body is strangely compatible with the creature, it is stabilized with his chakra system as if it is meant to be there. Even without it being inside of his body he could exact a measure of control over it."

"So what's the point?"

The expressionless face of the monster form of Kimimaro didn't even blink in response, "Can you imagine what a man with Orochimaru-sama's ingenuity can do with a powerful jinchuuriki body? He can remain in it for an entire lifetime and have unimaginably powerful chakra at his beck and call, and that is merely the tip of the potential iceberg. With the chakra supply of a jinchuuriki he can implant a Sharingan into his body akin to Hatake Kakashi and circumvent the stamina problem altogether."

"He's going to take his body?" Naruto shouted up at the underling of the snake sannin, "What's wrong with you people?"

"You know nothing of progress." Kimimaro stated coldly, digging his heel into Naruto's damaged arm to elicit a groan of pain from him, "And if you believe that making himself a jinchuuriki will endanger Orochimaru-sama know this; as long as I'm at his side I will reap a path through the Akatsuki so that he may lead us to newer heights." He narrowed his eyes down at Naruto and drew his sword back, "All enemies of Otogakure and Orochimaru-sama deserve the same fate; death."

"Look why don't we all just go home?" Naruto said, writhing in place on the ground, "Well… we'll go home. You guys can go to a hotel or something. And we can work this shit out another day, because none of us is having a good day right now." Where the fuck were those ANBU?

"I think not."

"I knew you were going to say that."

Without warning from behind, Naruto's machete lifted off of the ground and flew directly at Kimimaro's back. Impenetrable metal-dense skeleton or not, with wind chakra running through the blade it stuck directly into Kimimaro's back four inches deep, it might have even been resting on his spine. He couldn't remember the last time he had been wounded that deeply.

Hearing a jangle noise, he turned around and found the chain that he had severed reconnected to the bottom of Naruto's machete handle. But how?

The trail of the chain led to where the weapon had been lying, and then underneath the ground. Taking a step off of Naruto due to the severity of the thick-cutting blade buried in his back, Kimimaro saw that even though the arm he had been standing on was slick and dyed red with Naruto's blood, there was still a chain extending beneath his bloody arm-warmer that was going underneath the ground.

"Yeah that chain didn't come from around one of my grieves. That chain comes from me. How else do you think I kept extending it and pulling it back so fast?" Naruto said, jumping back to his feet as his chain pulled the machete out of Kimimaro's back. The opening given hear allowed Naruto to blur forward and rest both of his hands on Kimimaro's torso after disarming him, "And while your body might be as tough as steel I'll bet your insides aren't. Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"

With a twist of his hands and a sharp tug of them away from Kimimaro's body, Naruto created something of a crushing vacuum with his wind chakra in the hollow areas of Kimimaro's body, past the devilishly strong bones, to the soft and squishy bits beneath.

Kimimaro's head turned up and a spurt of blood flew up from his throat into the air due to having his internal organs squeezed like stress balls by Naruto's wind manipulation. Eyes rolling into the back of his head, his Cursed Seal receded before he fell onto his back ramrod straight and didn't move again, face twisted in shock and pain.

Naruto just stared down at the white-haired warrior, clutching his wounded shoulder with one arm as his own chest heaved up and down tiredly. Part of him was expecting Itachi to play opportunist and swoop in on him to try and finish the job on him, but it never came.

Whatever happened to him? If the entire base falling inward on itself didn't kill Kimimaro he doubted that it managed to take down someone like Itachi.

The bleeding from his shoulder was beginning to slow and with a weak shake of the limb Naruto's chain retracted itself, reeling in his machete to dangle just underneath his hand. He spared a glance down at it with a click of his tongue, "Thanks mom."

According to Jiraiya, Uzumaki Kushina had a very strange kind of chakra that worked for a special kind of ninjutsu style that revolved around using chains made of her own chakra that she would expel straight from her tenketsu. After working out the probable process of how it worked through Jiraiya's stories and Shikamaru's comparison in regards to how his Kage Nui no Jutsu worked, he came up with it a few weeks prior to the end of their tenure as guardians.

Apparently Kushina could do it from pretty much anywhere on her body with any tenketsu and the strength of her chains were so strong she could use them as the basis for a barrier, or as outright attacks complete with spikes, hell she could do even more than that from the things that he had heard! Compared to her Naruto wasn't anywhere near that. His chains weren't that strong to rely upon as weapons in of themselves in battle and he could only make them from his arms since that was where he was most accustomed to moving chakra from, but it definitely saved his ass today.

He literally had something up his sleeve that won that battle for him.

From the summit of the island he had a pretty good view of most of it and could see for the 10 square miles of the land. Shutting his eyes to really feel out as far as he could, Naruto sent out a burst of Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu to locate any signatures he could find.

He could feel Asuma, Shikamaru, and Yamato moving toward the northern coast. Anko and Ino were together in one place with another pretty unstable chakra. He couldn't feel Haku or Suigetsu anywhere on the island at all so they must have been underground or their search took them farther than his ability allowed him to reach from even that high.

Victory or not, fully completed mission or not, he was still concerned with the whereabouts of Uchiha Itachi, 'He definitely could have tried to take me down right now.' Naruto thought, shooting a look to his right shoulder that Kimimaro had gored, 'Did he really just leave?' He couldn't sense him either.

XxX

(Elsewhere on the Island)

Kisame sat, leaning against a tree overlooking a coastline area of the island. His Akatsuki cloak was completely burned off and he barely had pants left on to speak of. Those three had gotten him good.

In order to defend him as best as it could, Samehada wrapped itself around as much of his body as it could. This actually managed to absorb a tremendous amount of the destructive power of the blast that Asuma created and kept him from being blown to separate pieces. The fire itself was a different story though. Samehada couldn't protect him from all of it, only the fire that touched the blade managed to get absorbed.

And to keep from being cooked Kisame had to choose to retreat with the use of Doton: Dochuu Senkou (Earth Release: Subterranean Voyage)… for now anyway.

Footsteps resulted in Itachi walking right next to where Kisame was sitting down from behind the tree he was leaning against. Sparing a glance to the side, Kisame saw that Itachi was pretty well-worn himself, but was easily the one in better condition than him, "Itachi-san, you didn't use the Mangekyou Sharingan did you?" His eyes weren't bleeding and he wasn't straining to look out at the sunset, thus he hadn't done so.

"There was no need." Itachi said calmly as the two of them looked out at the ocean, "You didn't use Suirou Sameodori no Jutsu (Water Prison Shark Dance Jutsu) did you?" He asked in return, already knowing the answer as well. From where he ended up if Kisame had used that jutsu everyone on the damn island would have been able to see it.

Kisame let out a chuckle before sharply inhaling through his teeth in pain, "If I'd have caught up with that Kimimaro brat I'd have used it out of principle just to see him squirm and die, but against three opponents it's not really an ideal kind of move." For someone so severely burned he was in good spirits, "I'll just get Samehada to lend me some more chakra to patch this up.

"He's dead now if it makes you feel any better."

"Ha, it kind of does. Did you put that nuisance down?"

"No, the Kyuubi jinchuuriki Uzumaki Naruto killed him."

"And you didn't capture him afterwards?"

"It wasn't the right time."

"Whatever you say Itachi-san."

Both of them just continued to stare out at the sea before Kisame let out a sigh and tilted his head back, "…The Sanbi got away too didn't it?" Itachi didn't answer, and that in of itself elicited a sigh from the shark-like man, "When we took the Yonbi it was easier than this clusterfuck."

Would Kakuzu and Hidan have more trouble taking out the Nibi? He sure hoped so, because this crap was ridiculous.

"Let's return to the mainland." Itachi insisted, taking a few steps forward closer to the coast, "Leader-sama will want to know of these events. And a more accurate and current report on the formerly mostly unknown abilities of Uzumaki Naruto will only help in the long term."

That much was true. Everything that had been amassed on Naruto prior to his departure from Konoha was woefully outdated due to his time spent behind the concealing capital walls.

Besides, a snake was getting away with Akatsuki property. Orochimaru was finally sticking his nose in their business too the way that they always figured he would. They just never figured he'd try to take a biju in for himself.

Sasori was going to be pissed.

"Sure, let's go. I think my nerve endings are fixed enough so I can move without being in complete agony by now."

"…You look positively barbequed."

"Please shut up… and don't use any fire ninjutsu around me for a while or I might attack you."

XxX

(Seas Around the Island)

Haku had thought to lag slightly behind Suigetsu because in the ocean he would wind up using large-scale water ninjutsu to stop and defeat Guren, but what she found wasn't what she expected to see at all.

The bodies of the entire strike squad of ANBU that had been sent to back them up lay dead and bleeding in the water.

And Suigetsu was unconscious in the sea as well. His body was rendered into a jelly-like state that was basically like an oil slick on the surface of the water. A surefire sign that he had been defeated.

"What in the world?" Haku whispered to herself as she slowly walked around and surveyed the scene, "What happened here?" Upon getting close to Suigetsu's form she kneeled down and leaned over him, "Tell me what went on. Did Guren defeat you, or was the Sanbi too much even inside of its jinchuuriki?"

Suigetsu seemed to be able to see and understand her, but he was too weak to reform his body. His voice came out in a garbled tone through the water, "No …Orochimaru…"

XxX

Onboard a ship with an eight-headed snake figurehead, a contingent of nameless, masked Otogakure shinobi were busy making sure that both Guren and Yukimaru were in apt condition. Both of them were soaked to the bone, bleeding in some places, bruised, and otherwise looked like they had thoroughly been put through the ringer.

Yukimaru seemed utterly shellshocked at what he had just made it through, and Guren just seemed relieved to see a friendly uniform.

The crowd of attending ninjas parted and standing there like a conquering deity was Orochimaru, smiling down at the two of them. To most people to see this man smile at them would be chilling to the bone, but it was relieving to the two of them, "Guren… you've accomplished all of your missions admirably. Thanks to you Gato's wealth has been permanently secured for Otogakure, and you've managed to protect my young investment here in Yukimaru."

The moment that he received word of Gato's death and that he was now the majority beneficiary of the vast amount of Gato Company's massive funds he was aware that Guren had completed her mission that had really been assigned to her when she was sent to watch over Degarashi Port as the lead of Otogakure's security for Gato; managing to divert money from the company towards further investing greatly into the 'ninja business' after Gato's eventual tragic death.

Anyone that took over the company's reins after a successor was decided, if one would be decided before the massive shipping company was bitterly split up between Gato's useless business associates (see: yes men), they would never notice what all of that money was put into, and that they were essentially left with nothing between the lot of them worth really fighting over.

Taken back by the praise, Guren just looked at him in awe before bowing to him on one knee, "Orochimaru-sama, I was merely doing the work you assigned me to the best of my ability." They were such long assignments, and the Gato one was especially grating, but for him it was nothing at all.

"Don't be so humble dear." Orochimaru said, gesturing to the fading island on the horizon, "You managed to salvage the most important facet of my Mizu no Kuni dealings despite the fall of our main base." He gestured to the people around him, "I figured that after word came to me of the fall of Degarashi Port, a move would be made on us here by Kiri, so I evacuated all of our loyal people while their attention was on locating this main facility."

She shook her head dejectedly, "We failed. They managed to destroy the hideout even without the ANBU team making it there to assist. Akatsuki was important in ensuring that."

Still, hope filled her chest when Orochimaru casually dismissed the loss of their stronghold in prime position to do as they wished in Mizu no Kuni, "There is no more interest in this land for us. I've taken all that I need." He had taken enough subjects for experimentation, recruited enough potentially skilled recruits, and obtained basically everything of value that he could receive from that country without starting an outright war.

Guren remained bowing until she saw Yukimaru looking slightly intimidated at being in front of Orochimaru again despite having her with him, "Don't be afraid Yukimaru, you are very important to Orochimaru-sama. Too important to ever allow harm to come to you by those people."

A tentative nod came from Yukimaru who then looked back upon the white-skinned legend. He had been hearing the exact same thing ever since he had been made a jinchuuriki by Orochimaru and the strange man in purple with glasses. He used to be a prisoner of Otogakure, stolen away from his former unspectacular and drifting life, but was quickly taken away from that fate the moment he was deemed to be special.

But it took until that moment to really drive home the point that Guren and Kimimaro had been telling him for a couple of years. Like a hero out of some kind of legend, he seemed to come from nowhere, and he protected them from the powerful man that seemed to be one with the very water. He protected them from the squad of ANBU that appeared and seemed to be prepared to steal him away to their village.

He rested a hand on Yukimaru's shoulder and took the boy into a partial hug, "The sacrifice that Kimimaro made today in keeping the enemy away from you has to make you understand Yukimaru, that I only want great things for you. I only want great things for all of us." He said, speaking up to the entire mass of Otogakure ninja on the ship, "But there are oh so many out there that would seek to destroy us, and why? For seeking natural excellence in our ilk? For trying to improve upon what we already have?"

The hard look in the eyes of the many masked Oto men and women onboard as they nodded along in agreement along with what their leader was saying seemed to sway Yukimaru as Orochimaru directed Guren to stand and come along with him to the interior of the ship for medical treatment, food, and rest.

"I will never let Akatsuki harm you Yukimaru." Orochimaru assured him wholeheartedly, "I will make you strong, strong enough to keep Guren from being hurt by them or anyone else again. I promise you that. I will show you… I will show you all just what true power really is."

Though normally his words would come with a measure of faith in order to accept and believe them, when Orochimaru assured everyone on board that he would show them all what true power was, there wasn't a person there that hadn't seen him in action personally that did not believe in every word he was saying.

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 6

(Eleven Months after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

Sitting around a table in the common room of the Guardian Ninja quarters, there were ten players in the middle of a very large game of hold 'em in order to wind down from a rather tumultuous stretch of missions that had been dealt to the group over the course of the last month. It was the first time that all seven current members of the group had been underneath the same roof since Naruto and Shikamaru had completed their inaugural training.

In addition to Naruto and Shikamaru who were currently keeping their two cards to themselves, both with varying degrees of exasperation on their faces at what they were seeing, also sitting around the table in clockwise order were Sadao, Kotoko, Kenta, two other members of the guardians, the handler of the group and an aide to the daimyo in Nobuyuki, a pissed off looking Tsunade, and Jiraiya

One of the two other members of the Guardian Ninja organization was a young man Sadao's age with pale skin, and long hair fixed in ponytailed dreadlocks. He wore a white pants along with an open-collared hooded jacket with flame patterns all over it and a big hood in the back of it that was currently down as he was not out in the sun at the moment. His red eyes were aimed down at the table as he finished dealing the three community face-up cards that would serve as the ongoing flop for the hand.

Sitting next to him with a very smug expression on her face was the second of the other members of the guardians. A seventeen year old girl cropped black hair and one bang hanging over one of her sharp blue eyes with a thin scar going down her right cheek. She wore an intentionally shredded looking pink t-shirt and red leather short skirt with the guardian sash around her waist along with a mesh bodysuit underneath that covered the rest of her body. Taking a quick glance at her cards she confidently looked around scrutinizing the expressions on everyone else's faces. This was probably due to the fact that the most chips at the table collectively belonged to her.

Subtly leaning over to his apprentice's cards while Naruto seemed to be shifting uncomfortably due to his hand, Jiraiya started mumbling in a play-by-play announcer's voice under his breath, "And with Uzumaki holding the 'A's' it looks like he's an early favorite in the-."

"Fold." Everyone deadpanned at once and tossed their hands in.

"What? Ero-sensei back off!" Naruto shouted, shoving his teacher's face back over to the airspace of his own seat, "Quit peeking at my cards! I've been getting my ass kicked all night here, give me a break!" Just because Jiraiya could afford to piss away this much money getting beaten down in a card game didn't mean he could. He was steadily losing his whole paycheck here.

"Join the club brat." Tsunade grumbled, upon hearing Jiraiya blatantly expose what Naruto apparently had to the entire table. With a frown she looked up across the table to where Sadao was sitting and calmly enjoying the environment, "How are you even playing? You can't read the face of the cards."

Realizing that he was being addressed by one of the two strongest ninja at the table, Sadao blinked and lifted his cards in front of his sunglasses-clad face before shrugging and putting them back to what he figured was facedown, "Oh, well I just like being here. And when you came in here you were yelling that no one could hang out here without actually playing, so here I am."

"But you're losing. Badly."

"Well it can't be helped. Next time it's proposed we play, _someone_ needs to bring cards that read in Braille so that everyone can take part equally."

"Why would I do that? Then you'd beat me too. At least I know right now that if I can't beat anyone else I can beat the blind guy."

A frown broke out on Sadao's face before the blind monk just accepted the way things were. If he had a nickname like 'The Legendary Sucker' he'd probably take any win he could get while gambling too, "Hey Jiraiya-sama do you have one of those for me? I'm kind of parched." He said, referring to the beer bottle in Jiraiya's hand.

"Ah, sorry kid." Jiraiya said, shaking the nearly empty bottle in his hand, "Fresh out." He thoroughly ignored the fact that he had five more sitting on the floor right behind his chair. Hey, if Sadao wasn't extending his field of awareness far enough to know that much he obviously didn't want one that badly. Why share?

"Come on, let's go." The girl with short hair was the next to deal and had done so, prompting Nobuyuki to toss out the starting wager, followed by everyone else that chose to up the ante, "I want to hurry up and bust you all so I can get some beauty sleep."

"Akira you suck at life." Naruto said, taking offense at the fact that he had been getting crap all night long, "How can you do this to me? What am I going to do until I get paid again?"

"Go to the barracks with the standing soldiers and eat with them." Akira replied nonchalantly as if the battle-scarred beauty didn't care that she was bankrupting him, "If you wanted a better chance you should've played spades or tonk instead." Why did she have to feel bad about it? She hadn't known him or Shikamaru for very long at all since they were all usually busy out and about on missions.

"You know how women are Naruto." Shikamaru said immediately after, despite the fact that there were currently three women all older than him at the table, "They don't care if they use up all of your money as long as it goes to what they want."

After hearing what he had to say, Tsunade didn't really consider it as much of an insult as she expected to receive from that lazy kid, "Damn right."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Akira followed up while checking over her fingernails.

"Hey, I got an 'A' and a seven. What kind of lame cards are these? Even the ones with letters on them don't spell anything!" Kotoko… well if it was very believable, she actually wasn't doing that badly all things considered.

The mammoth Kenta looked at his hand behind the basket helmet on his head before he threw his hand in and folded, just shaking his head wordlessly. That was pretty much the best thing that anyone could say to sum up the entire game thus far, "Shinya?" He said simply, passing the buck to the next person's turn.

With a scoff, the pale, white-haired, red-eyed young man seemed to mull over his chances with what he had, but upon looking next to him at Akira who seemed amused at anything he thought he could do to win. In the end he just threw his hand in, "Oh what's the point? No matter who's dealing Akira's been tearing all of us apart all night long." Shinya said, placing his head down on the table.

"Don't be so mad about it." Akira said, choosing to up the ante further, "Some people win and some people lose. Nobuyuki?" The good-natured attendant just smiled and nodded his own consent to continue, throwing in his own increase to the pot, "That's the spirit."

"I'm not letting some wet behind the ears kunoichi break the bank on me." Tsunade growled, choosing to continue as well, "I think you're full of crap."

"I'm out." Jiraiya said, subtly switching out beers so that Sadao didn't notice the movement and he didn't have to share, "I can't keep doing this. I could be hitting on the ladies of the court right now instead of losing all of this money."

Naruto doggedly refused to believe that someone could win so many heads-up showdowns when it came time to show their cards and pressed on as well the way that Tsunade and Nobuyuki chose to. Shikamaru just stared across the table at Akira who was smugly waiting on him to either fold or continue. Instead of doing either he leaned over to Sadao and whispered into the blind man's ear.

Seeing nothing wrong with adhering to whatever Shikamaru requested of him, Sadao increased the depth of his field of perception with his Keimoudama (Sphere of Enlightenment) jutsu and his eyebrows raised high up over his sunglasses at all of the ambient chakra permeating the air, "Why's there a genjutsu in the room?" It wasn't like he could see whatever it was doing so it must have been cast over the general area instead of over any person in particular.

The room went dead silent as everyone threw their hands together in the ram seal and together dispelled whatever illusion had been set over the room, more specifically over the cards, as it had been covering up exactly what the true face of the cards everyone had were according to what the user wanted them to be.

Only one person there was really into genjutsu all that much to try such a thing on all of them. All eyes immediately turned to Akira who was visibly sweating at that time and had backed her chair up amid the crushing quiet and stewing killing intent from a couple of the players.

With good reason too, because without warning Naruto immediately dove over the table to grab her and missed when she jumped out of it and ran for the door. By this time Tsunade had flipped the table up to the ceiling and was in hot pursuit in chasing her out with Naruto following right behind.

Everyone just sat in their places without a table between them as if what had just happened was a normal occurrence. The loud yells of anger from both Naruto and Tsunade and the corresponding crashing as Akira continued to try and escape them echoed throughout the vast building.

Nobuyuki laughed in an almost childishly delightful manner and put his hands together as if applauding at a show, "Good show! What a splendid gathering! We'll have to do this again the very next time that everyone is in town."

* * *

Jutsu List

Kura Taifuu no Me (Eye of the Dark Hurricane). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-to-long range. Similar to other ashen-styled ninjutsu based on a specialized form of wind release, the user will eject the superheated substance from their mouth but at a faster rate than lesser attacks. The jutsu tends to cloud and hang in the air for longer and can be prematurely manipulated into a pattern dependant on the user's desire prior to being fired, making it a highly malleable and versatile jutsu for combat to either overwhelm or corral a varying number of opponents to establish control of a wide battlefield. Has high trickery and trapping potential due to this fact.

Sansei Ame (Acid Rain). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-to-long range. The user kneads chakra into a time-release ball of a compressed chemical substance and fires it into the air. It bursts into a cloud of poison that saturates the area beneath it in a quick downpour. Due to the ability of the technique to cover a decent amount of space it must be used carefully lest a ninja find harm dealt to their comrades in addition to their enemies.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Ninja Guardians

Ishii Akira

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 4.5**

**Total Score: 26.5**

Kondo Shinya

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 27**

* * *

**And that's going to conclude the arc. I think that's a pretty good start since I'm not using any canon storyline guidelines to go off of here, this is all uncharted and pretty much original content. Like I said, Orochimaru is going to be a more prevalent antagonist here because I think he's a good bad guy with a magnificent concept about him, and they could have kept his role as the big bad of the series going for a bit longer than they did.**

**Anyway, this was an absolute monster and I couldn't find a fair spot to end it and split it... so I'm going to go ice my fingers and continue preparing to go back to college now. Five days left and I'm moving back in. I don't know how I feel about that yet so I am reserving judgment until I meet my roommate in person. It's going to be hard to top my last one though, he was the most awesome roommate I've ever had by far (I basically had a live-in sparring partner for an entire year!).**

**Hope you enjoyed, and I'll catch you all next time.**

**Kenchi out.**


	51. One Thing After Another

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I need to go put some Icy-Hot on my bruised ego because that fact always stings me when I write it down for thousands of you to read.

**Chapter 51: One Thing After Another**

* * *

_(Flashback – During the Pursuit of Guren)_

"_I've got you Yukimaru." Guren said, still holding onto the young jinchuuriki in question as she ran inside of her crystal wheel, splitting through the ocean water as they quickly fled the island. It was a good time to do so apparently, because the tallest portion of the rocky island seemed to cave in on itself, shooting smoke and debris high into the air._

_That place was done for._

_Yukimaru put on a brave face despite the fact that he _really_ looked like the child that he was from his place tucked underneath the crystal manipulating kunoichi's arm, "Do you think we lost those people from Kiri?" He asked his older guardian._

"_How would they chase us out in the open water?" Guren answered his question with another question, smirking down to him as she did so, "Orochimaru-sama chose me as one of his elites for a reason. I'd have them kill me in battle before I let them have you to themselves."_

_Because Yukimaru was important to her master. More important than her life. She knew that and she had long since accepted that. It was a prerequisite for any true shinobi that Orochimaru deemed useful. Such was the life of an Otogakure ninja, to give oneself for their leader and everything that their ambition required._

_But giving her life wasn't really planned today. The island was becoming a dot in the distance and there were dozens more in the area to take momentary refuge on to look for an opening to leave once more. Once they fled south into territory that wasn't disputed, such as Umi no Kuni, Kiri wouldn't dare pursue them and risk causing a stink down there. From there they could find their way to the mainland of the Elemental Nations and locate an Oto hideout._

_For some reason the sound of water grew louder as they progressed, and it wasn't the noise of Guren's wheel splitting the waves either. Craning his neck around to see just what it was, Yukimaru's eyes widened suddenly at the sight._

_A massive wave, larger than anything that could be naturally created billowed forth over the seas in the shape of a monstrous fish. In the center of the entire thing was Suigetsu, half-merged with the water and holding Kubikiribouchou in hand._

"_Guren!" Yukimaru shouted in warning, but she was already aware that something was wrong as she could feel the presence breathing down their necks the moment that Yukimaru saw him, "We can't outrun him!"_

_Yes she knew that. Outrunning a wave that large rumbling toward them was just idiocy, even with something like what she had increasing their travelling speed. There had to be something that she could do in a hurry to stop him. _

_She really hated using what she was about to do in order to keep them protected, but there wasn't really much else she could do. Even if she used a potential jutsu that she had for a temporary supercharge, she wouldn't be able to stop the crashing water of a wave. It wasn't the most grandiose use of her abilities, but it would have to do._

_At least until the Kubikiribouchou blade came hurtling at her from the mouth of the great water fish. The aim was well enough to score a hit and knock her right out of the wheel along with Yukimaru, "Sorry, but I don't need you pulling any tricky defensive crap. Without Haku-chan here I'm not sure what I'd do to bust up your crystals." Suigetsu said through the water. While they were worried about the big attack, there was another smaller and still extremely lethal one coming their way._

_And now it was time to sweep them both away. The kid would survive. He'd make sure of it, but Guren would have to be put under and drowned. He'd focus most of the wave's pressure to crush her as best as he could while keeping the brunt of the impact away from Yukimaru._

"_Kuchiyose: Rashomon (Summoning: Rashomon)__!"_

_Directly in his path, a defensive gate with a demonic face on it, the size of one that would be posted to block entrance to a village appeared on the surface of the water and stopped him cold despite the massive dent he put into it, "What the hell is this?"_

"_Oh Suigetsu… getting your kicks on trying to get some vengeance against my adorable underlings are we?" That voice. No it couldn't be. What was he doing there? It made no sense, he never came out to do anything himself! Mizu no Kuni held no interest to him any longer, otherwise they would have found him at the base, "But I cannot let you continue to pursue my investment the way that you have been. I've put too much effort into young Yukimaru to allow Kirigakure to simply retake what I've bestowed upon him. You understand."_

(End Flashback)

"And that was the last thing that the kid remembered before Orochimaru put him down." Asuma said with a grim look on his face as he and Yamato stood debriefing from their mission in front of their Hokage's desk, "He must have found Suigetsu's hidden clan ninjutsu too troublesome to try and kill him, especially since he wasn't even a threat at that point."

"Either way…" Yamato continued, leaning against a wall and sharing the same look on his face that Asuma had, "Orochimaru has a stake in the jinchuuriki now." So between Akatsuki and who knew what Orochimaru wanted with the biju, there were two rogue elements out in the world that had something vested in the unstable power distributed across the Elemental Nations, "What do we do?"

Hiruzen thought long and hard. Something didn't add up. The timing was off on all fronts. Even if Orochimaru discovered what had become of Gato and Degarashi Port and had then gone for his base in Mizu no Kuni to run damage control, there was no way he'd have made it in time even with the current fastest seafaring vessel in the world.

No, he knew about it before the Konoha team had even reached Degarashi Port to begin with. That was the only way possible. And sadly it wasn't an anomaly of a lapse in intelligence security either.

It had occurred in other situations when it seemed as if a mission would put Konoha in a situation where they could potentially deal Otogakure a severe blow, and it had been happening sporadically for years ever since they had been aware of the village's existence under Orochimaru's control.

"This situation of the spy in our midst is becoming extremely vexing." Hiruzen said, taking a puff from his pipe to calm his frazzled nerves. He was getting far too old to be worrying about such things. Maybe Onoki enjoyed having the rest of his hair fall out from the stress of being a kage, but he wanted to keep what grey follicles he had left, "There was no one aside from those of you on the mission, Ibiki and Inoichi in T&I, and myself that knew the details of your S-ranked mission. No one else."

Who in the world was good enough to procure such information? And how did they even obtain it?

Several traps had been set in the past to smoke out the rat, but nothing concrete ever came up for them. It was absolutely unheard of for the presence of a spy to be known of for this long without anyone blowing their cover.

Asuma took a moment to think about it before pushing his thoughts forward, "Do you think it could be Danzo?" If there was any person in the village that had the resources to pull off such a thing it would be him.

The thought of such a thing was hard to believe, with someone like Hiruzen's contemporary Shimura Danzo giving out village information to such a dangerous entity, but there was always the chance that Danzo saw assisting a village that had almost been on the outs years prior in Kirigakure as a mistake that would jeopardize Konoha. Thus he managed to procure details on the S-ranked mission and let it slip to Orochimaru in advance.

But putting that kind of information out there when the Kyuubi jinchuuriki was amongst those in the field? Either he didn't think too much of Naruto's potential abilities, or he knew of them and felt that they too were a possible threat to Konoha's safety in the future… at least the Konoha that he had envisioned once Hiruzen stepped down.

Bah! But for now all of this speculation would do no good! They had nothing but paranoia with no facts whatsoever to back it up. There was a far better chance that Danzo had absolutely nothing to do with any of it, and they were just piling up suspicion against a loyal Konoha shinobi.

"Yamato." Hiruzen said with a stern look on his face. His tone of voice got Yamato to stand up straight off of the wall at attention. This was not the gentle and understanding Sandaime Hokage that everyone loved and saw as their grandfather figure. This was the 'Kami no Shinobi' that had earned his spot decades in advance, "I want you to put together two separate squads of ANBU to watch over the Cryptanalysis Squad and Torture and Interrogation. All in the two squads will report to me directly."

"Understood sir." Yamato said before departing the office to do just as requested of him. It looked like he was putting the porcelain mask back on once again. Pity that. He liked going out without it with the others. But duty called. His Hokage and his village required this of him and he was going to deliver come hell or high water.

The work of a ninja never really seemed to be done.

Not too long after Yamato departed, Hiruzen's eyes shifted over to the form of his son who was still standing there. Normally Asuma would have taken the dismissal of one of his similarly ranked comrades as an excuse to leave as well. It was why Hiruzen always gave Asuma his directives first to keep him from sneaking out and leaving prematurely. What Kakashi was to arriving on time, Asuma was to staying all the way through meetings.

But there he stood, and he hadn't even taken the initiative to light up a cigarette, not taking Hiruzen's use of his pipe as an excuse to do the same.

"So Jiraiya-sama can't find this guy or girl, whoever they are?" Asuma said, finally getting to his point of staying behind to speak afterwards with his father, "I figured that you must have sent him a message to call him back when I found out that he had gotten here a week before Naruto and Shikamaru were to return. I guessed that this was why."

Who better to sic on a spy than Konoha's own master of espionage in Jiraiya? The man had fingers in any place that he felt he needed to have them in around the other hidden villages. He knew of regional uprisings with local landlords and bandit groups before the mission requests even came out from the small communities requesting assistance.

"Asuma, you have to burn the field to flush out the field mice for the cat to hunt." Hiruzen said with a wry smirk on his face, "We've tried the subtle approach to no results, well now it's time for scorched earth. With everything that has happened recently and with the knowledge that someone let our sensitive intelligence slip to Orochimaru, Yamato will be a bloodhound when it comes to picking people to shadow our information organizations."

If that didn't put the squeeze on the person (people?) involved, they were truly dealing with a dangerous individual to shrug off such scrutiny and continue working. Of course, if this went in line with the other trends through the years this person was about to shut down for another eight months to a year to let the investigations cool off. At least until some kind of vital information that would affect Otogakure came up. Anything fabricated wouldn't work; they had learned this in the past when traps had been set.

Very well then. They would just have to go and get some real intel wouldn't they?

XxX

(Konoha Archive Library)

The sight within the wide open library was one that hadn't been seen there in years. Anyone perusing the tomes within would find that there were several copies of the exact same person, carrying several scrolls and books and trying to skim through them to find something useful on whatever they were all looking for.

Meanwhile there was one of them; probably the original, sitting at a long table, surrounded by even more books. But he wasn't necessarily reading them. Everything in front of him was open and turned to a page, signifying that he had been reading them, but the figure in question was letting out muffled snores from where he was laying facedown in his own arms on the table.

His harness containing his sheath and machete weapon of choice lay on the table for comfort's sake, and for some reason he had Tonton with him as well. The pig was sleeping on the table right next to his head.

The slam of a book on the table prompted the haggard and tired Naruto to pop up suddenly, sitting ramrod straight in his seat as Tonton jumped up and would have fallen off of the table had Naruto not caught her. Looking around for the offender all he saw was a puff of smoke next to him. Bastard clones. They only had to exist for a few hours max to find what he needed. When they dispelled he was the one that was going to feel the mind-numbing hours of searching and reading, not them.

It wasn't like he wasn't working too. Everything potentially worthwhile was brought to him directly to read while his clones searched for more.

"Bullshit." Naruto muttered to himself, rubbing his eyes before picking up where he left off in his last book, "…All of this stuff on genjutsu, and nothing about doujutsu based techniques." Tonton let out a yawn and curled up in Naruto's lap while he continued to try and find what he needed about those damnable illusions.

He could break them. That wasn't the problem. While he might have sucked miserably at actually casting them and utterly despised them in general, breaking them had been something that he had long since worked out, and he had even created a tool to help him assist in seeing through visual illusions. But until he could meticulously construct a new pair of special protective eyewear to replace the surprisingly fragile ones that had been destroyed in battle he would have to find a way around the most dangerous chink in his ninja arts armor.

Itachi's Sharingan had double-woven him into two illusions, the second of which he hadn't been able to break. That left a very bad taste in his mouth.

Come on. There had to be some records of how to negate the Sharingan's genjutsu effects. The Uchiha clan had been a major part of the village for almost an entire century. There had to be _someone_ that figured out a way to deal with them without getting mentally screwed to the wall. Someone obviously managed to pull it off in the past. Someone with a big and awesome hat that could make forests with a flick of the wrist.

Yeah, where was the book on the Shodai Hokage Senju Hashirama's memoirs? There would probably be four straight chapters on his fights against Uchiha Clan members, not even counting Madara which would probably be a whole chapter in of itself.

All of this trouble pondering what he was going to do the next time that he was to take on just _one_ member of Akatsuki. One! There were still eight others left to worry about, only one of whom he knew anything about! Enough with the damn studying! He needed to be out hitting the gym instead of the books! But he couldn't do that until he knew what he needed to do to prepare.

A little relief was soon to come his way as a finger tapped him on the shoulder and Naruto turned to face the more grown up Shiho smiling at him behind her glasses, "Any luck?"

"Not really." Naruto returned with a scratch of his head as he put what he had been reading off to the side and picked up another, "How can there be _nothing_ on the Uchiha Clan? They're like the most famous clan in the world."

Frowning at the sight of all of the books and scrolls that Naruto had with him, Shiho eventually just shrugged it off. After all, it wasn't like she was going to be the one to put them all back. Nope, that would be the genin interns who would do that. She had long since been promoted to full-fledged decoder now!

Taking a moment to sit down near her old 'student' Shiho decided to look over exactly what he had been reading. Someone seemed to be having some trouble with genjutsu, "Well they're clan secrets. It's not like there are extensive files on the Byakugan of the Hyuuga Clan, or of the insects of the Aburame Clan."

Yeah, Konoha didn't need to keep those secrets somewhere for everyone to see. Those clans were on their side and understandably kept their own abilities secret at a painstaking cost. It was only the enemy villages that tried to compile information on the clans in other villages, based on previous engagements and conflicts and the recounts of survivors. They never really had anything in-depth and broken down. It was why obtaining the bodies of the enemy happened to be such an important facet of information gathering.

You'd have to get that kind of thing straight from the source. And the Uchiha Clan was gone now except for two of them. One of them happened to be a rogue ninja and one of the strongest people in the world, and the other one was… right there in Konoha somewhere.

"Damn it." Naruto muttered to himself. He felt like smashing himself with one of the books, but that would just end up with him getting hit by Shiho or her boss that outranked him, "I think I've been in here too long if I didn't think about that after not finding anything good for three hours." Flipping the book shut he leaned back dangerously far in his chair with an exasperated sigh as he held on to the pig in his lap.

Shiho just smiled wryly as she heard the dispelling pops of all of Naruto's clones across the library, "Yeah that happens when the only thing you see all day is kanji. We're having our own share of troubles around here too."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"Are you any good at coming up with new coding systems complete with explanatory legends that link to the last coding system that we used?"

"…I wasn't even any good at the coding systems we learned in the Academy. It changed while I was gone too didn't it?"

"Yes it did. Once every year. It's standard procedure."

"…"

"…I'm sure someone can catch you up Uzumaki-kun."

XxX

(Konoha Strict Correctional Facility – 4th Level Special Ward)

The prison of Konohagakure no Sato. It was a small spearhead-shaped island of land that sat in the mouth of a volcano with one bridge on and off, miles outside of the walls of the village.

In addition to Konoha-borne criminals arrested by the Konoha Military Police, it also contained all of the prisoners captured alive during missions and sent back to the village for processing to be dealt with accordingly.

Depending on what was going on at the time, the severity of the offense the perpetrator committed against Konoha, and their affiliation to another village they could be executed, held indefinitely, or released to the custody of their villages to let them deal with them (sometimes).

Capturing others in the field was usually pretty rare though unless missions required it specifically. It was too much trouble and required too many resources for most people to take them back alive, so they usually just left them where they defeated them, allowed them to retreat if they were able… or they killed them. Once again, your fate after losing a battle depended on different conditions of what was going on at the time, and also how much of a jerk the person that had you at their mercy happened to be.

Within the deepest confines of the prison lay a captive that was deemed important enough to keep for later on an S-ranked mission. That was incredibly rare to say the least. He was kept alone though due to the danger aspect of having him amongst the other prisoners. Even while constantly shackled and bound he was still exceedingly dangerous to others.

"That's the guy?" Inoichi in his T&I director uniform asked his uniformed daughter who stood next to him observing her capture from the last outgoing mission, "This is the person that almost skewered you and Anko ten times over?"

In the corner of a thickly padded cell, sound-proofed to shut out his screaming whenever he transformed, Juugo sat in his prison issued clothing, in the corner with his knees cradled to his chest. Very odd for someone so large and imposing-looking. A solid iron door with a small, dense glass opening for the two Yamanaka Clan members to look through happened to be the only window outside of that little slice of world.

"I know he doesn't look it." Ino replied to her father, tugging at her bothersome and dreary grey T&I uniform, "But I told you, he's got the nastiest nasty mood swings you'll ever see. I'm sure that if these walls weren't padded to space out and cushion damage he'd punch his way out if he turned all homicidal."

He was a dangerous prisoner indeed. Maybe too dangerous. But his body housed some very important secrets, as did his mind. Ino had seen some of them. If they could find some matches to the landmarks that he had seen inside of his head they could probably find more Otogakure bases all over. Maybe they could do more than that.

It would just take one brave individual to try and get them from him, and they would have to pray that he didn't slip into his murderous mode while doing so. But being imprisoned alone didn't do it, so what the hell was his trigger? They seemed to be completely spontaneous and unrelated.

"So we can't get anything out of him without risking the lives of our men?" Inoichi didn't like the sound of that at all, "Is there some way to monitor his stability? Or can't you just sedate him?" Ino merely shook her head in the negative.

On the ship coming back someone had to go in there and keep him under every thirty minutes in shifts due to how resilient he was to Ino's sleeping and paralysis concoctions. They had to keep making sure that he was still down.

Keeping track of time for how long Juugo should have been under the influence of any of her poisons was not the same as it would be for anyone else. Due to whatever transformations his body underwent in one of his moods, his physiology was completely incomparable to a normal person's and her toxins didn't account for that in the equation of how long they would last.

Due to the fact that there was nothing to compare the effect they would have on him to, she had to waste basically everything that she had kept on her person and in sealed storage for the mission in order to keep him under for the trip home.

"I don't think the mind reading amplification machine can hold him." Ino admitted, turning away from the glass opening in the door and leaning on the wall nearby, "It's not meant to really restrain conscious people. That's a sensitive piece of equipment. If he wakes up in the middle of an interrogation, he'll bust that machine like wet newspaper and run through everybody in the room."

Inoichi and Ino both had to walk by the mess that Juugo had made while in one of his rages upstairs in the place where the regular top level prisoners were held, just one level above. Those were the worst and most dangerous that the place had to offer, and they had probably been trying to strong-arm him while he had been acting meek. Bad idea, because now they were coating the walls and floors with a fine sheen of dark red with their blood and bodily remains.

According to the report it had only taken Juugo two minutes to kill eighteen of them with his bare hands that he transformed into objects of death, and then he returned to his docile state, horrified at what he had done. So stunned was he that he allowed them to put him down in the most secure cell in the entire prison of his own free will.

With the 'astute' way that his daughter had just described how Juugo would break the machine, Inoichi merely grunted, picking up on just how strong Ino was implying that he was, "And if Ibiki tries to start in on him and he transforms we're going to have to find a new lead interrogator."

He didn't want that damn job. He got enough of that crap being as high-ranking as he was currently. The last thing he needed was more of it.

"Can I go home and change now?" Ino whined, momentarily taking her father's attention away from pondering what they were going to do about Juugo, "I wasn't even supposed to work today daddy, this is my time. You could have at least let me wear my regular clothes for this trip."

Anko was still ordered to be on rest leave, so she wasn't going to be asked to do anything like accompany the Torture and Interrogation Department to the prison for something that lower-ranked Ino could do, thus Ino was unluckily stuck with the obligated duty to come with her father on her day off for some background.

"So you aren't concerned with what we're going to do with this guy?" Inoichi asked with a twitching eyebrow at his impetuous offspring. Just like her mother she was.

"I'm not the one that gets to make the decision in the end anyway, it's way above my pay-grade. And Anko and I caught him to begin with so what else do you guys want from me? I put all of this in my report already." A pouting Ino stated with her arms crossed. Wearing that stupid ugly uniform made her so cranky. Crankier than usual anyway.

Inoichi wondered just why his girl was such a fantastic ninja of their clan, but so impulsive. It probably had something to do with the company that she kept most often as far as her teammates went. Naruto was a good kid, but did he have to rub off on Ino in that way?

"Fine." Inoichi said, rubbing his temple in exasperation, "We need a doctor to check him out before we can start planning the interrogation techniques we'll use anyway. Take the rest of the day off, you're back in the office tomorrow morning. You know the drill. Your reassignment hasn't been approved yet so you're still full-time T&I." A dejected Ino let out a groan at hearing that she still had to don that horrid uniform on the morrow.

Still, something came to mind about what he had just said to her, "Uh daddy, what kind of medic-nin in their right mind would volunteer to give Juugo a physical?" You'd have to be Tsunade-level good to figure that you could get away with it, and to her knowledge most of them couldn't really fight.

"Well Tsunade-sama and her apprentice are in the village, but she probably won't do it." Inoichi said as he walked with Ino to exit the prison, "So they'll probably use one of the lower-level medics. One that can do good work, but doesn't really possess overwhelming skills that would be detrimental if lost. A middle of the road ninja if you will."

A scowl crossed Ino's face at the thought, "Good thing I just dabble in basic medical techniques…"

XxX

(Sometime Later – Ichiraku Ramen)

A party of three sat at the counter of the ramen stand enjoying their food in a bit of downtime. Naruto, Shikamaru, and Chouji. Of the three of them, two were happily chowing down, while the third looked between them and then at the little pig that was sitting in the stool next to Naruto eating a bowl of chopped vegetables, "Really?" Shikamaru voiced aloud with a raised eyebrow, "Nobody's going to ask why he's got Tonton with him?"

And apparently nobody else cared, because Chouji just shrugged it off and kept eating and Naruto acted as if he hadn't heard him at all. Seriously, while Chouji might not have known the origins of the small animal, Shikamaru did. It was Tsunade's and to a lesser extent (or greater depending on how you looked at it) Shizune's pet.

Why the hell was Naruto rolling through town with a pet that didn't belong to him from perhaps the most troublesome woman ever created by the cosmos to make his life hard?

"Naruto…" Shikamaru deadpanned, poking his partner in the side of the head until he got a questioning grunt from the still eating Naruto, "Why?"

Naruto swallowed his food before looking over at Tonton who looked back at him. Hey, she didn't have any problems with having spent the whole day with Naruto. There was way less yelling and destruction of random property with super strength with him, "When we got back from the mission I found out that Tsunade-baachan was stalking me down because we ditched her at the capital… so I kidnapped Tonton to get her attention away from trying to find me. That way I could go home in peace."

He kidnapped the personal pet of the strongest kunoichi in the world to get heat _off_ of him? Yes, because that was a great idea for anyone to do. Steal property from one of the most dangerous people in the world in the hopes that they'd forget about you and wouldn't find out that you were the one that stole from them.

"What if she finds out that you took her?" Chances were that if he had taken Tonton and said pig was as cool with her abduction as she seemed to be at the moment, he'd just been casually strolling through the village all day with the pig in plain sight, and everybody would have known about it by now, "Then she's going to double-kill you. You know how this is going to end already. We've walked this far in the snow before, remember?"

"You can't double-kill somebody Shika, that's impossible." Naruto assured him as he started drinking down the broth in his bowl.

Chouji stopped eating and stroked his chin in thought at the conversation at hand, "Well she's the best medic-nin in the world, so she can technically beat you until your heart stops, revive you, and then do it all over again. That counts, right?" He asked before returning to his meal. Even as hungry as he was, he had the common courtesy to not order anything that had pork in it for Tonton's sake.

That did count. Damn it, he had a point. Man, if Chouji spoke up more often without being prompted to give his opinion beforehand more people would figure that he was actually a really smart guy. Or at least pretty attentive to what was going on around him.

"She won't beat me to double-death." Naruto said in a hollow voice that showed that he only half believed himself at best, "I mean, it's not like I drank her booze. I just took her pig. A pig that loves me by the way. It's a glorified day out."

Shikamaru just shook his head and reached across to pat Tonton on the head a few times before turning back forward in his seat, "Naruto, that woman chased you off of the daimyo's property because you smoked too close to her office window one time and she could smell it from inside. You stole her pig. You're dead. Just accept it."

Naruto did not accept it. He refused to throw himself at Tsunade's mercy because she would have none, but he felt that she would be rational in this regard, "Stop bringing up old stuff! We've all grown since then! Physically, spiritually… ecumenically."

Besides, at the first given opportunity when he could find her without Tsunade as well he was going to give Tonton back to Shizune, whom he was certain would not try to see if she could knock him clear over the village walls from the Academy rooftop.

"Naruto, do you even know what that word means?"

"Yes, but it doesn't matter if I know what it means or not." Naruto replied flippantly to the rowdy foreign voice in the conversation, "It's provocative." He then swiveled around in his chair to look at the newest apparent patron to the ramen bar, "Oh, hey. What's up Kiba? What are you doing here?"

Kiba had changed in looks since the days of their youth. He still had the red fang marks on his cheeks, but gone was his hooded jacket, replaced with a sleeker looking black one that was zipped up to his chest along with black pants, black sandals, and a black headband. Akamaru looked exactly the same, only now he was absolutely huge.

He had a big grin on his face as he walked through the curtain flaps and gave Naruto and Shikamaru some hearty pats on the back, "Look what the hell the cat dragged in. I thought I could smell you two along with the scent of ramen. Long time no see jerks." Akamaru let out a few deep barks in greetings as well before his eyes affixed onto Tonton and stayed there, staring the pig down.

In response, Tonton instantly hopped into Naruto's lap trying to use his body as a natural shield against Akamaru just in case. A ninken as old as Akamaru was usually disciplined and smart, but a ninken was still a dog and prone to chasing after things that it wanted at times.

Kiba flicked Akamaru on the nose to get him to stop before he even started and sat down in the empty seat that Tonton had left next to Naruto to further deter his partner from acting up, "I heard you two were back in town. And you just got off of some high-profile mission too… lucky. How do you pull something that big without having even been back for a week?"

Having a vested interest in the person behind the mission request helped, but if Kiba had known just what the mission entailed and how much of a multi-faceted pain it wound up being… well he'd probably be even more riled up at having had it go over his head to them.

"Sasuke seemed kind of miffed about that too." Chouji added in, patting his now full belly with over half a dozen large empty bowls sitting in front of him, "We never get missions so important that no one can know where we went while we were on them." And personally Chouji was good with that. But Sasuke always wanted the missions that would test his skills as much as possible. Personally he could do without them.

Speaking of Sasuke by the way…

"Do you know where to find Sasuke by the way?" Naruto asked, replacing his previous expression of basic comfort to one that seemed important, "It's kind of a big deal that I find him and talk to him."

"Ugh, you seriously can't wait more than a day after we get home to go find some other troublesome situation to get us into?" Shikamaru said with his usual lethargic look on his face as he shoved his cheek into his hand, elbow posted on the counter, "I'd like at least a week of comfort before we go back out after some psychos willing to kill us and wear our skins like some kind of Team 10 trench suits."

They couldn't really duck the Akatsuki because they didn't know much about them to do so, and it wasn't a good idea to ignore such a thing and just go on trying to live their lives, but still… just a short break. Nothing big, just two days to regroup and recharge before everything went to hell all over again. Was that too much to ask? Shikamaru really wasn't a fan of tangling with Hoshigaki Kisame, and the thought of there being eight other guys around his level of strength made him want to grind his teeth.

In all honesty though, since returning to Konoha almost two weeks ago, they had only been in Konoha for a grand total of four days; three days before setting out to Mizu no Kuni, and one day to the current day after returning to the village.

Both Naruto and Kiba just looked at Shikamaru with dry expressions before turning to Chouji expectantly for the answer to the question. It was only Naruto's business really, but Kiba was nosy and wanted something interesting to do after his team had broken off for the day from training.

"Not telling." Chouji asserted firmly from his seat, "If I tell you where he is, just what are you going to talk to him about? I'll bet it'll be about either that Cursed Seal guy you told me you caught, or Sasuke's brother who you ran into. Probably the last one, but both of those things are equally bad to talk to him about."

Naruto sighed and held the bridge of his nose in exasperation, "Look… we're all adults here." For the most part anyway, "Sasuke's a big boy. So I'm pretty sure that ignoring the fact that Itachi is alive and still exists somewhere won't do anyone any good. There are only two people with Sharingan, and he's the only one I know well enough to ask for help on this. If he comes after me like he says he is, I'm not sure how well I'd do against him."

He knew Kakashi had it too from reputation, but the man wasn't his sensei, and someone that wore a mask all of the time, 24/7, was probably pretty secretive. He didn't know him well enough to just go asking him to start giving away his own playbook secrets on Sharingan genjutsu. Who was he? Just some punk chunin. So what reason would Kakashi have to tell him much?

Well, there was _that one thing_ he could bring up that would probably get Kakashi to pay attention to him, but he'd rather not rely on that information that he had procured while away from the village until it became unavoidable any longer.

But back on topic. If he told Sasuke of Itachi and let him know exactly what the score was, that Itachi was in a group of badass super-villains trying to kill him painfully, he'd be more inclined to get some kind of assistance from Sasuke. It was a better idea than a cold approach to a jounin that he had only had limited dealings with.

Kiba had been stealing a fresh bowl of ramen that had been placed in front of Naruto to replace his old one while they had been talking, but when talk drifted towards Sasuke's brother he started choking on the meat and noodles, "You ran into Sasuke's brother? The one that killed off the Uchiha Clan? Damn it, where was I for this mission?" As frightening a prospect as that idea really was, it was still unquestionably awesome, and he wished he could have been a part of that. Either way, that brought up another question, "Wait… what the hell would Uchiha Itachi want with you?"

That query gave Chouji even more reason to require info on just what Naruto wanted with his teammate, "Yeah. Just what is all of this supposed to be about anyway?"

At that, both Naruto and Shikamaru looked at each other as if sharing the same thought. They were sitting there speaking with their contemporaries. This meant that in the future there was a chance that this whole Akatsuki thing could involve them.

And at this point there wasn't any reason to ignore the elephant in the room so to speak.

With a subtle hand gesture, Shikamaru gave his input on what to do, "You know, you might as well tell them. They both fought Fuu, remember? And there's always a chance that you'll wind up busting out some of its chakra later in front of them too." Both Kiba and Chouji looked confused at the inside conversation transpiring in front of them.

"I guess so…" Naruto replied, rubbing the back of his neck in an uncomfortable manner while Tonton pawed a hoof at his stomach from his lap, "Alright. Listen up guys, wait until I'm done talking, and don't freak out."

"-Don't freak out in the ramen stand at least." Shikamaru interjected as an addendum to what Naruto was saying. Most of this was his own story to tell as best as he could, thus he would leave it up to his buddy to do so.

With a snap of his fingers, Naruto pointed at Shikamaru as if he had said something very smart/important, "Yeah, what Shika said. Feel free to go somewhere else and run amok about it later in private, but just not here in public."

"Then why are we talking about it in public to start with?" Kiba asked with a dry expression on his face. Was a ramen bar really the place to talk about sensitive information? Favorite establishment to eat of the one doling it out or not.

This time, Shikamaru gestured to the fact that other than them the only other people in the ramen stand were Teuchi and Ayame who were just working with looks on their faces as if they had heard this before, "Because everyone else here knows the important parts of this already. It's a long story." Not really. It was actually a very simple story to be honest, but saying that made it sound better.

XxX

(Konoha Strict Correctional Facility – 4th Level Special Ward)

"You're sure you're up for this kid?" The large and imposing figure cut by the scarred-up Morino Ibiki walked slightly behind the medic-nin that had been sent to run the physical for the recently captured prisoner Juugo. The commander of Konoha's Torture and Interrogation Force felt he had plenty of reason to feel that way due to the edgy young man with him, "You don't seem to be very… confident."

Kabuto turned halfway around and gave a timid smile in return at Ibiki's questioning of his ability to carry out his assignment, "Oh, don't worry about that. I just always get this way when I'm stuck doing medical duties in the prison. Especially on this level… I've never been down this far before."

Ibiki let out a grunt and shook his head slightly before they reached the thick door that led to Juugo's special padded room, "Well here it is. I'll be right here in case anything goes wrong." An empty assurance of safety because from how close Kabuto would be, Juugo could kill him in a heartbeat if he freaked out, "Don't be a hero in there."

"Me a hero?" Kabuto replied with a bit of a laugh, "No, not a chance. Don't worry about that." The door was unlocked and opened as Kabuto tentatively stepped inside with a deep breath, at least he would have until a klaxon went off throughout the entire prison, "What's going on?"

Ibiki pulled Kabuto back out with a grunt and shut the door once again, locking it back as the footsteps of a chunin guard rushed up to them through the dark hallway of the bottom level, "What's going on?"

"Somehow weapons got smuggled in!" The chunin replied, pointing upstairs, "We counted thirty-one inmates with weapons in the courtyard on level one and in cell block A on the second level!"

With a scoff, Ibiki turned a gaze towards Kabuto before barking his next order, "Fine, stay with the medic and watch over him. Don't move to combat the prisoner if he turns hostile, just get yourself and the medic out of the room." He had to go put down a prison riot and figure out just who happened to be the ringleader of this little escapade. Someone's stay would be getting a lot worse, if they survived the consequences of their own actions that was.

A nod of understanding came from the underling chunin as Ibiki stormed away and prepared to handle business. Once he was gone he turned to Kabuto and stared at him before dropping dead on the spot.

Kabuto's demeanor changed to one of nonchalant detachment as he looked down at the dead prison guard. He had located and killed the man in his home that morning and had temporarily reanimated his body with Shikon no Jutsu (Dead Soul Jutsu). Having to locate an exact ninja that he could easily assassinate and one with the shift that he needed was risky. It was the first time he'd had to put himself at such risk within the sphere of Konoha's influence since he had been spying on them, but it had to be done in order to get what he needed.

He then used the man to sneak in weapons to prisoners that would cause enough trouble for him to do as he needed without doing too much to disrupt his activities. With a roll of his eyes, Kabuto pilfered the key to the cell from the deceased guard's uniform and unlocked the door before hurling the body inside.

It had to be admitted, that Konoha had come up with a great method of creating walls that couldn't be broken by brute strength. A good cell. No wonder they didn't have many of them, "Juugo, Juugo, Juugo…" He said upon walking inside.

Juugo made to react at the sight of Kabuto, standing up and pressing himself against the far wall, but before anything else, Kabuto streaked forward swiftly while making five hand-seals before his hands were covered with blue chakra and he jabbed at Juugo's knees and elbows to drop him facedown on the floor of the room, "Ungh… Kabuto. What do you want?"

The sadistic medic had managed to utilize his special jutsu to cut important tendons to keep him disabled, so even if he transformed there wouldn't be much he could do.

"You went and got yourself captured." Kabuto said, sounding slightly amused at what had happened, "I didn't think it was possible really. So I've come to do what spies do… you know, keep leaks from my own side from springing out. The last thing we need is them interrogating you on sensitive secrets."

"I don't know any Oto secrets." Juugo said with a grit to his teeth.

"Oh I know that." Kabuto said, a sinister glare from the light in the room reflecting onto his glasses, "But you know who I am, and that's something I can't risk them getting out of you."

"Why is that door open, and where is the guard?"

Great. So there were already sentries checking on things down there? He thought he'd have gotten more of a window to set things up and kill Juugo while making it look like he escaped. Damn it, he'd have to cover his tracks later, "Sleep." A quick use of the tiger seal brought many billowing illusory feathers in front of Juugo's face, putting him into a deep slumber, "Nehan Shouja no Jutsu (Temple of Nirvana Jutsu)."

He needed Juugo clammed up and isolated for long enough to rethink another way to get a shot at him.

But right now he needed to keep his cover. Kabuto popped a pill and jabbed himself harshly in the stomach with a knife-handed strike before dragging the deceased guard's body out of the cell and leaning against the opposite wall outside as two men arrived on the scene, "Shut the door, hurry! I don't know how long it'll be before he flips out again!"

Knowing how dangerous and unpredictable Juugo happened to be, one of the men wasted no time in shutting the door while the other checked over the dead guard and Kabuto who was bleeding heavily from the mouth, "What the hell happened?"

Kabuto kept his victim act up, trying to activate a healing ninjutsu as if he were trying to save the dead man in front of them, "I… I…" He stammered as if trying to regain his composure, "I hadn't even started when he went nuts and injured me with a single punch! The guard tried to help me, but he couldn't stop him, and I couldn't do anything before he seemed to get enough and he shut down! I can't revive him, there's too much damage done internally!"

"Tch." The guard that had shut the door back kicked it in disgust at what Kabuto was telling them, "What kind of human being is that?" A look of pity then crossed his face as he saw Kabuto hyperventilating at not being able to help their comrade survive, "Hey, that's enough. You can't do anything else. Worry about healing yourself right now. Don't worry. No one's going near that monster anytime soon."

Looking dejected, Kabuto allowed the guard that had been helping him to keep him sitting upright so that he could begin trying to fix himself up while he was still healthy enough to do so. It was almost difficult to keep the smirk off of his face. Being the medic on hand he'd run the autopsy of the corpse once he healed himself, and he'd made sure to kill via rupturing the man's organs to begin with.

He'd have to start making arrangements to leave soon, the moment he found the opening to do so without attracting notice. Still, he considered his time there a smashing success. An important part of the very village he was spying on was the entire reason that he was created as far as his skills of infiltration were concerned, and the man would never know that his own actions were the catalyst to his own home's security breach.

Sometimes coaxing this village into one way of thinking or another from within was as simple as forcing them to look at all of the scary things that were all around them.

XxX

(Within the Uchiha Clan District – Southern Border of Konoha – Naka River)

After managing to inform two more of his friends about just what kind of can of worms had been opened on his life from day one, it didn't take too much more coaxing to get Chouji to tell Naruto where he could probably find Sasuke.

Traveling with Chouji who already knew where to find him, and Kiba (with Akamaru) who could pinpoint the exact area where Sasuke was with his sense of smell, it didn't take too long to find Sasuke at the southernmost point of Konoha at the very outskirts of even the Uchiha Clan's former area of living.

The location was a very deep ravine with a river running through the bottom of it, and the rocky and somewhat desolate surroundings made for a good place to train in private, which was why he was a bit put off when he found Naruto, Shikamaru, Kiba, and his own teammate Chouji coming his way as he stood on the ledge between the river far below.

"What do you guys want?" Sasuke asked, turning around with a hand on his hip before he addressed Chouji in particular, "I thought we weren't supposed to meet up until tomorrow to accept a mission."

Chouji shrugged before the sizeable teen pushed Naruto forward, "Naruto had a question to ask you, but he's got to tell you something first for some background, don't you Naruto?"

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto said before clearing his throat into his fist and opening his mouth to begin what everyone else thought would be along drawn out explanation of what he knew of his origins, "I'm the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi."

"Really?"

"Yep. Since I was a baby."

"Not a stupid joke?"

"Sealed in my belly."

"Huh…"

"Yep. Problem?"

"No."

"Cool."

And that was as far as that explanation went, getting Kiba and Chouji to look at Naruto and Sasuke oddly as if they hadn't just downplayed perhaps the most monumental information that had been shared with them in their entire careers and probably their lives thus far, "Wait, what the hell was that supposed to be?" Kiba asked in an outlandish fashion, "How do you just shrug something like that off?"

"Because I don't really care." Sasuke said with a shrug, "I'm pissed we didn't know about it beforehand, but nobody else shouts their personal business from the rooftops in this village so why should he?"

"Because all of the adults all knew and didn't tell any of us ever?" Chouji tried to answer rhetorically.

Kiba did the same in an unsure manner, "Because the Kyuubi is the strongest monster ever, and we were sitting right next to the guy holding it in his gut every day for years?"

Once again, Sasuke's expression showed one of complete and utter detachment, "If it was that big of a deal back then it would have come up, but it never did so it clearly didn't matter." He then turned his gaze toward Naruto, "Kyuubi or not, when it comes down to it I can still kick his ass."

Naruto just stared at Sasuke blankly until his right hand drifted up to the machete sheathed on his back that he would have pulled loose had Shikamaru not restrained him with his shadow. With a disgruntled grunt, Naruto relented and began to ask his question, "Fine tough guy. Okay, part two of the story. There's a pack of super-strong lunatics called Akatsuki after my head because of the Kyuubi, and your brother is one of them. And I do mean _that_ brother. Can you help me?"

Sasuke's eyes widened at that and Kiba palmed his forehead at the blunt revelation, "You couldn't have sugarcoated that any?"

"What would easing into it have done?" Naruto asked, turning to Kiba with a raised eyebrow, "Either way I would have had to come out and say, 'Uchiha Itachi and friends want to suck my chakra out with a bendy straw and throw my empty husk into the compost heap.'" If Kiba had an eloquent and insightful way to say that to Sasuke's face that wouldn't make him catatonic he'd have loved to have heard it on the way to the goddamn ravine.

"You're a master orator you are." Shikamaru commented sarcastically, "I can't wait until we have you at the bargaining table hashing out our treaties and ceasefire arrangements."

After getting a few seconds to mull around what Naruto was saying to him in his head, Sasuke finally found the stones to speak on what he was being told, "So Itachi wants to capture you for the Kyuubi?" Naruto nodded, "Does that mean you know where he is, or how to find him?"

"Afraid not." It was clear to see that this wasn't the answer Sasuke had been looking for, but he seemed to understand. If it were that easy to come up with the answer he wanted he'd have found it himself years ago, "We ran into two members of Akatsuki during our mission in Mizu no Kuni. One was Itachi, but we were stuck fighting one of Orochimaru's best instead of just going up against each other."

It figured. Sasuke deduced the same thing that Naruto had on the spot during the battle. The distraction that Kimimaro presented the two of them kept Itachi from fully focusing on Naruto. It seemed that Naruto owed an enemy a thank you. Too bad he repaid Kimimaro for his interference by burying a machete into his spine and turning his insides into an organ smoothie.

Before the conversation could continue, both Kiba and Akamaru sniffed at the air and subtly caught Shikamaru's attention, "Hey, it looks like we've got an eavesdropper. I smell ink in the air." He whispered as Akamaru kept a low rumbling growl inside of his throat.

That wasn't good. Even in a village of their comrades, anyone standing aside and listening to what they had to say without permission was never really welcome as far as a ninja was concerned, "How close?"

"I'd say thirty-eight meters west…" Kiba said quietly without giving anything away in his body language, but gesturing with his eyes to a rocky outcropping near the desolate cliffside, "Trying to conceal themselves over there. I don't know how long the person's been there though. Why didn't you sense him?" He asked Naruto.

"Screw you, why didn't you smell him sooner Inuzuka?" Naruto replied. How was he supposed to know they were being followed? He didn't use his location jutsu in the middle of his home turf. It was only useable in bursts, not active constantly like a natural sense, "Look, that doesn't matter now."

Everyone had caught on by this point and knew not to do anything too abrupt or risk spooking their unwanted listener, "So what's the play?" Chouji asked, his visage set in a stony countenance, "I don't think I'm fast enough to get over to him before he takes off."

Shikamaru already figured as much and had accounted for as much, "Same here. But that's okay, I'm sure we've got others good enough to make that move for us. And that makes us the two that'll cut whoever this is off when they try to escape. You guys ready?"

Everyone including Sasuke nodded. He wanted to get back to the conversation that they had been having before they had been unceremoniously interrupted by their 'guest'. And this person had the gall to intrude uninvited on Uchiha Clan land? True, everyone else there had done it too, but one of them happened to be his teammate and the others were his friends… kind of.

From underneath the arm-warmer on his left arm, Naruto slowly snaked a chain comprised of chakra into the ground, slowly sending it burrowing in the direction of their enemy, "Five seconds."

Sasuke cracked his neck just as the sound of the ground bursting open hit everyone's ears and a blur leapt out from behind the cover of rocks that it had been hiding behind prior. Without missing a beat, Sasuke and Kiba both rushed over in an impressive show of speed with their gunbai and nails drawn respectively.

Both of their attacks cut clear through their enemy that turned into ink that puddled on the ground. With a growl, Kiba turned his head and sniffed at the air again to locate who they were looking for once more, "Guys!"

"I know!" Naruto shouted, having taken a flanking position elsewhere in the rock field while Sasuke and Kiba had been the first to make the actual moves, "You can't hide from us! Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!" Naruto reached his hands down onto the ground and twisted before pulling them up and causing a good portion of the land to implode and crumble.

"Holy crap!" Kiba commented loudly, glad that everybody else was clear of that attack before Naruto used it, "I thought we were trying to catch this guy alive!"

Shikamaru had his hands held in the rat seal with his shadows ready to go, "That didn't kill anyone." He said, sounding completely sure of this fact as his eyes searched around with Chouji standing back-to-back with him, "That was just a message." That Naruto could and would crush him underground if he was dead-set on hiding down there as if they didn't know he was there, "This won't be though. Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!"

With a shift of the hand-seal, Shikamaru's shadow branched out into dozens of spears that rapidly and accurately stabbed into the ground all over where Naruto's previous attack had focused, simultaneously avoiding all of his friends flawlessly as he rended the already softened up rock into a rubble pit.

Sasuke's eyes were peeled all over the place, looking for the slightest hint of movement before he saw it over by Naruto, who had been in the thick of the danger zone from the outset, "Dobe don't move! Katon: Housenka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu)!"

Small bursts of fire flew from Sasuke's mouth over at Naruto who didn't move an inch in any direction as requested, but he did turn around when the pulverized ground lurched upward and two large, muscular humanoid black and white figures came up from the ground in an attempt to smash him. Sasuke's fire attack hit them directly, peppering them in flames that Naruto sliced from two standing entities to four segments as his machete went clean through them in one swing.

Amidst all of the commotion, a bird flew up over the side of the ravine into the air over the opposite side. A strange pale young man with black hair and a strange outfit looked down at them impassively from above as he tried flying away.

"Bullshit!" Kiba shouted as he, Akamaru, and Shikamaru ran to the edge and tried to gauge how far of a jump it would be to try and make it across. None of them could make that leap, "I couldn't pick him out from all of the stuff he created with his jutsu! All I can smell is ink, ink, ink! Even that bird is made of ink! It's like other than that he doesn't have a real damn distinguishable scent!" But he did smell something else nearby. The faint scent of something burning, with a loose hint of explosives, "Oh, fuck."

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

A chain of explosions caused by explosive tags lining the ridgeline of the ravine went off, sending the entire cliffside collapsing and spilling down the long way into the waters below, but no Konoha ninjas were amongst them as two relatively large blurs managed to escape the blast and make it across the span to the other side to pursue the strange shinobi that had been spying on them.

Kneeling on the head of a toad the size of a small house, Naruto looked back slightly to make sure that Shikamaru and Chouji were there as well, and indeed they were, holding on in crouched positions as the mammoth amphibian covered large amounts of ground with every leap it took.

"This is really annoying." Naruto commented lowly before he then saw a shadow over them and looked up to see a huge brown hawk in the air with both a panting Akamaru and an uneasy Kiba in its talons, "Sasuke-teme can summon hawks now?"

Either way, they were all in pursuit of ink bird that had the headstart jump on them. The toad and the hawk were keeping up over the flat plains, but

"I really didn't expect to run into trouble like this inside of my own village today." Shikamaru said, sitting down on Naruto's toad's head, hands locked in his thinking position as he tried to break this situation down, "It's one guy… "

One guy, and he was giving the lot of them the runaround. What a pain.

A glint of sunlight when he first flew away let them know that he had on a headband, a Konoha one if they had to guess (Sasuke would be able to confirm that for certain), but he wasn't heading back to the village.

'He's sticking around my clan's property.' Sasuke thought to himself with a bit of annoyance, 'He knows that no one comes to this part of the village, so he's free to try and lose us here before slipping away.' The thought of someone using the land set aside for his deceased family to hide out like some criminal brought out a deep sense of loathing for whoever thought such a thing would be a good idea.

Tactically? Yes, it was a good idea given the circumstances. The Uchiha Clan compound covered 2.5 square miles and had within it training fields and dozens of buildings that had not been inhabited in a decade. And as they started flying over the homes and shops of the district this became clear. Plenty of space where nobody else would intrude. It was a ghost town.

But for the fact that the person chasing him considered himself the last real Uchiha walking the face of the continent? No, it was a horrible idea. Sasuke would pursue him like a rabid animal until he finally took him down if this was how he planned on escaping them. Not on his hallowed ground. Not a chance.

While Sasuke continued to fly, Kiba kicked around irritably in the grasp of his hawk, "Why the hell do you have to live so far away from everybody else? Nobody heard that explosion and nobody that sees this from the village is going to know what the hell to make of this! Even a Hyuuga would think we were just dots in the sky!" Let it be known that Kiba wasn't exactly a fan of heights or being held in razor-sharp talons, even as gently as the hawk was being.

"Shut up." Sasuke said, holding his gunbai in one hand as he charged lightning chakra through it, sparks flying off of it. He just needed to maneuver his hawk into range, but it wasn't that easy, as smaller bats and owls flew off from their airborne adversary and rushed through the air at them to attack, "Tch."

XxX

On the ground, in the middle of the streets of the Uchiha Clan district, Naruto's toad sat patiently in the streets holding up Naruto, Shikamaru, and Chouji on its sizeable head over the roofs of most of the buildings, giving them a great view of the ongoing dogfight above them.

"I trust your plans and everything Shikamaru…" Chouji said with one of his arms transformed to the size of a giant's and cocked back with Naruto sitting in his open palm waiting for action, "But when it involves one of our friends like this… well…"

"I'm good with it." Naruto said, giving a thumbs up of consent but not taking his eyes off of the happenings in the sky.

Gesturing to Naruto as if to tell his bulky friend that he told him so, Shikamaru craned his gaze upward as well, "See? Naruto's fine with it. Look, that guy has the advantage up there even though Sasuke can apparently fly too. All he has to do is avoid Sasuke's hawk and keep up what he's doing while the hawk has to get them danger-close to even attack." It wasn't a real battle, it was a chase, and their little intruder didn't have to do anything other than get away, "Sasuke's smart. All we need is to give him an opening and we can end this."

If Sasuke didn't have his hawks then they would have lost him by now. Naruto couldn't take a damn giant toad through town, and his scent wasn't distinct enough for Kiba to distinguish from the ink creatures that he seemed to be able to make.

"What if I miss?" Chouji asked, trying to judge the distance that he would have to hurl his jinchuuriki buddy at the speedy dark figure moving through the air, "Naruto can't fly." And there was a very good chance he'd miss. Killing one of his closest friends really wasn't on his to-do list today.

"Just get me in the general vicinity and I'll make it work." Naruto said, eyes locked on the skies. The sun was almost completely set by this time. To think, this all occurred because of the need for a conversation with Sasuke, 'Is it me? Am I just bad luck like that?' He thought to himself as he waited to soar.

Whatever. If both Naruto and Shikamaru were saying that it was alright to launch Naruto like a shot put then it must have been alright, "Fine. Get ready then." Chouji said as he tried to wait for a good moment to make the throw, "Fire!"

Chouji hurled Naruto who uncoiled his legs at the end of the arm's movement and rocketed out of his grasp, spiraling through the air with the wind from his speed flapping his face back. Chouji's aim had actually been very good, and Naruto had gotten close enough to see the momentary look of pure shock on the face of their pale spy before he missed wide. Apparently he couldn't believe that someone had been insane enough to even attempt something so inherently stupid just to reach him.

The jaw of Chouji dropped and he started sweating at the thought that he was about to watch Naruto go splat somewhere on the ground, but Shikamaru's face showed that he didn't seem to care and even Naruto's toad let out a disinterested croak as it watched as well.

As he fell, there had been a large looping slack in Naruto's chain that he had created even before Chouji threw him. Sasuke and his hawk both saw Naruto hurtling through the air and as he began to fall they took note of how wide open the loop of the chain connected to him happened to be.

Swooping down to save him from painting the dirt road or some rooftop with his lifeblood, Sasuke's hawk caught Naruto's chain around the topside of its neck and continued to fly without missing a beat.

Kiba and Akamaru looked down to see Naruto just dangling beneath them via some kind of chain that seemed to be connected to two tenketsu in his arm on the underside and the top like IVs to veins. So weird, but now wasn't the time to call him on it.

"Welcome back." Commented Kiba glibly, "By the way, what was the thought process of even trying that?" The Inuzuka standout asked as Naruto held on to his own chain with one arm to stay up there with them, "You didn't have a chance in hell of making that work."

"I know that. I'm not stupid." Naruto stated flatly in return. Oh ye of little faith, "How else was I going to get up here?" Naruto admitted before yelling up to Sasuke, "What's the rangiest jutsu you can do teme?"

"It doesn't matter. At this range he'll just dodge it." Sasuke muttered out just loud enough to be heard over the wind, red Sharingan eyes locked onto the young man leading them on. The light of the sun was almost completely gone by this point, and it didn't help that now having to ferry Naruto as well limited their capabilities to fly dexterously even more, "There's no way for me to adjust my aim for what he might do when he can literally maneuver in any direction at all."

In a fight it would be different, but this was just one party chasing after another.

"Stop being so goddamn grumpy." Kiba snapped at Sasuke from his useless position stuck in the talons of the hawk. But hey, he didn't ask to be there the whole time, "Can you at least try? What do we really have to lose?"

It was either that… or drop them all and continue the chase all alone, but then he'd have to justify to the Hokage and all of their friends and family just why he dropped two chunin-level shinobi and a ninken to their untimely deaths.

He had to admit that Kiba had a point too. It wasn't like they were making ground on shooting him down even before Naruto bummed a ride. Sasuke's hawk couldn't seem to cut him off without running headlong into a flurry of smaller aerial pests to deter them first, and that only gave him time to slip away.

Without another word, Sasuke set his gunbai on his back and quickly went through hand-seals before inhaling deeply, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Grand Fireball Jutsu)!" As the large fireball flew from his mouth through the air, Sasuke's hawk flapped its wings and let loose a torrent of wind that only fueled Sasuke's flame to a far larger size that forced the ink bird ahead of them to outright swerve to the side in a barrel roll to avoid being incinerated.

It didn't save its wings from being clipped and sliced clean off by the much more subtle fast-moving chain tipped by a fast-moving machete that had been hurled through the air and the firestorm itself though, "Setsudanki Hassha (Slingshot Guillotine)!"

At first Sasuke just blinked in surprise before glaring down over the side of his avian ride at Naruto who still had his free arm extended underhand, retracting his machete back to hand's length all the while, "If you were going to do that why the hell did I have to shoot a fireball at him?"

"Because he'd have seen the machete coming if you hadn't." Naruto replied as if it were obvious, "The first move is always a feint. Duh. I thought you were a genius." Good combination of wind and fire though, he had to admit.

"Whatever." Kiba said, sounding quite pleased by the turn of events as they watched the bane of their afternoon and early evening go down and crash land in a lake, "There's no 'I' in 'team'… but there is in 'win'. As in I say we win, so let's go catch that motherfucker and make him sing like a canary!"

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – Administrative Division Offices)

"Even his office is completely dreary." Jiraiya commented as he sat in one of the very few chairs in a rather bare-bones office. There was nothing in there other than a desk, the aforementioned chairs, and a portrait of the Shodai and the Nidaime Hokage standing together on a cliff overlooking Konoha in the early days, "We're not going to find anything incriminating or absolving in here at all."

The person that the office belonged to didn't keep any scrolls, files, or any kind of paperwork in the room at all. He probably kept it all on himself in a sealing scroll or two personally. Paranoid perhaps, but not without reason. He was probably never there for anything other than appearances.

After all, he did have both Jiraiya and Tsunade in his office waiting on him to make his last rounds of the day before leaving.

"I don't like Danzo either, you know that." Tsunade said as she peered through the shut blinds of one of the windows, "But I don't see someone like him giving any kind of village information like that to Orochimaru, no matter what he'd get in the process. There isn't much he'd sacrifice anything of his own for, but the village's security is probably the only thing I can think of."

Jiraiya tapped his own head with his fist as he sighed in thought, "I know that. But Orochimaru and he had some kind of weird thing going back right before he left. I think Danzo knew about Orochimaru's more questionable experiments before Sarutobi-sensei did, but kept it to himself."

When someone brought up things like that, things that had occurred in Konoha while she had been gone, Tsunade felt a twinge of guilt that she wouldn't have felt years ago. Maybe if she had been there some of the things that had befallen her hometown wouldn't have happened. Maybe Orochimaru wouldn't have defected. Maybe an entire clan of Konoha shinobi wouldn't have been exterminated in one night by the most gifted of them all.

She could have kept up that train of thought until the moon came up, but the door to the office cracked open. First, in walked a man with an ANBU mask and a white cloak who seemed to tense up at the sight of two of the sannin inside of the office. Both Jiraiya and Tsunade stared at him impassively, but began leveling their respective crushing presences onto him to try and paralyze him with fear, but he didn't seem affected by it at all.

'No fear?' Tsunade thought to herself, narrowing her eyes at the masked ANBU. He had to know that they would crush him like an ant, and he didn't seem to be concerned with his own potential well-being.

A hand set itself on the shoulder of the ANBU, getting him to calm down as another man walked past him into the room. An elderly man with messy dark hair and an 'x' scar on his chin walked in. His right eye was bandaged and he had a cane in hand as he wore a white kimono shirt underneath a black robe slung over only one shoulder that seemed to serve as a sling for his bulkily covered, badly injured-looking right arm.

His single visible eye scanned between both Tsunade and Jiraiya, but other than that he barely seemed to care that they were there, "I came back to lock up my office for the day, and here I find the two of you waiting here for me. To what do I owe the pleasure of my old friend's students' company?"

"I'm pretty sure that you know the results of the S-rank mission dispatched out to Mizu no Kuni." Tsunade commented wryly, "It's common knowledge to anyone seeking it by now, and nothing of that nature gets past you."

"Indeed I am aware of the 'successful' outcome." Danzo said with no real expression on his face despite the clear sarcasm behind part of his words, "I can't say that I was a fan when I learned that our jinchuuriki was sent into the lands of our potential enemies to confront an enemy with a history of spiriting away subjects he finds interesting. No doubt he now considers the strength of a biju 'interesting' nowadays. Times are becoming tumultuous aren't they?"

Wait, so Danzo actually saw value in Naruto? Or was it just that he saw value in what was _inside_ of Naruto. It was to be noted that he didn't identify Naruto by name, just by title of what he happened to be.

"Things had to pick up eventually." Jiraiya replied with a shrug, "It's a vicious cycle, you know how it is. All it takes is something binding us all to upset the status quo and then just like that we're in the middle of insanity again." Just like the good old bad days.

"I'm assuming that you're referring to Akatsuki as that something you speak of." Danzo said as he turned around to leave his office again, "I was referring more to the threat that we seem to have closer to home." Of course he was referring to the spy that they had in their midst, "It's ironic that such a master spy allowed another one to infiltrate his home village while he was gallivanting off at the capital. Or could it have been while you were pursuing Orochimaru to the ends of the continent?"

"And you're just going to absolve your own responsibilities from this as well?" Jiraiya replied, trying to hide the grit to his teeth at having the blame of a spy in deep cover of Konoha, "I may have been gone, but I did manage to dig up information on several threats to the village abroad while I was gone. Meanwhile you remained here, but were so busy playing your own games that you never noticed that we'd had our security compromised."

Danzo's sharp brown eye hardened on Jiraiya's stern glance as the two refused to give any ground, "My house is well within order. I sincerely hope that the next person Hiruzen plans to hand off the seat of Hokage to isn't you. If so I fear for the future of this village."

Jiraiya stood up and imposed his size advantage over Danzo as they nearly got face-to-face, "What would you care about the future when all you can ever do is look at yourself as the answer to everything you-."

"That's enough!" Tsunade snapped, roughly pulling Jiraiya back by his arm. Goodness, the woman almost dislocated his shoulder, "Danzo we didn't come to fight. no matter what we think of one another… we need your help." She admitted with great difficulty, "Sarutobi-sensei would never do such a thing, but ignoring the expertise that you bring to the table wouldn't be wise in this situation."

In a rare show of surprise, Danzo's wrinkled eye opened up wider than usual at hearing Tsunade of all people say such a thing to him, "I don't know how much you can expect me to do without Hiruzen bestowing some kind of authoritative position upon me. I have a bit of influence and prestige as an elder shinobi, but-." He stopped when he realized that neither Jiraiya nor Tsunade were buying any of his pleading the fifth B.S.

Sometimes it was hard to remember from the way that they acted that these two were some of the best and brightest that had ever been produced within the walls of Konoha. He could still see them as the children running around Hiruzen, forcing his hairs to grey early in their youth.

Good lord, had that really been almost fifty years ago?

And here they stood all this time later, ignominies aside, perhaps the most respected people in the entire village with the exception of the Hokage himself.

With a shake of his head he cast off the wave of nostalgia that had washed over him and finished walking out of the office, his normally cold façade giving absolutely nothing, "That's not necessary. Perhaps if Hiruzen were not so soft in times of peace this would not be an issue, but it is of no matter. The situation is under control, I can assure you. I will not let any true harm ever befall my village."

"But Danzo, just listen to-."

"I will keep Konoha safe, by any means that I see necessary. The village survived just fine while you two were away tending to your own affairs, and why do you think that was? We're leaving Torune."

The departure of one of the most ambiguous figures in the entire village and his ANBU bodyguard soon followed. And neither Tsunade nor Jiraiya knew what to make of it. Both of them just looked at each other, wondering just what Danzo considered safe for the village, and just what he meant by 'any means necessary'.

XxX

(With Naruto – Uchiha Clan District)

Much to Naruto's surprise, the lake that they had shot down their eavesdropper into was the lake that he had oftentimes seen Sasuke sitting on the docks in front of, just staring out at the water back in their youth. But those were sadder times for the both of them. Now things were better so to speak.

Not right then necessarily because they were searching for a body that they couldn't seem to find.

"Come on…" Kiba said to himself under his breath as he and Akamaru kept doggedly sniffing at the air, getting more and more heated by the minute as they searched the forest around the lake. By now the village was bathed in moonlight, but that didn't seem to deter him a bit, "Come on damn it!"

His anger was understandable. The scent of their enemy was everywhere. Strong ink smells were clogging his nasal passages, and if he had been blind and only able to navigate by scent he wouldn't have known which way was up. He couldn't even smell the water due to the blatantly oppressive odor.

If you couldn't hide your scent, the next best thing was to put it absolutely everywhere.

Shikamaru stood on the elevated road by the lakeside and heard Naruto appear next to him in a Shunshin. With an expectant look, all Shikamaru got in return was a shake of the head, "Fifty clones spaced out all over the place, sending out enough sonar pulses to have this whole place laced. If a squirrel farts in its sleep in these woods I'd know it, but we haven't seen our pale friend at all."

With an annoyed growl, Shikamaru turned back to the lake, "It doesn't make any sense. We all saw him go down and double-timed it over here. There's no way he got far enough away from here in any direction where we couldn't catch him before he hid." Even though the bird that had been shot down exploded in a torrent of ink all over the place, that only took care of Kiba's ability to track. Not Naruto's.

"We're not going to get any official help either I'd wager." Sasuke grumbled as he stomped up the hill and onto the dirt road, "That guy had a Konoha headband, so he was a ninja of this village, and he wasn't really listening in on any state secrets or anything… other than the Kyuubi thing."

"Oh please. It's the worst kept secret in the history of ninjadom I swear." Shikamaru deadpanned while Naruto nodded in agreement and lit up a cigarette for his smoking pleasure, "Not only does every adult in Konoha already know about it, but anyone that's ever seen a jinchuuriki anywhere else and seen Naruto fight using the Kyuubi's chakra knows without being told what he is. Do we even know how illegal it is for someone that's not you to talk about it?" He concluded questioningly to Naruto.

Naruto just shrugged cluelessly, "I honestly don't even care about it anymore. No matter what anyone thinks about me, you can't really get a worse reaction for being a jinchuuriki than having nine jackasses trying to suck the biju out of you… no offense Sasuke."

Sasuke didn't take a lick of offense though, "What? Itachi's apparently trying to get the Kyuubi out of you and he's a monumental jackass. You think that's an insult to me?" He then looked toward the forest to see Chouji and Kiba with Akamaru coming out, the latter two looking rather ruffled, "No news on our newest friend I'd wager."

That comment didn't ease Kiba's mind any as he turned and spit on the ground, "No nothing period." It was a personal insult to him that someone was able to evade his tracking abilities within the limits of his own village, "Fuck it."

With a dejected shake of the head, Chouji had to give up the ghost as well, "He's gone guys. No blood, no tracks. There's nothing at all."

Who was that guy?

XxX

(Meanwhile – Underground Root Chambers)

Slow footsteps echoed out in the tunnels connected to the waterway systems beneath Konoha as a lone figure slogged through the shadows cast in the dark. There was a significant limp to his step, but other than that, you could tell there was nothing wrong with him from the expression on his face.

'I didn't expect that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki would be so ready to react.' The pale spy that had been keeping tabs on Naruto thought to himself as he saw the tunnel open up into a wide chamber that seemed to be a center portion of an entire cylindrical facility.

There were wooden bridges and metal struts connecting suspended barracks of various purposes all over the midair space with pipes running through the walls.

A swift descent from the tunnel wound up with the figure of focus landing in a crouch on one of the bridges. At least he was safe now. Pushing his luck while in the presence of an Inuzuka was a terrible idea, but the target of interest in Uzumaki Naruto was in the midst of a serious conversation with what Danzo had constantly stated was one of the largest potential domestic threats to Konoha in Uchiha Sasuke.

That was something too potentially dangerous to miss out on. It was something he needed to hear and relay in turn. Especially since the point of the conversation that sparked his interest in the first place was his estranged nuke-nin brother in Itachi.

This had been a warning sent to them for years. Keep the two of them far apart by any means necessary.

"Sai." Turning around to find a presence that he hadn't felt before, the young ninja caught sight of one of his Root comrades. A man older than him by a few years with short auburn hair in a high ponytail and emotionless amber eyes. He wore a short black jacket with red straps on the shoulders, a burnt orange kimono top, black gloves, black pants, and black sandals, "Your position in spying on the Kyuubi jinchuuriki has been compromised?"

There wasn't any need to hear an answer. It was as clear as day all over him. He looked like he had just walked in from a warzone with how utterly worn out he looked, no matter how he tried to hide it.

"Yes." The young man now identified as Sai confirmed, not having any need or thought on easing into the truth, "But as ordered I have been following him and keeping tabs on him since the day of his return to the village. I was unable to test him alone in a battle to witness the extent of his control. Since my surveillance began there had never been enough of an opening to do so unfettered by outside interference."

Today was just proof positive of that statement, just ramped up to level ten. The entire day he had spent in heavily populated areas, and even when he ventured to an isolated location he did so in a party of five. Apparently Naruto had a healthy level of paranoia, because all of that was intentional. Everything he had done all day long and every day that he had been in the village since returning was expressly done to ensure that he didn't stay alone for any prolonged period of time.

"Another way will be found to continue reconnaissance on the boy." The older Root operative assured Sai in a stiff tone of voice, "His time spent as a Ninja Guardian could potentially have caused his ties to the village to wane, akin to his sensei Sarutobi Asuma years ago. If this is the case we all know what will be requested of us by Danzo-sama."

A jinchuuriki with questionable allegiance to Konoha was simply a danger that couldn't be allowed to roam free. Three years working for an outside entity in the daimyo after only a year as a genin and chunin had to have affected him negatively in some way, and with Jiraiya and Tsunade playing major factors as the role models and adults in his life there was even more of a risk in the stalwart eyes of Danzo and his fanatical Root forces.

The enemies at the gate… were they really as dangerous as the possible enemies within?

It didn't matter. There could be a few rotting branches on the great tree of Konoha. Just as long as the Roots below were strong enough to stand firm and break them off.

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 7

(One Year and Two Months after Naruto and Shikamaru's Acceptance)

A rather long and grueling detail seemed to finally be coming to an end as four of the seven current Guardians slogged back across the border heading southwest from Yu no Kuni into their home country of Hi no Kuni. It was all forests though so it was oftentimes hard to tell where the border was if one were not using certain landmarks as a marking point.

They did not have that luxury on this day.

The party consisted of Naruto, Shikamaru, the strange hooded and white-clad albino young man, and the short skirt and shredded t-shirt punk looking young woman that served as Naruto and Shikamaru's seniors on this mission; Kondo Shinya and Ishii Akira respectively. None of them looked too poised and in command at the moment though.

Everyone seemed to be covered from head to toe in cuts, abrasions, bruises, light burns, pretty much anything you could think of, and all of their clothes seemed to be battered beyond further usage… even as far as Akira's intentionally frayed pink shirt that went over her mesh armor was concerned. The black heart in the middle of the piece of clothing was completely shredded.

"This is the worst mission ever." Shikamaru said, voicing the opinion of pretty much everyone else there, "Really. This isn't the first time I've almost been killed before, but at least then it didn't drag on for three days straight." Slow burn peril was always more nerve-wracking than sudden surprise death. They were walking to save their energy for when they would need to run at night. That was when the raids would start again

"This was the one time where the decoy thing actually wound up being useful didn't it?" Shinya said, sounding completely exhausted as they continued to slowly travel. Even underneath his large hood sweat coated his face, and his usually clean and white clothes were covered in dirt and foreign blood, "Who hired those pricks to pick a fight with the Fire Daimyo?"

"Technically they didn't. Attacking us doesn't count as aggression against the daimyo." Akira pointed out, running a hand through her short cut black hair. She was quite certain that there were too many different bloodtypes griming her hair up after the day of pursuit and combat that they had dealt with, "We're just the muscle. We're expendable, meant to make sure that someone doesn't get the chance to try anything on the court."

Shinya knew that much, but he then pointed back at Naruto who was walking with more apparent energy than the rest of them, but with an apprehensive look in his eye, "Naruto was transformed _into_ the Daimyo! You know he's got the best damn Henge out of the lot of us, and the ambush didn't come from close enough for any of them to tell it wasn't the real deal in that middle carriage."

"Sometimes bad guys are just that ballsy." The fourteen year old Shikamaru reasoned, holding a loosely bandaged wound on his head from the back-to-back battles. This week had not been kind to him at all, "There's no use worrying about it now. Let's just worry about getting the rest of the way back to the capital. We've still got two days of travelling left."

The party had been dispatched with the other Guardians as a part of an entire protection detail for the daimyo who had ventured further north into Kaminari no Kuni and Kumogakure to view the chunin exams.

Upon departure the idea was to send the daimyo and his viewing party that consisted of parts of his family out to head off for home ahead of schedule under the cover of night and protection of the three most experienced Guardians in Sadao, Kotoko, and Kenta.

Meanwhile a second decoy caravan would be deployed in the morning in open sight for all to see, manned entirely by the four other Guardians, centered around one in particular that could clone and disguise himself dozens of times over to simulate the roving guard that usually stayed by them in traveling scenarios.

It was a good thing it was the red herring too, because the Kage Bunshin decoy convoy got absolutely annihilated on the way back.

They had been travelling on a mountainside path right before they reached the border of Kaminari no Kuni when all hell broke loose and a rockslide sent them over the edge and nearly killed them all. From there it had been all downhill, literally and figuratively.

The enemy had been Otogakure, though the point of attacking the Fire Daimyo wasn't clear, nor who hired them to do it. Luckily by the time the attack had happened, the real daimyo had been halfway through the next country down, far away from any harm.

A dogged pursuit followed, trying to stamp out any survivors, but this failed as well at least up until that point. The first attack had been the worst as the only two Guardians conscious after the fall off of the cliff had been Shinya and Naruto, but a panicking Naruto turned out to be their best bet at getting out of that deathtrap alive.

Apparently the Kyuubi wasn't such a big fan of being sent off the side of a mountain pass and chased by a pack of forty-plus faceless jerks in masks either. Go figure.

Either way, the first blitz ended up with twenty-seven enemy outright dead (Naruto killing eighteen of them) before the Otogakure platoon wised up and decided on hit-and-run tactics throughout the forested countryside to pick away at the Guardian Ninja team for the next few days.

The simple fact of the matter was that getting into a slugfest with a jinchuuriki who was scared that his friends were sitting ducks for death was not the most brilliant tactic one could take, even with the numbers advantage.

"So you're a jinchuuriki." Akira said bluntly to Naruto who seemed to tense up at the sudden question. "Kami, that's so lucky!" That… had not been the expected reaction to such a thing, "Why didn't anyone tell us we had a romping-stomping real life honest-to-goodness jinchuuriki with us?" She seemed rather ecstatic at the thought of having one watching her back.

"They did tell us." Shinya stated flatly, lowering his hood and revealing his long white dreadlocks due to their cover from the sun making his hood covering his face unnecessary, "Remember when Nobuyuki took Sadao and Kotoko to Konoha to meet with them? He came back and told us about them, and you were doing your nails through the entire meeting like you always do."

"Yeah, because why would I care if we were getting two underage kids joining up with us to fill out the ranks? That's boring Shinya."

"Well that's why you missed the snippet about our buddy Naruto here being a jinchuuriki. We all knew almost a year and a half before you did. Way to miss the boat."

While their seniors quietly bickered amongst themselves, Naruto looked at Shikamaru in near disbelief, "Wait, I thought the whole jinchuuriki thing was a big deal." Didn't people usually freak out about that? That was what he had been led to believe from every bit of interaction with every other jinchuuriki he had ever met.

Shikamaru could serve to indulge his teammate as to why it wasn't such a big deal after the initial surprise wore off, "Well you kind of stomp on the original jinchuuriki myth of how they're all hateful and unstable with spiked boots on." It also didn't hurt that some of them actually got to know him first before they found out about what lay within. He then noticed Naruto's eyes narrow on the forests around them as he slowly drew his weapon from his back, "Ugh…"

Not needing to know what the general feeling amongst them happened to be at the moment, Naruto rolled his own eyes and held his blade at the ready when everyone else let out exasperated groans, "Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I just feel them coming. It's not like I'm telling them to keep coming at us."

"Again?" Akira seemed extremely upset at finding that Naruto was readying himself for another attack, "Are you sure?" A silent nod was her only answer, "Fuck. You think they'd stop trying to get so close after the second time they breached the Kage Bunshin perimeter." She was already setting her hand-seals to begin casting her genjutsu the moment she got word on where the enemy was.

Shinya pulled his hood back over his head as a part of his own pre-battle ritual as everyone watched Naruto's eyes move and dot out where he sensed the Oto attackers were setting up from, "They're getting desperate to keep us from reaching Hi no Kuni. They're attacking during the day this time."

Shikamaru's shadow was already stirring and ready for action at his feet as he smirked, seeing slight bits of movement in the trees around them, "Well does this means that we can actually get some sleep tonight or are we still going to have to run again?"

Thirteen against four were not really the best of odds, but after a week like this one they'd take it in a heartbeat.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konoha Ninja

Team 7

Uchiha Sasuke

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Overall Score: 30**

Haruno Sakura

**Ninjutsu: 2.5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Overall Score: 24**

Akimichi Chouji

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 4.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Overall Score: 23**

Hatake Kakashi

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 5**

**Overall Score: 34.5**

Team 8

Inuzuka Kiba

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Overall Score: 24**

Aburame Shino

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 1.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Overall Score: 22**

Hyuuga Hinata

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 1.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 3 **

**Total Score: 24**

Root

Sai

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Overall Score: 27.5**

Torune

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Overall Score: 25.5**

Fuu (Yamanaka)

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Overall Score: 26**

Shimura Danzo

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 5  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 5**

**Overall Score: 33**

* * *

**My nerves are frazzled, my knees are temporarily shot, I'm low on funds, and my cupboards are severely lacking in the Jack Link's Beef Jerky, almonds, chocolate milk, and Cherry Coke departments.**

**But I've got enough wherewithal to do this so I must not be doing too badly. There's some internal turmoil brewing, but can a house divided fortify itself at a time when powerful foes will stop at nothing to obtain what they have within?**

**And is there a particular reason that I just tried to sound like a radio commercial for a primetime television slot on network TV? **

**Alright, I'm done. Hope you enjoyed the read you raging jerks you.**

**Kenchi out.**


	52. A Healthy Paranoia

Disclaimer: I found a Bop-It yesterday. There went three hours right down the drain. I also tore a few muscle tendons in my chest on the right side last week and I'm on the shelf for a little while. These things are totally unrelated and the last thing happened way earlier, but the latter hurts like hell and I feel like airing my grievances to an audience.

**Chapter 52: A Healthy Paranoia**

* * *

"I'm gonna kick her ass Boss!" Konohamaru declared devoutly as he did pull-ups on the railing of Naruto's balcony while the man in question sat in a chair set up there that let him look out over his street, "The chunin exams are the best chance I've ever had! I'll finally prove that I'm the only one that can be your apprentice, you'll see!"

The entire time Konohamaru had been over and visiting on his day off from team exercises, he'd been chattering something about a 'destined showdown' or something with Hanabi, but Naruto hadn't really been listening. He'd been acting as if he had been in order to humor the young genin, but his mind was out to lunch and anyone that looked at him for longer than five seconds could tell.

It had been two days since the wild and wooly chase against that mystery ninja that had taken him and some of his friends all over the sizable land holdings of the Uchiha Clan. They hadn't managed to catch a thing and the trail had gone cold. They weren't going to find any help outside of the lot of them.

And who would they have told that might have helped them anyway? They hadn't been attacked first, they had been the ones to initiate any fighting that took place. The guy had been spying on them, and after living in a situation for three years where someone spying on you could mean treason against the daimyo and eventual painful death to you neither Naruto nor Shikamaru took very kindly to any espionage against them.

"-Are you listening Boss?"

No, he hadn't been listening, but in the lucid state of awareness that he had been in the entire time that he had been thinking and fussing with his newly purchased pair of goggles trying to prep for the eventual painstaking branding of his seal on them Naruto had heard enough key phrases to caveman up a response, "Yeah, yeah. You. Hanabi. Gonna kick her ass. Woot."

Now hopefully he'd be left alone to work. He didn't want to go back to Tenten and tell her that he made her waste her abuse of her ninja tools discount because he screwed up some clandestine sealing combination on them. That girl had gotten scarier since he'd left and returned.

"Good. You were listening." Konohamaru said, stopping his pull-ups to peer over the top of the safety railing at Naruto, "So you're going to teach me some killer awesome anti-Hyuuga Clan tricks right?"

He was? When the hell did he say that? He could say quite confidently that he had never said that he would do any such thing at any time… ever. But if he flat out said no he'd have to listen to Konohamaru bitch about how he liked Hanabi better and blah, blah, blah. It just wasn't worth the headache that a one-word answer would give him.

"Look, I can't teach either of you anything." Naruto said, trying to let the younger ninja down rationally, "First of all, I can't teach. I suck at it. Second of all, it's a total conflict of interest because I like both of you and if I taught you something I'd have to go back and teach her something just as good to balance out my conscience and it'd be a wash. Third of all, the only 'anti-Hyuuga' move I have only works for me because it's basically an overpowered version of something Iruka-sensei taught me."

He pumped too much chakra into it. It wasn't supposed to give Naruto the clarity that it did, it was just supposed to give him a general idea of where things were. Frankly, if most others tried to do it the way that he did they'd wear themselves out within three bursts.

"So Iruka-sensei knows that jutsu too?"

"Sure. Yeah, let's go with that." Yep, dump Konohamaru's jutsu begging off onto Iruka. He dealt with kids every single day, he was probably used to such a thing. The man was a _teacher_ for crying out loud, "Wait a minute, why are you talking about beating Hanabi? The start of the chunin exams aren't for another month."

Konohamaru pulled himself up onto the railing in a flip that was actually pretty impressive, "Because it's just destined Boss! We're gonna face off once and for all, epically I might add! It's what rivals do! In front of everyone just like you guys did in your exams!"

"You're probably not even going to get to fight her." Naruto informed him pushing on his forehead with his index finger far enough to make Konohamaru lose his balance. Had it not been for Naruto sticking his finger to his forehead with chakra to keep a hold on him he probably would have fallen, "You should focus on passing instead of beating up one person."

"Why?"

"Do you know the odds of you actually getting to take her on? At all?" Naruto asked, finally letting Konohamaru keep his footing on the railing safely, "…Because I don't. My math sucks. All I know is that between the three stages, and the tournament at the end of it, you're probably not going to fight her, so stop worrying about it until it actually happens."

Konohamaru took the advice with a nod, but had to run a buzzkill remark through his head at the thought of he and his long-standing rival not facing off with one another on the biggest stage they'd been able to reach thus far.

The small bonding moment more or less ended when the sound of Naruto's front door opening caught both of their attention followed by the voice of a female, "Ugh, what a mess. I swear Goldie-kun… and people call me a pig just because of my name."

Upon hearing the shuffling through his idol's home, Konohamaru raised a confused eyebrow, prompting Naruto to answer the unasked question, "It's just Ino-chan. She's still got the key to this place from when I was gone." Once again Konohamaru didn't say anything, he merely raised a closed hand with the pinky extended upward, "No. And don't let her see that or hear you talk about it either or you won't make it to any chunin exam."

Yes, Konohamaru knew as much because girls got testy over that kind of thing, examples came to mind of Moegi and even Hanabi stomping him flat in the Academy to accentuate this. He didn't need to get beaten up by an experienced kunoichi of all things.

Thus his mouth was sealed tight when Ino passed through Naruto's room and found the two of them out on the balcony, "There you are. You're messing up the apartment I did such a good job of keeping clean you know."

"It's my house." Naruto replied, leaning back in his chair to get a look at her as she came through the open door to stand out there with them, "What's up? We weren't supposed to all meet up for a few more days." Shikamaru wanted to take _way_ too much downtime after missions for Naruto's tastes.

"Yeah, to team train and/or work. That doesn't mean I can't visit my friends." Ino said as she sat herself down on the railing nearby, crossing one leg over the other, "Hey Konohamaru." She greeted to the young genin who nodded in acknowledgment, "Anyway, I heard about what happened the other day with you guys from Shika. You think it's the person all the buzz is about?"

She was talking about the village's spy. They knew about it. Every ninja deemed decently relevant in the village knew about it. All of their grad class knew, all of their former genin squad leaders knew, basically anyone worth their salt as a ninja which meant at least chunin in rank knew. No one talked about it except in very small circles, but it was a topic that permeated every social grouping in Konoha.

Naruto had managed to get an earful of the underlying situation in the village after everyone started on their way home following the failed chase, and while he'd known a bit before he was able to recognize what a damnable problem it was. It had been going on for years, and the spy hadn't moved on yet. Either they were very good or very cocky.

Probably both.

"No." Eventually Naruto responded to Ino's query with confidence in his opinion, "That guy couldn't possibly have been the one that you're talking about." Trying to spy on them as close as their interloper had been spying was just not something a master spy would do. It wasn't as if the guy hadn't been good at concealing his presence, but it was too straightforward to be the one keeping the village on its toes for years.

Ino had to admit that maybe she was just getting a bit antsy. She'd been dealing with Konoha's intelligence for a long time now, and the whole spy thing just pissed her off. What possible reason would the real-deal spy have to look in on a bunch of chunin?

What they were talking about went over Konohamaru's head for the most part, but that was the point. He didn't need to know about it. Certain folks at a particular level (genin) wouldn't know how to take the presence of a high-level spy, and it was for the best that this was kept as low as possibly allowable until they could smoke the mole out.

And Konohamaru had already heard more than he probably should have, thus it was time for him to go, "Konohamaru you should head on home now. Naruto and I have things to talk about that you probably don't want to hang around to hear." It was a rather weak excuse, but if needed Ino could always just bitch him out if he talked back.

He didn't though, instead turning toward Naruto curiously, "I thought you said she wasn't your girlfriend? That really sounds like a couple sort of thing to say to me." Shaking his head, the youngster turned around on the railing and prepared to leave, "I'll just go ask grandpa about what I should do to train then."

Instead of being angry or offended at what he said, Ino allowed him to vacate the premises and merely had an amused smile on her face as she addressed her teammate, "He asked you if we were dating? And he really came to you for training?"

"Yes to both." Naruto returned with a shrug, "Which is stupid because I haven't been back long enough to get a girlfriend yet. But meh, I'll probably end up teaching him something. Rasengan maybe. I don't see why not. He's a good kid."

Ino just stared at him, still smiling the same as before, "…You already did something like that with Hanabi didn't you?"

"No. But now that you say that, I think I should. It'd be hilarious."

And why wouldn't it be? They'd both have the exact opposite problem with the jutsu.

Hanabi had the control necessary to get the formation of the jutsu down within an hour and she had the advantage of literally being able to see her chakra and moderate it during the steps that would teach her about it, but she'd probably lack the power to put behind it that would make it anything more than a palm thrust that would knock someone a few feet farther away. She'd get stuck on popping the rubber ball for a while.

Konohamaru on the other hand probably had a similar problem to him in the focus department when it came to chakra control at the near same age, making the formation of the Rasengan shell a pain in the ass. Step three would work his last nerve for certain. On the flipside he'd probably get the power portion of the jutsu down way before the finesse-oriented Hyuuga Hanabi would if given the jutsu at the exact same time. It'd be good to bet on who'd get it first.

Oh… he just came up with a way to make a load of money off of the idea and give his two favorite brats a great jutsu at the same time. He'd have to put that one into motion sometime later.

"Rasengan huh?" Ino said as she sauntered over to Naruto's side with her hands on her hips, "Well if you're going to be teaching it to some kids you aren't related to, why don't you show it to me? I kind of suck at taijutsu anyway, comparatively speaking of course, and something close-range would help. So come on. You owe me for watching your apartment for three years."

"No, you owe me for giving you your own private pad for three years, free of charge. I know you slept here a lot, and don't ask me how I know."

"…I left clothes over here didn't I?"

"Oh yeah. Clothes and stuff in the bathroom." Naruto drawled in return before seemingly thinking in an effort to tease her, "But you've got a point. A strong Ino-chan means a strong Team 10, so come here." He didn't expect Ino to cheekily plop down in his lap unceremoniously with her legs swung over the arm of the chair, "I meant grab an actual seat, but whatever." As if he was actually going to complain about it.

It had been a while since Ino had messed with him like this. She felt a wave of pleasant nostalgia wash over her as she batted her eyelashes at him sweetly, "Okay Goldie-kun, train me up. What do you want me to do?"

Naruto snickered a bit at how charming she was trying to be before getting a rather bright idea. First taking off one of his arm-warmers and then grabbing one of her hands in his, Naruto pressed their palms together and interlocked their fingers. Ino held a confused look on her face as her cheeks involuntarily heated up. What the two of them must have looked like.

It was partly her fault though, but she had casually forgotten that once she felt Naruto's chakra in between their hands. All of that bravado of hers got swept out the door rather quickly once she realized the position that she had put herself in.

"Alright." Naruto said quietly, actually having a lot of fun now that the shoe was on the other foot in teasing Ino for once, "Part of the Rasengan is chakra control. You need good control to keep the form of the jutsu because it's just raw chakra manipulation. It's what makes it spin in every direction." Ino nodded bashfully and continued to listen, "I'm using the same amount of chakra I use to keep the shell stable, you figure out how much it is and match it, and it'll separate our hands. Got it?"

Truthfully this had absolutely nothing to do with learning the Rasengan, but Ino didn't need to know that. It sounded good, and that was all that mattered.

Using her free hand to smooth her bang out of the way of one of her eyes, Ino tried to tug her hand away to see if she could only to find it stuck fast due to the application of chakra that was the signature of Naruto's taijutsu style. He was barely holding onto her hand with muscle at all.

Naruto's thumb stroked the back of Ino's tinier hand, figuring that he had full control of the chosen little game when he saw the embarrassed red on her face and heard the softer than normal voice that came with it, "…C-Come on Naruto. What are you doing?"

"You'll have to make me let go. It wouldn't be any fun if I didn't try to hold on to you."

Realistically, Ino didn't want to even try to separate their hands at all. This kind of closeness with Naruto was something she had wanted, and the better thing was that he had basically initiated it himself. While before he wasn't necessarily reluctant in regards to her advances, he always seemed noticeably uncomfortable with her forward approaches.

…Now, not so much.

Either way, this was what Ino wanted. She wanted him to want to be closer to her. And the fact that they were all alone made it better. It had been years since they'd spent any real amount of time together, and there was definitely a more grown-up vibe to it altogether. It made her heart thump a bit faster in her chest.

Instead of trying to break the connection, Ino kept their fingers laced and squeezed Naruto's hand, dropping whatever pretense of playing around that they had held beforehand, "What if I don't want you to let go?"

Naruto's eyes went somewhat wide at what she said, but before he could even think of anything to say or do in return, they found themselves disturbed out of their situation unceremoniously.

"Yo."

Looking up above, standing on the roof of Naruto's apartment building peering down at the two of them was Hatake Kakashi in all of his one-eyed, facemasked glory, waving down pleasantly as if he had no clue what he was doing.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Ino said absentmindedly before clearing her throat and getting up from Naruto's lap after feeling Naruto's chakra bond to her hand vanish, "Uh, what can we do for you?" As put off as she was, venom-spitting Ino would be no good at the moment, since Kakashi would more than likely just shrug off anything she yelled at him.

"Oh, I just decided to drop in and chat for a bit with the old students of a colleague." Kakashi said, sounding both bright and completely uninterested at the same time, "I remember back when you two were just cute little genin, and now look at you; getting interrupted from making out. Kids grow up so fast." Ino turned away and leaned on the railing of the balcony, face aghast at being called out in such a manner.

'Kami I wish I had my machete on me.' Naruto thought to himself, trying to hide the twitch in his brow. If Kakashi didn't have a good reason for showing up, Sakura, Chouji, and Sasuke could count their sensei as a missing person in just a few moments, "Is there something that you want?" That probably came out a bit harsher than he intended it to.

"Actually yes." Kakashi said with utmost seriousness, "You had a run-in with Uchiha Itachi on your last mission didn't you? I know that you did because you told Sasuke about it." Naruto nodded in confirmation, seeing no reason to indicate otherwise, "I see. Could you tell me about it?"

It wasn't an issue that he told Sasuke because he was old enough to know the happenings going on with his brother, especially since his goal as a ninja revolved around him. He just wanted to make sure that everything was okay. Sasuke hadn't gone off the handle and actually took Itachi's resurfacing rather well thus far, but hearing that Naruto had run up against the man wasn't something that he could brush off with what he knew of him.

Dredging up the memories of that little encounter came easily for Naruto. There wasn't any way he was going to forget just what had happened that day at all, "Inside of Orochimaru's base he was there too looking for the jinchuuriki that Otogakure had created and we wound up fighting. It was just me and him until Kimimaro jumped in and then we tore the whole place apart. Oh, and the genjutsu. He got me in a good one that I couldn't have broken if he hadn't had to move to stay alive."

"Still a sucker for a good illusion eh Goldie-kun?"

"These weren't normal bullshit mind tricks, they were seriously well-done! I know how to break a goddamn genjutsu Ino-chan!"

Kakashi wouldn't say it out loud because it wasn't told by the Sandaime Hokage for a reason, this he believed. Even so, even if it wasn't known by any more than a handful of people, Naruto was his sensei's son, and he did have some kind of interest in the young man's well-being, "That's a dangerous Achilles' heel to have when your enemy possesses a doujutsu."

Naruto let out an exasperated groan. He'd actually heard the same thing or something similar from almost everyone he'd spoken to about it since his return, "It is _not_ an Achilles' heel. He layered the genjutsu. _Layered_ it. As in one on top of another. Now that I know he does that I'll be ready for it next time."

Besides... he was going to get Sasuke to help him out with finding some tricks of the trade to avoid such a fate come hell or high water even if he had to blackmail the Uchiha youth into it somehow, and eventually he was going to find the time to fix his seal array back onto his goggles sooner or later.

"Well if you ever need advice, I'm always around somewhere." Kakashi offered coolly, trying to cover his own intent to assist Naruto somehow, someway. Asuma had done grand work with him, but a part of him wanted to have something to do with his further development as well, "I don't think I'm that hard to find."

With a smile, Naruto nodded and both he and Ino waved goodbye as the jounin leapt away to attend to his own business. Once he was gone, Ino turned to Naruto and raised a curious eyebrow, "Okay what the hell was that? Kakashi-sensei basically offered you help on command."

Let it be known that Yamanaka Ino was good at her job of interrogation and could read between the lines.

"Yeah." Naruto said, plopping back down in his original seat to screw with his eyewear once again to prepare the goggles for what he needed to do, "It's because my old man was his sensei. By the way I found out who my dad was. Whoo."

Kakashi's sensei had been Namikaze Minato, the Yondaime Hokage.

So basically Naruto was telling her that his father was the last Hokage before the Sandaime took over once more. She swore to Kami… if one more widespread hidden thing like this just popped up out of the blue involving that poor boy she was going to find an adult that she thought was responsible enough for the truth being buried and she was going to stab them, "And you know this how?"

"Super high-stakes chunin exam fantasy league wager with all of the Guardians, Ero-sennin, and Tsunade-baa last year." Naruto recalled, "She lost all of her money betting all over the host town during the finals, and he lost a lot of it on… other things around the same time. They had to pay me somehow."

"And it took taking advantage of a compulsive gambler's terrible streak of luck and the vices of a lecher to learn this, why again?"

"Something about enemies and secrets and grudges and stuff like that."

All Ino could do was sigh. What else could she do? The whole goddamn village was built on crap just like this, decades in the making, so it had to be expected to some extent, "…I love this village, but I hate being a ninja sometimes."

"Maybe. But really, what else are we really qualified for Ino-chan?" Naruto said, motioning the poor girl forward for a hug that she desperately looked like she needed and didn't shy away from in the least, "We were literally bred for this." All she did was moan piteously into his shoulder, mulling over the repercussions of having the child of f'n Namikaze Minato by her side nearly every damn day for years and years.

He felt for her, he really did, having all of this dropped on her without warning. Good lord, if he were normal what would it have been like for him after finding out? Fortunately Naruto spent three years having never-ending back-to-back near-death experiences to take his mind off of most things. Neither he nor Shikamaru were ever given much time to think to themselves.

That was just as well because according to Shikamaru, free time to yourself allowed you to ponder. Also according to Shikamaru, pondering made you emo. Yes, the way they lived for three years chipped away at the long-term sanity of the two boys, but at least Naruto could say that he would also never take shocking news the way Ino usually seemed to.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha)

It was time to go. Serving as a spy for several years uninterrupted in the village that he despised more than any other was a good enough record.

In a small hiding area nestled in between two of the lesser used training fields utilized by Konoha's shinobi forces, Kabuto was busy covering his tracks and ridding himself of any possible trace of his presence as a spy in the village.

'How should I do this?' He thought to himself with a smile as he started stashing away things he wished to take and things he needed to eradicate before leaving, 'I could fake my death… but what's the fun in that?'

His ideal situation would be to somehow let Danzo know that the spy he created with his treachery years ago happened to be the one that had been keeping Konoha's enemies nipping at their heels.

Honestly, Kabuto wanted to be a royal jerk about the whole thing. Flaunting the fact that he had been there, under his nose, thwarting his plans the entire time would have been the sweetest thing to him, and even more so if he could let people know that it was him in particular.

Seriously, Danzo had never even taken to learn his goddamned name before sticking him with an alias and dumping him in some godforsaken place as his mole. And when he finally came back and retook his real name, and the surname of his matron from the orphanage that Danzo procured his services from the bastard just assumed he was one of the other no-name orphans that he didn't care anything for due to their lack of use as potential Root members.

To say that he held a grudge against the man would have been the understatement of the year.

'Creating a major village-disturbing occurrence and slipping away should be good enough sending a message.' The bespectacled young man thought to himself with a smirk as he thought about all of the 'clues' he'd leave in the aftermath after he left.

He wished he could stay just to hear the reactions, like, 'Oh, he was such a good person. How could he be a spy?' And, 'A quiet guy like that? He was the one?'

Kabuto wondered if he could find a way to pull this off while gutting Shimura Danzo's damned Root at the same time. If only he could see the look on that old crone's face after it was all over.

He was the best at being nobody for all it was worth, no matter how much he hated it, but after he was gone from Konoha everyone would know his name.

They'd never forget it.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Elsewhere in Konoha – Roof of Ninja Academy)

Tenten and Rock Lee admittedly felt a bit out of place as they stood in line along with a few dozen other shinobi including their teammate Neji and their sensei Maito Gai. Even as chunin, their missions hadn't particularly revolved much around anything involving village security.

Neji didn't seem to be unnerved as out of the three Team Gai students he was the jounin, and Gai had a business-like look on his face that said that it was just another day at the office. He didn't seem to be in his flamboyant mood today though, and they all knew why.

Another mark of just how serious this was: Neji's Byakugan, and the Byakugan of every other Hyuuga that had been requested was active in order to search for any discrepancies in the immediate area. If a spy was stupid enough to try and get a close look, they were pretty dumb considering who they had watching the area.

It was good that this was done on a day where the school term was over for a few weeks.

Hair still in buns, Tenten's clothing consisted of a white long-sleeved Chinese blouse with red trim, red hakama pants that exposed the top outsides of her bandaged thighs, low-heeled sandals, black fingerless gloves, and a large scroll strapped to her lower back.

Lee still looked the same with his bowl-cut and his green jumpsuit ala Gai, but over it he wore a flak jacket to mark his past ascension to chunin status. Unlike Gai who was waiting in silence, Lee seemed to be just about ready to explode in anticipation, "I cannot believe that we were selected for such an important task force."

Tenten rolled her eyes at Lee trying to quietly express his excitement without causing a stir, "Well it probably had a lot to do with the fact that we're Neji's teammates." How wouldn't the ability to see through basically anything be useful for locating a spy? That was probably why there was a fair number of jounin Hyuuga Clan members there with the teams that they usually found themselves on.

Standing in front of all of them, the unmasked Yamato walked up and down the line looking over his selections for his unit and the teams that came along with them. No one he was suspicious of when it came to being a double-agent was there, but then again wasn't that what made the best ones so good at what they did?

But there was a good number of useful shinobi there, and all of them had already been cleared as far as village security went. The possibility of any of them being the leak had been eliminated.

"Thank you all for coming." Yamato said as he took a spot in front of all of them, clear to see, "There are forty of you here and the village needs every one of you to be ready to perform at your best. As of today you will be direct support to the operations of the ANBU within the village until the threat that we are all aware of has been weeded out and disposed of. You will be the first response for any alert that goes out, and will be meant to take down this person or persons when we divulge their identity. You will also be active in regards to stirring the nest to bring them out. Further briefing will occur in private in your personal teams. Any questions?"

"Yes, why are we doing this in the open? If we're trying to keep this quiet, what's the point of doing it here?"

A small smile came to Yamato's face following the query from one of his ninjas, "If a spy is stupid enough to come here, to the middle of the village, to spy on a rooftop being guarded in the shadows by three ANBU squads, for something like this then they're not worth the effort of putting all of this together because they're not very smart. Of course…" His face then took on a rather eerie shade as he stared at the lot of them, "…That's assuming that the spy still isn't among us."

A suspicious air settled over the grouping as everyone seemed to eye everyone else, as if they'd be able to scrutinize just if there was a traitor there with them just like that.

The mood was broken then when Yamato let out a chuckle and shook his head to try and clear things up, "I can assure you that you've all been screened thoroughly. None of you have any black marks or unexplained void points on your records. You're all impeccably serving shinobi, and I'm proud to have all of you here. When the time comes trust each other, and trust your own judgment."

"Gai-sensei." Neji said as he stood next to the veteran jounin in question. His Byakugan was still active and he hadn't lapsed in his duties of watching over the area. Hopefully this would flush the spy out, but no one had their hopes up. It was just the first major action that they had taken since the revelation of a spy in their midst had become loud and clear, "Has anything like this ever happened in Konoha before?"

"Not for this long without someone being caught." Gai told him before smiling in his usual confident and strangely reassuring manner, "Don't worry Neji. As long as you do your best, I know that when the time comes you'll be just fine."

Neji nodded but still had to contemplate to himself who it was. Even as a jounin he didn't know that many of them. How many people in Konoha were capable of such a thing? How many of them weren't well known enough to be famous for it? It had to be someone well under the radar, but how could someone hide ability like that and just go on as a mundane shinobi?

The coming days would serve to be very interesting, 'If Konoha requires my best and the best of my teammates, that is what I will have to give them.'

Yamato continued explaining what was to go on to the amassed group like the commander that he was, "Your ANBU will relay your standing orders to your squad leader and will be your method of communication with me. You are not to discuss the formation of the task force or of your duties to anyone other than those within your squads."

It was to be business as usual, with everyone on the trail of the enemy like bloodhounds until the time came to spring into action.

XxX

(Sometime Later)

The training grounds that Team 10 opted to use for their operational preparations found itself privy to a rather honored guest, as in the middle of a rather important session of team training it was crashed by said guest who didn't say much. Not much other than throwing a scroll at Naruto's head with questionable intentions.

It didn't really stop much as the field of the training ground was pretty busy with all of Team 10 as well as Team 8 there to take part in a few joint exercises at the behest of their team leaders. Naruto lifted a hand before the scroll could remove his skull from his spine and looked at it, just staring as the soreness in his palm throbbed, "…The fuck is this?"

How eloquent.

"It's a scroll Naruto." Kiba answered patronizingly, patting a growling Naruto on the shoulder, "People write things in them, seal things in them… you know." He quickly found his hand stuck fast to his blond buddy after a few pats, much to his chagrin.

Naruto just glared at him in return, still sticking Kiba's hand to his shoulder via chakra, "Hey Kiba, have you ever seen me suplex someone on their head without laying a hand on them?" Kiba shook his head no as he continued trying to pull his hand away, "Do you want to?"

Tsunade simply stood there with her arms crossed as she sternly looked over at her most beloved brat to hate, ignoring his playful or not so playful threat at his longtime friend, "It's your next mission. You and yours are locked in for it when it's go-time. It's kind of time-sensitive."

Shikamaru just stared long and hard at the woman before the genius finally opened his mouth to play his game of 20 questions with the shifty old lady that seemed to like both he and Naruto (more Naruto really) for some strange reason, "Does this have anything to do with Akatsuki?"

"No." Tsunade replied evenly, "Why would I knowingly have you do anything involving those psychos?" True enough. She did seem to love Naruto violently enough and she liked Shikamaru fairly enough as well. If she wanted anyone to hurt either of them she'd want herself to be the one doing it.

"Are you requesting us so that you don't have to pay full price for a commission?"

"I'm not nearly that broke and I'm not that cheap!"

"Are you sending us somewhere just to tell someone that you're not going to pay your debts to them?"

"...Maybe." Stupid perceptive genius brat. That was closer to what it was than she cared to admit without someone reading the mission statement. Why couldn't either he or Naruto just read the damn scroll and be done with it? Most people would have just been honored that she had requested them for a mission and gone along with it without a care in the world.

Not for two people that had spent most of three-plus years interacting with her. The luster of how great Tsunade was at what she did kind of wore off after you got used to all of the vices that came with that hard-earned talent. The napping in her office during down times, the drinking, the gambling, the incoherent snaps of rage of which no living creature could hope to stand against.

Yeah, the novelty of the Sannin, all of the Sannin, wore off pretty quickly after you hung out with them for longer than it took to get past being star-struck. That went for Orochimaru as well. You stopped paying attention to what a great ninja he was in exchange for how arbitrarily creepy a person he was all of the time, and you'd start mistaking the latter as evidence of the former.

It was kind of amazing for Ino, Hinata, and Kurenai to see Shikamaru speaking to the prime example of kunoichi strength in the ninja world in such a detached manner. They couldn't think of doing so themselves. Sure, Ino had had a bit of a flare-up at her before their chunin exam finale years ago, but that was a one-time thing. No one else in the village would do such a thing.

"Damn it Tsunade-baachan, these are dangerous people aren't they?" Naruto asked, marching right over to the woman decades his elder, waving the mission scroll as if it were a ward, "Why else would you hire us instead of doing it yourself or sending Shizune-nee?"

Well count Naruto as someone else in the village that would do such a thing.

A smirk crossed Shikamaru's face as he walked over and grabbed the scroll from his yellow-haired teammate, "I wonder how much money she owes that it's cheaper to hire us to tell the guy off and fight with him when he tries to kill us than to actually pay up."

Both boys had developed a habit of picking on Tsunade when they could get away with it, but the second they basically saw a tree explode from her punching it they put their hands up in a disarming gesture, Shikamaru even dropping the scroll to the ground. It was evident that playtime was over, "I will pound the both of you into chunky salsa."

Naruto slowly started to back away, sparing a glance at the gnarled splinters that remained of the centerpiece of the field, "I liked that tree."

While all of this was going on, Asuma stood back with Kurenai at a safe distance away from his male students and their attempt to antagonize one of the most legendary shinobi that Konoha had ever produced, "Is there-? Is there something wrong with them?" Kurenai asked warily, clutching at Asuma's hand tightly with her own, "Why in Kami's name would they think any part of what they're doing is a good idea."

Asuma showed off his more chivalrous side as he used his body as a partial human shield for the raven-haired beauty just in case violence spilled over in that direction, "I don't know. I don't think I was nuts enough to antagonize the S-rankers after I got back from my trip." He still wasn't that nuts as a matter of fact.

Meanwhile, Ino had gotten her hands on the scroll and had opened it up to determine what exactly the hell was going on and what they were supposed to be doing next, with Kiba, Shino, and Hinata reading right along with her. By the time she reached the third paragraph she wondered why exactly every major idol of the ninja world had to have some kind of major malfunction, "Apparently you have a new open bounty on your head, and you want us to find the person that put it out on you?"

"Oh that's right…" Shikamaru said, as if he were remembering something he had been aware of beforehand, "That banker guy you borrowed money from before the chunin exam where you bet Naruto, I remember he said something about putting a hit on you if we disappeared without setting up a plan on you paying him. That was a year ago. What was that guy's name again, Gin-something?"

Apparently the memory banks of the second of the three people currently in the loop kicked on too as Naruto snapped his fingers in recollection, "Yeah! He was all like, 'I don't care if you're a sannin or not, I know some pretty scary people myself who'll do anything for enough money.' And of course Tsunade-baachan just blew him off and ditched town after she lost everything she borrowed."

The guy probably hired some roving missing-nin that had a bit of a reputation before abandoning their village for whatever reason. It happened all the time. Loan sharks were hardly ever creative when it came to the means of how they got their money or their pound of flesh.

Ever attentive, Shino quickly picked up on something that had been left out, "Why is this illogical? I'll tell you. Because as the primary medic for the daimyo's court her wages should have been more than substantial to gamble comfortably in most establishments without resorting to a shady line of credit." Being put on the spot got Tsunade's cheeks to redden as if she were a teenage girl, 'She lost that money beforehand didn't she?'

He didn't say it out loud because Shino was smart, and mouthing off wasn't in his nature, especially if it could kill him. But damned if he and everyone else didn't think it.

"Kind of my fault." Naruto chimed in, "I ended up taking a lot of money from her." And he didn't lend it back to her to gamble with out of principle, because that was how she lost it to him. Also because he knew he would never be paid back either, "Geez, I won a cool 3 mil off of you, and that wasn't the end of what you lost? How much did you borrow before we got to Kumo?"

"Way more than a pissant 3 million ryo that she apparently paid you." Ino said as she finally got to the portion where she could read Tsunade's bounty, "That's almost two Asuma-sensei bounties! Who even has the money to pay that off?"

With her own standing in question here, Tsunade quickly steered the conversation back her way, "Long story short; no I'm not paying that prick for my own reasons that you don't need to know, and yes, you all are going with me to go tell him exactly that."

Asuma had to raise an eyebrow at just what amounted to his team being used by Tsunade to shirk out of what was probably an absurdly massive debt, "And dad signed off on this mission… this mission that has absolutely no foreseeable benefit to our village and would really only benefit you?"

A firm and confident nod from the buxom blonde legend was the response, but it belied just what she was actually thinking about in regards to this mission being approved.

Tsunade was in reality working off what the mission cost would be at Hiruzen's behest. Damn it he was smooth. This was officially the second time that the old man had goaded her into staying in the village instead of travelling around with Shizune. She should have known better than to return after Naruto, she'd get locked into something like this somehow.

Because she definitely didn't feel like hanging around just because it was where Naruto happened to currently be residing. Just like how she didn't offer her services as a healer to the daimyo's court just because that was where Naruto was. Just like how she didn't stay in the village the first time after the chunin exam finale years ago past the point where she was needed because Shizune enjoyed being back with her friends.

Nope, those things had absolutely nothing to do with any reason why she was staying at all. It was all Hiruzen repeatedly conning her into remaining there, and if anyone said otherwise she'd fight them on the spot.

"Well I won't be going then." Asuma remarked out loud, "I've got a few reasons to hang back in the village for a while."

Reasons such as the unspoken of spy that had not yet been named. Also Kurenai, the mother of his yet-to-be-named (or even revealed to his friends at large) child, the unspoken of child of his that sat within her womb, and it was amazing that it wasn't showing yet after two months… unless she had a genjutsu cast on herself to disguise it.

Hey, he never really ever checked for that. Tsunade did it to hide her age, and Kurenai was the best damn genjutsu user in the village so why couldn't she use something similar to hide other stuff?

'Hold up…' Asuma thought to himself, trying to feel a steady chakra stream coming from Kurenai where their hands were attached out of sight, '…Nope, no genjutsu, it's all her. Damn it I am awesome! I have _immaculate_ taste in women!' He tried to block a very self-satisfied grin from his thoughts as he continued to speak, "Kurenai ain't going either, and good luck tricking Kakashi into it, so you guys are basically on your own. Get a fourth for a squad leader."

"Fine." Tsunade expressed glibly with a raised eyebrow, "I'm going, so taking you would be overkill at a time like this." Popular or not, elites like him were needed in the village. It was only a matter of time before Yamato located the spy with his revamped task force, and Konoha planned on crashing down on whoever it was like a wave.

"Oh, you suck Asuma." Shikamaru said as Kiba snickered right behind him at their troubles, "You can't even take it upon yourself to find us a replacement?"

Asuma didn't seem bothered in the least at making it the problem of the others to find a leader for _their_ mission. Mostly because it didn't involve him and he wasn't their babysitter any longer, "Ah, ah, ah. Pecking order. I don't do grunt work."

"It's B-ranked Asuma." Kurenai pointed out as to the priority level of the mission, "They don't need a jounin to run the mission for them, they just need a fourth ninja to round the team out." And they had one of any three potential prospects to do so in her team, "So who do you guys want to take?"

Ino beamed at the practical jounin kunoichi before gesturing at her for Asuma's benefit, "See Asuma-sensei, why can't you be more useful like Kurenai-sensei is?"

'I'll remember that the next time you're pinned underneath a destroyed warehouse after some crystal-shooting lunatic almost takes your head off.' Asuma thought to himself with a glare set on his female student, "Alright… who are you taking then?"

Kiba had to fight the urge to raise his hand like a kid in school, instead choosing to stand and try looking detached and aloof so that he'd be picked. Besides, Akamaru was the dog and was more than willing to show his own exuberance for the both of them, panting eagerly as he awaited the decision.

Shino was doing a far better job of schooling his emotions, though the jacket with the hood covering his head and the sunglasses over his eyes helped that immensely.

Hinata on the other hand silently saw this as an opportunity to go on a mission with Naruto, having not done so since the two month period right before he went off with Shikamaru to join up with the Guardians. Ino knew this as well, and this was why the two were currently trying to stare holes through each other. Hinata's glare was infinitely better than Ino's though, and that was without the Byakugan.

Ino was a telepath though, and they could fight without saying a word aloud to each other, _"Oh would you really take advantage of a mission to try and shack up with Goldie-kun? Even I don't do that."_

Hinata's mental response was simple enough, _"All's fair in love and war… and this is both. So yes. Yes I would."_

"_Oh you do not want to start with me. This is _not_ a game."_

"_I started with you three years ago, it's all a matter of finishing it now."_

"This is tough." The oblivious for the most part Naruto said, looking over the three chunin of Team 8, one of whom was locked in a death stare with Ino. And indeed it was a tough choice. All three of them had the same extent of use when it came to the mission that they were about to take, shaking down a loan shark, "Well I guess if they all want to go there's only one fair way to figure out who it is-."

"-Yeah, that's enough of that." Tsunade cut in with her hands on her hips, "I'm going, I'm leading the mission, and I say that we're using more than four of you tagalongs." She was going along in order to make sure that she didn't have to hire a jounin to lead the mission and bump the priority up to A-rank. She wasn't made of money. Several chunin would suffice for what she needed.

"We're tagalongs?"

"Yeah, I thought that it would be a nicer way of saying that I'll probably have to babysit my own entourage."

"Don't be down." Asuma said, throwing an arm around his team and bunching them all up before either Naruto or Ino could say something impulsive to Tsunade in response, "Whenever you're down just remember the team motto."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at that, "Aim low?"

"… I meant the other team motto."

"We have another team motto?"

Tsunade just let them all hash it out while she thought about the mission from her own side. It was actually kind of important. The sooner that stupid bounty got taken down though, the better it would be for her and probably everybody else.

What Ino didn't really pick up on was that the official bounty statement that was also put out into bingo books all over the Elemental Nations omitted a few things that the poster of the bounty happened to be unaware of.

The physical descriptions, the rundown of her legacy as a ninja for safety's sake, her known associates in Shizune and Tonton (they'd even lumped in crappy descriptions of Naruto and Shikamaru). But it was late on a few things. For one thing, her last known position was off by more than six months, but at least they listed that much and suggested visiting a certain bounty station for more possible up-to-date info on her whereabouts.

The really dangerous thing about it, the main reason that she gave any sort of care about the fact that this bounty was out there was not that it meant that there was a price on her head. No, her reason for wanting it gone was far more annoying than just people trying to kill her for money, she was sort of used to that. The real thing was the main reason she had been so good at never staying in one place for too long as a traveler.

It was that in regards to her current status, the bounty had her listed as an unaffiliated wanderer.

That was infinitely more annoying for its own particular reasons, and had the potential for far more trouble for her and possibly the village as well.

XxX

(Sunagakure no Sato – Kazekage's Office)

"This is an opportunity that we cannot allow to pass us by." The Kazekage said, leveling his gaze on the three members of his ninja force that stood before him. On his desk in front of him sat the most recently updated village distributed bingo book to warn the shinobi in the field of recent developments and threats that they could face.

The book was currently open to a section featuring a bounty that had recently been placed on the head of Tsunade.

"Temari, Kankuro, Gaara, this mission is up to you."

The eldest of the Kazekage children in Temari looked absolutely shocked at what she thought was being asked of her. She still wore her blonde hair gathered in four spiky ponytails, but her outfit had changed with her age. Her headband sat around her forehead and over a short-sleeved mesh suit that cut off at her thighs she wore a black sleeveless battle skirt outfit over a sleeveless lavender blouse with a darker purple sash. Attached to her hip she had her supply pouches and a mid-sized scroll, and on her arms and legs sat black cloth coverings and shin-guards respectively.

Kankuro's appearance consisted of purple war paint with a line stretching across both eyes and from one side of his mouth to another with a line coming down from his chin to intersect and give it the appearance of a 'T'. His black bodysuit now had a kimono design to it and on his head rested a looser hood than the eared hat he wore when he was younger.

Gaara stood stoically with his arms crossed over his chest, dressed in dark grey trousers with a lace tied around the leg just over the knee and just over the ankle of both legs. Up higher he wore a long dark red coat with a single-strap grey holster vest that allowed him to carry the still massive sand gourd on his back.

The first to react to what was being told to them, Temari felt a touch of bewilderment at what was going on in her head, "I'm sorry Kazekage-sama, you want us to find and take down Tsunade?" That sounded thoroughly insane. Jinchuuriki that Gaara was, this was still not something you requested someone to do.

"Alright." Gaara said in his normally cold voice. Of course he'd be alright with it.

Kankuro scratched at his brown hair beneath his hood before voicing his own concerns, "…Are we really going after her just for the bounty? I mean, sure it's a lot of money that Suna can use, but-."

"The money isn't the reason why this mission is important." The similarly featured Kazekage informed his children as he pointed out what he saw was the most important part of the entire entry, "After all of these years she still doesn't affiliate herself with Konoha. There may be a chance that we can obtain the services of the most powerful kunoichi in the world if we can just get an audience to negotiate with her."

Temari's mind ran rampant at the thought of Tsunade being a Suna ninja. It was something like a dream for any kunoichi anywhere to say that Tsunade was a part of their village. Sure, Chiyo wouldn't be too much of a fan, but she stopped choosing to partake in anything involving Suna after Gaara was born.

She managed to pull herself together enough to speak on a mostly confident part, "D-Do you really think there's a chance something like that can happen? What about Konoha? Won't they take offense to that?"

"Let me worry about that." The Kazekage said, "They are our supposed allies, and as such this should be something negotiable if we manage to ruffle their feathers." After all, Sarutobi had been the one to allow the woman to leave for twenty years no strings attached. He had to realize that something of this nature was always a possibility, "It's all politics, and it can definitely be smoothed over to prevent any strife between our villages."

"Are we killing her or not?" Gaara interjected suddenly, his seafoam eyes shining over with impatience, "You're all being very unclear about what our mission is supposed to be."

Well… it was at least better than it used to be. That was the thought of everyone in the room. Back in the old days he would have probably slipped a none-too-subtle threat in there about killing his teammates/siblings and something about how much he hated his father/Kazekage.

That was something that said Kazekage was quite grateful for. While Gaara was still quite the figure of terror to the village, his results in the field could not be ignored, and he had warmed to Temari and Kankuro somewhat. 'Warmed' wasn't really the best word to describe tolerating them past killing them for any mistake in his presence.

He still also assumed that Gaara was going to try and take his shot at ending his life eventually, and he was preparing for that. But for the time being the boy was useful and markedly more stable than at any other point in his life other than his earlier childhood, "No Gaara, you're not to try and kill Tsunade. You're meant to try and recruit her. If nothing else, see if you can at least broker it for her to return to Suna to discuss the possibility of obtaining her services with me."

Hopefully it wouldn't be Gaara doing any of the delicate reasoning. Tsunade was notoriously volatile.

XxX

(Kumogakure no Sato)

Steel clashed against steel, one side far more aggressively than the other as a dark-skinned girl with long red hair attacked a dark-skinned young man with short white hair and a sucker in his mouth, "Take it back Omoi! Why would you even think of saying something like that?"

"Karui I was just thinking out loud!" Omoi replied, defending himself from his rather hotheaded partner, "Is that really such a big problem that you had to pull a sword on me?"

"When you say something stupid like what you did then yes!" Karui's amber eyes shone in annoyance at her overanalyzing teammate as she pushed him off and sheathed her sword. One of these days he was going to overthink something too heavily and what he said was going to piss off the wrong person, "I'm pretty sure if you'd said what you just did in front of Raikage-sama they wouldn't be able to find enough pieces of you at the bottom of the mountains for a burial!"

"…That was why I didn't say it in front of him." Omoi muttered, sitting off to the side on the safety railing that lined the side of the mountainside platforms that comprised Kumo's town streets, 'Seriously, nobody's gonna try and point out that Raikage-sama has a lot of good looking women in high-ranking positions? He could definitely be a playboy and that's why he wants us to bring Tsunade back here. She _is_ really hot.'

His face told his longtime friend that he was thinking exactly what had led to her little blowup to begin with, "Don't you even say it again." Karui warned.

"I can still think it." Omoi muttered in return, though thankfully Karui just let him be this time around.

The disagreement came to an end just as the last two members of their team rounded a bend and came across them.

One of them consisted of a fairly tall young blonde woman with neck-length hair and a low-cut grey short skirt outfit with a sheathed tanto at the small of her back. Her white Kumo flak jacket had been modified personally to wrap around her waist instead of going over one shoulder the way they normally did, emphasizing her rather large bust, "Can't you two ever be cool when I'm not around? I stay back with Darui-san to get our mission parameters and you two are here fighting again?"

In tow along with her was another dark-skinned man with shaggy white hair which covered one of his eyes. He wore a normal one-strap Kumo flak jacket like Omoi and Karui but underneath it he dressed in a high-collared sleeveless outfit with bandages on his wrists and a strange sword that seemed to be folded up strapped to his back. On each shoulder he had the kanji for water and lightning tattooed respectively.

"Yeah sorry, but I'm guessing that the double-booking of jounin on this mission is happening for a good reason." Darui said as he observed his three teammates. All three of them were students of Kumogakure's guardian and strongest ninja, Samui was a jounin while Karui and Omoi were chunin, "I'm sure that the Boss would have sent Yugito-san instead though if he didn't think that Tsunade would see it as a threat or something."

"We're not going to try and kidnap her or something are we?" Karui asked with a sigh, "I remember hearing about a lot of that old power hoarding crap that Kumo used to do back in the old days to keep an edge over the other villages outside of war times."

Samui fixed her fellow Kumo kunoichi with an even glance filled with curiosity or skepticism, "You really think that we could pull off kidnapping Tsunade?" She was confident in her own abilities as a ninja, but she'd pass on trying to grab that particular tiger by the tail, "This is to be a strictly diplomatic negotiation." Which meant that Karui and Omoi needed to shut up when it was crunch time or they'd probably wind up blowing it.

Omoi shifted the katana around on his back, slightly nervous at having to look for a living legend of the ninja world, "So why are we going then? Samui and Darui would be enough for something like that."

Darui gave the younger man a pat on the shoulder and began leading his group toward one of the village exits, "The Boss thinks that if we got this info in our bingo books, it would be everywhere. We're probably not the only ones with the same idea. It'd be best for us to find her first before the other villages get to her."

"They'd try to recruit her too?"

"Well Iwa won't." Darui explained calmly, "They'll probably try to kill her or something. But pretty much everyone else; yeah, they'll do something like what we're doing. She's seriously intent on not going back to Konoha. She actually worked for the Fire Daimyo for years until apparently leaving recently, so we've got a little bit on her trail."

"Where do we go to find out more?"

"Southeastern Hi no Kuni, to the bounty station that issued the reward."

XxX

(Northeastern Hi no Kuni – Shuuten Town)

A green-suited young man with spiky brown hair returned to the office that he and his partner shared only to find things in complete anarchy, 'I only left to go get lunch… what the hell?' Entering the office and setting his bag of food to the side, he walked over to his slick dark-haired, black-suited business partner, "Ginji what's the matter?"

Instead of simply answering, Ginji grabbed his partner by the collar and shook his furiously, "Kyoya, you put the bounty out didn't you?" Confused as to what the problem was at first, Kyoya merely nodded before he was cast aside as Ginji returned to his previous action of packing as much crap as he could into a travel case, "Damn it, we've got to go now! This is not good!"

What wasn't good? He wasn't making any sense, "You told me to prepare the bounty on the Tsunade woman who borrowed from us. I did. So what?"

"I didn't want you to send it out to the black market exchange point for every ninja with a bingo book and their grandmother to find out about!" Ginji exclaimed in a panic as he started gathering money, "I just wanted something to hand to the only actual person I wanted to look into the bounty! I called him here to show him, and when he finds out he's not the only horse in the race he's going to be pissed!"

"So?"

"Do you remember who we bank and account for mainly? And do you remember why we put this bounty out to begin with?"

Kyoya did remember, and that gave him pause. The ninja that they did the majority of their work for was a major bounty hunter, and he was scarily powerful, "B-But the money she borrowed and split with was-."

"Yeah, it was Kakuzu's money to begin with. How was I supposed to know that the whole 'Legendary Sucker' crap was for real? We were expecting her to pay us back and make a profit off of the interest." Ginji said, starting to calm down somewhat since talking about it made it somewhat easier to deal with.

The entire bounty idea was just something meant to be presented to Kakuzu as a method of paying him back for losing his money on an investment, and giving him a simultaneous shot at the woman that cut and run with his cash if he so desired it.

That entire idea failed when something was lost in translation and Kyoya put the bounty out for everyone in the world to take a shot at if they were gutsy enough to take the chance.

"Kakuzu is on his way here because I summoned for him. It'd be better than him finding out later." Ginji continued to explain, wishing that he had a drink or something, "Of course I just found out that by now the bounty on that detestable woman had been distributed from stations all over the continent… and when he gets here and finds out what's up he's going to flay us alive and his partner is going to wear our skin like trench coats."

"…Graphic." Kyoya muttered, actually seeing such a thing happen. To say that Kakuzu had a temper was like saying that the ocean was wet, and his partner was a very odd bird, and that was just being polite, "Why do we work for Kakuzu again if we're deathly afraid of him? Remind me."

"Because the man has a fortune from bounty hunting so he pays well, and managing money for someone that never tries to spend it the way he never does is as easy as house-sitting."

Well it was supposed to be anyway.

Things tended to get all screwed up and out of whack when you dealt with Akatsuki. Things that were supposed to go a certain way had a tendency to mess up. Being an employee of theirs had a low life expectancy when you were an actual ninja, to say nothing of when you were just a number-crunching civilian working for one of their members.

So the best thing that Ginji and Kyoya could do as people that couldn't fight and had no uses to Kakuzu outside of their ability to manage his money while he did Akatsuki missions and side bounties to procure even more money was to run away, because he'd probably kill them painfully, "If Kakuzu gets here and he doesn't like what we have to say he's gonna-."

Unfortunately, the door to their office flew open and in stepped a confident pair of figures in black cloaks adorned with red clouds. Well hell. And here Ginji figured they'd need at least a full day's headstart if he had any hope of getting to the coast to leave the mainland to somewhere safer to hide.

"Oh don't mind me." The first man to enter in a mask said, his strange eyes seeming to pierce through any confidence in their survival that they had, "By all means continue. Give me some ideas."

"I hate coming to this dump of a town." The second man to enter the office said as he entered. His purple eyes gazed around, bored and irritated by his current situation as he ran a hand through his slicked back silver hair. His fingertips on his other hand tapped impatiently on the handle of the large triple-bladed scythe he carried on his back, "Why do you have to run back here all of the time? What, do you feel a disturbance in the force?" The man joked.

Both Ginji and Kyoya gulped nervously. He probably wasn't that far off. Kakuzu was obsessive when it came to his money, and he probably did have some kind of sixth sense about it. It definitely wouldn't have been the strangest thing they'd have heard of from a ninja.

And Kakuzu was a woefully imposing figure without the threat of upsetting him. Tall and sturdy-looking with tan skin and eerie green and red eyes. He wore a tight grey hood covering his head with his slashed out Takigakure headband around his forehead and a black facemask covering his nose and mouth, "Well Ginji? Your message said for me to return here as you had some news. I'm hoping it's good."

God his voice was scary.

"Well Kakuzu-san…" Ginji started to say as his back straightened out. If he was going to die he was going to die standing like a man, "A very large chunk, insignificant if one looks at just how vast your savings are but a large chunk nonetheless, of your money was loaned out to someone in the hopes that the interest that would be made off of them would turn quite a lucrative profit."

Neither of the two men needed to hear anymore, but the silver-haired man was the first person to blurt something stupid out, "Huh… they lost your money and you're not killing them yet." He remarked, wondering why the wall wasn't splattered with civvie remains by now, or why the entire building was still standing, "You're getting better at holding your temper, is venting on me really that good for it?"

"Oh, no I'm still absolutely _livid_ Hidan." Kakuzu said in a surprisingly calm voice for what he had just said, "I'm just assuming for the time being before I see red that our associates here have a very good add-on to go with this news, otherwise they would have been smart to leave town, leave the country, leave the entire continent, and fake their own deaths on the way out."

Kyoya opened his mouth but quickly shut it when he saw that Ginji had hidden the travel case the moment that he heard footsteps from outside. Smart man, "W-W-Well… the thing is…"

"I'd like to hear this from someone that won't piss their pants just trying to get the sentence out." Hidan interjected before pointing at Ginji, "You. Greaser-man. Talk now. Fast."

Spoken like a Neanderthal or not, Hidan had a point as far as Kakuzu was concerned, "Well Ginji, we're waiting. Do try to make your point as quickly as possible."

And the petrified banker did just that, "We found the woman that ran away without paying the money back, it's Tsunade of the Senju Clan. The wandering Sannin. We found out on the black market that she had been working for the Fire Daimyo until recently. We've already put a massive bounty out on her, and we'll give you your money right back, right out of our own pockets even if we're bankrupted from it."

"Oh of course you will." Kakuzu said, having moved across the room in the blink of an eye to lift both men up off of the ground by the front of their suits, "And I'll go ahead and take that bounty that you put out as well. That way I can profit from this even after you pay me back." His bit of speaking done, Kakuzu threw both of them back against the far wall hard enough to crack it once they hit, "Hidan, we're going hunting."

Hidan watched Kakuzu walk past and waited for him to exit the building before turning to Ginji and Kyoya who were still reeling from being tossed like ragdolls, "So did you mark her down for dead or alive?"

They assumed he was talking about the bounty and Kyoya being the one that put it out spoke up, "I didn't specify. Either or."

A feral grin sprang to Hidan's face as he turned to leave and follow along with his Akatsuki partner, "Dead it is then!" As if Hidan would let someone that fleeced him out of his money live, even if it was indirectly. Sannin or not, and she hadn't been in a real battle for years so she had to be out of practice, "If she's as much of a pussy as Orochimaru allegedly was after Itachi lopped his hand off this won't take long."

XxX

(Sometime Later – Hi no Kuni Countryside)

Tsunade let out a rather violent sneeze for what seemed to be well over the thirtieth time since the team had been amassed and the journey to the Hi no Kuni black market bounty station had begun, 'I swear to Kami… if I sneeze one more time I'm going to hurt something.' All of that sneezing was blowing her mystique.

Surrounding her as they traveled were nine chunin, ironically they were all of the kids that she gambled on during their first chunin exam years back; the nine rookie genin that had blazed a trail through the entire competition.

There was the team that she was most familiar with for better or for worse in Team 10. Uzumaki Naruto, Nara Shikamaru, and Yamanaka Ino.

Two of the three she had been patching up after their violent, ill-fated Guardian missions for the better part of over three years and she knew full well how those two operated. Naruto would beat you, it was as simple as that. He had the moves, and it didn't matter what you did, if given enough time he'd find some way to finish you, because he was smarter than he appeared to be. Shikamaru was better than having a team of strategists at your back. He treated battles like a high-stakes strategy games and his shadow techniques were shaped to take advantage of that. The latter in Ino Tsunade didn't know as well, but she sort of had a soft spot for blonde kunoichi that could take charge of the men on her team and back up most of what she said. With someone like Naruto that was very much needed. She was a poison specialist and a talented practitioner of the Yamanaka Clan's mental ninjutsu, risk in battle be damned.

Next there was Team 8, the squad of Yuhi Kurenai. A very strong tracking team, they were no slouches in battle themselves.

Inuzuka Kiba was their most direct combatant with the brutal style of fighting utilized by him and his ninken Akamaru and had taijutsu that could let him impress his will over almost any enemy, even without Akamaru tagging up with him. Aburame Shino had a very oppressive ninjutsu style with his kikaichu to cut off enemy movement and forcefully drain their chakra, along with a shrewd intellect to maximize his effectiveness in coordinating them. Out of the three of them though, as far as Tsunade could see Hyuuga Hinata held the most potential out of the three of them. Her doujutsu was strong, her chakra control was sharp, her taijutsu had the potential to be the most devastating out of all nine chunin if she truly endeavored to cause an enemy harm, and when her resolve hardened she could be just as scary as the strongest in her clan.

The final portion of the nine members of the squad consisted of the vaunted Team 7. All students of Hatake Kakashi, and all of them in of themselves showed off the diversification of the man's talents.

Haruno Sakura had managed to cultivate her talents tremendously, specializing in more subtle aspects of the ninja arts such as traps and genjutsu. She was certainly smart enough to utilize the latter effectively. Akimichi Chouji's taijutsu was his strongest point, bolstered by his clan techniques to add overwhelming power to deceptive speed developed from training with the last member of the team in Uchiha Sasuke. When it came to Sasuke it was difficult to find just what he wasn't good at when it came to battle, though his ninjutsu was his best feature. Like much of the rest of his clan his battle potential was staggering.

Yeah, not bad for a nine-person team. Tsunade definitely could have done worse.

Many of them were pissed off though. Namely Naruto, Kiba, Sasuke, Sakura, and even Chouji to a lesser extent. It seemed like a waste of resources.

"You sure you got enough of us going with you to this bounty place?" Naruto muttered miserly as they all continued to accompany Tsunade to her intended destination. His comrades in complaining all nodded in agreement, though speaking up around Tsunade would probably get them hurled over the trees.

Speaking of Tsunade, she had long since grown accustomed to Naruto's mouth and merely fixed him with a raised eyebrow glance, "Is there a problem my beloved, evil, miserable brat whom I constantly contemplate poisoning or smothering with a pillow on a daily basis?"

The detached complimentary yet threatening way Tsunade addressed Naruto got everyone to take at least one large step away from him just in case, but he didn't seem to care, "Yeah, this is a waste of my f'n time!" Naruto shot a pointed look Tsunade's way, "You could have taken any one team out the three of us! There's no reason for all of us to be here."

Seriously, he and most of the rest of them had their mystery ink-draawing attacker to figure out things about. And the whole spy thing? There were things that needed to be handled at home.

"You think so?" Tsunade asked, bringing the journey to a halt as she got in Naruto's face and stared at him eye-to-eye, "Okay, let's play that game. How long do you think I've been doing this?" When she saw the grin spring to Naruto's face she changed her question, "Nevermind, better question. How famous do you think I am?"

"Super-famous?"

"Yes. You want to know how I got super-famous? By killing a lot of people, making even more people seem inadequate as shinobi by healing victims of their best shot, and basically being better than everyone else and letting them know it." Tsunade said, a small smirk forming with every point she made, "Basically everything I've seen you do for the last three years only I was way better at it."

"Modest ain't we?"

"Look who's talking." Tsunade flicked at Naruto's nose only to laugh when he wisely swayed his head back just out of range, "Anyway, over the course of a long time I have upset many people just looking for an excuse to try and take my head, and they're not even the most dangerous types that'll get that bounty. As far as I'm concerned nine of you isn't too many for this. Nine isn't enough."

Everyone present looked around at each other without saying a word as none of them knew quite what to say. They could have assumed that it was just another older ninja being melodramatic about something that didn't warrant the animation, or they could have just had the fear of a deity stricken within them, "Uh…" Hinata didn't really know what to say, seemingly looking around to the others for some kind of backing.

Surprisingly it was Sakura who was quick-witted enough to come up with something pseudo-smartass to say, "Well, it's a good thing that Naruto here can make way more of himself then, isn't it?" She tried to laugh it out, but it obviously came out way more nervously than she intended it to, 'Stupid joke, stupid joke, stupid joke!' It got a loud bark of a laugh from Naruto though, which didn't really help.

"Whatever…" Sasuke eventually said in his usual manner, breaking the standoff of sorts as he started walking ahead to lead the procession once again, "We're all wasting time now."

"I'm with Sasuke-teme. For once he has the right idea. Let's finish this mission and then get back to the village where the real problems are." Naruto said, soon thereafter following behind with his hands resting up behind his neck, "There's friggin' nine of us out here. Ten counting Tsunade-baa, eleven counting Akamaru. What the hell could possibly happen?"

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 8

(One Year and Four Months after Shikamaru and Naruto's Acceptance)

It had been two months since the hell on wheels mission to protect the daimyo during the trip home after the chunin exams had ended in Kumogakure, and after the Fire Daimyo caught wind of just how admirably Naruto and Shikamaru had performed along with the two older Guardians in Shinya and Akira in the week-long combat-filled trip back as the man's decoys.

Apparently putting life and limb on the line for the well-being of the nobles didn't really get any accolades from them, but the daimyo himself loved shinobi, and even more so the shinobi that worked and fought for him to an almost giddy degree.

Thus after a year, Naruto and Shikamaru were seen throughout the court and by their Guardian comrades as children no longer despite still being the youngest on the team by three years. It took a year, but hazing time was finally over, and thank goodness for that.

Naruto sat in one of the recreational rooms set aside for the leisurely enjoyment of the Guardians during their downtime, meditating serenely with the lovely strains of shamisen music in the background. Fuu told him that sheer willpower allowed a jinchuuriki the ability to use the power of their biju with more control. Jiraiya directed him to focus his efforts on Fuu's exercises for the time being until he made it back to train with him again, they would expand upon that later.

His concentration was broken upon hearing a rather sharp chord strummed, and he knew exactly what that meant as it had become part of his daily schedule while at the Guardian house.

Time to dodge.

Without missing a beat, Naruto Kawarimied with a nearby seat cushion and allowed it to be rended into a mass of chopped up fluff via Kotoko's musical wind blades, "Would you stop doing that?" He asked a bit heatedly from where he had attached himself to the ceiling.

"No can do Naruto-kun." The pleasantly insane musician melodiously said as she continued to play her instrument, sitting straightbacked in seiza all the while, "Meditating is all well and good for your concentration, but the enemy is not going to sit back and let you get in touch with your… shall we call it your wilder side?"

"Meh." Naruto muttered as he remained stuck to the ceiling. Perhaps it would be safer up there. The woman was so sweet, and sociable, and so helpful, and a lot of fun. But she was crazy. She was positively insane. There was no getting past that. Who else would think it was okay to fling lethal wind blades at your partners indoors to help with their concentration? "How are you doing that by the way?"

"Doing what?"

"Sitting like that and playing that thing with all of those books on your head. I can't do that even if I stuck chakra to the first one."

And indeed there were seventeen hardback books resting in a stack on top of her head, not moving an inch as her body stayed as still as a statue for the most part, "Oh, it is simply proper etiquette for a lady to have perfect posture." Her smile quickly turned to a feral grin and her cracked open menacingly, "On your toes now."

This time Naruto dropped down from the ceiling before Kotoko sent more wind blades flying that missed and cut through the ceiling, "Would you stop doing that! I need to stop hanging out with you!" Her face had long since returned to the previous calm expression with the normal smile and perpetually closed eyes, "You've tried to kill me once every day for the last two months!"

"I try to kill every fully accepted Guardian at least once a day when they're not already injured." Kotoko said as if that made it okay, "It keeps the team sharp. I can never find Shika-kun when it's convenient to try and kill him though so I usually miss him." Because Shikamaru was smart and painstakingly avoided her when he could outside of missions. And here Naruto was just assuming that he did that because he thought women were troublesome.

"I never see you try to kill anyone else!" Naruto argued in return before the doorway was filled with the form of the blind monk and unofficial leader of the Guardians in Sadao. He did not seem to be very pleased, "Are you mad about something?"

Instead of answering outright, Sadao pointed up, indicating the floor above them, "I was playing shogi with Shikamaru when a wind blade came through the floor and cut the table we were using in half." He walked up to the still smiling and performing Kotoko before stooping down to eye-level with her to stare at her. How this was to work Naruto wasn't sure because Kotoko's eyes pretty much never seemed to be open and Sadao was blind and wore sunglasses, "You owe me a new shogi set with pieces in Braille dear."

"Of course Sadao-kun." Kotoko said, that damnably beautiful smile on her face, "The very next payday."

Sadao let out a harrumph and stood up straight. If there was any way to fix her eccentricities he'd have found it by now, "Please save all of your attempts to kill us for the hallways, the outside yard, and the training pit. That'll cut down on the property damage since there are more of us to take shots at now." With that he left the room with a stunned Naruto looking after him.

As he walked down the hallway, Sadao noticed that Naruto was following him and called him out on it, "Yeah? What do you need Naruto?"

"Why didn't you just tell her not to try and kill us anymore?"

"We didn't tell you this story already? It's because she needs to try and kill us or she'll go crazy."

"She's already crazy." Naruto pointed out as if it were completely obvious, and indeed it was. A year there and it was clear that Suzukuro Kotoko was seriously messed up in the head, as wonderful a mentor as she was, "I love her just like the rest of us do, but she's nuts."

"Sorry, I meant berserk-crazy." Sadao amended with a sheepish scratch of his scalp before launching into an explanation, "If she didn't do anything moderately homicidal on a daily basis she'd get all pent up and eventually flip out. It happened once before back when it was just the two of us and we needed to rebuild the entire house after it was over. So we let her try to kill us because we can all handle it, and she keeps it down to one attack per Guardian at most per day and never in the field."

In the field it was never really necessary because there were usually all sorts of willing enemy ninja for her to kill in battle.

"She always attacks us face-to-face so we always see it coming and she'll usually say something before she tries anything." From a side door, Akira spoke. The punk-looking girl overheard the conversation as she leaned on the doorframe, "She isn't really trying to kill us, but her clan's training really fucked her up so she doesn't think anything of attacking us. The benefits of having her on the team outweigh the negatives by far though, so she stays."

Sadao chuckled and lifted his sunglasses to show Naruto his nonfunctioning eyes, "There's something wrong with all of us. I'm a monk that's been blinder than fuck since birth. Akira's an opportunistic bitch with almost no ethics or conscience. Kenta's a giant from a sect of monks that doesn't ever talk no matter what and he wears a basket on his head. Shinya's an albino from Kumo that can't stay in the sun without being covered well for too long. Shikamaru is the laziest human being I've ever seen even if he is a genius. And you, you're a loudmouthed jinchuuriki that can go five days without sleep and still have enough energy to make a hundred clones and fight an army."

Akira didn't take offense at Sadao's bitch comment and instead knocked on the doorframe she was leaning against with a chuckle, "The Twelve Guardian Ninja… the island of the misfit toys. If we were normal we wouldn't be nearly as cool." She got off of the wall and walked past Naruto and Sadao, giving the younger ninja a pat on the butt that got him to yelp in surprise, "You know we're awesome."

"This job sucks." Shikamaru commented as he walked past the opening at the end of the hallway, holding onto the two cut up parts of the shogi board from before shaking his head. Well now that the game had ended abruptly he could go outside and stare at some clouds for a few hours, '…I probably need to find a new place to hide again so Kotoko doesn't stumble across me.'

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konoha Ninja

Sarutobi Konohamaru

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 2  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 1.5**

**Overall Score: 16.5**

Team Gai

Hyuuga Neji

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 2.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Overall Score: 28**

Rock Lee

**Ninjutsu: 0.5  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 1  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 4.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 1**

**Overall Score: 22.5**

Tenten

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 2.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Overall Score: 21.5**

Maito Gai

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 2.5**

**Overall Score: 31.5**

Suna Ninja

Gaara

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 2  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Overall Score: 29**

Temari

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 24.5**

Kankuro

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 26**

Kumo Ninja

Darui

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 30**

Samui

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2.5  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 26**

Karui

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 3.5  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 22**

Omoi

**Ninjutsu: 2  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 3  
Hand-Seals: 2**

**Total Score: 23.5**

Akatsuki

Kakuzu

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 4.5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 32.5**

Hidan

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4.5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 31.5**

* * *

**My mouth is so f'n numb right now. Had to go to the dentist to get some fillings, and I lost three hours of my life I'm never getting back in a sedated haze.**

**Either way, here you go. The next arc is set and it should be short with the two things about to happen on two separate fronts. Keep your faith in me to pull stuff off and I won't let you down. Now I'm going to go sleep off my sluggishness. Hope you enjoyed.**

**Kenchi out.**


	53. Ninja Free Agency

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Nor do I own a stitch of orange clothing in my closet… or an orange anything really. It's kind of a damn shame.

**Chapter 53: Ninja Free Agency**

* * *

Much to the chagrin of the nine younger men and women accompanying Tsunade on her trip out to cast off the bounty that had been set on her head, she was partial to taking the quiet country roads of Konoha at a reserved pace (see: walking) instead of the faster tree-hopping that they all would have preferred to use to reach their destination.

It was extremely annoying because Tsunade insisted that this was time sensitive, yet she wasn't moving with any real sense of urgency. She didn't particularly like moving with purpose, preferring to exercise her right as client to travel as she wished at the speed that she wanted. In the end they were supposed to protect her until she did what she needed to do. She didn't need to acquiesce to them.

"Two days, eight hours, twenty-one minutes, thirty-six seconds." Naruto droned dully as he walked directly behind Tsunade, "That's how long we've been gone. We could have been there by now."

"-And halfway back." Sasuke added, feeling just as irritable as Naruto was, only he decided that he would suffer in silence and be passive-aggressive about his displeasure, "We've got more important things to do than walk through the countryside."

Kiba flicked the back of Naruto's ear and tried to throw an arm around Sasuke's shoulder only for him to slip out of it, "Oh will you calm down you pair of pink-eyes? What's the big hurry?" Both Naruto and Sasuke proceeded to answer.

"Pale, inky eavesdropping mystery guy and I've got other bad guys aside from him to keep tabs on."

"Spy in the village, and Naruto fought Itachi so I need to pick his brain to help me find him."

The feral boy blinked at the pair of quick answers from the polar opposites and had to admit that those were some equally pressing issues that were probably just as time-sensitive as the mission they were on, "Well hell then."

"Complaining about the current circumstances will not bring the mission to a close any faster." Shino stated from underneath his hood that obscured most of his face from view, "Why? Because I do not believe that Tsunade-sama cares about your problems enough to change her pace."

Nine sets of eyes looked at the twin pigtailed blonde woman at the center of the convoy, but Tsunade didn't even flinch or show that she found anything being said as important, "Now that's just not true." She said, disputing Shino's point, "I care. But the pair of Akatsuki problems aren't something that you can handle by being in the village anyway. And even if you were there, none of you would know what to do about the spy. Something like that is delicate work."

Ino's left eye twitched at the unspoken connotation, as she had been in Konoha T&I for almost the entirety of the vaunted spy's known presence in the village. It was a segment of the overall Konohagakure Intelligence Division which was somewhat responsible for the information that was lost, thus she felt a bit touchy on the subject.

While it wasn't really a shot at her in particular, and this much she knew, damned if it didn't feel like one.

"Delicate like interrogation you mean?" Ino said with a veiled raise to her voice, only for Hinata to make a comment on the other end of the escort party.

"Is torturing someone to pull secrets out of them really such delicate work?" Hinata remarked, feigning surprise extremely well. She seemed legitimately surprised at this 'revelation', thus no one else called her on it. Ino however knew better. It was her passive-aggressive way of picking fights with her verbally. And she was very good at it, "I'd have never thought so."

"It's more subtle than poking someone's organs with your fingers." Came Ino's rebuttal.

"I don't know. I think a lot of men would find a woman that can shatter their mind at a whim quite terrifying. Don't you think Naruto-kun?" Oh, that clever woman. Pulling Naruto into it. He wasn't even paying attention to the conversation for the most part. Instead he had been focusing on keeping his attention out around them, "N-Naruto-kun?" Ha. She still had a very real tic of nerves when it came to talking to him when his eyes were on her though. Talking to him directly was still her Achilles' heel.

"Huh?" Naruto said before the conversation between the pair of kunoichi caught up with him and he stitched the words together, "Oh. Now that I think about it, yeah. Ino-chan's mind stuff is really scary."

For a guy like him, losing control of his body and maybe even worse was like a nightmare. He didn't need to be reminded of just what he was capable of when he did so with the Kyuubi's chakra, so control over himself was everything to him.

"Yeah…" Naruto thought, looking over at Shikamaru for a moment before running a hand down the back of his neck, "_Really _scary." Hinata seemed to positively beam at him after he was done and he gave her a smile in return, though it didn't reach his eyes.

She realized this and felt some regret well up in her chest. She didn't want to be the reason that he smiled like that when the light didn't reach his eyes. It was of course unintentional, and Hinata would be sure to put it back for him once she had him to herself though.

And though Naruto didn't know what kind of context he'd said it in, an opinion expressed like that from him of all people actually hurt Ino a little bit, 'Goldie really thinks my jutsu is scary? That… something like that doesn't really mean anything, does it?' And that hurt showed on her face.

"What'll be scary is what'll happen if that bounty stays up for too long the way it is." Tsunade chimed in from her place at the center of everyone, "So keep your minds on the mission. You can play 20 questions in your treehouse after we get back to the village kiddies."

"No." Shikamaru warned sharply when he saw Naruto lift his fist to punch her in the back of the head to knock her out and carry her the rest of the way in order to let them go faster, "We don't need that troublesome drama right now. And besides… she'd peel the skin from your bones and put it right back again."

"Then there wouldn't be any real consequence of doing it, right?" Naruto argued in return. He kept his hand raised to strike until Sakura grabbed his forearm and lowered the offending appendage. Whether he was her regular teammate or not, she wasn't about to let him start a war in the forest against a Sannin, "Fine. I'll be good."

The only thing that kept him going was that he was doing this for Shizune. Not for the pay. Not for the rank of the mission. He was doing it for that sweet lady that spent three years keeping what was left of his sanity intact while he had been working for the daimyo.

Certainly she needed a break from all of the crazy if anyone in the world ever did, and for once she could stay in Konoha while someone else dealt with the brand of trouble that Tsunade stirred up.

Naruto was still more than a little irritable because Tsunade was not willing to let him smoke to pass the time of the damn trip, and no one was willing to defend his side of the argument. He was a man without a country as far as his nicotine went, and there was therefore no port in the storm for his growing ire in regards to this mission.

Sakura shook her head and let him go before moving back over to her team of Chouji and Sasuke, "Honestly, I thought the Guardians were supposed to be the epitome of professionalism. The best of the best to watch over the best man in the country. Didn't they teach you two about that?"

No, not really. After all of the constant training, the long-range travelling habits of the daimyo and his relatives keeping them oftentimes at work, and the nonstop near-death experiences from the daimyo's missions, learning how to act like a professional stiff was the exact last thing that came to the mind of any Guardian. There just wasn't any time for it. Thus the only professionalism that Naruto and Shikamaru learned was that it didn't matter how you got the job done as long as you got it done right.

Speaking of the job, everyone was just hoping that it would be over with by the end of the week.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Jounin Standby Station)

When the kids were away… the sensei still all had jobs to do because they weren't really responsible for any of their former students any longer and hadn't been for quite some time.

Kakashi really didn't do anything aside from working missions, standing around in Konoha Cemetery and in front of the Memorial Stone for hours, and training. When he wasn't doing those things he was catching up on his leisurely reading. And even when he was reading he did it in a place where he could be reached at a moment's notice if the need arose.

He wasn't really as hard to find as many assumed someone as aloof as him would be. Someone as dutiful as him could often be found just sitting on one of the semi-circular couches in the jounin lounge just waiting to be called upon. Copy Ninja Kakashi was oftentimes in demand.

Not today though. At a time like this, it was requested by the Hokage himself that Kakashi remain in the village. Known to only a certain number, Yamato was putting on the squeeze once and for all on all of this spy business. Once the perpetrator decided to make a run for it things would move fast, and quick responders would be needed. There wouldn't be many quicker to respond than Hatake Kakashi.

"Hello Asuma, Kurenai." Kakashi said without even looking up from his book. How he knew who was coming up behind him without hearing a voice or anything to set him off was beyond many of them that didn't know what the man was capable of.

"It's really annoying when you do that." Asuma pointed out, letting Kurenai sit down on the couch before he chose to do so himself, "It's not like we're trying to sneak up on you, so I don't know why you have to point out that you knew we were coming."

"It is kind of insulting." Kurenai added, hands neatly pressed in her lap.

"Oh, well look at you two." Kakashi said, still not taking his eye off of his book, "The baby isn't even born yet and you're both already in synch with each other enough to think the same." Asuma and Kurenai both gave him blank stares that he still didn't acknowledge by looking up, "…Yes I know. Even if you don't show yet. Don't ask me how."

"But I have to know." Kurenai said. She really had taken great measures to ensure that no one found out until her bump was prominent.

"Do you really want to?" Kakashi warned questioningly, tapping at his nose with one finger to say it without saying it, "I summon ninken and I picked up a trick from my dogs. I'd bet every Inuzuka in the village that's walked close enough to you can tell as well."

If that were the case then Kurenai needed to give Kiba more credit than she admittedly had in the past when it came to keeping his mouth shut from blabbing things like that, "I'm sorry I asked."

"I told you so."

Kurenai looked over at Asuma to take offense to any of this or defend her seemingly taking offense at Kakashi's perceptive abilities. Instead all she got from her lover was a shrug. What, was he supposed to punch Kakashi for that? She was the one that wanted to know how he knew. Asuma just thanked his lucky stars every day that Ino didn't seem to know, otherwise everyone within Konoha's walls would know within two hours whether they lived there or not.

One would think an interrogation specialist would be better at keeping things under wraps, but if it didn't have anything to do with village security it wasn't to be counted on.

"So." Kakashi said, trying to drum up some conversation with his fellow former genin instructors, "Tsunade-sama somehow managed to rope all of our cute little students into accompanying her to the ends of the planet? How'd that work out?"

Asuma held up a hand and started listing things off, "First it was my team since Tsunade seems to have some kind of weird sway over Naruto and Shikamaru. Then Kurenai volunteered her team so that she didn't have to run lead on another of their missions, thus covering her own tracks on being pregnant, something that seems irrelevant since Kiba probably knows about it from what you said. And I don't know how they got your kids to do it."

"Probably because Shikamaru got Chouji in on it and he convinced the others somehow, or Ino probably goaded Sakura into it, or I think Naruto probably waved the bait of telling Sasuke about his fight with Itachi in his face." Kakashi said, giving his take on how Team 7 wound up going, "That all sounds like things that would happen given the circumstances."

A nod came from Asuma as he fished a cigarette from his vest and placed it in his mouth, preparing to light it, "Uh huh, so we're missing someone from this shindig. Where's Gai? I haven't heard anyone shouting at the top of their lungs around any training areas lately."

It went unsaid outright, but when the look in Kakashi's eye subtly changed without him looking up Asuma picked up the gist of the reason why. When it came to Gai, he was one of the many actively hard at work dealing with Konoha's little problem.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha)

"So you're saying that the mess that Naruto told me that he got into has nothing to do with the spy in Konoha?" Tenten asked, walking around the area of the Uchiha District that had seen Naruto, Shikamaru, Chouji, Kiba, and Sasuke chase after a mystery man mere days before, "That doesn't make a lot of sense. It fits right?"

The day before leaving on his mission, Naruto stopped by the weapons store he frequented as a genin, and while she didn't work there part-time any longer Tenten still spent exorbitant amounts of time there for her own various reasons. While he was there they caught up a bit and he regaled her with the story of how he and a few others got into a chase with some weird pale guy their age.

Tenten saw that as a boon to her own recently assigned ongoing mission and was quick to share this with her squad, most of whom agreed that it would be beneficial to take a pair of Hyuuga eyes and retrace the steps of the conflict. Only Gai disagreed, but he did so silently due to the fact that they had no other leads or ideas at that point.

"Any spy skilled enough to evade capture for as long as this one has would not allow themselves to blow their cover spying on a set of non-descript chunin." Gai explained while Tenten came across a big webbed footprint in the road that obviously came from one of Naruto's toads.

"Yeah, but Naruto isn't really non-descript." Tenten said to Gai's confusion before letting out a cough that sounded suspiciously like 'Kyuubi', much to Gai's shock. Though she didn't care much from the sound of things, "Blame Neji. He basically figured it out a few monts after the chunin exam where I got promoted. You know, the one years ago with Gaara and Fuu. You guys suck for not telling anybody about that by the way."

"It was for his benefit apparently."

"Nobody even told him, and everybody older than us knew anyway. Who was this benefitting again?"

At a loss for words, Gai merely fell back onto the old military default for explaining anything that he couldn't explain himself, "…It was Hokage's orders."

Oddly enough, Tenten accepted that, "You see, you could have just said that instead of wracking your brain trying to come up with a defense Gai-sensei. Just blame your superior. We do it all the time."

"Many of us would." Gai explained with a wise look to him as he did so, "But with the crystal ball of his no one can ever be sure if he is able to watch them or not. Then again if that jutsu allowed Hokage-sama omniscience we wouldn't be having this problem. So you probably have a point."

A static noise went off in both of their ears before a voice came up, _"Gai-sensei, Neji and I have found something."_

Hearing Lee's call through the short-wave headsets they had requisitioned for their current string of missions, both Gai and Tenten sped across the ghost town that was the Uchiha District eventually reaching a lone road with a beautiful lake off to the side, a lush forest around most of it, characteristic of much of Konoha's terrain.

In a matter of minutes they covered the necessary distance and located Lee and Neji, the latter of whom seemed to be staring at something with his Byakugan active, "I can see something odd under the lake. Something out of place."

"That is not all." Lee said in an unusually quiet tone, prompting Neji to continue.

"We are being watched." Neji said, taking great care not to speak too loudly or indicate any given direction with his movements, "At my count while Lee and I have been searching this area, six unidentified shinobi have taken up positions to observe our actions. They appear to be ANBU."

What were Konoha ANBU doing watching them? They were supposed to be the support to the ANBU, not the other way around, so unless there had already been some sort of operation planned in that area there wasn't any explanation as to why ANBU would be there.

Gai's fists tightened and Lee noticed the serious demeanor of his hot-blooded sensei, though he did not understand it yet, "You say there are six of them Neji-kun?"

"There were, but there must have been some watching you as well, because now I count nine." Neji restated, "In standard ANBU attire of black cloaks and themed porcelain masks. I am certain that they are ANBU."

"Can you look any deeper? Focus on one instead of identifying them all."

That question surprised the rest of Team Gai, as Gai himself was never usually so paranoid about… anything really. Most of the time it was hard for Neji and Tenten to identify Gai as one of the most dangerous men in the entire world, but just like that he would remind people that he was perceived as one of the very best and was famed for a reason.

Knowing by now when Gai was being serious, Neji picked out the closest of the scattered and hidden ANBU closest to him and focused on seeing through him as much as possible, "No ANBU tattoo on the shoulder, and some kind of seal on the back of the tongue." He abruptly turned to Gai who looked like a diviner at that point, "But how did you-?"

"They are not Konoha ANBU." Gai revealed to his students, "They're members of a branch of the organization that should no longer exist called Root. A member of this group is possibly the person that was forced to flee from your friends earlier this week."

An ill feeling settled in the pit of Tenten's stomach at the thought of people masquerading as real ANBU watching them, whether their intentions were hostile or not, "Why are we just finding out about them?"

"Because they aren't supposed to exist."

A frown came to the weapon-specialist's face at hearing that, as she seemed to be getting a lot of that lately. She started to reach for a weapon but a stern look from Gai stayed her hand. So they weren't going to fight them. What were they going to do then?

"We won't attack them first." Gai commanded, "If we do so we will be in the wrong. We will keep on to what Neji-kun and Lee-kun managed to find, and if they do intend to ambush us we can counter it."

"It is what we found that may be the problem." Neji said, beginning to piece some things together. An organization that wasn't supposed to exist needed to have ways to meet, or a stronghold, or something of that nature, "What Lee and I found underneath the lake is a concealed flood tunnel that should not be there. This is a natural lake."

He managed to possibly locate the entrance to the base of a fringe organization within Konoha. That would probably be impressive if it weren't completely irrelevant at the moment.

What better place to hide something like that than a place that people would rather forget existed at all? No one, even the vast majority of ANBU patrols ventured into the old Uchiha District. The only reason Team Gai had done it on this day was to try and see if what Naruto had told Tenten would pan out to anything.

"They are not going to let us leave are they?" Lee asked, understanding the situation entirely, "If they are not supposed to exist we are not supposed to find this entrance. If they are not supposed to exist all they have to do is get rid of us to keep it a secret."

"People will know that we're missing Lee." Tenten said with her hands on her hips, "There will be questions that certain people won't be able to answer."

"Yes." Neji said, shutting his eyes and turning his Byakugan off if only for a moment, "But if we disappear here and now no one will know that it was this 'Root' that did it." With the spy in the village any blame would go that way, and even those that know of Root would accuse the mole before a group that wasn't supposed to be intact, "If they can keep us from reaching the rest of the village they can do whatever they want."

So they were all in a situation.

Team Gai could either try to venture into the tunnel under the lake which would be suicide, or they could pop their heads back out and try to leave, thus springing the trap upon them. Either way they had to do something soon.

On the other hand, Root had to make sure that they got rid of them so that they managed to hide the location of one of the entrances to their base, but if they failed not only would the location be lost, but they could possibly begin a civil war.

In the end, Root blinked first and pulled back. Neji noted that they were slipping away and leaving them alone, getting as far away from Team Gai as they could, "They're letting us be." Neji informed the others, getting Lee and Tenten to let go of breaths that they didn't know they were holding in, "There are no more enemies in the area. But why would they leave when they had us nearly two-to-one?"

"They obviously realized that two-to-one or not they could not stand up to the power of Gai-sensei!" Lee exclaimed, emboldened by the near-miss that had just occurred. Needless to say his adrenaline had not died down yet, and it didn't take much to get it to spike to begin with.

Even Gai was beginning to slip back into his previous boisterous personality until Tenten shot them both back down to Earth, "They're just going to scuttle the entrance. Going down by ourselves would be stupid-." She stopped and paused to look at both Lee and Gai before shaking her head and continuing, "-And if we went back or waited on reinforcements that would be long enough for them to warn someone in their base to block it off."

"It makes sense." Neji said, once again peering underground with his Byakugan, "The tunnel starts at the bottom of the lake and goes on for quite some way even though not much of it is submerged underwater. Should we venture down there we could be buried."

And he wasn't even talking about the Root members themselves doing it. He could see the security measures set for intruders even from there.

A sigh came from Tenten as she drooped in a dejected manner, "So we never had a lead at all, just like Gai-sensei said?" They almost got into a potentially violent skirmish and they weren't even on the right trail.

Gai didn't say anything else, seriousness taking over his face as he looked off into the woods, 'This is going to be a problem, even if we avoided trouble here.'

XxX

(With Team Tsunade – Nightfall – Hi no Kuni – Okumizumi-machi)

As far as missions that caused them to drag ass went, this one could have been worse. Due to the fact that Tsunade had a taste for stopping in towns for the night they didn't have to camp out in the woods. They got nice, cushy accommodations for the night that they didn't have to pay for as Tsunade footed the bill for all of them.

And Okumizumi-machi (Seven Lakes Town) was a pretty great place all things considered. Especially the hotel that they had gotten rooms in.

It was a pretty big place that had a fully stocked bar in a restaurant setting and nightly entertainment, a very large outdoor public bath for guests, and a scenic view of one of the seven large lakes that surrounded the entire town.

Standard procedure security was still required though. Two would watch the entire hotel at all times while two would stay by Tsunade at all times, and those on the jobs would rotate every few hours.

With a yawn Naruto walked through the halls of the hotel they had procured rooms in for the night, having just come back in from outside where he'd been on evening guard duty, taking his shift with Shino who was also heading back in with him.

That had been kind of weird. With his chakra sonar and clones, and Shino's bugs nothing was really going to get close without one of them noticing it so they didn't have to focus that hard on keeping their eyes and ears open. They didn't really have much to talk about to pass the time.

Naruto would try telling Guardian stories, but he wasn't sure if Shino had any sort of taste for them since while he never told Naruto to shut up it was never clear if he was enjoying them or not. He didn't laugh or ask Naruto to elaborate on anything he said. He didn't even seem like he was paying attention.

"You know if I was pissing you off you could have just told me to stop talking." Naruto told Shino as they walked back to their respective rooms, "You didn't have to sit there for three hours and hear all of that."

"But I was listening." Shino replied, sounding a bit confused as to what Naruto was talking about, "Why didn't I offer anything in return you may ask? Because I do not think any stories I have amassed over the last three years could match up to the, ahem, 'White Eagle' mission."

"You can't ever talk to anyone else about that by the way, just me." Naruto commented, "I told you that in confidence. Shikamaru would murder me if he found out that someone that wasn't a Guardian knew about that. That wasn't really a banner day to be us."

"I honestly could have gone the rest of my life without ever hearing that story Naruto-san." Shino deadpanned, "You seem to have far less shame about what occurred there than a normal ninja would. Any particular reason for that?"

"My sensei is _the_ Jiraiya. I ran out of shame years ago." Naruto emphasized as if that explained it, "I can't help it if we made really good male strippers for some reason. Apparently we were the best looking dude Guardians, so we were the diversion." Was Shino's body shaking?

"..." There was one more question that Shino really didn't want to ask, but if he was going to get a disturbing story he had to go all the way with it, "…Did you use your real name?"

"Nope. Stage name. Sergio Butterscotch." Shino visibly recoiled at hearing that. Either he just blocked a laugh or he threw up in his mouth a little. Either or was just fine. Thus it was time to go for the kill, "For the finale I poured butterscotch candies down my banana hammock."

Naruto didn't think he'd ever seen Shino walk so fast. He almost didn't hear him walk into the room that he was sharing with Kiba and Sasuke before he shut the door, but he could swear that he heard laughing and since they had been relieved of their watch by both Sasuke and Kiba it wasn't anyone else but Shino.

With a shrug, Naruto went on about his way and decided to catch a quick bath before turning in for the evening. His shift was over. He'd been the first on Tsunade duty with Sasuke and then flowed right into watching the hotel with Shino so his responsibilities for the night were over.

After popping into the room that was to be occupied by him, Shikamaru, and Chouji to grab a change of clothes, Naruto headed straight for the hot springs run by the hotel.

After relieving himself of his clothes, Naruto stepped into the empty male side of the springs and sensed around just in case. You never knew when someone would try their luck on you. In this instance no one was lying in wait to take his head off, thus he settled himself into the water and let out a content sight.

While Naruto would have rather been back at home resting in _that_ hot spring instead of being on this waste of time mission, it was still nice. The mission was being dragged out due to Tsunade's reluctance to ever move quickly when she didn't have to.

His eyes drifted to the reed wall and idly entertained the idea of peeking onto the other side, but quickly rid himself of it. First of all there was no reason. Second of all he'd seen most of the women hanging around that hotel. Not really worth compromising some of his morality to see, and that was being nice about it.

The girls that came on the mission were already the best looking things in that whole place by far, and none of them were over there.

Another sigh, even louder this time, because sitting there alone was seriously boring.

"Is someone over there?"

What was this? A young woman's voice from the sound of things on the other side. She must have been by the wall too, and hopefully just as bored, "Yeah. Just hanging out… by myself." Naruto responded, "I'm about to f'n doze off here."

"I hear you." The girl said seemingly rather perturbed by her current circumstances, "The people I came here with are complete downers. One of them is a stiff that won't even talk or leave the room and the other won't get his ass out of the damn restaurant and go do something fun."

"Your boyfriend or something?"

"No, brother. Why, are you interested? I'll warn you that I live kind of far away from this place."

"Ha." Naruto laughed with a slight shake of the head, "You sound a tough kind of cute, but I'd be a crappy boyfriend. So what brings you out here? Work?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Pretty much. I'm travelling with this old lady that needs to take care of some personal business." Naruto said, alluding to Tsunade, "That wouldn't be so bad, but she moves so slowly, on purpose! It's annoying, we should have been where we were going by now!" He was never going to get over that, "I've got things to do at home."

"Good luck with that. I've got my own thing to deal with so here's hoping for me too." The girl on the other side said, "I'm looking forward to it though."

Well it was good to love one's work. That was what Naruto was thinking. He loved his job too, he just wasn't crazy about his current mission. A comfortable silence settled over both sides of the spring, but it wasn't as boring as it was before. At least until a door at the end of the female side of the springs slid open from Naruto's point of hearing.

"Oh, well it looks like we're not the only ones trying to get a late bath in." The first girl from the other side said, sounding like she had a grin on her face, "Welcome to the party. That makes it three on both sides."

"Really now?" The second female voice sounded a bit amused and friendly, "I hope I can get my spirits up here. It's been a long day." Wait, Naruto knew that second voice fairly well.

"Hey Sakura." Naruto ventured to ask from his side of the wall as he heard the second girl get into the water, "That's you over there right?"

"Hah? Oh! Yeah." Yep, that was Sakura if she actually responded like that to a question of who she was, and she continued on as if she recognized his voice too, "So you and Shino are done? That's good. Your teammate was looking for you earlier so you might want to handle that before you go to bed."

"Which one?"

"The most annoying one of course." Definitely Sakura, because that was a subtle jab at Ino, "I basically had to babysit her and Hinata all evening. So not the time or the place for that kind of thing."

"Why would you have to babysit Hinata? Ino-buta-chan I kind of get, but not Hinata." Hanabi told him that those two tended to get into it from time to time recently. It seemed grossly out of character for someone so even-tempered like Hinata.

"I won't say, but I will say that it's your fault and leave it at that." An indignant noise came from Naruto's side of the bath, not knowing why it was his fault and not liking the inclination, eliciting a giggle from Sakura before she turned her attention to the third amongst them with her in the woman's side, "I can see why Ino likes messing with Naruto now. There is a bit of a charm to his reactions."

Instead of answering first, the second girl that Naruto had originally been talking to in the hot spring went silent for a bit, much to the confusion of both him and Sakura. Only Sakura could see the girl though.

"Naruto…" Uh oh. No person had ever said his name in a thoughtful manner and had it lead to good things happening, "And Ino. Uzumaki and Yamanaka right?" Oh hell, "Come to think of it you look pretty familiar too pinky."

"Have I pissed you off at some point in the past?" Naruto asked as he slowly moved away from the reed wall, trying not to let his body stir the water too much and make it noisy.

The girl let out a chuckle that was pretty humorless and that only made Naruto more paranoid, "You almost killed my brother a few years ago."

Naruto stopped swimming through the spring for a moment to think, "You've got to be a bit more specific than that. I've almost killed a lot of people."

"Gaara."

Oh, there was no way anyone that had ever heard that name and seen that person could forget him. Those were some scary times, and that was the scariest kid that had ever walked the planet.

On the other side, Sakura let out a gasp, and Naruto no longer cared about keeping his leaving a secret, "Right…" Naruto said, trying to keep his voice cool even as he hurriedly dried himself off and got into a robe in record time.

Realistically there were three options. Option one, he could stay and try to talk it out. That did not seem pragmatic though since talking to him seemed like the last thing that this lady wanted to do, and what was he going to say? Anyway, who wanted to fight naked? No thanks. Also, the chances that she was someone that wanted to find Tsunade were quite good as well, because they'd definitely been moving slow enough for someone from another country to catch up, which meant that other people probably had the chance to catch up.

Which led to option two. He could fight. Not a good choice either, despite the fact that he'd probably win. But he seemed to remember that girl almost splitting him from shoulder to hip with one swing of her damn fan three years ago, and that had been the second closest to dying he'd come before leaving Konoha, so it stuck out in his mind. A fight here wouldn't leave that hotel standing when it was over, of that he was certain. Not with her techniques. And like moths to a flame, one destructive fight would lead to more, and if things were out of hand now they would get exponentially worse before the battle was over.

Thus that left good old option three. The perennial standby action that Team 10 had been built on from day one. Discretion being the better part of valor. If it wasn't a good time or place to try to reason or fight, why do either at all?

"Well, the talk was fun Suna-girl, but I think it's about time we get ready to hit that old dusty trail Sakura. You gonna be alright?"

Sakura understood what that meant as she eyed the girl sitting across from her in the bath. In reality, Naruto was asking her, 'Does it look like she's about to pull something? Do you need help?' Other than the straightforward stare that she was getting from the green eyes of the sandy-blonde woman in the water she wasn't making any move to try anything. Maybe because her fan wasn't anywhere near her or even in the room at all?

It wasn't as if Sakura was armed either. They were both pretty much naked in every sense of the term.

"I'm fine Naruto." Sakura assured him, "You're right, we should get going. Go ahead and tell everyone that it's better if we head out now. I'll be right behind you in a little bit."

Naruto didn't say anything else. He merely slid the door to the men's side changing room closed, effectively leaving Sakura alone with a potentially hostile enemy. But not for long as he took a deep breath to settle himself before rocketing down the hall to get everyone, starting with Shino and eventually getting to Tsunade. There was only one place she'd be at that time of the night.

XxX

Still in the bath, Sakura continued to stare at Temari through the steam of the hot spring, neither of them really blinking until Temari smirked, "So I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that since you're a Konoha ninja if I remember correctly, you're here for Tsunade too."

Sakura blinked before figuring that there was nothing to do now but deal with what was currently going on, "So that bounty really did get around fast. Naruto was right, why we were moving so slowly this whole time I'll never know." She groused before hardening her gaze on Temari, "I really can't let you kill Tsunade-sama."

"-Because Konoha wants her back right?"

A look of confusion spread over Sakura's face. They already had Tsunade. She was the entire reason that they were even there to begin with, "Uh, she's already a Konoha ninja."

"Please." Temari said skeptically, "Tsunade hasn't been an active Konoha ninja in over twenty years. She's basically an unaffiliated wanderer for all intents and purposes, and there's finally current enough information on her for other villages like Suna to finally locate her and recruit her."

"You really can't do that." Sakura warned, not liking the way this was going at all. Trouble, trouble, trouble, **'Why the hell did that old bat have to take her sweet time getting our asses out here? This is not good!"** Inner Sakura raged in the regular Sakura's stead as she was busy thinking, "She's already with us."

Temari's smirk fell and the temperature of the open-aired spring seemed to drop a few degrees, "You found her? Well we just have to make sure you don't get her back to your village first. I hear that she hates Konoha, so if we can just stop all of you and escort her back to Suna that'll solve our little problem."

Sakura opened her mouth to continue to try and reason with the abrasive kunoichi, but quickly shut it when she realized that it was a moot point and that Naruto probably had the right idea originally. Reason didn't really push its way past mission orders for many people, "I'm not leaving this room am I?"

"Nope."

"Yeah I am… because I already left you see."

Temari wondered what Sakura was talking about until she noticed the slight continuity problems with the women's side of the spring. The steam in the air was slightly off and without missing another beat Temari threw her hands into a ram seal, "Kai!"

The genjutsu released to reveal that Sakura was gone and had barred the door leading back into the hotel before doing so. With an irritated growl, Temari bit her thumb and reached up for a small summoning seal on the back of her left shoulder to quickly procure her large iron fan, lifting herself out of the water with the intensity of her wind and drying herself off simultaneously.

"That bitch." Temari remarked, quickly getting to her clothes to try and get moving as well, "She prepared hand-seals underneath the water without me even knowing her arms had moved."

XxX

(Hotel Rooftop)

Kiba sat on the roof for this leg of his guard duty, Akamaru lying down next to him sleepily. The white ninken let out a yawn that got Kiba to rub him behind the ears consolingly, "I know boy. This is boring as hell. Don't worry. At least when Sasuke gets back the next patrol will be up to us." A grin crossed his face at hearing Akamaru bark excitedly at the mere prospect of the chance to get up and walk around looking for trouble.

In a swirl of leaves nearby Sasuke appeared and down to take a seat on the rooftop, staring out at the roads leading to the one that the hotel was on and the clearly visible rivers nearby. It really was a pretty place.

"You sure took your sweet time on that patrol didn't you?" Kiba said, interrupting Sasuke's quiet contemplation, "It doesn't take twenty minutes to circle the premises."

In all actuality Sasuke had been enjoying the silent tranquility of the night and the scenery of the area around the hotel. He didn't need anyone to hear that he'd been doing anything like that out loud or it would spoil his image, thus he fell back to his default reaction to such a thing; covering for his actions under a guise of professionalism.

"It's called being thorough. Take some lessons." Sasuke said, getting a narrow-eyed glare from Kiba, "Maybe it'll help you get promoted faster this time around." He finished with a smirk.

"Really?" Kiba replied with a twitching eye, "Is that why you haven't made jounin yet? Oh, no wait. It's because you still suck at leading teams. At this rate Naruto or Shikamaru are going to get the nod over you like Neji did."

"I will cut you."

"I'll cut _you_!"

Akamaru's head popped up as quick as lightning, something that did not escape Kiba or Sasuke's attention as the large canine started whining.

Kiba started looking around and sniffing at the air himself, "Akamaru says he can smell some seriously strong chakra nearby."

"So?" Sasuke said, raising an eyebrow at how defensive Kiba seemed, "Naruto's around here somewhere, so is Tsunade. And then there's me." While it wasn't modest he wasn't going to act like his chakra wasn't strong. Even without ever using it, the Cursed Seal he received years ago seemed to augment his reserves, "Are you sure it's not something like that?"

"Akamaru's used to the chakra of the rest of you by now." Kiba explained, "But this one's like Naruto's. Kind of. I don't know how to explain it."

"Jinchuuriki." Sasuke said as if cursing bad luck or something.

"Yeah, that's it!" Kiba exclaimed with a snap of his fingers, "How'd you kno-oooh?" He then realized that there was another scent amongst them and wondered how someone got that close to them and almost let out a quite unmanly squeak upon turning in the direction of the person up there with them, "Aw… son of a bitch."

Some people you didn't forget upon interacting with them, even if it was only once, even if it was only in passing, and even if it was years ago.

Nigh-untamed red hair. Seafoam green eyes with black rings around them and a thousand-yard stare that would give an ANBU chills. Red kanji for love on the side of the forehead. Most notable of the features of this young man was the big-ass gourd on his back that looked to be made of sand.

Sabaku no Gaara.

He wasn't even looking at them at first. Instead he was looking up at the moon with a complete disregard for who else was up there with him. At least until he turned one of his eyes toward them. It damn near made Kiba feel twelve years old all over again, "So…" Kiba tried to say, getting Sasuke to palm his face at the fact that Kiba had said anything at all, "Nice night huh?"

Gaara's eyes turned back up to the sky and took note of the heavenly bodies above, 'Full moon…' He thought to himself before closing his eyes and speaking, "I hate the nighttime. I'm unable to sleep."

"Way to piss him off Kiba." Sasuke said completely under his breath, knowing that Kiba's enhanced hearing would pick it up even when Gaara did not. Of course the first thing that Kiba would say would be about something that Gaara didn't like, "Idiot."

"I remember you both." Gaara said, now turning fully toward the pair of Konoha ninjas, "I remember everything about those days in Tetsu no Kuni. Tell me… where is Tsunade?" His eyes seemed to try and bore holes through their soul as he tried to interrogate them with his killing intent, "Do not lie to me. This is a long way from Konohagakure. There is no reason for a ninja to be in this place other than the same reason that I am. You are aware of the bounty as well aren't you?"

Both Kiba and Sasuke stood in place until Kiba gave a pat to Akamaru and the ninken darted off of the roof. Sand rocketed out of Gaara's gourd to try and stop him but before it could cut Akamaru off from getting away, Sasuke and Kiba intercepted with a combination of a Tsuuga and a fire wave unleashed by a swing of Sasuke's gunbai.

"Really not gonna let you do that." Kiba warned with a bit of a snarl. He had seen what Gaara could and would do to people caught in his sand. Like hell he was going to allow such a thing to happen to his dog.

Gaara didn't seem to be very discouraged by his first wave of sand being blocked by the Inuzuka-Uchiha makeshift combination, bringing it back and letting more sand than before billow out of his gourd, "I'll say this once. You should get out of my way or I'll kill you."

All Sasuke did was narrow his eyes. Akamaru would go and tell someone else what was going on and the appropriate measures would be taken. Even if they _couldn't_ deal with Gaara, it would matter in regards to the mission. He was there for Tsunade, so all that mattered for them was getting her away.

"Don't you get it? This isn't the chunin exam from years ago, we're all grown now!" Kiba shouted out with a glare, "You can puff your chest out with the death threats all you want to. Nobody's afraid of you anymore!"

If he cared one way or another, Gaara didn't show it outwardly, "You should be."

Gaara's sand drew back like the hands of a boxer getting ready for one big punch, and both Sasuke and Kiba saw the practicality of fighting someone like him somewhere else. Anywhere else for that matter. Because a rooftop had to rank right up there with the top 5 worst places possible to try and fight with Gaara.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Okumizumi-machi)

For two of the members of the Kumo squad put together to try and retrieve Tsunade, they had never been that far outside of Kaminari no Kuni before. Deep in the heart of Hi no Kuni, it was a bit strange for them.

First of all there were a lot more trees than they had expected, even for a country that housed a hidden village named for being hidden in the leaves. Karui and Omoi figured that the trees had been just a Konoha thing. But most of the countryside was covered in lush greenery. A stark contrast to their country to be sure.

"This is supposed to be the place." Darui said, followed by Karui and Omoi as Samui walked next to him, "Every little bit of tracking her down took her in the direction of this town. There isn't another around for quite a ways. At least not any town where someone could find Tsunade."

"Tsunade's a Senju right? The Shodai Hokage's granddaughter?" Omoi asked, looking around at the trees that sat in the background behind the buildings on the street that they were on, "What if she doesn't want to hear what we have to say? The Senju Clan is famous for Mokuton, so maybe she'll sic an army of trees on us. Or since she's related to the Nidaime Hokage too maybe she'll drop an entire lake on our heads. I mean, they're everywhere around here, and you've seen the sizes of those things!"

"Nobody's going to drop a lake on your head dumbass." Karui chided, cursing Omoi's tendency to over-think things ad nauseum, "She might even like what Kumo will have to offer. Those wars were a long time ago. And I don't think Tsunade was in Konoha back when we were fighting with Konoha all of the time." There was a touch of confidence at the thought that Tsunade would at least hear out what the Raikage had to say.

"Kumo wound up killing the Nidaime Hokage." Darui pointed out, forcing Karui's point to die right then and there, "That was still a _long_ time ago… but ninjas do tend to hold grudges. I'd just be ready to turn and run if I were you."

All of a sudden Samui stopped walking and looked up to see an entire platoon of dark-clad figures leap overhead. The civilians on the street level of the town along with the Kumo contingent did not notice the movements in the dark of the moonlight night. The suspicious folks above didn't even allow themselves to cast a shadow on the street. But a well trained ninja could feel it.

Luckily, they didn't seem to be there for them, because they had been moving with purpose. And that purpose didn't seem to be diplomatic in the slightest.

Unluckily, if that were the case there was only one other person in that town worth sending an entire squad of what Samui presumed to be ANBU from some village for.

"That…" Karui said after trying to get a rough count of just how many she had just seen flying overhead, "…Was a lot of bad guys."

"Indeed." The soft-spoken Samui said before addressing the others, all of whom had seen the potential bogeys after they had passed overhead, "Could anyone tell what village they were from? It was too dark for me to see."

All she could see was that the cut of their cloth moved the same in the wind, meaning that they were uniformly garbed. She got a round of head shakes in the negative, eliciting a quiet curse from her under her breath.

Darui let out a sigh before motioning for the others to follow him. They were going to have to be in a hurry if that had been an assassination force from some village meant to take out Tsunade. At least if they managed to take them down and keep her safe that would hopefully get them in her good graces.

"At least this mission won't be so dull anymore."

XxX

(Inside the Hotel – 1st Floor)

Naruto had managed to quickly get Shino from his room, and by then Sakura managed to catch up to them, fully dressed with hair that was still quite wet. From there they had grabbed up everyone's gear and had started heading down to the one place where they knew Tsunade was and had been all evening long.

The bar.

"Where the hell is Shika?" Naruto asked, having sent his clones around to locate the lazy young man. He knew that Shikamaru wouldn't subject himself to the troublesome practice of heading down to the restaurant area if he knew Tsunade was there, not when it wasn't his shift to watch over her, so he had to be somewhere else in the hotel, "Nobody's got time for this!"

"I don't know!" Sakura replied just as worriedly as Naruto had. Fighting wasn't going to be good. If one group from an entirely different country that wanted Tsunade tracked them down, Murphy's Law stated that they most certainly wouldn't be the only ones. And that Temari girl had to have been pissed when she broke that genjutsu, "I haven't seen Shikamaru since we first got here! Why's it so hard to just run away?"

"We're not running away!" Naruto snapped, "Uzumaki Naruto does not run away! He just tactically retreats!"

"Naruto-san." Shino said quietly, indicating Akamaru sliding into the lobby on the slick hardwood floor, almost slamming into the front desk before barking upon spotting them. It would have been funny to watch if things hadn't been so serious at the moment. The girl behind the desk shouted out something about pets but it went unheard, "Akamaru, where's Kiba?"

Akamaru just grabbed Shino's hand and dragged him into the restaurant, remembering the request he'd wordlessly received from Kiba on the rooftop.

XxX

With a yawn, Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck as he languidly walked through the halls of the hotel looking for his room. He'd just gotten through taking a nap out by one of the huge lakes that gave the town its name, and now it was time to get to sleep in an actual bed. With nine of them watching Tsunade one of them would have to fall on the grenade of not taking a shift at all.

He was just the man for that job.

At an intersecting hallway, Shikamaru came to a stop when he almost bumped into a quite livid-looking blonde girl with her hair in four tails, holding a gigantic iron fan. She made to shove him out of the way so that she could continue on, but trying to lay an unkind hand on Nara Shikamaru at this point was a tall order and he basically slinked right out of her way, almost making her fall when she had expected to make forceful contact and touched nothing.

She actually stumbled into the wall and bemoaned her misfortune on this evening. First those two Konoha ninjas managed to get the slip on her from the onsen, and now she was made to look like a klutz by this random guy… that wasn't that random.

"Don't I know you?" Temari asked, and somehow Shikamaru had managed to make it a good distance down the hallway in the second it took her mind to process a sense of familiarity. Someone was light on their feet.

Shikamaru knew her for sure which was why he'd walked so fast after passing her by. He had the memory of a damn elephant, and forgetting the scariest two days of his life up until that point was something that a goldfish probably wouldn't do.

He didn't turn around. He remembered exactly who that girl was the moment he had seen her, and he really wished that she would have forgotten about him. Really, he wasn't spectacular enough to remember after three or four years was he?

He did freeze in place however. Why, in hindsight he had absolutely no idea. The smarter thing would have been to act like he hadn't heard her or thought that she was calling out to someone else. That ship had sailed though.

Nevertheless he couldn't just stand there not saying anything. That never helped, "…No. You don't." He said, only to curse inwardly when he heard the sound of iron slamming on the floor.

"Yes I do!" Temari shouted, pointing at Shikamaru at the end of the hallway, "You're the lazy-ass from that team of Konoha rookies that almost got my brothers killed! Your buddy already ran away with some pink-haired girl just a minute ago!"

"…No. I'm not." Shikamaru tried again. Naruto ran away from a fight? Awesome. Although in hindsight Naruto never really had a problem with hightailing it out of a bad situation, and getting into a fracas inside of a hotel was definitely a bad situation. He never called it what it was though, which was running away. He called it tactically retreating.

"Yes you are! Now where's Tsunade, because I'm so not in the mood for this!"

That made two of them.

"I don't know who you think I am. I'm just trying to get to my room." 'So I can go out through the window down to the lobby and get _everybody_ else.'

A tick mark formed on Temari's head as she had suffered through enough games from these shifty Konoha ninjas, "This is _so_ not my night! Fuuton: Kakeami (Wind Release: Cast Net)!" With a grand swing her open fan, Temari sent a tight net of razor-sharp wind that fit the contours of the hallway flying at Shikamaru. He was not going to dodge around that, and he wasn't fast enough to make it down the hallway in time to turn a corner.

She was right. He didn't do any of that. Shikamaru turned left and booted open the door to a room before running inside and letting the net of wind pass by. A scream of surprise came from a woman inside of the room before a man spoke up, "What are you doing? This is our room!"

"Sorry! Emergency!" Shikamaru's voice echoed out from inside of the room before the sound of glass breaking came from within.

Temari quickly reached the doorway and stuck her head inside to see a couple in the moonlight from outside underneath the sheets looking quite mortified and angry at the intrusion on their intimacy. The bastard had cut through their room and gone through the window.

Looking outside, Shikamaru was running while picking shards of glass out of his face and muttering to himself why he didn't throw something through the window besides himself first. He threw himself out of the window? That was admittedly manly. Temari had to concede as much.

Still though.

"Tell me where Tsunade is you bum! Kamaitachi no Jutsu (Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!" Temari jumped out of the window and once again gave her fan a swing, sending gale force winds Shikamaru's way as he continued to evade her, much to her anger.

Taking cover behind the wall of one side of the hotel, Shikamaru sent out his shadow to catch Temari in once she landed, hidden in the very shadow of the hotel itself. But she remembered what the Nara Clan specialty was and pushed herself back into the air with a movement of her fan that she then used to glide above.

"Crap." Shikamaru said to himself, not thinking she'd be able to do that while falling. That was a really agile move to make.

"Nice try." Temari taunted from above, "But I remember that jutsu even if I was never caught in it myself. I'm not dumb."

"How about this then?" Shikamaru asked, switching hand-seals to the bird seal, "Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!" From the shadows of the hotel, multiple long black tendrils flew up at Temari that forced her to grab hold of her fan again and fire down wind to pin them away from her, "I don't know why this is happening to me, but I don't care. You're the one that wanted to fight."

Shikamaru had to cut his attack short before he had achieved the desired results when his ears picked up a rapid clicking noise and he remembered her brother, the puppeteer ninja.

But was his luck really that bad? Was it really so terrible that he would piss off one of the most dangerous women in Sunagakure and then have to contend with her brother at the exact same time?

Any sense of optimism had long since died in the mind of Nara Shikamaru, therefore yes. His luck really was that bad.

Dropping his hand-seal, Shikamaru turned and extended a long blade from the sleeve of his black jacket to bat away a dozen poisoned kunai sent his way by a pseudo-human puppet in a tattered black cloak.

"Thanks for coming Kankuro." Temari said, semi-jokingly, semi-honestly as she had seen the entire thing from above.

An annoyed grunt came from Shikamaru as the puppet Karasu landed and he found himself between the deadly weapon and a wind-manipulating kunoichi, "This is bullshit." He groused under his breath, "I thought this kind of shit would stop when I came home from the capital. I really did. And I was really looking forward to it."

"You wanna quit?" Temari asked mockingly as she landed on the ground in a flourish, "All you have to do is just get us to Tsunade. That's all. We don't really care about you or any of your Konoha ninja comrades."

"Look lady." Shikamaru said with a careless hand on his hip despite his current situation, "I might be a lot of terrible things. A human sloth, a smart-aleck jerk, a ninja with the lowest sense of drive ever seen in the Elemental Nations, the former number one coward of the Guardian Ninja, and a decent amateur male stripper." That last one got Temari to raise an eyebrow questioningly but he did not elaborate, "But if there's one thing I'm not it's a guy that'll cop out and give up something that'll endanger my mission or my friends."

"We'll see about that." Kankuro's voice echoed out from nowhere.

"You're hiding right?" Shikamaru said, seemingly turning his attention away from Temari entirely, "I'm talking to the puppet guy."

"I know that!" A red-faced Temari snapped at him in return. Honestly, what an infuriating man.

The sight and sound of his riled up sister elicited a chuckle out of Kankuro before he decided to answer, "Yeah, and?"

"If you're hiding that means you're hiding in the dark." Shikamaru said before trailing off, "…In the shadows. Do you really think you're safe where you are? That you're going to stay away from me for that long?"

"Big talk for someone that's trapped."

"About that." Shikamaru said before quickly forming a ram seal before anyone could react.

Near where Temari had landed on the ground there was a tag hidden where no one could see it and it went off in a big flash of blinding light that forced Temari to tightly shut her eyes and instinctively swing her fan in case of an attack. But a few seconds later she opened her eyes to find no one there. Not even Kankuro's puppet, "Kankuro! Where'd he go?"

XxX

(Inside the Hotel – Restaurant)

Naruto, Sakura, Shino, and Akamaru bolted into the lounge-like restaurant that had been Tsunade's place of relaxation for the evening. Quickly spotting Chouji, Sakura and Shino went to get him while Naruto and Akamaru went over to where they could see the kanji on the back of Tsunade's green jacket at the bar.

"Please don't be drunk. Please don't be drunk. Please don't be drunk." Naruto said to himself, finally reaching Tsunade's stool as she seemed to be enjoying her drink, "Tsunade-baachan, we've got to go. Right now. Drop that drink or down it quick, I don't care. Just get up."

Swiveling around in her seat, Tsunade actually surprised Naruto by not appearing to be sloshed despite the fact that she had clearly been drinking, "Where's the fire brat?" She was of course hoping that there was no literal fire, but with ninjas you never knew.

"You know that guy from the chunin exams that tried to turn into the Shukaku in the middle of the arena after I beat him?"

"Yes?" The freaky mass-murdering jinchuuriki from Suna. Kind of hard to forget that guy, even if she didn't fight him.

"His brother and sister are here somewhere. So he is too. And they're here for you." Tsunade probably would have preferred a literal fire at that point.

"Crap. I thought we'd have more time." She said to herself, frowning deeply as she crossed her arms over her ample chest in thought, "How fast did they travel to get here from Suna? Even if the bounty reached Sunagakure at the same time as Konoha it takes three days to even get there from the desert."

Naruto rubbed Akamaru's head as the dog kept whining about something, "I think Kiba's in trouble, because Akamaru's always with him and he ran into us in the lobby without him."

Without his noticing, a slender figure draped its obviously female form over the back of Naruto, pulling at his whisker-marks from behind, "Goldie-kun… where you been all evening?" Oh Kami. Naruto glared straight ahead at Tsunade because he knew she was responsible for this somehow, but had to cut that out in favor of the girl rubbing her cheek against his, "I haven't seen you since we got here."

"Get off of Naruto-kun's back." Hinata managed to say evenly, though her voice had a bit of a chill to it. She sure as hell wished she could be that comfortable putting herself in such a situation. It did look rather nice, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Ino-chan, not the time." Naruto said, though he could smell alcohol on her past her normal floral scent.

Yes, she was clearly inebriated, "Yes the time!"

Sharp and aware blue eyes shot to Tsunade who had the good grace to look sheepish, "What the fuck did you do? Why is she drunk? Sakura couldn't have left you thirty minutes ago and if Ino was drunk I'm pretty sure that would have come up in the hot spring!"

"You were with Sakura in the hot spring? I'll kill her!" Ino then noticed that Sakura was in the general area and quickly amended her previous statement, "Just kidding."

"She's a lightweight." Tsunade defended even though she knew there was no defense for letting her guard get sloshed, unintentionally or not, "Three cups of sake, that's all it took, not even the hard stuff. She hasn't even had anything in ten minutes." Even the Hyuuga girl had just as much at the same time and seemed just fine from where she was glowering at Ino for hanging off of Naruto's back.

Ugh, whatever. Ino was probably going to end up on his back for safety purposes at some point anyway if she had to use her clan jutsu, so this was just skipping the middleman, "Look, I don't care right now. Can we go? Please? Right now!" He was asking, but his face held the look of if she said no he'd try to punch her out and drag her out.

He'd seen this particular action movie before a dozen times over and even lived it a few times, and he already had the script committed to memory so to speak.

He knew how it ended if things kept going the way that they were. This was classic clusterfuck scenario. The stars had aligned to screw him again.

Everything seemed to be going wrong with no logical explanations for half of the things happening around them and the whereabouts of half of their crew. Bad guys were in the breach, and there were always more than the ones that you could readily identify.

Tsunade was aware of this stark reality of their luck too, and a part of her had to wonder what the hell she'd been thinking and what else she expected out of this. Why'd she pick the biggest hotel in the town to stay at for the night? She was a bountyhead for goodness sake! These were the situations that slumming would have been appropriate for! That way when they destroyed something they wouldn't have to pay for as much.

Damn her love for living lavishly. That bar was great. Top-shelf booze for sure, and from all over the world too.

"Right. Let's go." Tsunade said, downing the rest of her drink before standing up and slamming her hand on the bar, getting the attention of everyone there. But she only needed a few, "Shino, Hinata, Akamaru, you three with me. We're heading out. Brat, go get your teammate and give the girlie on your back some of this." She said as she handed Naruto a small sleeve of powder, "That should sober her up in five. Chouji, Sakura, same with Sasuke. Go get him, then catch up. If either of you find Kiba take him with you, if not he can track us by scent."

There was a joke in there somewhere about Tsunade carrying a ready-remedy for getting blitzed, but now was not the time for it.

Because the electricity died at that moment and every light inside of the place went out.

People in the restaurant not of the shinobi variety started panicking until the sound of something smashing into a thousand pieces shut them all up. That of course would have been the bar that Tsunade had hit the first time to get the attention of her ninja, "Everybody shut the hell up." She said in a dark tone, and it got the results that she wanted. Dead silence.

Seriously. They would need their hearing to be on point. For those of them that couldn't see in the dark (Hyuuga), smell things out (Akamaru), or otherwise sense the chakra of the enemy (Naruto, Shino), it would probably save a neck or two.

The quiet dragged out for quite some time, and since none of the sensors were reacting it was clear that whoever their assailants were weren't there in large enough force to justify attacking a squad containing Tsunade. Someone wasn't about to wait around and play kunai pincushion though.

"Fuck this." Naruto said before a massive boom could be heard, creating a wickedly large hole in the wall leading outside, moonlight pouring in. Without missing another beat, every Konoha ninja in the room spilled out into the night air and took off from inside, "Kiba and Sasuke were on guard duty, so check the roof first!"

If bad guys got inside and cut the power that meant that there was something else occupying their attention to keep them from stopping such a thing or tipping them all off in advance. It was probably why Akamaru had come to them before anything in the restaurant had even happened.

Sakura and Chouji darted off to locate their wayward teammate and the Inuzuka Clan member of the entire squad.

Naruto created a clone that went off to try and find Shikamaru, with directions to create more clones with the chakra that Naruto had originally enabled it, "Shino, Hinata, Akamaru, we need you guys to stay with Tsunade no matter what in case something else happens. You guys can tell if anything dangerous is coming better than us. If we need to fight, me and Ino-chan can handle it." When she sobered up of course.

Nobody else was speaking up trying to get things in action, and they were all the same rank, thus Naruto was the first barking orders. He wasn't even aware that he was doing it, it just came from him. And there were no objections thus far so he figured that it was cool.

"Hinata, did you see who was after us?" Shino asked, never getting sight of the individuals despite getting some intel from the bugs he had dropped from his body throughout the hallways. They were all high-level shinobi from the read that his kikaichu got on them.

A nod came from the Hyuuga princess, her Byakugan still active, and with good reason to have it as so. Even at a distance she could see the enemy forming up at the hole in the wall of the hotel that Naruto had created for the Konoha party to leave through.

A feeling of dread crept into the pit of her stomach when she was able to make out the masks on their faces, "ANBU. A lot of them. Twelve-. No, sixteen by my count. I think there might be more coming since they're not after us yet." But there was something strange.

Each village's ANBU were uniformed differently. All of them had masks and most of them wore cloaks over their actual uniforms, but that was basically the only similarity in appearance that they held between the villages.

Konoha ANBU had animal stylized masks, black pants, black tight short clothes underneath grey body armor, metal arm-guards, and spiked sandals along with the tattoo on their shoulders.

Suna ANBU had masks reminiscent of demons and monsters, wore turbans to cover their heads and hair, and had the body armor in a sandy color that covered their shoulders instead of just their chests.

Kiri ANBU were usually heavily dressed for the climate that they operated in. Their masks had slits for eyeholes and random patterned markings instead of more descript things like in the other villages as well as a marking indicating that they were from Kirigakure.

From their shared stories over the years none of them had ever seen Kumo ANBU, so they didn't know what they looked like.

But Iwagakure ANBU they did know. As Academy Students there were only two ANBU uniforms they were taught to recognize on sight. Konoha's own, and Iwa's. A remnant from the last costly war that Konoha had found itself in before their generation entered the halls of the Ninja Academy.

Iwa ANBU had uniforms consisting of red pants, tightly woven, tough red under-outfits that were said to be able to stop the tip of a kunai from penetrating them and thicker burgundy body armor over that. More designed for heavy combat than for precise engagements the way most ANBU units were.

That was what Hinata saw.

Not only that, but mixed in with them there was one clothed differently. She'd never seen the kind of outfit belonging to the last ANBU before. Black pants, and a short black jacket that cut off halfway up the ninja's torso. The mask and cloak though were definitely from Konoha, but the uniform underneath wasn't, and he had no tattoo, "Is he a fake or is he really from Konoha?"

XxX

"We didn't have the hotel locked down before one of them broke the wall." One of the Iwa ANBU reported over short-wave radio as more of his comrades arrived on the scene, "How did they know that we were coming?"

"I never trust these joint assignments. I feel like we've always got a sword at our backs."

All eyes were directed to the ANBU from Konoha garbed in the black cloak. If his voice showed any nerves behind his mask he didn't show it, "We are for Konoha, but our aim is not any different from yours. You want Tsunade dead for your own reasons. Our master wants her dead for ours."

"That doesn't make any sense. She's the best medic-nin in history and the Sandaime's student. Why would the Hokage want her dead?"

"The Hokage is not my master." The Konoha ANBU said with a biting tone to his words, "Tsunade has not claimed our village as her own in twenty years and her actions have not benefitted us in any way in just as long. Her legacy is obsolete and her name is more of a detriment than anything else to us now. She is a problem. The only value she has left to Konoha is to fund my masters black ops with her bounty which will be split with Iwa. In this endeavor we are partners, and per my master's previous agreement with your Tsuchikage I will lend my assistance to help you overcome her. Anything you need to know to win against her. But stay away from the jinchuuriki."

None of the Iwa ANBU said anything as they all moved out, noting that the Konoha ANBU remained behind them far enough to assuage their fears that he wouldn't betray them mid-mission. Even so, mistrust ran deep. And all of them had the same thought.

'These Root ANBU are seriously freaky.'

Speaking for their standards, that was saying something.

XxX

(With Sasuke and Kiba)

"Why are we still running?" Sasuke asked quietly as he and Kiba were fleeing the scene through the trees around the hotel, "Weren't we buying time until Akamaru warned the others? We've led him far enough away from the hotel where they can all sneak out and get away." If anyone hated retreating more than Naruto it was Sasuke.

"You wanted to fight that guy on a fifty foot rooftop?" Kiba asked incredulously, "Suicidal much?" He said that, having been the one that had originally called out Gaara for threatening them, "There's no room to move up there! How were we going to keep away from that sand?"

"No, I'm not suicidal." Sasuke replied a bit offended at what Kiba had been implying. If anything he knew he had more tactical savvy than Kiba did, so he didn't want to hear that out of him, "I have Sharingan and hawks to keep away from him just fine."

"I don't!" Kiba griped back at him, "I'm an Inuzuka without my ninken! And even if you let me fly on your bird again, he has a giant sand raccoon! Are you fucking mental? We need space!"

"Even so… you do kind of have a point." Sasuke said, admitting that biju beat hawks any day. Even summoned hawks, "If we'd have stayed up there that hotel wouldn't have been standing for five more minutes. I'm sure of it." Gaara peeled the tile off of the ceiling going after Akamaru in the first five seconds. That wasn't really a good sign for how well that building was going to stand up to what it would take to fight back against him.

Both of them found their progress inexplicably brought to a halt, and both prepared to start thinking panicking thoughts until they realized that sand hadn't captured them. Nothing seemed to at first glance, until the shadow from a tree seemed way too long for how the moonlight was casting it.

"Ugh. What are you guys doing here? Not that I don't want the help."

"Shikamaru?" Sasuke said as he felt full control of his body come to him once again, "Wait. You're in a fight too?"

"Temari and Kankuro from Sunagakure if you remember those two." The down in the dumps look on Kiba's face couldn't be hidden, even if he had been able to keep something like that from Shikamaru, "No… don't you tell me what I know you're about to say. I don't want to hear it."

"Gaara's here too." Kiba said, wincing at the same time as Shikamaru, "I knew you'd remember that guy."

"Damn it."

"And he's probably looking for us right now." Sasuke added coolly, though he kept his eyes peeled in case someone felt the need to surprise them.

"Double damn it." Shikamaru said as a follow up. But then again this wasn't all bad. At least now it was three-on-three. That was something. Even if those two weren't his first choices for teammates, "They want Tsunade, so are we leading them away from the hotel?" Nods came from both Sasuke and Kiba, "Alright. They don't know just how many we've got. Temari saw Naruto and Sakura, but she and her brother don't know you're here yet."

"And Gaara doesn't know who else is here other than us two either." Sasuke concluded in Shikamaru's stead.

This was good. They could use this. Normally squads didn't run much more than four to a team. So if they were found, the Suna kids would think that there would only be one more dedicated to staying with Tsunade as opposed to six more. Seven counting Akamaru.

In the instance that they got past them and somehow reached the main team after a potential battle was fought and the Konoha side lost (not that Sasuke would ever acknowledge the fact that he could lose, even in a hypothetical situation), they would misjudge the amount of guards that Tsunade would have. People had been killed due to far less vital misinformation in the past, so why not?

"You thinkin' we should make a stand or something?" Kiba asked when he saw Shikamaru in a position of deep thought, "Because I'm game. I wish Akamaru were here, but I'm still game."

"A stand implies that we're going to lose." Sasuke said with a smirk, "Are you saying you're about to get your ass kicked?"

"Don't put words in my mouth jackass!" Kiba snapped, still speaking under his breath, "So where are we doing this Shikamaru? You're the smart one."

The entire time he'd been thinking about what to do. He wanted to stay amongst the trees if that were a viable option, but in all honesty it wasn't one. That Temari girl used wind to cut things and create storms. She was also a hothead. And if she was anything like Naruto when he got a bit heated there was a good chance that she would-.

"Kuchiyose: Kirikiri Mai (Summoning: Quick Beheading Dance)!"

-Bring the entire place down to find them.

XxX

(With Naruto and Tsunade)

The one thing that Naruto had to say about all of his team members that were running with him was that they were all in shape, because they were cutting a murderer's pace through those woods to the south side of the town, the agreed upon direction that they would all meet up at in case things caused the team to fracture.

Shikamaru and his contingency plans.

"Does everyone remember what to do in case we are forced to move from the meeting point?" Shino asked as they all continued to move, "If the ANBU Hinata found are really after Tsunade-sama there will be a good chance that some of us will have to divert them to keep them away from her."

Everyone nodded. There was an old fishing village miles west of Okumizumi-machi that was abandoned when that town had become prominent. Fishing could still come from the new village and conveniently use the lakes but remain close to a great place of commerce and to sell their catches. It was mostly a ghost town used to store old boats and other water-faring things now after falling out of use.

Still riding on Naruto's back for the time being, Ino held her head with a pained expression, "Oh my head." She said, "I'm never drinking anything again. It's not worth it. It's definitely not worth it."

Tsunade smirked a bit but held back a laugh. That powder she gave Ino sped up the time it would take to flush the alcohol out of her system. It also magnified the hangover process in exchange for getting rid of it far faster than was natural, and it took time to get used to the effects. She should have just been grateful that she didn't throw up on Naruto's head from how they were moving.

Come to think of it… if they kept moving at the pace that they were moving at, they'd make it to the place they needed to go just before dawn. That would take a few hours, but they were up and running anyway, so why not just go straight there and nip the whole thing in the bud?

"Should we split up?" Naruto asked, breaking her train of thought. Getting Tsunade away was the main thing, so as long as they did that everything would be fine, right? "My Henge is pretty good. I can lead them away pretending to be Tsunade-baachan and the rest of us with a few clones."

They'd probably catch on not long after actually seeing him, but by then he'd have led them along so that what was left of Team 8 and the real Tsunade could get away.

Team 8 was a tracking-specializing team, so if any squad knew how to cover its tracks it would have had to have been them. But they needed the room to do it, and if there was anything that Team 10 was especially good for it was stalling and diversion. Naruto kind of blew that out of the water because he fought like a tank as well, but stalling and diversion was the major thing.

And if it worked well enough, they could trap them and take a bunch of them out. Sure, Shikamaru could have been ultra-useful in that situation, but it wasn't as if Naruto and Ino were strategically helpless without him. Their plan of action would just be a lot more bare-bones.

A large team of ANBU was no joke, even for someone like Tsunade, who while she could probably take them on would be putting the younger ones at great risk by stopping to fight them. And with Suna apparently hot on their heels to boot it would probably turn into a marathon. It was complicated in that she wasn't the leader of any of them, but she knew more about being a ninja than they did.

Tsunade knew Naruto's body of work better than anyone else, and figured that the offer wasn't misplaced noble bravado… for the most part. There was still a lot of that in there though, and a part of her flashed back to what she was told about her granduncle Senju Tobirama and how he died. Her eyes quickly flashed to the necklace that used to be hers around Naruto's neck before her face toughened up.

"What are you asking me for kid? I'm not the leader of this mission, I'm the client." Tsunade said with a falsely dismissive air, "You're just supposed to protect me while I travel. How you do that in the end is up to you." She glared back at him slightly, but there was no heat behind it, "Take care of that necklace just in case you really need to sell that you're me somehow. If you make my necklace smell like cigarettes before I get it back I'll beat your narrow ass."

She gave him that damn necklace for a reason, because she believed he'd survive no matter what. If things got bad he knew full well how to make a break for it and keep himself safe.

The grin on Naruto's face was basically him believing that she had taken off the leash so to speak, and with that he took Ino and headed off to make the best case of sidetracking an ANBU that he could think of.

With that being done, the trio and dog kept running in an uncomfortable silence. Shino was simply thinking about how to handle a squad of over a dozen well-armed, highly trained ANBU and probably a jinchuuriki-led team to boot. Hinata let out a gasp and came to a dead stop on a branch, getting Shino and Tsunade to do the same slightly ahead.

Turning around they all saw her looking back from whence they came with a horrified expression on her face. Shino jumped back and put a hand on her shoulder to get her attention, "Hinata, what is it?"

Tsunade knew the look on her face. That was a look of someone that had seen something horrifying, 'I swear to Kami Naruto if you got yourself maimed or killed already I'll fix you and break you all over again.'

"The ANBU…" Hinata said quietly as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing, "…T-They're all being torn apart!" Really? Wow, Naruto was strong. That might really be the most badass thing that had ever happened. Was he Kyuubified? "Naruto-kun and Ino aren't the ones doing it. Two other men just destroyed them."

Ah, of course not. Little miss all-seeing-eyes would have known how close on their heels the ANBU had been, and would have warned them if they had started closing the distance. She could see 10 kilometers.

But then that begged the question of just who did it if Naruto and Ino didn't. Did the Suna kids and the ANBU bump into each other and end up with Gaara killing them all? That would have been the best news anyone had heard all night.

"I don't know what group-." She started to say before realizing that saying she didn't know something didn't help anyone. Being as descriptive as she could was the best option she had available, "One has a strange scythe for a weapon and the other has threads connecting his body… like that Dorobou boy from Taki from the chunin exams." She'd never forget that narcissistic psychopath, "They're both wearing the same clothing. Long cloaks with cloud patterns on them."

XxX

A sigh came from Kakuzu as he watched Hidan finish an impromptu ritual thanking his God for the bountiful slaughter he had just engaged in. He was blissfully ignoring the gore, entrails, and body parts that littered the surrounding tree trunks and branches.

"Are you done?" Kakuzu asked flippantly as he casually tossed aside a porcelain mask that had belonged to some out of place ANBU. Weird. The rest were from Iwa, but one seemed like a fake Konoha ANBU. Meh. Probably Root, "You just blew whatever jump on catching up quick that we had."

"It doesn't matter. It's a bunch of chunin with her. One of us by ourselves could handle this." Hidan replied, grinning down at the pilfered internal organ in the palm of his hand before he extended it to Kakuzu, "Here you go you old fucking heathen. I know how much you like collecting hearts and stuff."

Kakuzu normally carefully took them from the chests of his enemies with his Jiongu threads so that they remained intact and still beating when he used them for himself. Hidan on the other hand had just brutally carved it out of one of the ANBU's chests with an extendable pike.

"…Thanks." Kakuzu said, taking the bloody heart from him. He waited for a pleased Hidan to turn around so he could throw it away out of his sight. It was a thoughtful gesture as far as Hidan went, but completely useless, "Can we go chase Tsunade so I can get my millions now?" Not just from the bounty, but the necklace that she wore… oh. He'd have so much money to hoard when he found a buyer for that thing.

"Oh hell yes. I'm getting the killshot just so you know. I'm gonna savor that one."

"No, I'm taking her organs. Do you have any idea how good that woman's heart must be?"

Continuing to argue into the night, the two Akatsuki members left seventeen bodies worth of blood and violence behind them and continued onward to do the same to a group of Konoha ninjas and a world-renowned legend.

* * *

**I think I might have lost my mind. I'm quite certain that my workload caused me to temporarily lose my sense of self. That's the only explanation I can give for how I'm feeling right now. I think I broke myself. I'm tired, and all I want to do is sleep. The other day I was so pent up I broke a Playstation controller with a headbutt. Enough said.**

**I have one semester left of college and one summer session and I'm done… and not looking forward to any of those things. One of these days soon me and this thing we call life are going to have it out once and for all, and I don't think I'll win, because life fights dirty.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. Kenchi out. I'm going to go try and sleep some sanity back into myself.**


	54. Scramble Madness

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. New year, old problems, and new ones to pile on top. Yep, I can see why people get drunk on New Years' Eve.

**Chapter 54: Scramble Madness**

* * *

Ino was now back on her feet and her accelerated hangover from hell had subsided as she moved amongst a cadre of Naruto clones. One in original appearance, three transformed to look like most of Team 8 and Akamaru, and one Henged to look like Tsunade.

"So." Naruto said in a bit firmer of a voice than anyone would have expected from him, "Are you good to fight?"

He sounded a touch miffed at her, for the first time in quite some while. It had been so long that Ino had forgotten that Naruto could get upset with her. And probably with good reason. If they had been forced to fight it out back in the dark at the hotel she would have been a liability. What had happened was an anomaly. She wasn't a drinker and had no designs on being one.

"I can fight. I'm better now." Ino said, a bit embarrassed at the state that she had been caught in. Really, what a way to play into the ditzy blonde stereotype. She decided to switch to Yamanaka Clan telepathy to prove it to him, _"You're not mad at me are you?"_

"_I shouldn't answer that right now."_ Naruto replied immediately. That of course meant yes.

"_I made a mistake, and I can't even remember why I did it."_ Ino defended, not willing to drop blame all on herself just yet, _"Tsunade was way more careless than me. She drank twenty times what I did. Why does it piss you off even if I'm sober now?"_ Nothing was the matter now, and it was never going to happen again, so what was the problem?

"_She's earned the right Ino!"_ Naruto projected a bit more heatedly. Sure, he got on Tsunade's case a lot, mostly for alcoholism and shitty luck, but he loved that old bat, and he knew full well she could kill him in a matter of minutes if push came to shove. She could probably kill anyone, _"And she's the best medic ever! She can probably process alcohol through her system in five minutes! You can't do that!"_

"_Oh, so just because she can drink and shrug off being drunk that makes it okay for her, but I can't have three sips?"_

"_It's not that you were drinking, it's that you did it on a mission! Goofing off on the job is cool, but you can't do that! Tsunade-baachan's the client here!"_

"_Don't give me that client crap Naruto! She has to be just as aware as we are, and you barely said anything to her about it, so what's your deal with me?"_

"_I don't want you to fuck up and get killed okay?"_ Naruto blurted out as the argument seemed to escalate, _"If we had to stay in that hotel and fight in the dark you would have gotten killed! You wouldn't have been safe on my back, and you wouldn't have been aware enough to protect yourself! That's the last thing I want! Do you know what that would do to me?"_

They fucked around freely and made asses of themselves at work as members of the Guardian Ninja, as was their right as all being borderline insane, but no one ever drank or did anything on the job that could mess with their heads. That was the ultimate no-no, and for good reason. Too many things could go wrong too quickly on most missions if they were caught slipping.

As they could see buildings near the end of the trees in the forest, Ino's expression changed to a more receptive one due to the silence that had emerged between all of the Narutos and her. She didn't like it when Naruto was quiet around her. She'd had enough of not hearing his voice for three years and thinking of him actually being mad at her for real didn't sit well with her.

She wasn't going to prostrate herself though. Not for something like this. He was mad because he cared, that much was obvious and she was sorry for that, and for being the reason that he felt that way, but she wasn't going to go spineless just because of it either. She had pride as a ninja that she'd earned over years of hard work too. She hadn't just been sitting on her ass waiting for her prince to return and whisk her away.

Naruto couldn't just come back and treat her like they were still thirteen. In reality though, he'd spent three years working as a Guardian. That was two entire years longer than he'd been an actual Konoha ninja, and before they were teamed up they hadn't necessarily been the closest to say the least.

Being originally forced together eventually brought them together, but being forced apart could have done just as much. Ino probably missed out on many of the experiences for better or for worse that made Naruto who he was now. While he was still mostly the same, some things were still noticeably different.

Same with her. He missed out on several important events that occurred in her life from the time he and Shikamaru walked out of the village gates. Things that changed who she was, not just as a ninja but as a woman. She had nothing to prove to their contemporaries on Team 8, 7, and Team Gai, because they had been around and knew of most of it, even having experienced some of it themselves. They knew what she was capable of.

But she still felt that Naruto didn't see her on the same level as himself and Shikamaru. She wasn't sure if Shikamaru did or not, but Naruto definitely didn't from how his first instinct was to do what they did when they were genin and to have her sit on Naruto's back while they were moving quickly just in case, as if her only go-to in a dangerous situation would be to aim her consciousness at the enemy and hope that it hit in one shot.

She still resented their leaving the village. Because they missed so much. Because _he_ missed so much. Things that she took pride in. Things that let her believe that they'd be proud of her to know about them.

Even when they moved out of the forest and into the small fishing village that had originally been meant to serve as the second rendezvous point, neither of them could find it in them to say anything, either to apologize or otherwise. So they didn't say anything about it at all.

They were on the clock so to speak anyway, _"The fishing village is a good enough place to set the ambush if we're going to pull one isn't it?"_ Ino said as they landed on the rooftop of the first shack.

Naruto took a moment to look out around and get a quick sense of their bearings. It was basically a shantytown of wooden shacks, some of which could have barely been considered homes. And people used to live there? It made him glad that Okumizuchi-machi was such a successful place and that this place had been abandoned, because even the town that had hosted them in Nami no Kuni as kids didn't look half as bad as that place.

"_Okay, parameters…"_ Naruto mentally projected through the connection with Ino in order to answer her question, _"…We have none. This entire place is expendable as far as I'm concerned, so feel free to get creative with the ideas once we get them here. We just need to get them into the village, period."_

Back to the situation at hand it seemed.

Looking around, Ino clicked her tongue before beginning to pull out some trap-making equipment. She didn't think she had enough material on her for a squad as big as the one that Hinata had been alluding to, but then again they might not have needed it.

The village they were in was supposed to be the first area that they were all supposed to meet up at in case they were split up. While Tsunade, Hinata, and Shino had moved forward, the others all would have gone to this little village to try and meet up first before going to what was supposed to be the second spot (thanks to Shikamaru and his micromanaging). So when the others tried to link back up it would have been at that spot, which meant that the odds would have been evened up.

They were still planning on fighting ANBU though, which was not a sexy-sounding idea under any circumstances where the numbers were not on their side, but at least it would have been less of a man advantage for the enemy.

"Man…" Naruto said, his clones still disguised as Tsunade and company took up positions to look like guards protecting a VIP for the sake of the show while the original started pacing around and thinking of where he could and would set up his own traps, "I've never had to take on an ANBU before. This is a new one."

"We're taking on more than one." Ino groused out while trying to run tripwires between buildings for when the enemy arrived, "So we're fighting to stall until we get more people here right?"

Naruto nodded, even though Ino couldn't see him due to her work. Speaking of which, he started preparing to get on his own, with explosive tags. There was no such thing as overkill, if he could take down a good number of ANBU with explosives at least, "That's the basic idea. If you can kill any of them that would be great, but guys like these are usually really good with traps."

In other words they probably would find a way around or through them because they were ANBU. Nighttime or not, they could hide those wires as well as they wanted to, it probably wouldn't matter.

"Fuck, there's no time for a mess of traps!" One of Naruto's clone's disguised as Shino said from where he had a perch to oversee the area in case someone was coming, "I can feel unfamiliar people moving our way sooner than we thought. It's not sixteen people either like Hinata-chan said either. It's just four."

Just four?

The implication wasn't lost on Ino or the original Naruto who proceeded to punch a nearby wooden building and collapse an entire wall, "Damn it! Unless they had a sensor, which if they did they would have jumped us in the pitch-dark restaurant with the twelve they had at first, there's no way they figured out we split up. We covered their tracks!"

There was nothing they could do about it now. The situation had changed. Luckily it was now just four ANBU against the two of them. Better than holding off sixteen in a dilapidated fishing village, because Kami they were about to walk face-first into a meat grinder on that one.

"Boss!" Naruto's Shino clone said again to get its creator's attention, "These don't look like Iwa ANBU."

What? Who the hell else was chasing them then? "What do they look like then?"

"Not Iwa ANBU. Aren't you listening?"

"I would dispel you if I didn't need you to sell this right now."

"I don't care Boss." Shino-clone droned, continuing to look out in the direction he could sense incoming mystery ninjas from, "I'm a dude that's a copy of a dude, disguised as another dude. I'm you, so I have your memories, and you've done this a thousand times. I know the drill."

Both Naruto and Ino looked at each other before he sighed and gestured for the clone to get down, "Just… get in position and act like Shino damn you."

At least Shino-clone was obedient if not belligerent and did as asked, the entire time Ino had moved next to Naruto in preparation for the arrival of their would-be assailants, "Arguing with yourself is a sign of insanity you know. You want to talk about it?" She teased dryly.

"If we live, sure." Naruto replied under his breath as a set of blurs landed nearby, and to the surprise of Naruto they weren't Iwa or Suna people at all. This was definitely a new one, "Uh, can we help you… Kumo people?"

A squad of four ninjas wearing white flak jackets from Kumogakure, two men, two women. So Kumo had a stake in this now? Awesome.

"Who are you?" The dark-skinned girl with red hair brazenly questioned Naruto's way, "So Konoha really does think they still have a stake over Tsunade? Even after all of these years of her cutting ties with them?"

"Maybe Konoha's sick of her." The dark-skinned white-haired young man said aloud as he idly rolled around a sucker in his mouth, "Yeah, and the whole bounty thing is a chance to get at her and get something big in return. It makes sense, because I heard that she kept an apprentice with her. They must have killed her and captured Tsunade!"

Naruto's transformed clones all looked at each other before the one disguised as Tsunade spoke up, "No… that's not really accurate… at all." The clone then characterized up for its appearance, "Now what do you want?"

The tallest Kumo-nin, a dark-skinned man with shaggy white hair that covered one of his easygoing eyes walked forward, looking at Naruto and Ino before turning his attention to Tsunade-clone. It was really uncanny just how much time Naruto had to have spent around Tsunade over the past few years. His clone had her posture and expression down perfectly, making it look like the consensus 'most dangerous woman in the world' without question.

"We've come to discuss your, should we say allegiance?" Darui said before introducing himself and his allies, "My name is Darui, a jounin of Kumo. This is Samui, another jounin." A curt nod came from the aloof-looking blonde woman with him before Darui gestured to the redhead and the boy eating a sucker, "These are Karui and Omoi."

"Fantastic." Tsunade-clone deadpanned, "Now what about my allegiance?"

Karui didn't like the attitude of the sannin, but she kept her temper enough in check to find something to say, "Well you haven't called Konoha home in decades. It's on record that you hate the village and the idea of being a ninja there. So the Raikage wants to offer you a position in Kumo, and he's definitely willing to negotiate with you to make it happen."

"You could probably get next to anything you want within the Raikage's power if you were willing to hear him out." Samui said, keeping a cool glance on the Konoha shinobi also listening to the conversation. Why the hell did some of them look familiar? One was apparently a Hyuuga, another other with sunglasses was covered up quite a bit so she couldn't recognize anything about him, and the last two fair-haired ninjas were-.

Wait, she did know them.

It had been years, but yes she remembered who they were. When you were knocked out of the chunin exams finale in the first round you tended to remember the batch of rookies that went on to win it.

"Uzumaki Naruto and Yamanaka Ino yes?" Samui asked, pointing right at a confused Naruto and Ino that hadn't expected anyone to actually address them directly as long as 'Tsunade' was there. Once again though, Naruto was dreading this, because people that knew his name generally didn't want to shake his hand or give him ramen coupons, "What exactly is Konoha trying to do here with Tsunade-sama?"

"We're taking her to get rid of a bounty on her head." Ino said, looking over at Naruto with a shrug. What would the point of lying be? You had to pick and choose what you chose to lie about, so that when you finally started bluffing someone would take it easier. Ninja psychology.

If Tsunade hated Konoha why would she hire Konoha ninjas? But then again she probably stuck around Hi no Kuni more often than not, and Konoha was the only game in town so to speak in regards to hiring for something like that unless she wanted to leave the country and risk running up against other villages that might have had a longstanding grudge against her.

"Well we're willing to wait and return with her once you complete your mission." Darui said, continuing his attempt at diplomacy, "Or if she would prefer we can take the responsibility off of your hands and escort her the rest of the way."

Naruto didn't like the sound of that at all. It didn't sound like any of those choices involved turning down the offer outright without going to Kumo first, "We can't really do that or we'd fail." He tried to reason, "But you're not going to let us leave unless she goes with you, are you?"

"We can't really fail either." Omoi said almost apologetically, "Trust me, the Raikage is not the man to mess up a mission for."

"You're really going to fight me?" Tsunade-clone said, cracking its knuckles and chuckling darkly in order to intimidate the Kumo squad into backing down, "Just because I'm a medic, don't think I have any problems with putting any of you in the hospital… or the morgue."

XxX

(Miles Away in the Forest)

Tsunade's mouth involuntarily twitched into a smile that she quickly put away, 'What the hell was that?' She thought to herself, turning for a second to look back in the direction that she, Shino, Akamaru, and Hinata had left Naruto and Ino to go off in.

XxX

The prospect of fighting Tsunade got Karui and Omoi to intelligently step back, but Samui's eyes were locked onto something that wasn't there… or more accurately something that was there, but wasn't where it should have been, "Uzumaki-san, why do you have Tsunade-sama's necklace?"

Naruto touched at the gem sitting against his chest without looking away, "How do you know about this thing?"

"Tsunade-sama is an idol to many kunoichi around the Elemental Nations." Samui explained calmly, staring a hole right through him. She had of course been including herself in the wide characterization of the modern female ninja, "I know of the famous 'cursed' necklace of the Shodai Hokage. So why would it be on you?"

"Because I gave it to him." Tsunade-clone replied, "He earned it." Ino fought the urge to roll her eyes as even at a time like this Naruto couldn't help but toot his own horn, "Is there a problem with that?"

"Yes, there may be." Darui said, quickly catching onto the drift of what Samui was alluding to, "That necklace is supposed to be one of the things that were meant to prove Tsunade's identity. It's supposed to be synonymous with her. And now it's on some random Konoha ninja."

"I'm not 'random' you dick!" Naruto bristled in rebuttal to the pseudo-insult.

"Back to the point…" Darui continued, "…I'm saying that this isn't Tsunade." Why would she cough up a priceless possession such as that to some kid? Some kid from Konoha, a place she was supposed to hate?

Tsunade-clone crossed its arms over its sizeable transformed chest (how did she function normally with those things?) and sneered forward, "Well then who am I smartass?"

"That's what I plan on finding out, right before I get you to tell me where the real Tsunade is." Apparently he wasn't too fond of being deceived, because Darui drew a giant foldable cleaver with an exceptionally large handle and stormed forth at Naruto's mess of diversionary clones.

The best way to find out if someone was who they said they were was to fight them, and Naruto couldn't fight like Tsunade so he couldn't sell the ruse any further.

Luckily, he thought that the ringleader of the whole thing was whoever was transformed into Tsunade.

He was wrong, and Naruto and Ino tried to take advantage of this by running away again, until they were cut off by both Karui and Omoi blocking their retreat from front and back, "Kumo-Ryu Mikazukigiri (Cloud-Style Crescent Moon Beheading)!" Both of them swung their swords in a flashing crescent arc, attempting to cut off most of the ways that their two targets could move in.

Not particularly a fan of being surrounded and being cut down alongside one of his closest friends, Naruto was not about to humor the pair of swordsmen with a two-on-one duel with his machete. Not when he could just blow them away, "Fuumon no Jutsu (Wind Ripple Jutsu)!" Pushing chakra from his body in all directions as if he were utilizing his sonar, only nature transformed into wind, Naruto blew both Karui and Omoi away from himself and Ino before an edge of a sword even touched them, "Get out of my face!"

Both Naruto and Ino separated by pushing each other away and moving in opposite directions. Naruto cursed as Darui had managed to finish his clones off using some strange electric jutsu he'd never come up against before.

So there they were, four-on-two, stuck in the fishing village with no traps set for them to take advantage of, and not willing to move to the next rendezvous point out of risk of compromising it for the others.

Not the best of odds. But it was still better than the alternative of taking on the ANBU.

Upon getting her feet back underneath her, Ino heard the unsheathing of another bladed weapon and sighed before ducking a slash of a tanto from the heavy-chested Samui. Fast enough to avoid the attack, Ino stood back up and lashed out with a kick in return that didn't make contact in return.

Turning around, Ino positioned her hands in the seal for one of her clan techniques and smirked when she saw Samui balk at the prospect of losing control of her body, stopping herself from attacking even though Ino's hand posture was a feint. Instead of firing a jutsu, senbon popped into her hand that she was prepared to throw until Karui appeared back in front of Samui, ready to intervene.

"Come on, what did you hesitate for?" Karui asked Samui as the two Kumo kunoichi stood together, getting Ino to back down from wasting senbon that would probably just be dodged or deflected, "We could have attacked her from two sides if you'd have kept going forward."

"She's a Yamanaka." Samui pointed out, mimicking the hand-seal that Ino made moments before, "If you see her make any seal like this, disengage to make sure she misses or you'll lose control of your body." The prospect of someone taking over her body actually got Karui to cringe a bit.

"Ooh, people know about us in Kumo." Ino said, the moonlight in her eyes dancing treacherously, "I'm not surprised since we've been around for generations. But I wonder how outdated your intel on my clan is. Konoha and Kumo haven't fought each other in a long time."

"It doesn't matter." Samui said, her confidence not shaken. Why would it have been? She had the advantage, even before Karui showed herself, "Members of the Yamanaka Clan are notoriously bad at taijutsu…"

"…And I don't see a single melee weapon anywhere on her pretty little ass." Karui finished brazenly, holding up her own katana, "There's a reason Kumo has so many sword users."

'Bad at taijutsu?' Ino thought to herself with a frown on her face, 'Yeah, we're not the best, even daddy, but flat out bad at it? We're better than the Nara Clan at it.' "I'll tell you what. If you think you can get close enough to me with those toothpicks to hurt me without getting yourselves killed, feel free-. No, feel _encouraged_ to try." She challenged with a narrowing of her eyes.

Was it smart to say? Not particularly. But the Kumo redhead was definitely going to spend the entire fight trying to birfucate her anyway, so did it really matter if Ino tried to piss her off further? At least this way she'd be more prone to mistakes.

Both Karui and Samui nodded to each other before Karui rushed forward to put Ino's threat to the test, "Kumo-Ryu Omotegiri (Cloud-Style Front Beheading)!" Karui swung her sword at Ino in a powerful horizontal motion that she was able to avoid, but cut through an entire wooden building cleanly in one move.

An on-the-move Ino hit Karui with the handful of poisoned senbon she'd been holding, but it felt a little too easy. Quickly throwing her hands together in the ram seal, Ino disturbed her own chakra flow enough to break a genjutsu that had been cast over her before something bad could happen, 'Fuck… a decent genjutsu user and someone that's going to rush me the whole time?'

She really hoped that Naruto wasn't having as much trouble.

XxX

"Boss?"

*CLANG*

"What clone-me?"

*CLANG*

"Does everyone in Kumo know how to use a sword?"

"Seems like it."

"Makes us seem prophetic for picking up something for ourselves doesn't it? Ah, switch."

Naruto and his clone substituted with each other as Darui and Omoi moved in with their respective bladed weapons to cut them down. The pair of dark-skinned men were thwarted by the sudden switch-off of Narutos, but the battle still continued nonetheless, with the original Naruto fighting against Omoi while his clone fought Darui.

Darui's eyes couldn't help but keep flickering to Naruto's choice of weapon in a simple machete. Strange, but then again with his own foldable cleaver sword he couldn't say much about strange weaponry, 'He shouldn't have the range to feel confident in fighting against a real swordsman.'

And just like that after Naruto whiffed on a machete slash, Darui realized why. The chain attached to the hilt of his machete was a lot longer than he first figured it to be and it almost smashed off of his face and broke his nose when Naruto tried to use it as a bludgeoning tool.

Or a tool that would have torn his face off, because it got close enough for him to hear it cut through the wind.

So that was why he was so confident in his abilities in close, because he had more than one weapon.

For Omoi, Naruto's chain was a much more annoying tool that he used to defend himself effectively instead of attacking. Instead of blocking any of Omoi's long katana attacks, Naruto would use his chakra chain to deal with the sword whenever it got close enough to possibly do any damage to him. How did someone learn how to fight effectively against a trained swordsman with just a chain?

A stray movement ended with the chain wrapped around Omoi's sword trying to pull it out of his hands. While Omoi didn't let go, he probably should have when Naruto dug his feet in and pulled hard, yanking him forward and off of his feet.

Darui witnessed this happen and swung a sword at Naruto to force some space between them so that he could create a hand-seal, "Omoi get up! Raiton: Kuropansa (Lightning Release: Black Panther)!" He created a dangerous-looking panther out of black lightning that flew at Naruto's clone and electrocuted it brutally into nonexistence.

"There goes that Black Lightning jutsu of his again." The real Naruto said with a slight sweat at his brow. That had been what he'd used to kill his clones at the outset of the fight.

"So you've heard of it?" Darui asked, body still crackling with the aforementioned jutsu as Omoi got up and got back to his side, smarting from Naruto getting the edge on him earlier. He couldn't believe a clone had gotten him in such a predicament.

Naruto shook his head and pulled out a quick cigarette. Hey, he hadn't had one in three days and if he was about to get killed he was going to go out on his terms. They'd already been caught after all, "No, not really. I mean, it's black and it's lightning. I really don't know what else I would have called it."

Omoi shook his head at the sight of Naruto lighting up the end of the cigarette, but he didn't attack him. If Darui didn't see it as an opening, there was probably a good reason for it. Attacking was probably what Naruto wanted, "You know, smoking is a really bad habit. Why would you do something like that that's so bad for you?"

The Raikage completely outlawed smoking within his ninja ranks. Woe to the one that was caught smoking while on the Kumogakure roster. The man was almost obsessive about health not just for himself, but for everyone else under him.

"It's a long story…" Naruto said blankly, way used to this song and dance for years already by now, "If it makes you feel any better Surgeon General, it gave me the idea for a special ninjutsu style." He'd have told him off, but he was sick of defending himself about it. Kicking someone's ass was such a better way to handle that problem, "So let's try this again."

Both Naruto and Darui Shunshined away while Omoi leapt off in the direction that he felt them move in to catch up and stay in the battle.

Naruto reappeared on a rooftop of the shantytown village first before Darui did as well, coming close enough to cutting Naruto's head to slice the embers off of the end of his cigarette. From behind, Naruto was stabbed by Omoi's katana, much to his surprise until his body started to turn to a blackened ash that stuck stubbornly to the sword in clumps.

Trying to rub and scrape the gunk off with his hands resulted in them being burned by the steaming hot ash and tar that comprised Naruto's Ash Clones.

Upon hearing Omoi's burned shout of surprised pain, the real Naruto crashed through a ceiling from underneath near Darui. While that one attacked, another did the same from another side, diverting his attention. One hit the side of Darui's legs with its entire body while the other stomp-kicked the man in the face, knocking him down and drilling his heard into the roof hard enough to smash it like a watermelon, "Bunshin Haijo (Clone Elimination)!"

This only resulted in Naruto finding a crushed chunk of rotten wood underneath his foot. A Kawarimi. That was kind of annoying he had to admit.

And now both Omoi and Darui were gone and could be taking refuge anywhere with a wall in hundreds of shacks in that little hovel of a former fishing village.

Okay, now it was really annoying.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Forests Around the Outskirts of Okumizumi-machi)

It was basically the lumberjack special, with the sheer amount of trees chopped at the trunks by Temari's belligerently destructive wind jutsu. She really hoped that the town wouldn't be pissed at the loss of so much of their trees, but if they were she didn't care _that_ much.

Really, she was more concerned about the fact that Kankuro had been in there somewhere, moving so that Shikamaru didn't find him. Hopefully he'd been farther away than the range of her jutsu, because it had only really been the size of a full-sized playing field.

She'd been controlled in her anger at the pineapple-haired prick that had done little more than run his mouth and run away from her, because she still needed him alive. She was certain he knew where Tsunade was. She was a professional after all, and wouldn't let her anger get in the way of a successful mission.

But looking over the sheer amount of lumber she had cleared she coughed uncomfortably into her hand, 'Maybe I went a little too far?' Maybe anyone caught in it would have wound up with crushed limbs and not completely crushed bodies.

Think positive Temari, think positive.

A touch of movement caught her attention and upon heading in that direction, she found a sight that gave her a sigh of relief in the form of a large puppet of a salamander that she knew of fairly well, "Kankuro, thank goodness."

The puppet opened up enough that Temari's facepainted and hooded brother could be seen within, giving her an exasperated look, "Did you have to bring down part of the whole place on my head just because that guy pissed you off?"

"Sorry. But all of that big talk about shadows and dark, just to run for the hills when he got the chance?" Temari said with a scoff, "I figured that team was full of big talkers that couldn't back it up. Now are you going to help me look for the bodies or what?"

"Yeah, yeah." Kankuro said, using his puppet to push chunks of tree off of itself so he could help Temari search the damage zone for the dead and/or wounded. As they continued to walk, Temari stopped for a split-second while Kankuro continued forward as something had gotten her notice once again.

Before he could ask what it was, Kankuro noticed it too and cursed as from their respective positions both siblings placed their hands in a ram seal, "Kai!"

The environmental genjutsu cast over them both was broken just in time to see a rather large young man in red armor falling from the air with giant arms ready to smash down on them both. A yell of alarm quite uncharacteristic of the battle-hardened Suna pair flew from their throats as they dodged and the massive hands proceeded to break some of the fallen tree trunks around.

"Sakura, they broke the genjutsu!" Chouji shouted after the enemy had dodged his attack, "What the hell? You said it was in!"

And it had been. Sakura had done a basic copy rendering of their current environment, but since she had been hiding down by the trunks of trees that hadn't been cut down she couldn't feel that from where Temari and Kankuro had been there was a small steady night breeze going.

She'd copied everything else perfectly, but she couldn't add on what she hadn't been aware of to begin with, and that was how they broke free.

"Nice try princess." Temari said, yelling out to the pink-haired girl that had managed to put her in another genjutsu earlier at the hotel, "I thought you'd run away already. Kankuro!" She shouted to her nearby brother who had somehow managed to hide that bulky puppet monstrosity he was taking cover inside of.

"Got it." Kankuro's voice projected around the area, "Oh wow, she's really cute. Makes me almost feel bad about this. Almost."

From where she had been hiding amongst the trees, Sakura stepped her foot off of a trunk before backflipping off of it as several poison-coated kunai stabbed into the same tree and she caught sight of the freaky form of Kankuro's Karasu puppet, gliding around through the forest all around her.

Some of them had explosive tags attached and Sakura quickly darted away from the tree before it was blown to hell. That really could have been her had she not been attentive enough.

A whizzing noise alerted her to three saw blades connected to arms flying through the forest at her, "Why are you doing this? Konoha and Suna are allies!"

"That hasn't really been very beneficial to us." Kankuro said from wherever he was hiding while Sakura continued to dodge and search for him wherever he was, "Sure, we get more work and money than we used to back before, but that boost is only from the scraps that Konoha hands off, like we're the little brother village to yours. It's emasculating! No wonder villages like Iwa still don't take us seriously and try to throw their weight around all the time!"

"And having Tsunade is going to do what for you?" Chouji asked, carefully staring down Temari out in the open amongst the felled trees as the wind-based kunoichi did the same against him, "Even if she is super-strong, she's still just one person."

"One person that countered every poison that our village's expert put forth in the Second Shinobi World War and revolutionized the way that shinobi squads are put together forever." Temari amended, "You're telling me right now that you don't have anyone on your team that practices medical ninjutsu?"

They did. The one out of Team 7 that dabbled in it was currently being pursued by a weird six-armed humanoid arsenal puppet, the origin of which she couldn't get enough time to locate.

Able to tell that this was the case from the look on Chouji's face, Temari continued, "There isn't anything that Suna won't do to get that kind of a military boon. An entire generation of field medic-nin would change almost everything about the way we operate in-mission. And that's just the beginning of what she could do for us."

"She's a Konoha ninja!"

"Not for the last twenty years she hasn't been!" Temari said as she drew her fan back for a swing, "She's a free agent for all intents and purposes! Fuuton: Tatsu no Oshigoto (Wind Release: Great Task of the Dragon)!"

Instead of sending an attack right at Chouji, Temari's wind flew up into the clouds and began manipulating them around overhead. Chouji was not willing to sit and wait to find out whatever she had cooked up, as he created two hand-seals and started bringing his own fighting style into play, "Baika no Jutsu (Multi-Size Jutsu)!"

Chouji's entire body grew to twenty times its original size, giving him the appearance of a giant. Even when the tornado that had been spawned via Temari's jutsu fell from the skies, Chouji wasn't even taken off of his feet and had to smirk at the fact that she could barely budge him enough to take a step back.

So he was so big she couldn't send him flying was he? That was fine. If that were the case she could always just use her wind to cut chunks out of him until he dropped. That would certainly work for her.

Before she could even draw her arms back to swing her fan again, Chouji channeled chakra to his hands and smashed them down into the ground through the tree trunks littering the area, "Chouharite (Super Open Hand Slap)!" A miniature earthquake took place with debris and chunks of wood flying up all over.

Temari had to cover up to keep safe before swinging her fan to send all of the materials in the air away so that she could see. See the gigantic palm heading right her way that she was barely able to use her iron fan to protect herself from.

Even so, she still wound up coughing blood from the hit that rattled her insides around. But instead of crashing into wood or against the rough, hard ground she got a much softer bed to land in when she was caught out of the air by sand.

Surprise at not taking catastrophic injury from Chouji's overwhelming attack that she still should have been feeling the pain gave way to a feeling of victory when she realized that they weren't in Kaze no Kuni, so there was one reason sand would be there.

And that reason would kill everyone standing against them.

"Where have you been Gaara?" Temari asked as she was carefully placed down on the ground by her youngest brother's sand, "You were going to spend some time outside so you should have noticed everything that happened."

"I had my own opponents to deal with." Gaara stated in the chillingly calm tone that Temari had long since gotten used to. Even if he wasn't threatening anyone, that was just how Gaara spoke, "I was actually looking for them when I found that you had razed a quarter-mile of forest to the ground." Temari had the good grace to blush as Gaara looked at the gigantic form of Chouji right ahead of them, "Of course considering your opponent I guess it is understandable."

Upon seeing Gaara and remembering just what that person was capable of back when they were all kids, Chouji shouted out in alarm, "SAKURA!"

She didn't need to hear it again as she started trying to extricate herself from her conflict with Kankuro's puppet to try and get back over to Chouji. Fighting with a puppet that she couldn't find a way to disable was a little out of her comfort zone. A dodge to avoid a set of explosive pellets from Karasu led to Sakura falling into a well concealed opening that quickly closed off and trapped her inside.

"Ah, gotcha Konoha babe." Kankuro said from his hiding place as his puppet revealed more of itself, such as its horned head, six thin arms, and two thin legs like Karasu's, "It was only a matter of time before your focus slipped and you fell into Kuroari. Kurohigi Kiki Ippatsu (Black Secret Technique Machine One Shot)!"

Segments of Karasu broke off revealing blades hidden in the body parts before they stabbed into openings on Kuroari to impale Sakura. The resulting scream sounded like victory, but there was no blood. And he couldn't take Karasu's parts out of Kuroari either. Growling to himself, Kankuro broke the genjutsu again to find Sakura was sitting on giant Chouji's shoulder, "Magen: Shouri no Kotei (Demonic Illusion: Stroke of Victory)."

"When did you put a genjutsu on me you bitch! You don't even know where I am!"

"I know where your stupid puppet is though." Sakura replied, not trapped or impaled at all, "And your puppet is controlled by your chakra thread connecting it to you. I can use the puppet like a light switch to turn on the lightbulb so to speak. If I cast a genjutsu on your puppet I can creep control over to you depending on how far away you are from the damn thing."

She extended her chakra flow through his chakra thread all the way back to him and his brain to slip a genjutsu on him. For fuck's sake, what kind of chakra control did something like that take?

From her place on Chouji's shoulder, Sakura had as close to a bird's eye view of the battlefield as she was going to get. It was now three-on-two, and one of their enemies was that scary Gaara guy, "What do we do now?" She asked Chouji who didn't really have a way to respond.

"If we're going to retreat we're going to need to get creative, because Sasuke and Kiba aren't here." Chouji said, bringing up their entire reason for being away from the bulk of their squad.

"Enough." Gaara said with his arms crossed over his chest, "Where is Tsunade?" No response from the Konoha contingent, "If that is your choice…" He said, waving his hand to manipulate his sand directly in front of himself, "…So be it. Rendan: Suna Shigure (Successive Shots: Sand Drizzle)."

Gaara fired dozens of high-speed sand bullets at Chouji who crossed his arms and blocked the attack with his body due to his inability to dodge. He had to use that size and durability of his to his advantage. He wore that armor for a reason. Even so, the impact of all of the sand projectiles were pounding the air out of him.

In a bid to assist her teammate, Sakura wrapped an explosive tag around a kunai before launching it at Gaara only for his sand to stop it and cover it entirely. The sand muffled the explosion from the tag and left Gaara and his siblings entirely unharmed.

Gaara began making hand-seals, completely unshaken by Chouji's sturdy body standing up to his previous jutsu, "It seems as if your size isn't for nothing Akimichi-san. I'll have to fight you to scale then. Suna no Iseki Maisou (Sand Ruin Burial)!"

Underneath Chouji, the ground loosened and a torrent of sand flew up in large enough amounts to surround his entire body. Temari swung her fan and guided all of it into a spinning pillar of sand that seemed as if it could peel skin from bones.

As it died down though, there was no bloody Chouji skeleton within. Instead it was an uprooted tree with the bark entirely peeled off of it. Without the powerful winds to hold it upright it fell to the ground in a crash, and neither Chouji nor Sakura were there to be seen.

Another genjutsu? It had to be something like that, because Chouji didn't have that much speed to avoid the combination jutsu altogether, nor did anyone have the power to just force their way out of a razor-sharp tunnel of sand.

"Kawarikage no Jutsu (Shadow Replacement Jutsu)." That seemingly bored voice despite the fact that there was a battle going on. Temari involuntarily grit her teeth in anger at the sound of it.

From the trees, the top of Chouji's spiky brown hair could be seen as he walked back into plainer view with a smaller figure down at his feet doing the same, hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket, "I didn't know you could do that with a tree stuck in the ground Shikamaru." Chouji commented.

Shikamaru kept his eyes on the group in front of him with a perturbed look on his face. Getting tons of trees cut down on top of your head would put one in a foul mood, "I can teleport anything similar in size. You're as tall and as heavy as a tree bud."

"How did you not die?" Temari blurted out in anger at seeing him still standing, with not so much as a fractured limb for all of the trouble she went through.

Shikamaru just fixed her with a passing glance, "Lady, I'm talking with my friends here. I will deal with you and your brothers in just a minute." All that did was get Temari to fume and punch at her iron fan out of anger. Gaara gave her a slightly wary glance but said nothing, "Hey Sasuke, we're friends right?"

Temari and Gaara's eyes widened at the slight sound of chirping as his sand moved to defend them both, but apparently not fast enough as a pair of lightning covered hands shoved through their chests from behind, "Tch." Their bodies then turned to sand and everyone looked up to see both Gaara and Temari suspended in the air by a platform of Gaara's sand, "Fuck off Shikamaru."

Needless to say, he was not happy at his targets dodging his double-Chidori, even if it wasn't the fault of the Nara genius.

"The best." Shikamaru muttered sarcastically while Sakura was set down on the ground by Chouji's hand, "So what are you guys even doing here?" He asked the pink-haired kunoichi.

"Looking for Sasuke-kun and Kiba." Sakura said, relieved at seeing Sasuke was alright. But wait, "Where's Kiba?"

Shikamaru just smirked.

XxX

(Nearby in the Forest)

"I'm coming for you dandy-man!" Kiba said in a ferally gruff manner as he rushed high-speed through the trees, "You can't hide from me~!"

At his side, Karasu appeared, clicking noises going off to intimidate his enemy, but intimidation was the last thing that Kiba was thinking of, even when the puppet brandished a decent amount of its arsenal to try and bring him down, mostly consisting of multiple hidden blades and a giant poisoned needle in its mouth.

Kiba dropped a smoke bomb that prompted Karasu to riddle the cloud with an assortment of poisoned kunai, senbon, and poison gas only for it all to clear away to reveal Kiba wasn't there. Instead there was only a hole in the ground, and right then Kankuro realized how Kiba, Shikamaru, and Sasuke were able to survive Temari's attack if the Inuzuka Clan member could use a jutsu that would allow him to do such a thing so quickly.

"Tsuuga (Passing Fang)!"

The ground underneath Kankuro's hiding place burst out with Kiba spinning his body like an active drill, knocking against the heavily defensive side of Kankuro's sturdy third puppet Sanshouo, almost tipping it over entirely.

"How did you even find me?" Kankuro asked as he continued to take refuge inside of Sanshouo while waiting for his other two puppets to get close enough for him to fight Kiba off again.

"You smell like machinery oil, steak, and fear." Kiba said, "The fear's the most important part. It's also my favorite part. Not good at fighting in close dude?" He intentionally brandished his sharpened fingernails for emphasis, "That's too bad."

This was salvageable. All Kankuro had to do was get some more space and throw forth a full-court press onto Kiba. Inuzuka Clan members were notoriously bad at distance fighting. And right on cue, Kuroari attacked Kiba with its body open to try and capture him.

Far too quick for such a direct approach, Kiba turned in the air from a jump and kicked the puppet in the head, spinning it on the body like a top. With Karasu moving in to pick up the slack and continue pursuing Kiba, Kankuro sealed Sanshouo away before choosing to move along to a new hiding place.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kiba caught the movement and wasn't having any of that, "Nuh uh! You ain't hiding again pal!" Of all things to do, he unbuckled his pants and jumped into the air with the most wicked grin imaginable on his face. Akamaru wasn't here so it had to be him to do this, "This one's for you boy!"

XxX

"GAH! OH, YOU DISGUSTING MOTHERFUCKER! I'M GONNA MURDER YOU!"

A gigantic explosion from within the forest soon gave way to a slightly burnt, soot-covered Kiba running as fast as he could while buckling his pants into the clear-cut area where his allies were, "Hey Sakura, Chouji, what's up?" He asked hurriedly, constantly looking behind himself to where he had come from as if he expected something bad to come his way.

Sakura raised an eyebrow but answered nonetheless, "We came to get you and Sasuke-kun to get all of us moving to the rendezvous point before a big squad of Iwa ANBU that outnumbers us altogether caught everyone… but we hit a little bump." A sandy bump that could crush them and kill them all.

"I noticed." Kiba deadpanned, still looking out for an irate puppeteer to be coming that way any moment, "So now what?"

Sasuke apparently had the answer, at least from his point of view, "Who knows what else could be happening with Tsunade and the others right now?" He said, never taking his eyes off of Gaara and Temari in the air, "It would probably be best to link back up with our original teams, or at least to put as many bodies on Tsunade as we can. Kiba and Shikamaru should go. We can handle them ourselves."

A frown crossed Shikamaru's face at hearing that. True, it was probably the first thing that would have come to mind for him, but it left too many people out on the vine. True, Naruto and Ino were amongst those being pursued by the alleged Iwa ANBU that Sakura spoke of, but if there was one thing he detested it was the default plan to split off and deal with problems as they came.

There had to be another way, if only there was time to come up with one. He was about to do his best to come up with something until he heard the gigantic Chouji behind him clear his throat. Turning around, Shikamaru looked up to see his old friend smiling down at him, "It's not like you're leaving us at a disadvantage here. The odds are even."

"You guys sure?" Kiba asked, raising an eyebrow at the more *ahem* delicate member of Team 7 in Sakura, who didn't seem to be very taken aback at all in the face of the pending battle, "I mean, we've got five here against three."

"And the others have got twelve to sixteen ANBU to their five. Six counting Akamaru." Sakura replied, and that was all Kiba needed to hear before deciding that they did need to link back up with the others. He yelled for Shikamaru to follow him, which the strategist did, but reluctantly.

Gaara watched all of this from above, having never taken his eyes off of Sasuke the way that Sasuke had never taken his eyes off of him.

"It doesn't matter if they run or not." Gaara said plainly, "We'll finish you and follow them back to Tsunade. If you want to do this the hard way we have no problem with accommodating you."

"Just because you're up there doesn't mean we still can't bring you down." Sasuke said with a smirk, excited at getting a fair shake at fighting someone that had a real reputation in the world.

A few more seconds of staring led Gaara to gesture to Temari with his head, prompting her to leave his suspended platform to engage Sakura and Chouji again. He wanted to fight Sasuke himself if that was indeed the challenge being laid down. And he maneuvered himself in the air away from the others to a location a short ways away.

It could be said that they would have needed the space.

Sasuke fled from him when they were atop the hotel. Gaara didn't really expect more out of him in this meeting, but his blood was boiling for a fight and he was going to take the opportunity for one. It had been a while since he'd fought against someone that would have actually been fun to kill.

As he lowered himself to the ground, Sasuke just waited for him to finish descending, to which Gaara raised a nonexistent eyebrow, "Why haven't you taken the opportunity to attack me yet? Some fool thing like honor?"

"No, not at all." Sasuke said, tapping his temple as he spoke, "I'm just thinking. More like wondering really. After I get rid of all of that sand of yours, I wonder just how good of a shot you can really take."

Gaara's face didn't change or show that he'd risen to the semi-threat at all, "Do you remember what I said about hating the nighttime? That goes double for full moons. It makes me rather… testy." With that he split his abundance of sand into three segments and sent two of them at Sasuke.

Sasuke drew his gunbai from his back and swung it at the ground, throwing up a torrent of flame that Gaara's sand quickly put out only to find that Sasuke wasn't there. Gaara's third portion of sand quickly moved to protect the Shukaku jinchuuriki, grabbing hold of Sasuke's sharp-edged war fan before he could try and lop off a portion of Gaara's body.

The sand crept up the weapon along the handle until Sasuke let it go and backflipped away before the offensive portions of Gaara's sand could surround and capture him.

As he moved away, an end of wire sat in Sasuke's mouth and he rolled through hand-seals before utilizing a jutsu, "Katon: Ryuuka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Dragon Fire Jutsu)!" Fire travelled from Sasuke's mouth down the length of the wire until it reached the handle of his gunbai and caught the entire weapon in flames.

With a jerk of his head, Sasuke pulled the flaming weapon free from the scorched sand and back into one of his hands. He formed a half-tiger seal with one hand and swung the fan, sending several flaming, winged creatures out directly at Gaara as they seemed homed in on him with screeching noises emitting from them, "Katon: Koushitsu no Tsubasa (Fire Release: Imperial Wings)!"

They exploded on contact with Gaara's sand shield, one after another in a fiery display, but did absolutely nothing to bring it down, "Mere explosions aren't enough to weaken my sand defenses any longer." Gaara sent his sand back out at Sasuke to crush the young man without fear of any sort of reprisal from him, "There are more productive ways to commit suicide just so you know. Ways that wouldn't have cost your teammates their lives either."

"I'm not worried about them, or about myself." Sasuke said as he continued to dodge up, around, and behind all of the fallen trees that Temari had cut down, "I wouldn't have volunteered us to stay and fight if I didn't believe that we couldn't beat you and your family."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. And if you think that a few fireballs are the best I've got, you've already forgotten my first move against you here, haven't you?"

With that, Sasuke's gunbai began to let off a small humming noise as small volts of electricity began to spring from it. Impressively, Sasuke's fan began to neutralize Gaara's sand as it came into contact with it, much to Gaara's shock.

Just touching the fan seemed to cause Gaara's waves of sand to dematerialize out of attack form and fall limply to the wayside for a short time, 'So his mastery over elemental transformation extends to lightning just as well as fire.' Gaara thought to himself, breaking down just what Sasuke was doing to stop his sand, 'That first jutsu he tried on Temari and I upon his arrival, it isn't all he is capable of with electricity.'

"You might be a jinchuuriki…" Sasuke said with a serious expression, twirling his gunbai around before holding it firmly in a two-handed grip, "…But I'm an Uchiha. So don't take me lightly."

"I don't take anyone lightly." Returned Gaara as he returned all of his sand to around his body, "But to your earlier question to me I have one of my own. I'm wondering myself, if I counteract your Sharingan, just long would you be able to survive?"

That was something that was sort of confusing to Sasuke. In his mind what he'd said about Gaara's sand made more sense. The sand was separate from Gaara's body. Sasuke's eyes were attached inside of his head, and thinking about losing that made him physically ill. Maybe because it involved his eyes being plucked out and because he could see Gaara gouging his eyes out with sand? Not a pleasant thought.

Prepared to make a move, Sasuke felt a stinging at his eyes and ignored it after a blink or two, proceeding to storm forth to attack.

During the chunin exam years ago, Naruto and Team 10 had basically written the blueprint for how to defeat Sabaku no Gaara. Even though it was probably far more difficult to take advantage of due to the years that had passed, the fact of the matter was that not only was it possible to get past his Shield of Sand, it was necessary if one wished to win against him.

Sasuke's Sharingan allowed him to see the billowing layers of sand coming to intercept him and he was able to analyze any safe path in getting to Gaara. He was able to see when a place was open, when it was closed off to him, when he was in danger, all of it.

But his eyes kept on bothering him, forcing him to break off in the middle of his attack pattern. Going in blind was worse than not going in at all. Upon seeing Sasuke move backwards, Gaara sent several waves of sand at him that Sasuke repelled with the electricity flowing through his gunbai.

He did not see a small tendril of sand wrap around his ankle and begin creeping up his leg, eventually dragging him to the ground.

Sasuke could feel the sand coming his way and created a Chidori in his right hand, ridding his leg of the sand around it before it was too late as a wave arched and crashed his way. Gaara had to admit that Sasuke was incredibly quick to keep avoiding his sand.

'What the hell?' Sasuke thought to himself as he continued keeping his distance from Gaara after his failed attempt to maneuver past his defenses, 'Wait, is he the one doing this?' Taking a moment to focus on more than just the pending threat of Gaara's personal sand, Sasuke smiled grimly at what he picked up on, "Didn't take you for the subtle type."

"I dabble in subtle from time to time." Gaara said, taking a bit of wry humor out of Sasuke discovering that he was spacing out grains of sand in the air to irritate his eyes and force him into making mistakes, "This isn't even my best one. My best was slowly getting enough sand little by little into an enemy's ear until I had enough to force it through his brain. It isn't always 'crush my enemies,' though that tends to be the easiest approach."

Gaara didn't even have to sacrifice a significant portion of sand to mess with Sasuke's vision, only the minutest amount was required. A stray grain of sand could scratch at his cornea.

'I really wish I had those stupid goggles Naruto wears right now.' Sasuke thought to himself as he pondered his next move. And he only had so long to do it, because while Gaara didn't move during battles he had his sand to do it for him. And it didn't seem like it would wait very long before it would come at him in force.

XxX

(With Tsunade and Team 8 – Countryside of Hi no Kuni)

"Does anyone else need a soldier pill?" Tsunade asked as she, Hinata, Shino, and Akamaru had stopped for a momentary spell to take full account of the situation. Also so that Hinata could rest her eyes for a short bit. Overuse of the Byakugan would keep her from being able to see even normally for a short time, "We can't stop moving for long."

Stopping again was not to be advised.

Even stopping when they did was only done out of necessity. Hinata had kept up the Byakugan for two hours straight after turning it on and off for much of the day already.

"It's straight to the bounty station from here on out isn't it?" Shino asked, keeping an eye on Akamaru who was steadily sniffing at the air for incoming enemies while Hinata was nursing her doujutsu for the time being, "The sooner we get there and put an end to this the sooner this can all go away."

"That's the plan." Tsunade said, her hands blue as she checked the others over to ensure that they were still all fighting fit, "Like I said, if we keep moving at the pace we've been going we shouldn't make it there much later than just after sunrise." She then noticed Akamaru whimpering and barking to get their attention, "…Maybe a bit later."

Clapping could be heard in the open field that they were resting in, and everyone saw a pair of men walking their way, one with silver hair and a wicked-looking scythe, the other tall and imposing with large stitch scars on his arms.

The more heavily covered of the two with strange red and green eyes and the full facemask happened to be the one providing the sarcastic applause, "Well 'mark,' or should I say Senju Tsunade, is there anything you have to say for yourself?"

Clearly they were Akatsuki, which meant that if they knew where Naruto was they would try to hurt him. That already put them on her shitlist. She acted like the kid was a pain and in return he acted like she was a bothersome old lady, but the two of them cared very much for each other.

She'd crack their skulls before they took his biju.

"Can I help you?" Tsunade drawled with her hands on her hips. Her chunin and ninken associates were not as vocal as she was in facing off with such potential threats, "Wait, let me guess. Facial reconstructive surgery, and a lobotomy." She said, pointing to Kakuzu and Hidan respectively.

"Wahahahaha!" Hidan cackled at Kakuzu's expense at the insult hurled his way before the second half of Tsunade's comment was processed by his brain, "Oi, you bitch! I didn't even say anything yet! How are you going to call me crazy or stupid?"

"Because you look crazy _and_ stupid." Tsunade argued in return, "Besides, the legendary missing-nin Kakuzu is obviously the brains of this outfit."

Kakuzu chuckled deeply and stepped forward, "I'm flattered that you know about me. Your grandfather disposed of me so casually all those years ago I figured that I was hardly a passing threat to him."

"It's not what you were that the stories were about, it's what you became after your village turned on you after your failure." Tsunade said, shaking her head at the thought of a hidden village selling its own up the river for going through with a mission that they assigned. Even in failure, to take on Senju Hashirama and to try and assassinate him was something that took incredible courage and conviction, "I can hardly say I blame you, but that's neither here nor there."

The thought of what happened to him got Kakuzu's fists to clench in anger, "Cowards. I was their best. I bled for them. And they turn around and hike up their skirts the moment your grandfather came to them offering peace in return. Imprisoning me for following their orders just to make themselves look good." With that he let it all go and laughed to himself, "But like you said, that is neither here nor there. I got my pound of flesh, left with the secrets of their most valuable techniques, and now the only thing I believe in is money. It never lets you down, it stays constant, and it's why I'm here now."

Tsunade raised a delicate blonde eyebrow but said nothing as Hinata tried to observe just what their two new enemies were made of. Upon seeing them, she let out another small gasp. She was doing that quite a bit at the sight of these men.

Only now she had a close-up view of what made them tick.

Kakuzu's body really was like that of the Takigakure boy that had beaten her team and then had been subsequently killed by Sasuke in the following round in the chunin exams final tournament. Only those four masks sewn into his back gave her pause. Each of them radiated a different element of chakra, each of them making this man almost the textbook definition of a monster, because each of them contained a beating human heart.

That was what that boy had been talking about all those years ago when he remarked on being interested in implanting her organs into his body. How sick.

"Tsunade-sama…" Hinata said quietly, "That man Kakuzu, he has five hearts. I don't know what this means."

"A Hyuuga." Kakuzu said, narrowing his eyes on Hinata's form, "I never liked that clan. They never seem to know when to keep the things that they see to themselves." With that he waved his hand in the direction of the Konoha squad, "Suiton: Nami Shindou no Jutsu (Water Release: Wave Impact Jutsu)!"

From the ground, water shot out in a quick riptide-style wave that drenched the open field and would have shattered the bones of whomever it hit had everyone not moved aside.

"Wonderful." Kakuzu said, once again clapping his hands, "You dodged. I'd hate to have broken such a sweat and travelled all this way in such a rage just for a first round knockout." Though admittedly killing all of those ANBU really took a chunk off of the edge of his temper, "Show me your grandfather's strength whelp."

Tsunade pointed at herself and couldn't help but laugh, "You just called me a whelp. Ha, that's a new one. A new one that I'm not really that angry with." It was better than being called old lady or grandma. Or hag. Especially hag, "I never thought I'd ever fight anyone else that I could rightfully call an old bag of bones, but here we are." She then punched into her palm with a thick smacking noise, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't pick on these kids though."

"Heh." Hidan said, wiping at his nose, "Well look at the mama bear. I don't care how strong you are. Your dusty old tits can't take us both on and protect those runts at the same time! I'm killing somebody today!" He turned devious eyes towards Shino and Hinata only to have his vision obscured by a green jacket being thrown over his head.

"Tsuutenkyaku (Heavenly Foot of Pain)!"

And out into the air echoed the sickening crack of someone's neck snapping like a twig and the sound of the ground being pulverized.

Tsunade had moved fast enough to hit Hidan unaware with an ax kick that smashed him headfirst into the ground, a crater forming underneath where he faceplanted into the grass and dirt.

No one moved a muscle. The Konoha squad didn't move out of shock that a human being could take advantage of a self-created opening with such finality with nothing more than brutal taijutsu. And Kakuzu just didn't seem to care.

"And that…" Tsunade said, grinding her heel into the ground where she'd dropped Hidan in one move, "…Is how you do that. Questions? Concerns?" She looked up over at Kakuzu who hadn't moved at all since she'd attacked, "You should really make sure that if you're going to travel with a human meat shield they're at least moderately reliable as a buffer." She sounded nonchalant, but the fact of the matter was that these jerks were S-ranked, and she wasn't going to sleep on any opportunity to kill them.

The fact that a chance to do so presented itself earlier than she'd anticipated was no reason not to break Hidan's neck like a chicken's.

"Noted." Kakuzu said rather cheerfully for his strangely deep voice, "I'll bet you can't do it again to me. As a matter of fact I'll stake all of _my_ money that you borrowed off of my banker, and all of the money that I'll get from turning in your corpse… as well as that quaint little necklace of your grandfather that is worth a mint."

"Your banker?"

"Yes… you borrowed money and didn't pay it back to my banker. My money." His skin seemed to darken as he glared at Tsunade and radiated intense killing intent, "Oh, and now I'm pissed off again. Go figure."

He and Tsunade sped at each other before each broke off and tried to outmaneuver each other, but before Kakuzu could make a move on the Sannin, a large swarm of bugs deposited themselves between him and Tsunade, "I feel as if you've forgotten us." Shino said as he sent his insects at Kakuzu, "That would be a major mistake."

"The adults are talking." Kakuzu replied, casting away his black and red clouded cloak to reveal a black sleeveless shirt underneath. In his back four masks were visibly sewn into his back, one of which separated itself from his body in a mass of black threads that took on the deformed four-legged form of a tiger. All the while, Kakuzu created three hand-seals, "Here. Play nice with one of my elemental affinities. Katon: Zukokku (Fire Release: Intelligent Hard Work)!"

Deep inside of the black thread body of Kakuzu's fire mask, a small fireball was created that it fired out at Shino's bugs, creating a firestorm that set a vast portion of the open field ablaze. All Kakuzu did was cackle, even while Tsunade glared him down.

"Damn it Kakuzu! Could you have at least waited until I pulled my head out of that stupid crater you money-grubbing heathen?"

"Oh you're fine! Stop complaining!"

Tsunade's jaw dropped at hearing Hidan's voice again after what she had done to him. That monster was still alive. No one could have survived something like that. And yet she could see his silhouette standing up as plain as day through the fire, as if she hadn't done what she did to him mere moments earlier.

Yes, by the way… about Hidan." Kakuzu said, positively grinning beneath his mask, as terrifying as that prospect happened to be the look on the faces of his enemies when they learned of the following information just did it for him every single time, "His body is completely unkillable."

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 10

(Two Years and One Month after Shikamaru and Naruto's Acceptance)

A trip into the capital city of Hi no Kuni near the court of the daimyo was meant to be a day off for two Guardians, but it only really ended up being a rest day for one. On duty or not, weird things seemed to happen around them all of the time, even by Guardian standards.

At least this time the weirdness didn't directly involve Shikamaru. Instead it was solely Naruto's problem today.

Sitting off on metal bench just outside of a stand that he and Naruto frequented on their times in the city, Shikamaru just sat off to side eating his mackerel and watching the scene unfolding in front of him with a placid expression on his face. Strange considering his partner was possibly in mortal danger right in front of him.

"Go away! I don't want to fight today, it's my day off!"

"Stop all of this posturing and fight me properly student of Jiraiya! It's a matter of tradition!"

It was quite the conundrum that Naruto found himself in. And if ever a situation qualified itself as 'troublesome' this one would have to be it. It had everything that Shikamaru figured to be the hallmark of a bad situation.

It involved fighting.

It involved effort needing to be given in general.

It involved a woman.

It involved a woman that apparently knew how to fight and had no problem giving the maximum amount of effort needed.

Pretty much everything someone needed to fuck a day up.

Responding to a disturbance in the streets, word of which had gotten to the daimyo's court, blind monk Sadao and giant bucket-helmeted juggernaut Kenta made their appearance along with a platoon of regular soldiers. With a sigh, first and foremost Sadao walked up to Shikamaru who was still hanging out and watching the proceedings, "Okay, why aren't you stopping this shadow-boy?"

"Day off." Shikamaru replied before continuing with his meal and ignoring the uproar in the background, "Besides, she's not stepping in so it's a fair fight." He said, motioning to the kunoichi-looking brown-haired woman sitting on the exact same bench as him, calmly watching the ongoing fight while drinking tea.

She was taller than all of them save for Kenta of course and had short hair, wore a red bodysuit with the back removed from it and a long katana strapped to her back. She didn't seem to want to fight however, so at least she was being civil.

The same couldn't be said for what was going on with Naruto.

Using his machete he blocked a wave of kunai that had been sent his way by his lovely adversary. He could do that in his sleep, but that didn't make the circumstances surrounding it any less annoying, "Seriously, I'd be a crappy boyfriend, let alone a husband! I suck!"

"That isn't an option!" Naruto's female foe replied, continuing to coat her kunai in wind chakra. She didn't expect that Naruto would have been equally adept at generating elemental chakra through his weaponry, let alone the same element as her, "Now fight like a man! I won't accept a victory just handed to me!"

Kenta had walked over behind Sadao to tower over him while the latter palmed his forehead, "What's this all about?" This merely showed how he was the most levelheaded of the bunch aside from maybe Kenta, but he didn't talk so he didn't count.

If it had been Kotoko to respond to the disturbance she probably would have shredded all perpetrators involved and walked away. If it had been Akira she would have probably started taking bets on the fight. If it had been Shinya he probably would have just sat and watched out of interest for how the fight would turn out.

The reason for this being because the two combatants were Naruto and a single girl that they hadn't seen before.

A girl Naruto's age with green eyes and black hair in a high and loose ponytail with bangs framing her face. She had on a black headband with the metal plate engraved with a flower insignia. She wore a very tight black outfit with short sleeves and the back exposed with a dark burgundy sash around her waist as well as black sandals.

She was doing a very good job of trying to cause Naruto great physical harm. And Sadao wanted to know why Shikamaru hadn't done anything yet. Day off his ass, there had to be a better reason for it than that.

"Okay. First of all, the girl's name is Shizuka. And she's the leader of the Nadeshiko Village." Shikamaru said, pausing when he heard Sadao let out a whistle, either at her looks or at the title. Probably the latter because he really couldn't see her, "Yeah. She's fourteen like us."

Naruto pissing someone off wasn't that strange, but he was usually good about keeping himself under control around dignitaries? And why was she even there to begin with? Nadeshiko Village was kind of way out of the way. Like, south of Mizu no Kuni out of the way, "That still doesn't explain why this is happening."

"Getting to that." Shikamaru replied, thinking of a way to begin explaining what was happening, "So you know how Naruto's sensei Jiraiya was hanging around and looking all skittish all week long before he just up and left yesterday?" Both Sadao and Kenta wordlessly nodded, "Well we know why he left so fast now."

It had been weird. Jiraiya seemed to be jumping at shadows. At first everyone figured that he'd just pissed Tsunade off and had been ducking her, but that wasn't the case as even she didn't know what the deal was. He'd been off of his game every time he sparred with Naruto and absentminded. Then he up and left.

Shikamaru continued his narration of the current events, "A bunch of years ago way before any of us were born Jiraiya wound up infiltrating Nadeshiko Village to do his perv thing, and on his way out after he got busted he got into a fight and fought with her-." Shikamaru stressed, pointing at the girl hurling weaponry at Naruto, "-Sensei; the old leader of their village. Their village has a law where guys who defeat their women are supposed to be engaged to them, and you can guess how that went over with him. So he didn't beat her because he knew what would happen. He just promised that he'd have the woman's student fight with his student and pick up where they left off."

"So…" Sadao tried to pick up what Shikamaru was laying down, "What, did he think that wasn't ever going to happen or anything?" He had to admit from what he was seeing as Naruto deflected a powerful stream of wind from Shizuka that he could have dodged that he was doing a good job of minimizing property damage.

"Clearly." Shikamaru said as he then watched Naruto dodge a falling kick that had wind chakra around the leg. Naruto was definitely not going to stand beneath that and try to block it. He knew better, as it destroyed a large portion of the road upon contact, "He didn't want any students back then. How'd he figure he'd end up with Naruto, or even the Yondaime? Namikaze Minato hadn't even graduated the Academy back then."

"Oh. Well that sucks." From the sound of his voice, Sadao didn't really care that much. But he kind of did. Not because he didn't want Naruto to get hitched, because he didn't give a damn about that.

No, he cared because Naruto was under contract, and if that contract was broken just so this little princess could take Naruto as her hubby, there was a good chance that such a thing could either get Naruto assassinated or start a war. Neither of those things were good and needed to be avoided if at all possible.

"You don't even know." Shikamaru said with a shake of his head, "Naruto has two options as far as I can see. First of all he can just kick her ass and wind up with her trying to take him back to her village to marry him."

Entirely possible, because while Shizuka was good befitting of her status, and had mastery of her wind techniques to a great degree, Naruto was better. He'd mastered his element as well, and he was making it hard on her just by dodging everything she was throwing at him. She hadn't touched him in twenty minutes.

Winning would be bad though, since he wouldn't kill her in victory just for trying to follow her village's customs she would try to take him with her. And who knew how bad that could wind up being, or how long it could take to settle? Kunoichi were crazy and sometimes very vindictive. Kotoko, Akira, and Tsunade were all living proof of that.

"Or he can stand there and let her flatten and possibly kill him so that she'll leave him alone." Holding his hands up like two sides of a balance beam he continued, "That's a lesser evil though. Logic would say to just throw the fight since he can take a bit of a beatdown because of the Kyuubi and because we're here and won't let her kill him-."

"-But this is Naruto we're talking about here." Sadao concluded, rubbing his eyes beneath his sunglasses, "The guy that would rather flip the shogi board than lose a game. A game that he knows he's garbage at. I can't imagine how he'd feel about losing a fight he knows he can win hands-down." Kenta tapped the smaller monk on the shoulder and somehow Sadao understood what he was trying to say, "Yeah, this girl seems to hate Naruto, so what would she actually get out of getting with him?"

"It is the custom of our village for the women to marry men stronger than them to ensure powerful offspring." The woman next to Shikamaru, probably Shizuka's attendant, said as she continued to neutrally sit and watch, "As its leader Shizuka-sama more than anyone else doesn't have the luxury of casting such a thing aside. I wouldn't say she hates him either. He just hasn't tried to hit her back from the start. She thinks he's being sexist."

"No, he's not being sexist. That's my thing." Shikamaru amended for her, "He just doesn't know if he wants to fight to win or not. Win and be engaged to some girl he doesn't know, or lose. You'd think that decision would be easy wouldn't you?"

Naruto's pride was perhaps his greatest strength and weakness. He had an unflappable self-confidence in himself to the point where every time he fought with Jiraiya he always believed he'd find some way to pull out the win, and as a Guardian you had to walk around believing that you could handle absolutely any task the daimyo or Nobuyuki decided to throw at you on any given day.

On the other hand there were also extreme negatives to that. Such as not willing to let anyone believe that they could beat your ass, no matter how much trouble actually winning the fight would be for him. You could actually see it on his face.

He knew exactly what was going on and the ramifications of either victory or defeat. He also knew that the outcome of either was all in his hands. He was fighting with himself over whether or not to let Shizuka just lay him out with one of those shots and pick his ego up off of the ground later, or to actually try to win and open up a whole new can of worms.

Oh! What if he scared her off? That could work. Whether she was trying to marry him for customary reasons or not she probably wouldn't want her name to be associated with monsters or anything like that. Girls kind of had a thing for their significant others not being freaks or what have you.

And he had one in his belly.

All of a sudden Naruto stopped and his entire body was covered in a red, fox-shaped shroud of chakra complete with two tails as his features roughened, "Oops." Naruto said in a deadpan voice, "Oh, would you look at that? My biju is showing. Sorry about that."

From the complete look of shock and astonishment on Shizuka's face he felt that his spur-of-the-moment gambit had worked. It had worked well enough that he didn't have to go ahead and flatten her to win the battle at least, which was what he wanted.

Nearby, Shikamaru looked on and nodded in silent approval. He couldn't have picked a lazier way to stop a fight himself, short of just giving up of course. But since Naruto never surrendered this was as shrewd a move as he could have made.

Especially when he immediately took his opening to hightail it on out of there back to the court, with Shikamaru finding it prudent to follow. He'd finished his lunch after all.

Let it be known that Uzumaki Naruto did not run away, he strategically retreated.

He was also going to strategically avoid that woman for as long as possible to avoid another no-win scenario if this didn't get rid of her for good.

He was _also_ going to strategically kick Jiraiya in his scrotum when he saw him again for leaving him to this with little to no warning.

And once Naruto was gone, both Sadao and Kenta found no reason to hang around, as one of the causes of the in-town disturbance had just left. It would probably be quite some time before Naruto returned to the city after this little episode.

The functional mute Kenta nudged the smaller Sadao with his elbow, getting a nod from the blind young man who spoke for him, "You're right Kenta, there's no more issue here. You guys enjoy the rest of your stay in the capital, stay out of trouble, and have a safe trip home."

Even when the last two Guardians on the scene departed, the leader of the Nadeshiko Village couldn't help but stare at the place that Naruto had been standing at minutes ago. As her female attendant came up to her to get her attention she still didn't look away.

"Tokiwa." Shizuka said after having recovered enough to speak, "He referred to the biju, which would make him a-."

"-Jinchuuriki." Tokiwa said, finishing her sentence for her, "Yes, exactly. To think that Jiraiya would have trained one of them as his own student…" She trailed off in thought at the prospect of a biju container being the student of one of the most powerful men to ever come from Konoha.

All Shizuka did was continue to stare, "Can I defeat him?" He'd kept her at bay the entire time without using a single offensive attack and looked more annoyed than threatened by anything that she did, "Or am I just putting off my own responsibility?"

The battle technically never ended. Shizuka never struck Naruto, nor did he strike her with anything on his end so there was no real victory. Either way, she wasn't leaving yet until she got a definite fight out of Naruto that would end one way or the other.

And if she lost she would then not be giving up on someone so definitively stronger than her, no matter how long it took. After all, those Guardians operated under contracts didn't they? And eventually those contracts expired, right?

* * *

Jutsu List

Bunshin Haijo (Clone Elimination). C-rank taijutsu, offensive, close-range. Misdirection provided by any of a small number of clones (2 to 5) can provide an opening for a more precise final attack. Normally the final move doesn't come until the target is thoroughly distracted and flustered by any of one to several feints mimicking an intended assault, but this can be hurried up for a speedier approach.

Magen: Shouri no Kotei (Demonic Illusion: Stroke of Victory). C-rank genjutsu, supplementary, close-range. This genjutsu plays on the confidence and expectations of a target, drawing forth an image from the brain similar enough to an ideal scenario that it can distract an enemy in battle or get them to reveal a trump card technique without true prompting. Only a true pessimist would immediately doubt the validity of this jutsu's reality, thus it is a useful illusion to try against an enemy with the advantage.

Suna no Iseki Maisou (Sand Ruin Burial). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-to-long range. A collaboration technique with Gaara's sand and Temari's wind manipulation via her fan; is used to trap an opponent inside of a spinning torrent of wind-fueled sand. This jutsu has incredible destructive power and its size can be widened or narrowed to fit the situation it is needed for.

Katon: Koushitsu no Tsubasa (Fire Release: Imperial Wings). B-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-range. Sasuke uses nature transformation and chakra flow to imbue his gunbai with fire. He will then extend and mould his chakra to fire miniature birds comprised loosely of fire that will explode on contact with anything they touch. It is unknown how Sasuke is able to get this jutsu to lock in on a target, but it is hypothesized that it has something to do with the Sharingan or his field of vision.

* * *

**Whoop-de-doo. New Year. Yay. Are any of you out there in reader land hung over yet? As I type that I idly wonder how many of you are old enough for that. Legally I mean. Meh, I don't care if you're of age or not.**

**Alright, I hope you enjoyed. Now Kenchi has to go problem-solve again as he seemingly has to every goddamn semester break before he can safely go back. Thank God I never have to do it again after this. I'd rather work day in and day out. At least I know I'd be making some money to help solve these problems.**

**Later.**


	55. Pick Up Or Delivery?

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Posing online as a Nigerian prince that wanted to give Kishimoto money in exchange for his simple personal information did not help. He just didn't bite. I guess he has enough money that he didn't need the extra.

**Chapter 55: Pick Up or Delivery?**

* * *

In the mansion of the Hokage, Hiruzen was getting a late night bi-weekly briefing from Yamato as to the current progression of the manhunt for their pesky little spy. It had been nearly a week since the entire operation had begun, and working a domestic procedure like this never left good feelings.

But it was necessary. Security of the village was paramount, and no amount of scrutiny was too much in order to bring espionage to light.

Yamato had no real news for his Hokage though, much to the chagrin of the former.

"The only run-in worth mentioning with any of the groups I have under my command happens to be the one that occurred with the team led by Maito Gai." Yamato reported in the moonlight of the window while Hiruzen read documents by lamp in a comfortable lounge chair, "They discovered the entrance to a Root tunnel on the grounds of the former Uchiha District, but backed off of investigating it. If they had done so they would have instigated a confrontation."

Hiruzen let out a sigh at that. Of course he knew that Danzo had not fully disbanded Root the way he had commanded almost a decade ago, but they were a formidable force and Danzo's way of doing things had many supporters in the village. Directly forcing him could result in civil war or some sort of social upheaval.

The man was no fool and would know how to play the cards presented to him. Still, the audacity to set up a secret tunnel on the lands of the clan that he had indirectly orchestrated the extermination of. Let the dead lie still for goodness sake.

"Yamato." Hiruzen said, getting his subordinate's attention, "I want every ninja over the rank of chunin prepared for anything in the coming days. I'll be informing Shikaku in the morning to put the watch teams on invasion alert but with their focus pointed inward. Make sure they all know to remember to keep this quiet from the genin being taught in squads."

Of course. For genin things were need-to-know. For something like this they most certainly did not need to know anything. They would be more likely to get in the way and get themselves hurt or killed than help out.

"I can get word to the teams watching the limits of the village to do this already before I retire for the night." Yamato offered, getting a grateful smile from Hiruzen in return, "Do you need anything else from me Hokage-sama?"

"Only the continued current effort that you are giving your assignment." The wizened old man said before Yamato seemed to just about disappear from his mansion office.

Between the spy seemingly reporting on every major move Konoha had tried to make for the last three years plus and Danzo trying to undermine him from the shadows there was no shortage of trouble on the homefront for him to juggle. It was a welcome comfort that he had such a loyal force of ninjas that would work for Konoha.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – Ninja Academy – Administrative Division)

The halls of the Academy were vacant at such a late time of the night, all with the exception of one elderly man covered in bandages and holding a cane.

Walking into one of the great meeting halls for the real higher-ups of the village, Danzo went inside and stopped once he reached the middle of the room. He didn't even bother turning around to face the person he knew was there at the door, "Yes Jiraiya? Is there any reason you're interrupting my quiet reflection time?"

Indeed, standing at the open double doors was Jiraiya with a very serious expression on his face. His first instinct was to make a joke about Danzo's quiet reflection time, but now was not the time or the place.

"What the hell do you think you've been doing for all of these years?" He asked with a barely restrained tone, "Building secret paths on private property in the village? Maintaining your own standing private army? What's the point?"

"I am the one willing to do what Hiruzen is not to keep this village safe and strong." Danzo said, not raising his voice or rising to the fact that Jiraiya had cornered him for this 'discussion', "Every great tree needs its roots after all."

"Safe and strong?" Jiraiya replied, "How is outright undermining the Hokage doing anything other than making us all weaker? You're supposed to be an advisor!"

"And that's what I've always done." Danzo said, turning around with his single eye narrowed on Jiraiya's form, "I've tried to advise him for years. But in all of that time he's only heeded my advice on what course of action to take once. Just once. And if he hadn't taken my direction this village would have seen a civil war. But I wouldn't expect you to know about it with you being out and about, wasting years pursuing your traitorous teammate."

Jiraiya's fist shot out and punched the doorframe hard enough to break it and bust a metal hinge on the door, leaving it leaning, "And I'd do it again! You think I wanted to do what I did? I have a godson here! But that same teammate is holding a blade over this village's head as we speak!" He gestured out of the door through the windows lining the wall of the hallway outside, "I don't know if you've noticed, but this peace that we've spent the last ten years trying to savor is slowly rotting away like tooth enamel!"

"You call it peace." Danzo seemed to wish to spit at the thought of considering Konoha currently safe, "What I see are enemies at the gate, and enemies amongst us. And as all of this is happening I feel that I am the only man fighting the tide. You've been out there. You've seen it firsthand. But you clearly choose to ignore all of it."

"And you want to go to war with all of it."

"Jiraiya you know full well the only path to actual peace." Danzo continued to try and reason, "Even a man with all the power needed to achieve anything, such as Senju Hashirama, tried things your way when he had enough power to keep and hand the biju over to the other villages. Had he merely finished things with the upstart villages of the past, there would be no four other great villages. We really would all be one."

And that's why as long as I'm around I can never let you be Hokage." Jiraiya said with a shake of his head, "You would start a war with everyone in the Elemental Nations just to put yourself at the top, because you think you have all of the answers."

"Hm." Danzo said, walking past Jiraiya to leave the room, not even finding himself wary of giving Jiraiya his open back, "At least I'm the one trying to come up with an answer based in reality. Instead of you, waiting on the… 'Child of Prophecy' as you called it? How did that wind up working out?"

The very last thing Jiraiya needed to be reminded of in life was the results of his past adhering to the prophecy of the most elder of his summon creatures. Two students of his fell prey to what he'd been told decades ago, and that just so happened to be his 'button' of sorts.

Because he reached out and grabbed Danzo by the throat from behind and squeezed liberally to strangle the old man.

"You've got the balls to say something like that about a man that saved this village and your worthless life at the cost of his own, of his wife's, and of their own child's freedom?" Jiraiya said, refraining from lifting Danzo up. The only indication that Danzo was even choking was the strained sound of breath leaving him. His face didn't change, and his body didn't move to free himself, "You can start and win a thousand wars, and you won't be half the hero that Minato was."

With that, Jiraiya let go of his neck and walked past him first before the old man could black out, and Danzo took in deep breaths of air to keep himself on his feet as his rival's top loyal student left the room, stopping at the door that he'd originally broken to look back at him with a massive grin on his face.

"See, that's why I can't be Hokage." Jiraiya said, tone belying the bloodlust that was fully radiating from him even at that very moment, "You see, sensei wouldn't have tried to strangle you. He wouldn't have thought of trying to snap your brittle neck like a twig." He let out a laugh without an ounce of humor in it, "The only thing that kept me from doing it right here, right now was thinking of what that would do to sensei himself."

Now was not the time for people to get the idea that Hiruzen had sent Jiraiya to take out his chief competition for continued seat of Hokage under the guise of the spy mess, which was what it would be construed to look like once the inevitable details of Jiraiya killing him leaked out.

He wouldn't be surprised if Danzo had people watching over him just for that very reason. He actually was surprised that they didn't attack him when he'd gotten a hold of his neck.

Danzo just glared at Jiraiya through his single visible eye before the man left to exit the building altogether. He could still feel Jiraiya's grip around his neck, but he knew that the fool wouldn't kill him. He was too deeply seeded into Konoha's hierarchy to go missing. His death at a time like this would basically martyr him in regards to the message of how endangered Konoha was without his policies being featured.

"I will do what is right for this village whether Hiruzen and his lapdog of a student are against my methods or not."

Speaking of his policies, the patterns that the spy happened to be using to cover his tracks seemed… somewhat familiar. But that wasn't possible.

Clearing his own throat, Danzo proceeded to leave the room to return to his own home for the evening. There was work to be done to catch this spy and apparently he was the only one in Konoha with the fortitude to get the job done at all costs.

The clandestine leader of Root left the halls of the administrative building, and his hidden shadows followed him, keeping a watchful eye on their leader, but as they left the vacant corridors they missed the shine of the moonlight off of a remaining figure's circular glasses as his body slipped up from underneath the floor, a confident smile on his face, "Nice to see you again Danzo. We'll have to catch up again some other time."

Right now he had to put the finishing touches on his grand old exfiltration of Konohagakure. For good this time.

"You created this monster Danzo…"

XxX

(Countryside of Hi no Kuni – Forests Around the Outskirts of Okumizumi-machi)

So Temari had to face the gigantic Akimichi kid and the genjutsu-adept pink-haired girl that had made her and Kankurou look stupid one time each. That was fine with her. The fact of the matter remained, "No matter how big you are, you can still be cut by my jutsu! Daikamaitachi no Jutsu (Great Sickle Weasel Jutsu)!"

With a swing of her fan, she manipulated the latent currents in the air to a razor-sharp degree and sent them the way of Chouji to fell him like a tree.

Sakura gasped and jumped off of Chouji's shoulder as he shrunk in size to make himself more difficult to hit with the killer wind technique. It kept him from being shredded like newspaper for the time being if nothing else.

Landing in a roll, the pink-haired kunoichi of Team 7 hurled a pair of kunai with little bags attached at Temari only for her to blow them away as if it were child's play. Of course that wouldn't have worked, but she had to test how attentive she was nonetheless, "Tch."

Sure, if she had half a memory she'd remember how Sakura won a battle years ago with a special genjutsu that required a visual medium as a trigger. This was a more practical idea based around that one to sucker her into one of her most painful illusions. It was her favorite finish, but it wasn't to be on this occasion.

"You couldn't have possibly thought that something like that would work." Temari said, directing her attention Sakura's way with a smirk. As this occurred, the sound of clicking and chattering could steadily be heard getting closer until Karasu launched itself from the forest at Sakura again, "Took you long enough Kankuro."

The Suna puppeteer was not in the mood for any snippy remarks from his older sister at the moment as he threw his voice from wherever he was hiding, "I got covered in human piss by that goddamn Inuzuka kid!"

"Well he left, so help me deal with these ones and maybe we can catch up to him or follow him back to the rest of the Konoha ninjas." Temari insisted, preparing to heft her fan for another grand swing, "Gaara should be done with their teammate any second now!"

"Right. Definitely don't want to keep him waiting, even if he is more patient."

Sakura and Chouji moved nearer to each other again, keeping an eye on Temari and Kankuro's puppet while trying to find where the man himself was, "My bags on the kunai didn't break." She expected Temari's attack to cut them open, which would have set her up for a rather devastating jutsu, but she completely turned off the cutting power of her wind jutsu, "Too straightforward?" The pink-haired kunoichi asked rhetorically.

"I think she's just really attentive." Chouji said instead of outright agreeing, "Long-range fighters usually are."

Which meant that Sakura was going to have a harder time sinking in a genjutsu since both Temari and Kankuro knew what she was capable of. That severely limited their options since Chouji was strictly close-range in his abilities, and Temari was not about to let them get close enough to make that work.

"Chouji…" Sakura said, mind turning quickly to try and come up with a solution. It wasn't a complicated look underneath the underneath Shikamaru special, but it was something she had plenty of faith in to request, "Use the Multi-Size Jutsu again for me and-…" She trailed off to quietly whisper the rest of her idea to him. It was good enough to get his eyes to go wide and get a firm nod from him that this was the move to make.

"Baika no Jutsu (Multi-Size Jutsu)!"

Once again, Chouji's mass expanded to that of a giant, though still smaller than the first time he made use of the jutsu in the ongoing battle, completely demanding attention as his body grew to unreal proportions.

Temari however, was not impressed, "This again? I can still cut you up from here no matter how big you are, and none of that will stop Kankuro from poisoning you." She was about to show this firsthand with her next move until something terrifying happened.

She saw Chouji grin evilly and place his hands together in the form of a hand-seal that she knew from doing battle with the most prolific user of the jutsu it was affiliated with in the past. Chouji's hands were stuck in the position for calling upon the Kage Bunshin technique.

And right before her eyes, seven Choujis, all as tall as trees with four times the girth surrounded the clearing, all glaring inward at her and Karasu.

Did everyone in Konoha know how to use that goddamn technique like that? As far as she knew from the fact that her village had a few people that could use the jutsu as well, even making one was extremely dangerous due to it carving up your chakra evenly between each clone, but here were six clones, splitting the Akimichi kid's chakra seven ways.

"Kankuro!" Temari shouted as she saw all of the Choujis lift their glowing blue hands with strange markings on them. She couldn't target them all, she couldn't do anything about the ones at her backside, and she couldn't dodge what that would do to the ground around her even if she could avoid the crushing palms themselves.

"Got it, just hold on!" Kankuro cried out, willing her to simply wait on him while he did something. Even if she couldn't attack them all, he could, "Kurohigi: Rakka Sora (Black Secret Technique: Falling Skies)!"

The sound of something large being launched into the air gave way to a very large container of some sort flying up into the night sky. Once it reached a high enough altitude, it exploded. Temari immediately swung her fan upward, because she knew what was happening and that she had to protect herself.

If she hadn't right when the pod exploded, she would have been impaled by a spike half her size in less than a second.

The entire open area of the battlefield was covered in the large spikes impaling into the ground, the trees, it was all a gigantic clearing of spikes littering the area. The only clear place was around Temari, since she had protected herself with powerful winds to keep the spikes from killing her.

The thing about it was though, that there were no dead Choujis around either. There hadn't been any puffs of smoke, nor was there a gigantic, dead, original anywhere around her.

What the hell? Those big, fat, slow bastards couldn't dodge that. Once that pod exploded it was instantaneous. The only reason she was able to do anything about it when she did was because she knew what was coming and how fast she needed to be to save herself.

And then it hit her.

"…Little pink-haired genjutsu bitch!"

The only saving grace to being caught hook, line, and sinker in the trap was that genjutsu affected the brain, which thought and worked much quicker than things happened on the outside.

Cancelation of the genjutsu revealed that while it was around twelve seconds while subjected to the illusion, it had been closer to three seconds in real-time. Three seconds where she couldn't notice or react to anything that her enemies were doing. And if it took her that much time to break it herself, how long was it taking Kankuro?

The reason being, that he really needed to make sure that it had been broken by now.

"Nikudan Hari Sensha (Spiked Human Bullet Tank)!"

A gigantic, rolling ball comprised of Chouji's body covered in his own overgrown, spiky hair tore through the stumps and spikes littering the area before he barreled straight into the forest in the direction he saw Kankuro shoot his jutsu off into the air from.

Trees were not an obstacle for this sphere of devastation. He rolled over any tree fool enough to not sprout legs and run away, and cut the trunks to pulp underneath his hair that served as deadly, deadly treads for his locomotion.

"Kankuro!" Temari shouted at her brother, hoping that her voice could break through what influence Sakura's genjutsu might or might not have had hold on him. Speaking of which, a sharp movement from near her blindspot caught Temari's attention and she turned, opening her iron fan to block the stab of a kunai that was directed right at her liver, "How did you do that?"

"I can't give away all of my tricks, even to an 'ally' of Suna." Sakura said as Temari pulled her fan up. She jumped back enough to set up for another move, but she wasn't going to let her swing that fan to cause any wind to fly if it killed her, 'I might not be the best at taijutsu, but if she has to carry that big thing she's got to be centered around backing off and using it from a distance.'

It was difficult to deal with though. Fully open, Temari's fan easily kept her entire body out of Sakura's view. She wasn't going to be stabbing anyone behind that thing. And Temari could always move it right in front of her dexterously to keep her at bay.

If only it was Chouji taking her on up close instead, he'd have just slapped her aside and been done with it. Sakura wasn't that strong. She didn't have any ninjutsu in her repertoire that could bolster her close-range capabilities either.

Temari chortled at Sakura's failed attempts to harm her, "You think I'd carry something this big if I didn't know how to handle it in a situation like this?" Without warning she closed the fan and in one motion proceeded to swing it like a bat at the unprepared Sakura who barely covered up to defend from being struck, "Grow up!"

Sakura's body slammed off of one of the tree trunks that Temari had previously cut down, losing the kunai that bounced out of her grip and away upon impact. She cringed and held the back of her head where it hit, steadying her vision on the fan-wielding maiden of the desert, 'Damn it! I've been doing nothing but keeping her on her heels all fight long and I can't secure anything to win with!'

It wasn't fair. She'd been doing everything right. She'd had her in dire straits twice, but the fact was that she had to get up close to beat Temari, and in close she didn't have anything that would do the trick for certain. Temari could use her fan for wind ninjutsu, to protect her entire body, and as a bludgeoning tool. What was she to do if she couldn't win at far-range and wasn't good enough in tight to do anything decisive.

"Don't you get it?" Temari said, "You're not fighting an opponent with some clear-as-day fatal flaw to their style. Any ninja worth a damn already knows what they're weak at, but they've fixed it enough avoid it being a problem. So unless you're a taijutsu-adept, you're not laying a hand on me sister."

The village of Konohagakure ninja always had it so easy from her point of view, in every way.

Their climate and geography? The most hospitable in all of the nations.

Their standards for a shinobi, even genin? In her opinion they were far more lax than Sunagakure's when it came to that.

Even the men and women that were supposed to be noted as skilled always seemed to be soft to her. Why were they the best and perceived as the strongest? Why did Suna have to play second-banana to them in their treaty? She didn't understand and she didn't want to.

Suna was doing better under the treaty once the idiotic previous Wind Daimyo had been ousted and replaced by their current one, and at the behest of the Fire Daimyo he began supporting and funding the village system better, but even so, they were still seen as inferior to Konoha.

"You think I don't know that you condescending skank?" Sakura said bitingly as she got back to her feet, "It's clear that you're still seeing me and all of our friends the way you probably did when you met us in the chunin exams years ago. But tell me, back then would you have had nearly as much trouble with me as you're having now?"

The answer was a resounding no. Sakura had some neat little tricks back then to get over with, but by and large Temari would have squashed her in short order and they both knew it.

She wanted to say that the danger aspect of Chouji was the reason that she'd lasted so long, but in reality Sakura had been the one keeping her reeling, not the big-boned Akimichi.

"It's funny how you disrespect us and think we're weak because we're from Konoha but you want Tsunade-sama. You saw Naruto and Ino and Shikamaru like that back then too when you fought them in the finals…" Sakura said with a smirk, "Then what happened?"

"Okamaitachi (Scythe Weasel)!" Temari did not need to be reminded of the last battle that she and her siblings ever wound up losing and prepared a wind that would turn Sakura's pretty little body into a set of bloody slabs.

"Nikudan Hari Sensha (Spiked Human Bullet Tank)!"

Chouji flew through the air from where he'd been steamrolling through the forest looking for Kankuro and hurled himself right at Temari, forcing her to divert her winds his way to stop him from annihilating her. The steel-like consistency of the hair that covered his body kept him from getting hurt, but he lost his momentum and plummeted to the ground with a crash.

Temari smirked until she saw a handful of kunai thrown up into the path of her wind storm. Okay, so that happened, "What the hell was that supposed to accomplish?" Temari shouted over at Sakura who wisely hadn't tried getting close to her otherwise she would have failed in that task.

Sakura didn't say anything and just stood up as tiny cherry blossoms floated all over to surround Temari from the air. Those kunai, were those the same ones with the bags attached? Temari immediately placed her hands in the ram seal to break the forthcoming genjutsu that she was certain was going to come her way. She remembered seeing Sakura's coup de grace back in the chunin exams when she defeated that Oto genin Kin and she was not about to let herself get caught in it.

That seemed to be what Sakura was waiting on as she quickly threw a kunai with an explosive tag burning down at Temari's feet. To avoid being hit, Temari lowered the hand-seal and leapt away with her fan, "Heh. This one's not a genjutsu like the first set would have been."

Dread filled the pit of Temari's stomach in that instant, "What?"

"Sakura Fubuki no Jutsu (Cherry Blossom Blizzard Jutsu)!"

The kunai detonated a distance away from Temari, but all of the petals that had been floating all over weren't just petals. Most of them were miniature explosive tags painstakingly designed by the resident seal-adept of the Rookie Nine for use as a secondary trap jutsu.

They all exploded all around Temari in a chain reaction, and she didn't react fast enough to blow them all away after the first explosion ripped free out.

She was at the mercy of blast after blast until it all subsided, leaving the area a smoky, charred mess.

"Wow." Chouji said as he walked over to Sakura after it seemed to be all over, "That cheap-ass, ryo-store jutsu actually worked."

"Cheap jutsu?" Sakura squeaked before punching Chouji in his arm hard, "What made it cheap? The fact I didn't make it come out of thin air or shoot it from my mouth? Oh I know, I didn't change my entire bodily makeup to pull it off, that's what's wrong!"

Chouji wanted to cover his ears, but he had to suffer through it for the time being. He should have known better really. How long had they been a team? He'd opened that can of worms when he'd made that crack at her jutsu and now he had to live with it.

He ran over Kankuro's puppet Sanshouo when he'd been dozing through the forest. He didn't break it, but it didn't move again and it was buried halfway into the ground when he saw it so he was out cold. Chouji had already tied him up. Now they just had to find Temari.

In the meantime he had to listen to Sakura, "Uh huh…"

"No, really! Do you know how hard it is to learn a strong ninjutsu when you're not clan-based? I had to get advice on that one from Tenten!" Sakura continued to complain as she and Chouji began checking over the area for Temari, "I specialize in genjutsu for a reason you know! The rest of you have the weirdest techniques that I could never match up with, except with my own imagination!"

Hopefully they would be able to find Temari before the sun came up, because he needed the change in subject.

XxX

(Sasuke vs. Gaara)

It was taking everything Sasuke had to keep away from Gaara's sand. His efforts went solely into keeping himself one step ahead, and even then it sometimes wasn't enough. He had to remove a limb more than once from the seemingly inescapable trap that was constantly being hurled his way by the expressionless Suna-nin.

He couldn't rely too heavily on his impeccable eyesight alone to do the job for him. That simply wasn't going to work. Why didn't his clan ever invest in protective eyewear? It kind of seemed like a no-brainer now that he was facing this current problem. That probably should have been the first thing they did.

The constant grains of sand floating in the air were Sasuke's saving grace and his primary detriment at the same time.

It was in the air to keep him from outright relying on his Sharingan to anticipate every path of motion that Gaara's sweeping waves of sand would take every step of the way. While it didn't cost Gaara much of his personal sand to do this, it cost him part of his focus. Keeping part of his attention on maintaining that irritant kept Gaara from concentrating fully on putting forth the effort to attack Sasuke at all costs.

'His sand is so much faster than it was back then.' Sasuke had never faced it personally until this point, but he'd seen it active in battle and just as he had grown in physical speed the sand had as well. He got a really good view of it when it chose to slam bluntly into him. Who knew that getting hit with sand would hurt so much?

"You're sweating and bleeding." Gaara remarked coldly. Sasuke could have sworn that he hadn't moved a step since he'd taken control of the battle, "I'm still waiting on the tears and pleads for mercy."

"You're going to be waiting for a while then." Sasuke replied, wishing he had Naruto's wind ninjutsu to blow the stupid sand grains away so he could stop squinting and blinking involuntarily, 'What would Itachi do?' He thought to himself, begrudging himself for even asking himself that question as he kept backflipping out of the way of Gaara's sand.

The thought had merit, whether he liked it or not.

Lightning techniques could pierce the Shield of Sand, though it would have to be one that was actually strong enough to do the job all the way through. Fire _might _be able to cook him on the inside of the shield, but the sand would just snuff it out unless he kept up the flame for long enough to pull it off, which wasn't going to happen.

Option number one it was then.

Well… actually there was always option number three.

Sasuke took some blood from a patch of his arms that Gaara had scraped the skin off of with his sandy attack and bolted through hand-seals instantly before slamming his hand on the ground, "Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!" A nonexistent eyebrow of Gaara's rose in interest at the sight of a gigantic hawk taking flight in the air above from the smoke that had risen from the summoning. Sasuke stood on its back with a confident smirk, "Let's see just what that sand of yours can really take."

"I fail to see what this is going to accomplish." Gaara deadpanned honestly. Sure, Sasuke's hawk was big enough to ride, and those talons were pretty imposing, as was the beak, but it didn't matter, "Just what do you think you can do with it?"

"Don't underestimate a ninja's summons." Sasuke said, rolling through more hand-seals before inhaling deeply, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

Normally a fireball from Sasuke would be dangerous enough by itself, but the moment he fired it his hawk began flapping its wings and kicking up a wind storm to push it forward and spread it out dangerously.

It created a barely controlled firestorm that covered Gaara on all sides, but for as incredible a sight as it was it didn't cause him any harm other than making him sweat a bit from the sheer heat. Was he trying to cook him inside of a makeshift earthen oven of sand?

That was just too much. And the damnable thing about it all was that it was working! Gaara's own choice to limit his mobility in battle was coming back to bite him here and now as the temperature rose rapidly to a frightening degree.

As if he hadn't been using enough sand before, Gaara sent out more than Sasuke thought he had to begin with, whipping it all around and stanching the flames quicker than they would have spread in the first place before sending it Sasuke's way in large, grabby tendrils.

Gaara learned from his battle with Naruto that while giving into the Shukaku made him stronger, he sacrificed control and much of the things that made him formidable to begin with. Losing to Naruto showed him that the tradeoff wasn't worth it and completely abandoned using his tiny Shukaku form, learning to do some of the techniques himself without tapping into too much biju chakra to lose himself.

With a series of hand-seals the sand morphed itself into a head of Shukaku that sucked in wind hard enough to steal the oxygen from the rest of the flames in the area, giving off a whistling, hissing sound as a pressurized ball of air formed at the mouth of the construct, "Fuuton: Rekuudan (Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet)!"

Sasuke saw it coming and his hawk was skilled enough to avoid it when it shot at them in the air, 'If that had hit they'd be finding pieces of my summon falling from the sky in the nearest town. Maybe pieces of me too.'

It wasn't over though. Gaara kneaded more chakra through his sand that began to gather at the Shukaku mouth for another compressed air bullet and began shooting them off, one after another with only enough lag-time in between them to build up more for a new shot.

Going with hawks as his summon creatures might have been the best thing Sasuke could have done given the current situation. He could see how much force those large balls of wind had within them. If they made contact with anything, whatever they hit just wasn't going to exist in the same state any longer.

Sasuke's hawk swooped low enough for one of Gaara's missed shots to wind up in the vicinity of the nearby woods. The moment it touched the first trees in its way it exploded and leveled thirty yards worth of forest in the process.

Right. New plan.

Getting his hawk to go around for another pass, Sasuke dropped down in a position on his animal ride's back to prepare for a speedy rush while forming a Chidori in his hand. The Chidori seemed to extend in length to around fifteen feet, "Chidori Eiso (Chidori Sharp Spear)!" It was weaker in puncturing power than the real Chidori despite its extended range, but from where he was attacking from it would have to do.

From a bit of a distance, the hawk started coming in quickly, with the glowing electric blade stretching from Sasuke's right hand leading the way in front of its head. What was this, a joust? Yeah, it was. Only instead of a horse, Sasuke had a goddamned hawk, and instead of a lance he had a blade of pure electric chakra.

A screaming hawk flying right at them faster than most high-level ninjas could even move would have scared the hell out of most people, but Gaara was not most people.

Gaara's sand formed a thick half dome right in front of his body as Sasuke jumped off of his hawk to allow it to safely bail out without sacrificing itself for the sake of the attack. The carried-on speed that went along with it propelled him straight into the wall and with several almost unseeable flicks of his wrist he cut a hole straight through the sand and barreled straight into Gaara, whom he stabbed clean through.

Holding his Chidori hand out while crouched and sliding to a hard stop, Sasuke's jutsu pushed Gaara up into the end on the end of the electric blade where it then branched while still in his body, stabbing out of him in five different directions.

It then proceeded to crumble into sand, revealing to be a Sand Clone.

"I have to apologize." Gaara commented, having substituted himself with a Sand Clone once he realized that the velocity of the previous move was more than definitely going to best his Shield of Sand, "I said that you could never break through my sand. I see more drastic measures will need to be taken to deal with you."

'Crap.' Sasuke thought as he turned Gaara's way and saw a horrifying amount of sand pouring out of the ground like water from a geyser. It just kept coming, "You can make more?" When had he put together the time to even do such a thing?

Of course. When he'd been firing off shots with the Shukaku's head, Sasuke had been flying around to avoid them for over a minute. But was that really enough time to loosen up the soil enough to make _that_ much sand? Good Lord. There wasn't any way around that.

"I can make so much more. As much as I need." Gaara said as he stood elevated off of the ground by a sand platform while he started manipulating the rest underneath him Sasuke's way with multiple hand-seals that started and ended with him clapping his hands, "I am known as Sabaku no Gaara in Sunagakure. Gaara of the Sand Waterfall. Ryuusa Bakuryuu (Quicksand Waterfall Flow)!"

And with that, Gaara sent every bit of it forward. Sasuke was not going to avoid anything like this. There was no way. Even looking at him from where he was standing, Gaara knew as much. He did his best to run, but it caught up to him and engulfed him entirely, covering over him and burying him entirely.

"Now die for me. Sabaku Taisou (Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral)!" Dropping down from his platform, Gaara slammed his hands onto the ground and let out a shockwave that sent ripples all throughout the sand-covered battlefield.

And that was that.

So why did he hear the faint chirping of birds? And why couldn't he feel a body down there as his sifted through his sand to confirm his kill.

"Kai!" Gaara threw his hands into a seal to disrupt his own flow of chakra and found that the sound wasn't faint, it was loud and clear. Turning around he saw Sasuke standing there charging up a Chidori before streaking his way the moment he turned, "How?

"Eye contact!" Sasuke shouted, alluding to a Sharingan genjutsu as he dashed at Gaara with his arm poised to strike out at him, "Now die for _me_! Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"

Gaara couldn't home his sand in on Sasuke's footing enough to stop him with a wall, even on the now sandy field they stood on. He was too fleet-footed, too quick. And he had the jump on him thoroughly. There wasn't going to be any slight deterrence like some sand in the eye to deter this strike.

Well sometimes one did have to take their own defense into their own hands after all. You couldn't always rely on the basic stuff to get the job done. Just in front of Gaara, a tall and wide replica wall of Shukaku formed, complete with markings on the body from the sand that he had created just as Sasuke's hand shot forward to finish him off.

Even with the Chidori surrounding it, Sasuke's hand did not pierce the gigantic solid shield. It actually broke his hand from the force that he hit it with. Recoiling promptly with a visible cringe that belied just how much breaking all of the little bones in his hand had hurt him, Sasuke backflipped away.

"Do you now see that 'absolute defense' isn't just a catchy title for my jutsu?" Gaara said as he saw Sasuke cradling his Chidori hand, "The hardest minerals that I could find went into that shield. And now you can no longer make hand-seals."

Sasuke winced and left his injury alone. Yeah, his fingers weren't going to be making seals for a while. Even so… "Can that thing move?"

"What does it matter when you're right in front of me? If you go around you will be going to your death either way."

"KEEEE-AAAAR!"

From behind in the air, a massive brown blur plowed into Gaara with one pulverizing, 200-plus mile per hour divebomb, shooting sand high into the air and then a large puff of smoke. True to Gaara's word, his Shukaku shield really was made of the best stuff, because it didn't budge.

That was bad for Gaara though.

Because he'd just been hit with a gigantic summon hawk's full-speed dive from high altitude, and if Sasuke was right about the trajectory it had taken, Gaara wound up being sandwiched between hundreds of pounds of hawk and that damn shield he'd put up.

Granted, that was not exactly what the hawks were meant for since it probably nearly killed it before it sent itself back to from whence it came, but it wasn't his idea to begin with and it seemed to work out for the best.

Just in case though, Sasuke quickly vacated the bit of land that was completely covered in sand. He didn't need any 'beyond the grave' surprises, even though he was sure that someone like Gaara wasn't used to being hurt, and what had just occurred would have had to have been punishing.

As long as he didn't do that full-biju thing that people said he did in the chunin exams after Naruto defeated him, things would be fine.

Still though, he could hear Gaara breathing raggedly and had to hold back from cursing when he saw him walk out from behind his shield.

"How are you not dead after that?" Sasuke asked, not bothering to mince words. Seriously, he really wanted to know. The term 'Ultimate Defense' was really not supposed to be taken as a literal statement.

"My sand cushioned the impact and everything else to go along with it."

"Hn."

"And now your summon is gone, with you out of options."

That was for the most part true. Sasuke still had more techniques left, more jutsu up his sleeve, but he couldn't do them without both hands. Hands as in plural, more than one, minimum of two. His hawk had saved his ass.

Either way, he pulled his gunbai from his back and held it at the ready to do battle once more until he seemed to disappear in a torrent of petals.

…Okay?

In a matter of seconds the petals all disappeared and Gaara was left with the sight of his two siblings tied up with varying degrees of injuries having seemed to be dealt to them and quickly treated before they were moved to that spot. Kankuro was awake and seemingly cursing up a storm behind the gag that had been stuffed in his mouth and Temari was still unconscious.

Without moving from his spot initially, the red-haired, ring-eyed jinchuuriki noticed that Sasuke wasn't anywhere around anymore and he proceeded to uncharacteristically palm his face.

They were so lucky he was past killing the whole 'killing them' phase at this point.

XxX

"I didn't need your help." Sasuke insisted as he and the rest of Team 7 proceeded to run away from Gaara after hoping that tending to his siblings would deter him from immediate pursuit. They didn't seem to be afraid of his presence anymore, so Sakura and Chouji felt that it was a possible out to break Sasuke out of situation, "Just heal my hand and let me go back. I'll finish it."

He was _not_ going to let it stand like that. He had him on the ropes. If he had his right hand back in action he'd be able to find a way to wrap it up. He knew he would. Gaara was a man! Gaara wasn't a machine! He could be hurt!

Damn it, he'd taken forever to turn the tide of that fight and it was over just like that? He felt so robbed!

"That's not a good idea Sasuke-kun." Sakura replied, knowing that Sasuke's idea of finishing the battle would have been potentially lethal, even if Gaara wasn't the one that would have wound up winning, "Even if this wasn't a fight we really started, if we wound up killing the Kazekage's children and the jinchuuriki of Shukaku that would end badly for Konoha."

Full-scale wars had been started over less after all.

Besides, they needed to stop so that Sakura could apply a medical jutsu to his hand, and she and Chouji weren't particularly fans of staying still just in case Gaara ignored Temari and Kankuro and went ahead to chase after them.

"I hate running away from a fight I can win."

"Call it a strategic withdrawal then!" Sakura snapped back in turn. This was not her night. Her relaxing bath had been interrupted and she hadn't even gotten five minutes to soak. Her hair got all wet. She had to fight against some seriously powerful wind ninjutsu and only won because Chouji was punctual and made for a seriously scary distraction when he needed to. Then Chouji insulted her winning ninjutsu. And all of that without getting a lick of sleep in almost twenty-four hours, and sunrise was going to be upon them within three hours, "Problem?"

So yes, she was rather miffed at tonight's turn of events.

Sasuke just stared at her for several seconds until she turned to the side to glare right back at him, "…I think I liked it better when you'd just shut up and wouldn't argue with me." He then turned his eyes straight ahead when he swore that he saw her eyes roll hatefully into the back of her head.

"Can we just get back to Tsunade-sama now?" Chouji asked, stomach growling at the fact that he'd missed his midnight meal due to their circumstances of having to run.

XxX

(Hi no Kuni Countryside – With Tsunade and Team 8)

Kakuzu's fire mask seemed to only exist outside of his body for one reason and one reason only; to seek and destroy Tsunade with extreme prejudice shooting off blast after blast of fiery chakra that erupted upon immediate contact with anything.

"So glad…" Tsunade said tensely, literally outrunning the expanding flames of another shot that was aimed her way, "…I stayed in shape."

"Well what they say about you is true." Kakuzu remarked, keeping his eyes locked on Tsunade to try and find an opening to attempt another attack on her while his fire mask tested her capabilities, "You really are quite difficult to hit."

She could dodge all she wanted as long as she didn't get close to him to try and lay him out with one of those killer punches of hers.

And right on cue she diverted her path right in his direction, either to try and get close enough to hit him, or manipulate his stupid mask into shooting off Katon: Zukokku in his direction before she moved out of the way and left him to survive the shot somehow on his own.

Not tonight.

Of course, before he could do anything, his mindless mask proved itself as he had correctly perceived it to be as it let loose another fire attack at Tsunade's back. And that was fine, it was just that by the time it hit her it would be danger-close to him as well.

The look on her face told him that she knew that full well. The bitch, 'Fine, let's play chicken.' Kakuzu thought to himself, waiting until the last possible moment before flipping through hand-seals to stop her, "Suiton: Suijinheki (Water Release: Water Encampment Wall)!"

Pulling down his facemask, Kakuzu spewed out an obscene amount of water that blew out around him in a circular flowing pattern, highly forcefully. Tsunade was caught between a wall of water in front of her and an oncoming torrent of fire from behind her.

When presented with that decision, there wasn't much of a choice to make.

Tsunade punched at the oncoming water wave with one hand, the other one drawn back in preparation as if she knew that it wasn't going to stand up to her. Indeed it did not, as one punch from her split the flowing wall a path straight through to Kakuzu while the fire behind her ran into the rest of it.

A second punch soon followed that liquefied Kakuzu's head. Well that wasn't right, 'Water Clone.'

"Of course I knew you could muscle your way through that." Kakuzu remarked from a different distance, "Your reputation really does precede you, a little too much in this case. You're much more impatient than Hashirama ever was."

'Kiss my ass you wrinkly rag-doll.' Tsunade thought to herself at that very instant before she felt the presence of a second mask drifting around the battlefield, 'Another one?'

"Raiton: Gian (Lightning Release: False Darkness)!"

A second mask with a deformed bipedal form comprised of black threads charged electricity at its mouth, and Tsunade was surrounded by water from Kakuzu's last jutsu that had been meant to defend him. The electricity fired off in a single, straight bolt that was too slow to hit her directly.

That was the reason for the water.

There wasn't anywhere she could run fast enough to avoid the contact shock from the electricity touching the wet ground. Kakuzu's abnormal eyes danced in mirth as sparks spread freely across the ground and Tsunade's body recoiled and went into spasms while she held back any sounds of pain and anguish she felt from the electricity passing through her muscles.

Ah, it reminded him of money.

XxX

Hinata and Shino would never claim to be experts in their field of the ninja arts. They had seen a lot since they had graduated from the Academy, and they had had their share of successes and experiences, but seeing a man walk straight through fire as if it didn't bother him after watching Tsunade apparently kill him with the damndest heel drop they'd ever seen kind of took the cake.

"Feh." Hidan spat, his own blood covering Tsunade's jacket that she'd thrown over his head to blind him before smashing him into the ground with her foot. He hurled the green apparel back into the fire that he'd just walked out of and faced down the two Konoha chunin that he'd wound up walking towards, "Since I've got to walk through more fire to get to your big-titted babysitter that kicked me, I guess I'll just kill you two for now and hope there's some left when Kakuzu's through with her."

His cloak was in smoking, singed tatters, but he didn't seem to care one bit.

The three-blade scythe in his hand was a little bit more important at the moment.

"I wonder. If I cut you in half would bugs fly out?" Hidan asked bluntly, bloodthirsty eyes staring at Shino before he moved forward to attack him.

"I hope that you don't get to find out." Shino said, hands in the pockets of his hoodie as bugs filtered out of his clothes in abundance, "Bousui no Jin (Spindle Formation)!" They flew at Hidan in a spiral motion to make their trajectory harder to anticipate.

Immortal or not, if he didn't have any chakra, he wasn't going to be able to do anything, even move.

Hidan licked his lips and didn't stop his rush, instead choosing to dive straight through the middle of Shino's spiral bug attack, leading with his scythe, "Gotcha brat!" Upon reaching Shino he sliced him up, but instead of blood his body collapsed into a mass of insects, "What the hell?"

Taking advantage of Shino's Insect Clone catching Hidan's attention, Akamaru dove at him, spinning like a drill to pulverize his body, but Hidan showed off incredible agility and acrobatic ability by deftly backflipping over and out of the way of the ninken's killer attack… not that it would have killed him, but it would have been very inconvenient.

'If he's really immortal…' Hinata thought to herself as she moved in to attack him herself upon his landing, 'I might as well not even bother aiming for an organ. Shino-kun had the right idea in draining his chakra.'

As was previously stated, immortal or not, if he had no chakra he would be useless.

Hidan caught her coming his way out of the corner of his eye and lashed out with his scythe, getting a few strands of her long hair when she ducked the move, "Hakke Kushou (Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm)!" With a thrust of her palm, Hinata blew him back and away with a strike without even hitting him with her hand.

"Little Hyuuga bitch!" Hidan complained as he flew through the air and righted himself upon landing, "I'm _so_ killing you first!"

Hinata wasn't so sure that she could risk an attack like that again. That scythe was long enough to give him the range that even a jutsu like the one she just used wouldn't be able to safely avoid each time, because it was still taijutsu and she needed to be close.

He knew that too, because he was quick to attack her all over again. Shino hurled more insects his way, but a skillful mastery of his scythe allowed Hidan to fan them out of his way without breaking his stride one bit.

It wasn't a matter of trapping or outsmarting a man such as this. That wasn't the issue for one as intelligent as Shino. What could you do when your enemy was such a berserker that it wasn't enough to do so? Hidan allegedly didn't have to worry about dying. And what stronger deterrent was there for a ninja to act than the threat of death?

Instead of swinging his scythe normally, Hidan held onto the cable attached to the end of it and used it like a flail with odd angles of attack gifted to him via this method of battle.

One particular patterned movement came dangerously close to hitting them both, barely splitting the ground between both Hinata and Shino. It was a move of misdirection however. When they both turned their eyes down to the blades stuck in the field the scythe was suddenly ripped back out, turning their gazes forward once more to see Hidan closer than they would have ever perceived that he could move in just one second.

Until then his speed had been dangerous enough to take note of, but they had either severely misjudged his short-range swiftness or he'd been sandbagging intentionally the whole time.

Either way, he was in, with his weapon right back in his hand and a manic grin that let them know he was well aware of how much of a position he had on them. That was put on hold when he saw the living drill that was Akamaru moving on him again, "That goddamned mutt!" Hidan broke off and turned to block the Tsuuga with the pole of his scythe, being driven back before finally deflecting Akamaru off of him with great effort.

But over the wall of flames all over the field came a second drill, coming in far faster than Akamaru had been. Hidan was aware of it and moved to dodge, but he was unable to evade it entirely and wound up getting the right side of his body caught up in the attack.

After smashing Hidan into the ground, jumping out of the attack was Kiba, landing in a very heroic pose while breathing very heavily. He'd run all that way to catch up with them as fast as he could and was very pleased by his own timing.

Seriously, he couldn't have timed that save any better if he'd been waiting for something like that to happen, "Feel free to worship me… now." Akamaru was not shy to do so, immediately bounding up to reunite with his partner.

"Kiba." Shino said, sounding somewhat relieved to find that he was alright and there to help, "Wait. We need you and Akamaru to go on ahead to the bounty station."

"What?" He'd spent all of that time catching up to them and now he was supposed to go ahead? And what about the fight? They were all about to get filleted until he showed up, "I just got here and you want me to run away?" Kiba licked away his own blood from three long cuts he'd received on his arm during his attack against Hidan, "Give me one good reason."

"You're the fastest. Out of all of us. Even the people that aren't here."

Okay, that was a very good reason.

"But what about that guy?" Kiba asked, pointing at Hidan who was beginning to get back up, "That should have killed him. Why didn't that kill him?" He seemed significantly alarmed by that.

"Because he's immortal."

"…And you're sure you want me to leave?"

"Kiba-kun." Hinata said, grabbing a hold of his arm to make sure she had his attention, "If all of us stayed here but none of us could kill him anyway… what would that accomplish?" He seemed at a loss and blinked in confusion, "At this point, all we can do is keep him at bay and hope that Tsunade-sama can defeat her opponent."

Maybe they could incapacitate Hidan, maybe they couldn't. But that wasn't the point.

Someone had to make sure the mission got accomplished. Shikamaru and he had split up the moment he realized that the team had fractured off, separating Team 10 from Team 8 and Tsunade, so that meant that they were the group that was the farthest forward, and that would look to him being the lead man going to the bounty station

"Go, and remove the bounty from Tsunade-sama." Hinata urged him, turning off her Byakugan momentarily to look at him meaningfully, "We'll catch up with you when this is over, or you can return after you've finished. Trust us."

Kiba frowned but nodded and whistled for Akamaru before both of them took off back through the wall of fire that spanned most of the battlefield, "You guys had better not do something stupid like get killed!" He shouted back as he left them.

There wasn't a clan in Konoha that knew of Hi no Kuni's backwoods and wilderness than the Inuzuka. Travelling with everyone else was probably just slowing Kiba down. Alone he'd knock off a quarter of the time he'd have made moving with others at the same distance pace.

Hidan's entire right side was badly torn up by Kiba's last attack, "How many of you vermin are gonna come out?" He asked blood pouring down half of his body entirely, "Any other surprises? Anyone else planning on dropping in that I don't fucking know about? No? Okay, let's get to the fun part!" In his left hand he held up his scythe that had some blood on the blades and proceeded to lick the red fluid off.

Hinata held her hand up to her mouth in shock at seeing someone actually ingest an enemy's blood like that. What was with these people? One with five hearts and a body composition of black threads inside, the other unkillable and bloodthirsty… literally.

These weren't humans. They couldn't be.

And when Hidan started drawing some strange circle on the ground and his skin change appearance altogether she felt serious belief in this fact, "Jujutsu: Shiji Hyouketsu (Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood)!"

XxX

(Miles Away – Decrepit Fishing Village – With Team 10)

Okay, so almost knocking Darui into the next life with pure taijutsu and clone tricks pissed him off. Good to know.

He had a strong ninjutsu base, and this was coming from Naruto of all people.

"Suiton: Hahonryuu (Water Release: Tearing Torrent)!" A whirl of water formed in Darui's right hand before he shot it out at Naruto in a powerful burst that the latter dodged. It wound up plowing its way through every single shack and homes and home in its way, plowing straight into the nearby massive lake that was a geographical trait of the area.

Naruto was impressed, and that wasn't a good thing. Splinters, dust, and old loose fishing equipment flew through the air, clouding the vision of both Naruto and Darui until a gleam of steel could be seen behind Naruto.

Pulling his machete's blade from the sheath on his back just enough to protect his neck, Naruto blocked a swing of Omoi's katana that would have beheaded him. He never thought that he would be the one to complain about something like this, but fighting more than one opponent was annoying.

One was very powerful, and the other one was dangerous enough that he couldn't ignore him or he'd lose his head.

Naruto aggressively kicked Omoi away hard enough to send him sliding right into the lake with a crash, through the pathway that Darui's previous jutsu had created in the small ghost town.

"You can't have Tsunade-baachan." Naruto said, taking his machete back out and pointing it right at Darui, "She wouldn't come with you, so just go home. I'm totally serious and I'm about to get pissed. We've been getting chased by Iwa ANBU, you, and Suna ninjas all night long. I'm so not in the mood to do this right now."

Ino was busy fighting with two other Kumogakure kunoichi, and who knew what else was happening wherever other bad things were going on.

"Sorry, but why should I care if you're in a bad mood kid?" Darui asked, holding up his large cleaver sword to prepare another attack again, "That doesn't mean anything when it comes to bailing on our mission. The Boss would kill us if we just quit like that, and we've got the numbers on you and your girlfriend. Why don't _you_ just quit?" At that moment, Ino's battle against Samui and Karui could be seen by the two men with the three women darting over the rooftops, "Do you really want to take your chances four-on-two?"

Ino seemed to be doing okay since Karui appeared to be utterly focused on getting close enough to cut her down with her sword. The Yamanaka girl was extremely light on her feet in staying away from the attack, lithe, like a dancer even.

He hadn't seen her in battle since returning to Konoha… and she was stunning. So graceful. So much more confident now when it came to her every move. So completely certain that Karui would not, could not hit her. That she was in full control even though the numbers were against her.

She was beautiful.

And Darui could see, even in Naruto's passing glance in the direction of Ino and his own two Kumo teammates, that he was captivated by the girl.

A target was presented.

At best it would end the battle altogether. At worst it would throw Naruto off so badly mentally that he would never recover and would be easy pickings from that point forward. He was talented but he was young, and a young ninja could easily become compromised by his own emotions. All you had to do was find their berserk button.

His was more than likely going to be the pretty little thing fending off Karui and Samui. The look in his eyes was something that he couldn't hide from a shinobi as attentive as him; he was sweet on her.

Getting Naruto's attention once more, Darui quickly rolled through four hand-seals before holding his hands in the final dragon seal, a circle of bright energy surrounded his hands before even more covered them, "Sorry, but we're getting what we need to get." No matter what they had to do, "Ranton: Reiza Sakasu (Storm Release: Laser Circus)!"

'What the hell is a Storm Release?' Naruto thought to himself, preparing to move in order to avoid any potential attack coming his way.

From his hands, through the aiming point of the halo, Darui fired off more than a dozen trailing, flowing beams that Naruto didn't even have to avoid. They bypassed him completely, missing entirely and moving past him to target Ino.

Who was unaware that they were headed for her.

It was a shot that was at least fifty yards away, and she was involved with her own problems at the moment, so she wasn't exactly knowledgeable of something coming her way from such a long range, from Naruto's opponent especially.

"Ino!" Naruto shouted as loud as he could muster, desperate for her to hear him and find some way to avoid an attack with so many angles on her that she wouldn't have had much of a chance if she'd seen it coming in the first place.

She turned upon hearing Naruto's voice yell for her and saw the many laser blasts coming her way from Darui. Her mouth opened in a gasp and she tried to feel for something around that could help her, but her ninjutsu skills weren't destructive enough to dredge up a move that could stop such a thing. She wasn't a powerhouse of a ninja like Naruto was.

Her life flashed before her eyes in the blur of the lights coming her way.

And then she found the building she was standing on collapsing, sending her down to the ground below and forcing Darui's attack to miss. Inexplicably, that and four other entire buildings found themselves sliced down by the foundations.

"Ugh…" A rather disgruntled yet lazy voice said, slowly walking onto the scene while holding his fingers in a rat seal, "Did I really have to blow my whole element of surprise to save Ino like that?"

Shikamaru's shadow slinked back over to him, reeling back in from where he had used it to cut down the flimsy dwellings that Ino and the Kumo girls had been fighting on. Good old Shikamaru. Reliable as hell when it counted.

Naruto's relief quickly gave way to mounting anger as he glared back at Darui and formed a Rasengan in his hand in preparation to attack, 'That jutsu. That's the Yondaime Hokage's signature move isn't it? This kid knows it?' It was pretty surprising, but it was also a well-known melee attack. He had to get close enough to touch him with it for it to do anything.

Naruto wasn't focusing on him though, instead holding out his right hand toward the lake that he'd knocked Omoi into, he added a second hand behind the first and the Rasengan began to take a warped form as he blew ash onto it. It began to develop a grey shell, cracked with specs of hot orange in it, like a dying planet with a visible blue core inside of it.

"My turn." He said with a flash of red to his eyes before they turned back to blue, "Rasentekidan (Spiraling Grenade)!" With one might push of both hands, Naruto sent his strange jutsu out at Omoi who just gotten out of the water and was clearing his cobwebs on the wharf from Naruto's earlier landed blow.

Much like Ino, he did not see this one coming.

Unlike Ino however, there was no one that could move him aside or distort the battlefield in some way to save him.

The Rasentekidan detonated upon contact with the first thing that it touched, blowing up the entire wharf and what was on it in a powerful shockwave that sent ash billowing out from the center of impact. A large, black-sooted figure flew out and fell into the water with a splash, and nothing moved from there from that point forward until a body could be seen floating on the surface of the water.

When Naruto turned his eyes back to face the stunned jounin that he'd been locked in battle with moments before, Darui was forced to look into his eyes which told the whole story, just like they had before to how he was enamored with Ino.

Only this time they spoke in a different kind of manner than the fondness for another that they'd once held.

'You started this when you attacked us. You escalated this when you attacked her. So I'll finish this by any means necessary.'

Those eyes couldn't hide any secrets. Not that he was trying to hide in the least what he was thinking at the moment.

"How could you…" Darui started to say before glaring hatefully at Naruto. If that was really the route that this fight was going to go-, "He never saw it coming! He was defenseless!"

"Ino wouldn't have seen it coming either!" Naruto snapped in return, a blood red cloak of chakra covering his body with two tails of energy visible behind him. His physical features roughened and turned more feral right before Darui's eyes, "Now take him and leave, or shut up and fight!" He barked with a gravelly tint to his voice, "You can't just change the rules back whenever you feel like it asshole! You started this!"

Surprise filled Darui's eyes at the sight of an aggressively assumed chakra cloak for Naruto. He couldn't be the right-hand man of the Raikage without knowing what that was from personal experience, and it left in him a feeling of having screwed up that he couldn't shake, 'A jinchuuriki. This is the Konoha Kyuubi jinchuuriki.'

Granted, he wasn't as famous as the jinchuuriki of most other villages since Konoha had done a very good job of keeping him as under-wraps as they could. But even so, there was no way Omoi would have been ready to face someone like that, even if they'd known that they'd be stepping on one's toes during the course of this mission.

Still, he was a kid. And he wasn't as completely comfortable in his own skin so to speak as Killer B would have been. He was strong enough to handle taking Naruto on. He knew that he was, he just couldn't fight with revenge on his mind or he'd wind up playing into the hands of what a jinchuuriki specialized in, toe-to-toe slugfests.

"Whatever you want kid." Darui said, face hardening into a stony expression, "Show me what you've got."

Both of Naruto's chakra tails shot forward on both sides of Darui to pincer him in while Naruto himself came straight down the middle for a three-pronged attack.

Darui readied himself to move while whipping through more hand-seals before he jumped directly into the air to avoid Naruto's three-sided attack. That wasn't going to stop anything though. All it would do was postpone Naruto's barrage until he fell back down to the ground.

That was what the jutsu was for, "Ranton: Reinbouinzadauku (Storm Release: Rainbow in the Dark)!"

Quicker than the last one, Darui formed the light around his hands and threw it down at Naruto, not surprised at all when he dashed aside and dodged it. That was not the point of the jutsu.

It hit the ground, but instead of exploding or just vanishing it began to spin before letting off dozens of small beams in every direction, quickly synching up to target Naruto and pursue him. If Darui's last attack against Ino was inescapable, Naruto had perhaps thought prematurely as all he could do was turtle up defensively while they started blasting off of his form.

From his point of view, Darui watched his jutsu faithfully chase Naruto down and hammer him relentlessly with so many of the small village's hovels and shacks being annihilated in the process. When the smoke cleared, nothing of those things would remain. Three-quarters of the ghost town was now destroyed as a result of the battle, and his jutsu wasn't even finished yet.

"Naruto!" Ino cried out now that the shoe was apparently on the other foot and Darui was blowing him into the next life as opposed to him doing it to her. Her initial wish was to get up to try and attack Darui herself, but she found herself more concerned with rolling out of the way of a sword strike that cut an entire building in twain.

"He'll get what he deserves and more!" Karui exclaimed, gripping the handle of her sword so hard that her hands were actually bleeding onto the ground, "I guess Kumo really is the only village with a jinchuuriki that isn't a soulless killer!"

'Well at least they've forgotten about Tsunade-sama for now.' Ino thought to herself. And anger was always an emotion that she could take advantage of, "Goldie-kun isn't soulless. For what? Doing what that other guy was going to do to me anyway?"

"That was different!"

"Like hell it was!"

Still angered, Karui attacked Ino directly, looking to cut her asunder with her katana. The lovely Yamanaka girl formed two quick hand-seals and inhaled deeply, "Dokugiri (Poison Mist)!" A dark fog spewed from Ino's mouth, but Karui was quick enough to move out of the way of the airborne substance.

She didn't realize that Ino had expected her to avoid that move the entire time, and angled her attack so that she was forced to go in one direction instead of another. A direction where Ino was already aiming with something else altogether.

Upon avoiding Ino's poison, all Karui got was a quick view of Ino's hands held in a new hand-seal that made it look like she was taking aim at something. Her. Omoi's death made her emotional enough to forget Samui's original advice in dealing with her at the outset of the battle, "Shintenshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Switch Jutsu)!"

Karui's body stopped moving forward mid-stride and violently jerked involuntarily upon having Ino's consciousness supplant hers so that the latter could have complete control of her body. Ino's own body collapsed to the ground, fainting due to the current lack of a cognizant mind in it.

Dropping the katana and looking at her hands as she got her bearings quickly within Karui's body, Ino then frowned as she got a feel for what she had to offer, "I think I was better off staying in my own body."

In the entire block of wrecked homes that Shikamaru had destroyed the foundations of to bail Ino out of danger from Darui's jutsu, the lazy genius managed to locate Samui lying amongst the wreckage of one of them with a rather large shard of jagged wood piercing her left leg.

She wasn't making any loud noises to reveal the kind of pain that she was in, but she would let out little sharp intakes of air to bite back any outcries that might have occurred. It was a very nasty wound and she was doing what she could to nurse it on the spot.

Her eyes tilted up to see Shikamaru crouching down just staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face. The fact that it was still extremely dark in the early dawn probably didn't help her try to read his expression, "So, are you going to kill me?" Like how Naruto killed Omoi.

"Surrender and I won't." Shikamaru said, "I really don't want to have to, but…" He pointed at the sash around his waist before forming a few more hand-seals, "…Me and Naruto? _They_ really made us not care about killing the people we have to fight since they'd kill us first. So I'll do it and won't lose a wink of sleep over it."

Omoi was dead. Karui was indisposed. She couldn't walk, much less run or fight on her injured leg. Darui was the only one of them left and he was still dealing with Naruto. As angry as she was that her teammate had been ended, she had to stay cool. There rightfully wasn't anything that she herself could do to make these people pay.

That, and Shikamaru's shadow seemed to be setting up to impale her from many different directions in the dark, "And you'll allow us to leave?"

"If you leave now? Yes. Ino will stay in that girl's body and take you and yours as far as she can before letting her go of her jutsu."

"As I am I can't walk."

At that moment, a loud noise sounded out from the direction of the lake that the town was initially built right by. No one else was really aware of what it meant, but Shikamaru was. He'd only seen it in person once, but one time was all he needed to remember the feeling that came with it for life.

"Then you'd better hope Naruto's feeling in control enough to win without killing your other friend."

He wouldn't count on it though. Not with the track record that came with it.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – Nearby)

Darui's self-sustaining Ranton jutsu eventually ran out of juice and left the battlefield a smoking, battered mess. But he could still feel that same pressure of anger and harm coming from nearby. It didn't take a sensor at all to locate Naruto. Anyone with half a feeling for malevolent chakra could feel out his foul signature.

Standing out on the lake itself was Naruto, only now he had a third tail available to his fox chakra shroud. His eyes were pure blood red and the entire form seemed to be bubbling. The water around him directly appeared to be beginning to boil and push waves away from his body just from him standing there.

'Focus.' Naruto thought to himself, trying to control his own breathing at all costs, 'You're fine. This isn't as far as you can go. Just be cool.'

Fuu taught him that pure willpower and experience was what it took to control a biju's chakra, and Jiraiya made sure that he learned how to center himself and remain calm on each stage of drawing upon the power before he ever wanted to see him practicing fighting with it.

"…Didn't hurt." Naruto blatantly lied before letting out a cough as his body betrayed him. The chakra had patched up all of the injuries that Darui's last nonstop jutsu had dealt him and the cloak itself had protected him from quite a bit of devastation. But it most assuredly _had_ hurt. Very much so.

"Then why did you tap into more chakra?" Darui asked dully as he walked closer to the site of the fight, "I know what the tails mean kid. Killer B is Kumogakure's perfect jinchuuriki that can use his biju's full power. You can barely tolerate as much as you're using right now."

"Well maybe his biju isn't a douche like mine is?" Naruto replied, feeling a pull on his own chakra from inside and he knew what the reasoning was, 'What? You know I'm right! You're a jerk even when I try to be nice to you!'

"**You know what'd really be nice? LETTING ME OUT YOU WHELP!"**

'But then I'd die…'

"**Well wouldn't that just be a national tragedy?"**

Internal sarcasm aside, there was a conflict still going on. And Darui was wary, but he didn't seem concerned. Naruto wasn't flying off the handle the way that most of history's jinchuuriki were noted for doing when tapping into their fouler chakra.

Yet at least.

That wasn't a good thing. He wanted him to lose control.

"Tell me." Darui said to Naruto who seemed to tilt his head at being asked a question in the midst of their battle, "Do you know what chakra natures you need to create Storm Release?" All he got in return was a look from Naruto, exhibiting that he didn't care, "Water and Lightning." Really? Well it sounded appropriate, but Naruto didn't feel like he'd been getting shocked when it hit him, "You've already seen that I can use one. And guess where you are?"

On a damn lake.

Naruto and Darui seemed to be at a momentary standoff, until Naruto ran for shore as fast as possible, whether Darui was there or not. He saw the man quickly making five hand-seals and forced all three of his chakra tails forward to drill into him to intercept whatever move he was about to make.

Darui had to make an audible and drew the cleaver sword from his back to swing at Naruto's chakra arms, cutting through them with the lightning-infused blade before throwing it into the water.

The discharge stopped Naruto in his tracks before his sandaled feet could touch solid ground, "GRAAAAHHHH!" Lightning was officially his least favorite element. It was the fastest out of the five, and the only thing that hurt more was fire.

He was quite certain that in another reality his dislike for lightning would remain the same for an entirely different reason, but for now he could definitely say that it altogether sucked.

'He won't die.' Darui thought to himself, watching Naruto scream in pain and still remain standing atop the water without a heel or an ankle submerging beneath. He was still able to keep his chakra under enough control to water walk, 'It shouldn't be this difficult to finish someone.' His hands met in the ram seal as he started drawing upon so much chakra that it was visible and black, 'Even a jinchuuriki!'

He had to hurry and kill him. Naruto's own chakra output had grown so intensely visible that his own skin began to burn from it. A black sphere of energy surrounded his body, and broke open with a massive roar/yell, that could have echoed out for miles.

From his body, Darui forced out a large amount of black lightning chakra that took the form of a massive panther, bigger than the first by three times. It looked as if it were alive as it went straight for Naruto.

That roar let Darui know that Naruto had lost it. He'd gone berserk, and now was the time to strike at him and end the battle. Once his ability to reason was lost, the instinct to destroy that made up for it simply wouldn't be enough.

Instead of staying in the water, Naruto's form leapt high into the air, far over Darui's head, and landing on the ground hard enough to break a crater into it upon impact. A massive amount of lake water was covered in black jolts of lightning from where his attack had spaced out upon missing Naruto.

But Darui would wait and prepare another Black Lightning ninjutsu. He would wait for the berserker rush from the lost jinchuuriki, however it never came. There was no desperate rush from Naruto to claim his life. He was just standing there, shaking every few seconds.

Naruto's chakra cloak mixed with his own blood to give it an eerie black and red glow, shaped in a more streamlined fox formation around his body. His eyes were solid white. His teeth were bared, but he wasn't snarling, nor was he hunched or raging. He was entirely focused on his breathing, and it was apparently hard to keep level from the sound of it.

"Yeah." Naruto said, with a drastically warped voice that seemed to be marred with unseen suffering, "Try that Black Lightning stuff now…" He said as all four of his chakra tails shot out in corner positions and began to rotate around like blades on a fan, smashing through the ground easily to make extra space for easier spinning, "…I dare you."

* * *

Omake: Guardian Days 11

(Two Years and Two Months after Shikamaru and Naruto's Acceptance)

"Let me get up." Naruto complained. He'd been confined to his room in the Guardian Quarters for two days after a little… 'incident' occurred a few miles away from the capital city. Luckily Jiraiya had the practiced foresight to take him far, far away from civilization before making him push certain limitations of his, "Come on. I'm fine."

"All of your skin burned off." Shizune said, sitting guard nearby Naruto's bed with Tonton. A watch needed to be kept over him lest he find some way to escape again. For an added measure he was sealed in with tags on the four corners of the bottoms of his bed and the ceiling. He wasn't good enough at fuuinjutsu yet to break it from the inside himself even though his hands were free, "You're not getting out of that bed until Tsunade-sama gives the okay."

Jiraiya was a jerk sometimes. And all of the other Guardians sucked too, Shikamaru included, for not letting him out. He tried to summon something so that he could send a message to Gamakichi to reverse summon him out, but the barrier blocked space-time ninjutsu.

"I don't remember that."

"Of course you wouldn't from what we heard."

"What happened?"

"You kind of almost rampaged toward a village and destroyed it." Shizune seemed extremely uncomfortable in informing him of that fact, as signified by the shifting of her heeled-sandaled feet even while sitting still in her chair. Even Tonton oinked concernedly.

"…"

Naruto didn't say anything, because how the hell did you respond to something like that? So _that_ was what Jiraiya and Fuu had always kept talking about when they said that he could wind up relinquishing control of the Kyuubi's chakra? Yeah, it had been difficult to keep his head when he started using more, but he never figured he'd actually lose it.

Wow.

"Uh..." Naruto said, licking his lips while wondering what to say next, "Well, I've just got to learn how to work it out and control it to that point then don't I?" He asked, trying to keep things positive while wondering just what kind of a beast he became when he'd gone under, "The next time I'll-."

"No." Shizune said, immediately cutting him off, "No, no, no, no, no. No 'next time' for that. Never again. Do you know what you did to yourself, aside from going on a tear?" The blank look on Naruto's face answered the question, "Your chakra was so intense that it burned through your skin. You were destroying your own body and healing it so quickly… the constant creation and destruction of new cells shortened your life."

"But I'm an Uzumaki, so…"

"That doesn't mean you can just cut chunks of years off of your life whenever you feel like it!" Shizune actually got up and threw her own chair at Naruto, and because the seal only stopped things from getting out and not from getting in, so that they could feed him amongst other things, it sailed in but didn't get out again, much to Naruto's consternation, "Kami, you're just as bad as Tsunade-sama! You two really _are_ related to each other!"

She realized that she'd presented Naruto with some extremely new information that she wasn't the one to rightfully inform him about. All he did was stare at her with a wide-eyed, confused expression, "Say what now?"

Shizune just started edging her way out of Naruto's room with Tonton in grasp, "I'll go get her. I think she'd be better to talk to you about this than me."

As curious as he was, Naruto accepted this. Shizune wasn't a pass-the-buck kind of person and had his complete, unconditional trust, thus he accepted this. Even so, "Okay, but can I ask a question before you leave?"

"Yes."

"Why is _she_ here?"

The 'she' in question was the Shizuka girl that wanted to take him home with her not too long ago. Word had it that she'd been hanging around in the capital after their first run-in, but he hadn't seen her since. And yet here she sat, confidently in seiza at the foot of his bed, looking right at him with an unreadable expression of partiality in her eyes.

Shizune pitied the boy, but there was a reason for it, "She is a high-ranking diplomat from Nadeshiko Village, so she was able to negotiate a stay within the court as a good-faith guest of the Fire Daimyo."

Damn it! That old man was so easy to sway with pretty words. He was a nice guy and good at his job of ruling more often than not, but any half-assed speaker could influence him if there wasn't anyone to go against them.

Shizune wished him luck and left Naruto alone to go retrieve Tsunade. The girl couldn't get him out of his temporary prison without a relatively good mastery of fuuinjutsu, and even if she did, absconding with Naruto like a thief in the night would be next to impossible.

All Naruto could do was sit in his bed and stare at the dark and lovely girl with an odd method of obtaining a spouse, "So…" Naruto started to say, not wanting the awkward (in his opinion) silence to continue any further, "You didn't go home."

"I can do no such thing until I've determined that my would-be husband is unworthy by defeating him." Shizuka said, lowering her head slightly in what could be perceived as a momentary bow, "But I accept the fact that you are more powerful than me Uzumaki-san."

Oh, Naruto had to find a way to excuse himself, because his ego was showing, "Really? Nah. Well, go on if you insist." He said, almost preening like a peacock despite being confined to the limits of a king-sized bed, "Tell me more."

"Really. I cannot defeat a jinchuuriki that can do what you managed to do to the countryside." Shizuka conceded freely, green eyes never leaving his form, "That asserts that you are the stronger of us. My efforts will now be focused on getting you to return to the village with me. We will be wed as soon as possible."

Okay, that really made him lose the overinflated self-esteem and then some. She already didn't seem to care that he figured that he would be a terrible significant other, so he had to try to appeal to other avenues of escaping this fate, "What if I said I had a girlfriend already?"

A fire set itself in Shizuka's eyes as she brandished a trio of kunai between her fingers, "Then I will have to emphasize to her that I am the only kunoichi worthy of betrothal to someone this strong. Do not concern yourself with such a trifle. I know that you will be very happy once we return home. What is this girl's name?"

'No! I am not going to some other village, especially one with customs like this!' Naruto thought to himself frantically. Granted, at the moment he was totally safe, since she couldn't just snatch him up and leave lest she begin a war, but she could always talk the Fire Daimyo into it. That was a very realistic and terrifying chance.

"So what is the name of this other girl so that I may prove my superiority over her?"

Naruto's first idea was to say 'Kotoko', but that would be infinitely too vindictive. It would solve his problem more than likely, but it was far too cruel of a fate to inflict on a young woman just trying to fulfill the customs of her home.

No one deserved to die like that, even if he had been in the malicious mindset of putting Shizuka to sleep forever, which he wasn't. Kotoko would try to butcher her from the outset without even asking why she'd been challenged or attacked, and she'd do it with a lovely smile on her face that would make it all the more chilling.

So why do that?

But she was waiting on an answer, eyes filled with hope that it would be something she could handle that would prove to him that being wed to her would be for the best for the both of them.

He had to give her something. Even if it was something that she could never try to go for, for whatever reason. And only one name filled his head due to some of the letters that he could still see on his nightstand by the bed.

"…Ino." Naruto eventually said, trying to keep an even expression on his face to hide the outright lie, "Her name is Ino." Any further conversation had to come to a close as the door opened to reveal Jiraiya poking his head in, "YOU!"

"Yes, me." Jiraiya deadpanned as he walked into the room, "Is that how you thank the man that risked life and limb to keep you from renaming a village into 'Big Smoking Crater in the Ground?'"

"No, that's how I thank the man that got me engaged." Naruto replied, crossing his arms over his chest, "I mean it's not her fault, and it isn't mine either. Seriously, what am I gonna do, stop being awesome?"

"I feel the same way every day." Jiraiya replied, noticing that the Nadeshiko Village girl was still sitting seiza on the floor in front of Naruto's bed, "Mmm." He said to himself, sizing up the lovely young lady. And she actually openly wanted to get with his student? "…You know, if you did go I could still train you and everything. I can go wherever and do whatever I want after all-."

In response, Shizuka's eyes lit up and Naruto leapt at Jiraiya with intent to tear him apart, but the seal holding up the barrier around his bed came into play and an invisible wall caused him to collide with seemingly nothing headfirst. The chair that Shizune had thrown at him earlier then came into play when he picked it up and tried to break free of his jail with an impromptu weapon.

'I came here to let him out since Tsunade-hime finished checking over the damage that the four-tailed form does to him…' Jiraiya thought, stroking his chin in contemplation while Naruto continued to wail away at nothing with a piece of small furniture, 'But if I let him out he's just gonna come after me with that chair, and I don't want to beat his ass right now.' Jiraiya mindlessly touched at a still fresh and sore scar that lay behind the confines of his shirts.

Maybe loosening the seal for access to more power wasn't the best idea yet? Because he was extremely aggressive.

Oh well. He'd get over it.

* * *

Jutsu List

Kurohigi: Rakka Sore (Black Secret Technique: Falling Skies). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. From the mouth of his Sanshouo (Salamander) puppet, Kankuro propels a heavy pod into the air that contains a large amount of heavy spikes. Hundreds. The pod will explode and send the spikes shooting all over to cover the battlefield. As it is the technique of a Sunagakure ninja, the jutsu is most effective in the desert, where cover from such a devastating attack would be perfectly nonexistent, but when taking on large numbers of enemies it is still a highly effective attack that can 'thin the herd' on any sort of terrain, not just in open areas.

Magen: Osore no Kagami (Demonic Illusion: Horror Mirrors). C-rank genjutsu. Creates copies of an intended target, but not in a similar manner as a common Bunshin. The copies created can be of anything in the area; people, objects, etc., and after the initial illusion takes hold on a foe(s) they can then be freely manipulated and distorted to the user's liking. This should be exercised with caution. Treating the manipulation of the illusion too cavalierly will result in the enemy seeing through it. The illusion(s) cannot cause physical harm to the enemy. It is only a jutsu intended to fool them.

Rasentekidan (Spiraling Grenade). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. Using the principles of shape manipulation that come with the original Rasengan, the user (Naruto) combines that with the nature transformation of the ash-based ninjutsu to allow the Rasengan to maintain its form away from the body, turning it into a projectile. This is fortunate since it can only safely operate as such, as it explodes upon contact with anything else. While not an incendiary, it will release the power generated from the Rasengan process in a shockwave and will send large amounts of scorching hot ash and tar all over for a splash-damage 'smash-and-burn' type of effect.

Ranton: Reinbouinzadauku (Storm Release: Rainbow in the Dark). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. A fire and forget attack in the branch of techniques known by those with the Storm Release kekkei genkai. The jutsu after leaving the hands of the user will be self-sustaining for the life of the technique, firing off smaller energy beams that will hone in on the nearest formidable target, discriminate by the level of chakra of the would-be victim.

* * *

**This update comparatively took a while because it was extremely battle-heavy. But there is a reason for what is happening. I had to do the characters fighting justice in their battles and you know… manufacture a genjutsu-heavy based fighting style from scratch for Sakura who is wholly differently trained in this story. **

**Man, everyone in Naruto is just so diverse and even people in the same clan and whatnot have entirely different ways of handling combat situations. That's huge for someone like me that's trained to break down what someone is doing and why something is happening in real-time. I love that stuff.**

**Seriously, say what you will about Kishimoto these days with how he's closing the series out (and I've heard it all), but the foundation he laid for the whole thing was **_**impeccable**_**. Absolutely impeccable. And I'm just talking about the technique potential, not even the setting of the universe itself. Oh God, it's all just so rich. It's layered, it has depth. **

**You can do almost anything you want with the world, completely original in story content, but keeping with the context of what we already know about it and expect from it.**

**And it's given me a new idea for a story set solely in the Naruto universe damn it. **

**Another epic too if my rolling footnotes are to be believed, but thankfully I will put it aside and won't touch it until I finish the Sealed Kunai which should wrap up in ten to twelve chapters if my estimation of what remaining development I can fit into chapters is spot on. **

**I think I might just knuckle down with my free time and see if I can wrap that one up to go ahead and finish it. But that's aside the original point.**

**So… while I'm veering farther off-topic, I've been reading a **_**lot **_**of Nathaniel Hawthorne lately, and I think it's fucking with me. **

**Seriously. Nothing good ever happens to the characters in his short-stories. That's usually the hallmark of most short-stories, no real happy ending, but damn. I've been through like thirty of them and the only one that had kind of a decent ending was 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux'.**

**Such a buzzkill. But they're still just so technically magnificent. I can't stop. The description in his stuff is awesome. Not like Hemmingway. Hemmingway doesn't describe shit. In actuality he doesn't really have to, but still.**

**And now that I've alienated my readers from what I'm talking about to a significant enough degree I feel it's time for us to part ways for now. Until next time, is Naruto really in control of the infamous four-tailed form? What will become of the new victim for Hidan's curse jutsu? What's going on in Konoha with the manhunt for the spy stressing out two sides of the same coin?**

**What's that smell!? **

**Ooh, that smell! Can't you smell that smell?**

**There's something wrong with me.**

**Kenchi out.**


	56. Without A Fight

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Deep, bored inhaling really hurts with cracked ribs, so don't get bored when you have several busted up ribs. It really doesn't work out too well.

**Chapter 56: Without A Fight**

* * *

Gaara was not pleased.

That was possibly the understatement of the week.

To find both of his siblings had been defeated while he had only suffered one blow in his battle with a very skilled opponent that he was about to completely overrun. For Kami's sake he'd given himself so much sand to work with on that battlefield, there was no way he'd have lost. It would have been mean and very inaccurate to say that most of the talent in the family drifted his way, especially when that was partially due to the Shukaku being within him, but damn it.

"What have I told you all?" Gaara said as he moved through the trees with Temari and Kankuro to catch up with the Konoha team that had escaped from him but left his brother and sister behind, decently healed up, "Underestimating our enemies… is being burned once not enough for you two?"

Being rebuked by Gaara for their mistakes was much better than having to plead with him for sparing their lives, but it was still very annoying

"It was a fluke Gaara." Kankuro said. He had a right to be pissed off. He'd broken a genjutsu only to find that his puppet was about to be crushed by a giant, spiky ball. Sanshouo wasn't crushed, but it did get mushed into the ground, and he did get knocked out from it, "They didn't even kill us."

"They didn't kill us because they don't want to raise an issue with Suna." Temari said, glaring to the side at her face-painted brother, "Even if we're just ninjas intruding on their mission, we're still the Kazekage's children. That does mean _something_ out there, even if it doesn't seem like it to our father."

"My opponent tried to kill me." Gaara said calmly, "I don't think he cared too much about the would-be connection between our villages."

Any fraternal conversation was cut short the moment they seemed to cross a threshold and intense killing intent that most of them had never felt before was placed upon them. So oppressive was it that Gaara had to stop tree-running and lean up against the trunk of one to deal with it, holding his head and moaning softly in pain to himself.

"Gaara!" Kankuro stopped to put a hand on his little brother's shoulder, but at the holding up of a hand, Gaara kept them back, "What's going on? What's with this feeling?"

"It's not Shukaku." Gaara said with a bit of difficulty, "It's… it's Uzumaki and the Kyuubi." He knew of that feeling anywhere, even if it was infinitely more imposing than the first time he'd had to face it, "Why was I not informed that he was on this mission?"

Both Kankuro and Temari looked at each other with varying degrees of skepticism. Temari could have told him the moment that Team 7 had shown up and Gaara had arrived in chase of Sasuke and Kiba, but… "Honestly Gaara?" Temari started to say, "Because we figured that you'd drop everything and go after him instead of stay on task."

"Who do you think I am?"

"A guy that's really pissed off about the only fight you ever lost." Kankuro answered despite Gaara's question being rhetorical, "You kind of obsessed about it for a year straight, even after we got promoted past genin. You wanted to turn it down and go to the next chunin exam in case he showed up again so you could kill him then."

"I did not obsess."

"Yes you did." A glare from Gaara got Kankuro to back off a few steps but he kept his position, "Killing me isn't going to make it any less true."

Without another word, Gaara leapt off in a direction completely different from the one they'd been tracking Team 7 in, much to the consternation of his siblings who had to follow along to keep the squad together, "Gaara." Temari urged, trying to use some kind of authoritative tone with him.

"We do not know that the team with the Uchiha in it is going to where Tsunade is." Gaara said in an effort to reason, "They could be decoys. If I were running a mission I would keep the most capable and durable fighter with the target. Uzumaki is the best possible choice for protecting her."

"Last time I checked Gaara, that kid didn't have an automatic defense like you do." Temari said, more or less deriding the idea of Uzumaki Naruto being anyone's main protection in a security or escort detail.

Gaara's eyes flickered in her direction before turning back in his intended direction, "There isn't very much need for defense when you can tear apart whatever is in front of you with brute force." Then why the hell were they going that way in the first place?

The answer was because Gaara wanted to see. It was rare when he ever got to see another jinchuuriki in battle, and Shukaku was screaming for him to go and prove that just having one tail didn't make him weaker than Naruto's biju.

Gaara wasn't going to open that can of worms… maybe. He just wanted to see what growth his reviled enemy had taken on over the last few years.

"Get down and behind something!"

A sudden blast of air flew their way, and it was only due to Temari's early warning that they weren't blown haplessly off of their perches. Due to the heavy debris flying past their places of hiding they were all certain that if they hadn't been warned in advance they'd be hurtling back through the woods bonelessly hoping they didn't smack fatally off of something solid or jagged.

"What the hell?" Kankuro said as he and his siblings dropped from the branches, taking cover behind the trunks of trees as the wind howled and weaker trees groaned and cracked under the force of the wind, "What the hell is going on? Temari?"

The only thing he could do was ask their resident wind specialist as to what was happening, "There's no cutting power to this jutsu!" Temari tried to shout up over the wind, "But it doesn't need it! It's strong enough without it!"

She couldn't estimate how fast the wind was blowing, but trying to keep her footing in front of it didn't seem possible in the slightest. She felt that if she'd put her arm or leg out into it she'd wind up with a dislocated limb or a completely lost one entirely.

There were flecks of red that flew right along in the direction of the wind that Gaara could attribute to Naruto.

And he could smell the blood in it.

XxX

(Moments Earlier – With Naruto – Decrepit Fishing Village)

If one could ever recognize the feeling of constantly having one's skin forcibly removed and replaced, they would tell you that it was what hell must have been like, and why would someone willingly subject themselves to such torment for any prolonged period of time whatsoever.

Naruto would not be amongst those people. Yes, it hurt like no other pain that could be comparable in his life, but focusing his willpower on the pain was what kept him in control when he was releasing that level of the Kyuubi's chakra.

A lack of focus outside of taking down an enemy was his faltering point in keeping control of himself in the past with the other stages of chakra intensity. Whatever he was thinking about at the time of utilizing the heightened power would be magnified in importance in his mind once he stepped it up, so if he had been thinking that he needed the power to defeat his enemy or make them pay when he'd been moving up steadily to the four-tailed level, by the time he actually got that far 'defeat' would become 'annihilate'.

Instead, he shifted his focus to how goddamn much four-tails form hurt, to keep him from losing himself. It also helped because it made him desperately wish to hurry up and put an end to the fight that forced him to go that far to begin with, so that he could stop with the self-induced torture.

Naruto's tails had carved a trench into the ground behind him with the way that they were constantly whipping in a circle like fan blades, and his solid eyes were focused solely on Darui who wondered why Naruto wasn't rampaging, "You can control it?"

"**Heh, heh, heh…"** The Kyuubi wished that Darui could hear him the way Naruto could, **"He can **_**endure**_** it. Control is too complete a word for what he has. He's too weak to control me."**

"Grr…" Naruto gritted out. It wasn't that he was feral or was trying to give the illusion that he wasn't in control. Being in four-tailed form fucking hurt! He didn't want to waste focus actually using words.

Even though he didn't say anything, he sent out his chakra arms to attack Darui and keep him away while tails started picking up the pace, spinning faster and faster, something that Darui figured he was doing to occupy his mind so that he didn't slip away and descend into madness.

Basically his mindset was that if he could stop the motion of the tails and make Naruto focus back on the fighting, he'd have a berserk jinchuuriki to deal with. Kumogakure knew how to deal with those well enough. That meant that Naruto was about to receive another attack that he couldn't dodge.

After managing to fend off Naruto's chakra claws with enough agility to escape their impressive range, he squared up and decided on a ranged ninjutsu attack, "Ranton: Reiza Sakasu (Storm Release: Laser Circus)!" From his hands he formed a gigantic orb of light that shot off dozens of branching light beams aimed right at Naruto.

Naruto did move away from the swift-moving ninjutsu, allowing his tails to somehow bat away each shot that had been aimed at him when he was able to alter the fan pattern of his tails in front of his body. Contact with even two should have killed another shinobi, and factoring in that Naruto wasn't normal even then he should have been devastated with the amount that made contact.

Darui didn't understand how they didn't affect him and shock him, even through the chakra tails, at least until he felt his hair begin to blow. There shouldn't have been any wind that night. There hadn't been any wind that night until right then, and it was steady… and getting stronger.

The wind was being generated by Naruto's tails as at the ends of them he was creating a gust and using the propeller motion to blow outward. It was the basis of the first wind jutsu that Asuma had taught him as a genin, only meant to do something entirely different.

The speed and the wind picked up to the extent that Darui had to cover his eyes with his arms to keep debris from around the half-destroyed fishing village from getting into them. He stuck himself to the ground with chakra, endeavoring to stand up and face whatever this was, somehow, 'Wind Release? He _would_ have the elemental nature that trumps mine wouldn't he?'

As the wind picked up, a jet noise could be heard and Naruto took that as his cue to raise his hands up and form a more resolutely powerful incarnation of wind chakra. With a forceful grunt the length of his tails expanded, as did the width to the actual shape of circular fan blades, as they continued to spin, "Fuuton: Akao Shimpuu (Wind Release: Red-Tailed Typhoon)!"

A well-aimed directional subsonic blast of air blew forth in a controlled funnel, leaving a destructive trail in its wake. Darui tried to dodge around it, but Naruto could turn to aim without stopping the blurry whirling of his tails whatsoever. So intense was the exterior of the funnel that it effortlessly stripped the soil five feet down. Everything close around him in the path got chunked up into mulch and was sent forward along with the wind and the red glow of his chakra.

A dark chuckle could be heard as clear as a bell in Naruto's mind, **"Very good Naruto. Not quite as good as I would have done with the same level of power at my disposal, but not quite a disappointment either. You left your mark on this land I would say."**

XxX

Watching from a safe distance away from the battlefield, Samui had to watch in silent awe when she saw the destructive force of one jutsu. She was quite certain that such a jutsu could destroy the majority of an entire sector of a modern village in a circular pattern if he aimed it around himself.

Fortunately he wasn't aiming it in a general circle. It was being fired away from them. At Darui. And he wasn't turning anymore to track and aim at him, which meant that he'd caught the man up in the blast.

That… wasn't good.

The blonde Kumo woman couldn't believe it. Only years of maintaining the cold façade that was her usual demeanor kept her from giving her poker face away, but it was a struggle to keep from showing on her face that she was very much affected by this.

He couldn't be dead. Darui was the right-hand man of the Raikage, basically his closest confidant. A master of Black Lightning that he was taught by the Sandaime Raikage, Storm Release aside, he was a ninja that many in Kumo looked up to.

To think that both he and Omoi could be-. No, she didn't want to think about it. And it was actually a good thing that Karui was out of it. Losing Omoi was enough of a major blow to her psyche. To realize that Darui had been finished, it would be hard to consider how she would react to that, but it wouldn't have been in a calm manner.

Karui's jaw dropped at the sight of the damage, though it was really Ino's psyche inside of her body doing it, "Is that really Goldie-kun?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Shikamaru said, wiping a bead of sweat away from his brow as he saw Naruto immediately bringing out the big guns to put the fight to an end, "The sooner he gets out of that the better, but the damage is already done."

"What damage?"

"The part where his skin gets burned through because the chakra is so intense." Shikamaru said, staring at his partner seriously, "That's not just a chakra shroud. That's his blood mixed in with the chakra."

"WHAT?!" This was the cost for the power of a jinchuuriki? None of that used to happen when Naruto utilized the chakra. It didn't happen in Mizu no Kuni,

Samui kept quiet and reserved at Darui's demise, but she tucked this information away for posterity. They were doing a good job of refraining from saying it around her while still getting across the point of how dangerous Naruto's four-tailed form was, but she knew enough about jinchuuriki due to the two famed ones in Kumo to recognize this much.

That if using the chakra caused that kind of harm, he didn't have complete control of the Kyuubi's chakra. He was an imperfect jinchuuriki.

Killer B, Kumo's most powerful jinchuuriki, was perfect. Nii Yugito, while without the flawless control that Killer B had, still had greater control than this boy Naruto had. Their 'Version 2' forms engulfed their entire bodies like Naruto's did, but it _did not_ hurt them the way it did him.

If only, if only.

If only Konoha had put this Uzumaki boy through the paces that Killer B and Yugito had been put through at young ages to control their respective biju. He was able to kill Darui on his first attempt after tapping into his Version 2 level of power.

Had he been properly given instruction for handling that awesome power within him sooner than the age of twelve… but that was not the case. Coming that far in only three years when others took at least a full decade to grow that powerful.

Still, Killer B and Yugito were beyond him. This she believed with all that she was. This display did nothing to make her believe otherwise.

'This mission is a complete and utter failure.' Samui thought, closing her eyes as if to shield them from the truth of what she had to accept, 'We cannot defeat them, not with what they have fighting with them, and we cannot complete our original assignment.'

She herself was injured to the point where she needed healing to walk. There wasn't going to be any way that she and Karui would finish their mission, even if they had managed to win at this juncture.

Shikamaru looked around and deemed it all clear before sticking his fingers in his mouth and letting out a loud whistle to get Naruto's attention, "Naruto get over here and turn that damn thing off!"

Ino in Karui's body recoiled and took a step back upon looking into the solid white eyes of Naruto's four-tailed form. So soulless. And then she barely saw him at all as he blazed toward them, chakra flaring wildly.

"Naruto, that's Ino!"

Naruto slid to a harsh stop, dragging a trench into the ground and coming to a halt just within reaching distance of Ino. She could feel the sheer heat from the chakra as if it were an open flame. She reached out a shaky hand to try and touch his face when she felt Shikamaru's hand grab hers (or Karui's in this case).

"It's not hot just for show." Shikamaru said, "It'll burn you, badly. It's toxic. Now turn it off already Naruto. It's killing you."

"Oi, don't try to hurry me up." Naruto said, gritting his teeth as his tail swished around to try and occupy his mind, "You're in a real rush to see me suffer aren't you Shika?"

Fool, it was because he _didn't _want to see him suffer that he wanted him to return to normal, "Okay, walk around glowing like a damn lantern until dawn and knock fifteen years off of your lifespan." Shikamaru said, "It's not like you don't already hurt like hell. Look at you. You can't hold still for half a second you're in so much pain."

Naruto just turned and stared at Shikamaru before turning over to Ino. He really wished that she didn't have to see this, but… well he was going to have to undo it eventually. Seriously, the longer it stayed on, the worse things were for his lifespan. The only reason he used it was because Darui was a powerhouse, and they didn't have the time for him to try and fight with him for too long. Their mission was to stay with Tsunade.

Never say that Shikamaru wasn't intelligent though, in more matters than just battlefield strategy, "Ino, take that girl's body and get the other one on their way out of here. I told her that we would."

Ino (in Karui's body) looked as if she wanted to protest, but he had given his word in order to detain Samui peacefully that if she didn't try anything funny they would let them go, "…Okay. But the moment I get them far enough away I'll be right back in my body got it? I won't be long."

With that she went over to Samui, and the defeated Kumo kunoichi could do nothing more than allow Ino to lift her up piggyback style to begin carrying her away, "My comrades…" Samui said, "What about their bodies?"

It was too much to ask that she request their bodies back. A ninja's body could divulge very important secrets in autopsy.

She was on the losing side of this conflict, and the loser couldn't dictate terms, but again it couldn't hurt to ask. What was the worst that she could say, no?

"You can have them." Ino said, surprising Samui. Her voice sounded quite hollow as she explained, "This wasn't a battle we wanted to fight. I know it's not protocol, but if I lost one or two of my teammates in one mission… especially since one of them was on your genin team wasn't he? So was the girl I'm in right now."

She remembered of course, because there was no way she could ever forget anything about the chunin exams that they'd originally come across each other in, even if they didn't meet directly in those days.

"We'll find their bodies and seal them away on the way out."

It was a small mercy after Naruto had decimated two of them at least. Even if she was absolutely certain that the same wouldn't have been done for them had the positions been reversed.

XxX

"You're an idiot, you know that?" Shikamaru asked as Naruto lay on the ground, missing the top layer of skin from his body, "Trying to be macho and not let Ino see you like this… she could have healed you before she left."

"Kiss my ass." Naruto said, extremely grateful that despite not having a top layer of skin on more than half of his body he wasn't bleeding profusely. Once again, it hurt like hell though, "I don't need you telling me how to deal with the fallout from my own stuff."

"The way she makes you act sometimes is troublesome." Shikamaru said, taking enough mercy on Naruto's current state of being to stick a cigarette in his mouth and light it for his friend, "I'm not saying that using the Kyuubi's chakra was the wrong thing to do, because it wasn't. That guy was tough and we didn't have time for saving any tricks. But you went four-tails Naruto. What did we agree on about that?"

"Unless I'm absolutely sure someone around me's gonna die and I don't have another choice, don't fucking transform." Naruto said as if he were recanting something he'd been told several times already. Jiraiya, Tsunade, Shizune, every single guardian, and Shikamaru as well said as much to him.

"-Don't fucking transform." Shikamaru repeated in the third person, "Exactly. And why'd you do it here?"

"Because three-tails wasn't getting the job done?"

"How would you know? You barely stayed in three-tails to fight him." Shikamaru said, calling him on it as he had seen it, "You saw that lightning guy take a shot at Ino, and you were still pissed about it even after you finished the Omoi guy off."

"I didn't get pissed."

"You did get pissed. You're still pissed about it right now. Stop being pissed! You killed him!"

"**It felt good didn't it?"** The Kyuubi chimed in from within Naruto after Shikamaru had given his last statement. What, did he mean losing an entire layer of skin? Hell no that didn't feel good, **"I mean to destroy your enemies like that. Just imagine how it would have been if you'd allow yourself to slip further, or yet, give me the reins. I'm more experienced at matters of destruction than you."**

Yeah, but there was the entire matter of the fact that killing people didn't make him feel good, even after an intense battle like with Kimimaro and Itachi where he'd earned the win with blood.

'We'll talk later.' Naruto thought to his inner biju before addressing Shikamaru, "I'm going to blame it on a lack of sleep and nicotine for as long as we've been on this mission." He said, breathing smoke out past his cigarette. "I'm fine now. Seriously. I'll tighten the seal back after the skin grows back on my stomach if it'll make you feel better." A growl then went off in his head, 'We'll talk about it later.'

He wasn't going to tighten a damn thing back up. That was for Shikamaru.

"The seal's not the problem." Shikamaru insisted with a sigh, "I know you can handle the seal. No one our age is going to be better with them than you. It's your head when Ino's around. You've been weird ever since we got back."

Weird? What was weird to him? Naruto didn't think he was being weird. But he figured he was being normal by his own standards. He did get pissed and he knew that he did. Even right then he felt terrible about how he reacted. Ending a life the way he ended Omoi's. It was brutal.

"Seriously, I'm not mad anymore." Naruto said, sighing before wincing at his wounds, "It's fine. Look, can we just finish the mission? I just killed two people and I feel like an ass about it." Life of a ninja or not, killing someone never made him feel victorious in the aftermath, it made him feel terrible, "Sitting here, talking about chick problems that I may or may not have ain't gonna get us back to Tsunade-baachan any faster."

"Tch." Shikamaru rolled his eyes and, "When Ino gets back to her body she can heal you, then we can go. She's going to bitch you out after she sees you like that, but that's your problem." He noticed Naruto's eyes sharpen up and tensed up himself, "What's wrong?"

"I feel something else coming."

"Something _else_?"

Both young chunin stood back up and faced the direction that Naruto had chosen to turn in only for it to be occupied in a matter of a minute by Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro of Sunagakure. Both Temari and Kankuro looked cross, and rather worn, which probably meant that Team 7 had been able to handle them to an extent.

Gaara instead was staring directly at Naruto. With his current health issues, Gaara could feel Shukaku screaming in his head to take him down and see what the rest of his blood looked like, **"Kill him! He's right there! He looks worn! Take him out! Finish him off! You know you want to! I want you to! Listen to your mother!"**

Luckily, Gaara's improved relationship with his brother and sister let him learn things about their mother that he hadn't ever been privy to prior, 'You are not my mother. Be silent!' The only indication Gaara gave off of his discomfort in front of Naruto and Shikamaru was a momentary closing of his eyes.

"Gaara." Kankuro said, gesturing his head at Naruto and Shikamaru, "What do we do? He's the one you want to kill isn't he?"

It took a long while, as Gaara just stared Naruto down, contemplating deeply before he finally spoke up as the leader of the squad, "No. Not like this. When I kill Uzumaki Naruto I want it to be with our full power against one another." With that, he took steps in Naruto's direction and stopped within reaching distance of him, but Naruto didn't back up a step, "It has been a long time."

"Yeah, a real long time." Naruto replied, staring Gaara down directly, "Listen, killing me or not, you need to know. Akatsuki. A group is out there called Akatsuki made up of the world's strongest missing-nin, and they want all of the biju, so watch your back."

Shikamaru sent Naruto a momentary look, but realized that one way or another it was best that the other jinchuuriki were informed if they weren't already.

"You want to fight me again as well one day?" Gaara asked, sounding somewhat pleasantly surprised.

"No. I never want to fight you again actually. Are you nuts?" Naruto said in return, "Don't answer that actually. But you seem less… mad at everything now." Less lonely, "And I've killed enough people today."

Gaara knew that. The air was filled with the smell of blood. Granted, most of it was Naruto's since he'd blown the scent over most of the little destroyed fishing village along with his chakra aura, but it still smelled like blood nonetheless.

"Your concern is unnecessary." Gaara said back to him, "If there is anyone out there that wishes to take Shukaku from me… they can feel free to try."

"So now what?" Temari asked, eyeing the motionless body of Ino nearby the two other Konoha ninja, "What about the mission Gaara? Konoha has Tsunade with them right now."

"I care nothing about this mission." Gaara admitted rather bluntly, "It's a vanity assignment that father gave us. Contrary to what he says, we do not _need_ Tsunade in Sunagakure and I am not here to return her home. I simply took this mission for one reason, the hopes of meeting you in battle again."

This sounded strange and farfetched, but it was true. Any high-level mission where it seemed as if Konoha would be involved, Gaara wanted to take it. He wanted to have another chance at fighting against the only person that had defeated him directly before. For three years he did this whenever the opportunity presented itself without the results he wished for.

And now… he wouldn't even be able to enjoy the struggle. And he really wanted to fight him.

Temari and Kankuro knew this, but they didn't know that fighting Naruto outweighed the missions that they'd gone on with him.

"Gaara…" Kankuro said, trying to reason with his brother, "…Dad's going to be pissed at you if you say that to him."

"Then I won't say it. As the Kazekage he should know better than to divert a village resource like a jinchuuriki to something like this." Turning his back and walking away from Naruto, back through his siblings, Gaara got a few more feet away before stopping, "Kankuro, Temari, we're leaving."

"L-Leaving?" Temari questioned. Aborting missions left a sour taste in her mouth, but things had gotten progressively worse as it seemed to all break down. Fighting to salvage something out of getting Tsunade had not gone as well as hoped, and even if Gaara ran the gauntlet of Konoha ninja protecting her, they'd then probably wind up getting on her bad side in the process, "Alright fine."

With that, the odd Sunagakure siblings, children of the Yondaime Kazekage departed the area as quickly as they arrived, eliciting a sigh of relief from both Naruto and Shikamaru.

"I could have taken him." Naruto said after Gaara had departed, "I just… really don't want to fight that guy again, you know?" However this meeting was infinitely more pleasant than the last time they'd come across each other.

"Yeah, I know." Shikamaru said in return.

"Seriously. Give me five minutes, I could have taken it to him."

"Are you trying to convince me or you?"

"Whose side are you on Shika?"

In a matter of minutes, Ino's body stirred on the ground and came back into functionality once her mind rejoined with it, and one of the first things she caught sight of was the current state of Naruto, "Oh my Kami, what the hell happened to you!?"

XxX

(Forests of Hi no Kuni)

Kiba and Akamaru flew through the trees en route to the bounty station that was the target objective, even as the sun peeked over the horizon just a touch. But Kiba was not running, he was riding, because he was unable to continue running any longer.

Seething to himself in pain as he rode Akamaru, Kiba's pants were stained with blood from inexplicable wounds on his legs, "What… the fuck is this?" He said before more shocks of pain jolted through him, "Why am I bleeding? What's going on?"

Grabbing a kunai he cut up the leg to find actual wounds on his body. But where did they come from? The only injury he received was that little bloody nick he took when he drilled that guy with the scythe into the dirt.

"Gah!" Another stab wound found its way into his leg, forcing more blood from the injury. Akamaru whined in concern, but Kiba was not going to stop just because of that," Just… just keep going boy."

What was happening?"

XxX

(Elsewhere in the Countryside)

Shino and Hinata watched as a ghastly-looking Hidan seemed to keep stabbing himself in the leg and waiting on some kind of reaction to come from one of them. Needless to say, both were stunned. Moments ago he acted as if he had them checkmated, and now he couldn't seem to understand why whatever he was doing wasn't working the way he had intended it to.

"Come on." The maniacal Akatsuki member said as he stabbed himself in the leg one more time with a retractable pike and shrieked in pain that he was expecting to be sharing with one of the Team 8 members in front of him, "One of you drop already! Whose blood did I get then? I swear to Jashin, it better not have been my blood!"

"What are you talking about?" Shino asked, still standing at the ready in case this was all just a ploy to lower their guard to get close to them again.

"This is supposed to link me to one of you worthless little shits!" Hidan angrily explained, "It has to be one of you! You're the only ones I've been fighting!"

But it wasn't one of them. Hidan hadn't injured one of them enough to draw blood from them despite his previous unending pursuit until Kiba interjected.

Oh no, Kiba. Before departing, Kiba had sported a few cuts that he couldn't explain getting from his last successful attack on the odd Akatsuki member. Was he nicked by the blades of that weapon in the process? And if he was, Hidan didn't realize it because Kiba had been so quick in his attack and so quick in leaving at their prompting.

This could either be really good or really bad. Really good because he hadn't tried anything fatal that he could survive and Kiba couldn't, really bad because he'd still stabbed himself several times and if he was linked to Kiba he'd have been injured as well.

"Shino-kun…" Hinata said quietly, "What are we going to do?" Kiba was at risk, even if Hidan didn't wound himself any further, they couldn't fight him without hurting Kiba as well… could they?

Shino had been looking at Hidan long and hard, and his gaze had been attracted to around the man's feet, "Hinata, do you see that circle around his feet? What is that?"

Hinata's Byakugan was on, but she had been so occupied and caught off-guard by everything that had already been happening that she almost missed what Shino was talking about, "There's a chakra connection running through that symbol, going into Hidan."

Get him out of the circle first and foremost, and with their abilities, step two would be to destroy the circle. Doing that without hurting him would be the biggest problem presented to them, because hurting him would be hurting Kiba as well.

But if there was chakra running through the circle… maybe they could do something about that.

Shino forcefully clasped his hands together, fingers interlaced, before he moved his arms out in Hidan's direction, "I had this set up in advance… but then this happened. Hijutsu: Mushidama (Secret Technique: Insect Sphere)!" From the grass around Hidan, thousands and thousands of kikaichu rose up around Hidan in the form of a ball that surrounded his body, "You've been checked."

"Ooh." Hidan taunted, faking fear, "You're gonna drain my chakra and yak-yak-yak-yak-yak. So what? You can stab me, burn me, blow me up, suck out my chakra, but you can't _kill_ me! What are you going to do? You'd better make it count."

"Juuho Soushiken (Gentle Step Twin Lion Fists)!"

With his vision obscured by the insects swarming all about, Hidan didn't get to see Hinata moving around the battlefield to a vulnerable point at his back to attack him from. Around both of her hands, two shrouds of blue chakra formed in the shape of lion heads.

'Dumb bitch.' Hidan thought to himself, preparing to take the blow. It wouldn't do anything fatal even if it landed, 'All she's going to do is fuck up whoever I'm connected to.' Feeling a pull on something connected to his chakra, Hidan figured it was Shino's bugs trying to suck him dry, but when he looked down he saw portions of his circle had been ruined by layers of insects in certain places, "No! The connection!"

'He can't possibly dodge this!' Hinata thought to herself as she pushed her arms forward to smash Hidan with her most powerful taijutsu, hopefully in his spine so that she could possibly paralyze him, 'The chakra in the circle is gone!'

"Not fast enough little girl!" Hidan turned on his heel and lashed out with a scarily well-aimed kick to Hinata's face, avoiding her jutsu-covered hands in the process, "Ha! I hope that broke something!"

Hinata's body landed on the ground hard, her head swimming from the boot she'd just received at the hands of the deceptively strong Hidan, 'My strongest attack jutsu failed. So this is how scary an S-rank ninja can be.'

"I'm the slowest member of Akatsuki." Hidan admitted with a smirk as his skin returned to normal from the grim reaper look it had been sporting moments before, "But you're not fast enough to catch me off-guard with something like that."

With a vulnerable little strumpet on the ground prime for attack, Hidan hurled his scythe at her like a flail via the cable attached to it underneath his cloak sleeve. On the ground as she was, she was too good a target to pass up.

"Mushi Kame no Jutsu (Insect Jar Jutsu)!" A large amount of Shino's insects rapidly flew around Hinata's body in a dome formation with a strong enough force to protect her, bouncing Hidan's scythe off of it.

"Not good enough!" Hidan caught the scythe out of the air while running to the insect dome before he began slashing it apart with reckless abandon, "Now let me share some pain with you honey!" As the insects began to dissipate, Hidan lifted his scythe high over head to bring it down on the pale-eyed Hyuuga chunin.

'Almost.' Hinata thought to herself, having gotten back onto her feet with the time gifted to her to recover from Hidan's counterattack, "Now! Shugohakke Rokujuuyon Shou (Protection of the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms)!"

Seemingly like a dance, Hinata spun swiftly, her palms and fingertips nimbly producing a constant flow of chakra that she formed into a sharp net field around her body to protect herself from Hidan's pending attack. Due to the insects of Shino that had been obscuring her to an extent, the thin glow of the chakra was concealed until the scythe breached past them.

The immortal Akatsuki member found his attack not only blocked, but his right arm was severed just under the elbow. Wow. That was some sharp chakra. The kind of control it must have taken to force one's chakra into that tight a form and keep it powerful enough to be like a blade.

He was no stranger to getting limbs removed in battle however. When Hinata's jutsu repelled him and took his arm along with it, he backed up as if he'd been repelled, simultaneously switching his weapon to his other hand with sleight of hand. The second that stupid field of chakra dropped…

And once it did he hurled his scythe at her again, this time at a much closer range, too quick for her to reenact her defensive measures. With awe-inspiring flexibility she bent back and placed her hands on the ground, allowing the scythe to pass over her as she flipped out of the way.

While it was unexpected, it wasn't entirely unaccounted for, and Hidan had already been rushing forward to follow up even before she dodged his last move, his pike drawn and extended to run her through, "You'd better hope this kills you!"

Still vulnerable from the last evasive action she'd taken, Hinata landed back on her feet to find Hidan within a few steps of stabbing into her with his secondary weapon. As he moved his arm forward to finish the job, Shino's body jumped in front of hers and took the blow instead before dissipating into a swarm of insects.

What was with these brats? Hidan and Kakuzu mowed down a whole platoon of ANBU before they'd caught up to the Tsunade escort squad. He was not about to accept the fact that two stupid Konoha clan runts were good enough to keep him from eviscerating them.

It was a clash of styles really. That was all. Shino didn't fight close, and Hinata almost had to. While Hinata gave him the distraction, Shino was the main attacker. Using whatever opening the Hyuuga princess could provide him to

"You say that you're not afraid of having your chakra drained. This is foolish. Why you ask?" Shino calmly said as his insects attempted to overrun Hidan once again after allowing Hinata to escape grievous harm, "Because immortal or not, you should always have a healthy fear of your opponent's ninjutsu."

"Why fear what can't kill you?" Hidan asked, licking his lips as he warded off the insects with skillful spins of his scythe, "That's what immortality is all about! I don't fear anything you weak little shits can do to me. No one can kill me!"

"There are worse things than death."

"Let's test that shall we?" Stopping his retreat from Shino's bugs, Hidan took a deep breath and unzipped the front of his robe to reveal his open chest. Taking his pike he quickly carved out a bloody symbol of Jashin on his torso and made a set of hand-seals, holding the last one as the insects engulfed him, "Jujutsu: Chimei Setsuzoku o Seigyo (Curse Technique: Controlling Fatal Connection)!"

The kikaichu began to suck Hidan dry, but something strange began to happen, Shino began to feel his own chakra reserves weaken and falter as well for seemingly no reason. They were running low at a rate that he could attribute to being similar in how an enemy's chakra would be drained by his insects. Hidan's skin temporarily switched to the black color with the white skull-like markings.

'What is this?' Shino began sweating and looked for the symbol of Jashin at Hidan's feet, but even if it had been there, Hidan had never gotten a single drop of his blood. With no other option he called off the attack off his kikaichu. With the amount of chakra he'd lost, the hive that was his body was already going to suffer enough for the dearth of energy.

"Heh, heh, heh…" Hidan chuckled to himself despite his own showing of the loss of chakra, "Well I guess that useless-ass jutsu ain't as useless as I thought it was. I'd rather hurt you idiots myself, but having you do the honors to yourselves is almost as good."

Shino found himself staring at the symbol on Hidan's body as the man's skin color returned to normal. It didn't stay that way like it had when he'd ingested Kiba's blood. It only turned that way when the bugs started draining his chakra.

Were they to attack him, as long as he could activate that jutsu they would wind up taking the damage from their attacks on him. It was a crash and see who could stand up situation. A technique that favored a battle of attrition. Hidan was immortal, he could take it. No one else could.

'This really is an S-rank ninja.' Shino thought to himself, sunglasses hiding the pensive look on his face.

XxX

The sight of the slug princess falling to the ground motionless put a smile on Kakuzu's face underneath his facemask. As his elemental masks rebonded with his body he walked over to her to ensure that she was dead. She'd been badly electrocuted by one of his strongest, fastest lightning techniques while she was surrounded by water.

"Oh… Hashirama countered that one." Kakuzu said as he stood over her. Reaching down at her neck he felt no pulse and prepared to seal her body away for safekeeping. And they weren't that far away from the bounty station either, so he could cash in on her corpse within the hour, "I guess enough of the clan talent didn't trickle down to his spoiled little granddaughter did it? An S-rank medic-nin is still just a medic-nin I guess." He felt a little static jolt come from her as he let go so that he could grab a sealing scroll.

*THUMP THUMP*

Kakuzu's eyes widened as he was still close enough to feel Tsunade's pulse kick in for one strong beat. The arm he'd just felt for her signs of life with wound up clutched in the impossibly strong, crushing grip of the blonde woman.

"You say that like being a medic is an insult."

Kakuzu could have sworn that even though his guts were insulated with an uncountable amount of black threads due to the Earth Grudge Fear kinjutsu, the punch that came from Tsunade as she rose off of the ground squished up his organs on the inside.

The only thing that kept him from flying off into the distance was the fact that she'd been holding onto him the entire time.

Actually, it did more than that, as Tsunade had been pulling on his arm to reel him deeper into the punch to begin with. Not only had she effortlessly dislocated his shoulder, her fist sailed straight through his chest and out through the back in a bloody, rib cage destroying mess, pulling a ragged breath from Kakuzu as he sank to his knees.

Laying face down in the soaked ground, Kakuzu's odd green and red eyes rolled back in his head and right forward again, 'Two of my hearts.' He said as he inhaled harshly with his severely damaged lungs, 'She destroyed two of my hearts with that punch.'

Jumping back, Tsunade looked down at the hand that she'd used to punch straight through Kakuzu. Her bare arm was covered in his blood up to her bicep, 'I'm glad I got over the whole hemophobia thing with the brat.' Making a fist with her bloody hand, Tsunade looked over at Kakuzu who had just risen from the dead. The massive hole in his chest that she'd just created was closing itself off with black threads, "Two down, three to go."

"Tch." Having more 'lives' so to speak made Kakuzu more prone to making mistakes that he would have avoided before he'd taken on his signature jutsu to prolong his life, "Consider that a freebie girl. You will not get another chance like that again." Hashirama for all of his power that clearly overwhelmed what Tsunade was capable of didn't fatally wound him.

But the Kakuzu of that time was fighting for something. He had an ideology that he'd been trying to uphold. He believed in something so strongly that he chose to take on the most dangerous ninja in the world by himself for his village of Takigakure without a second thought.

The Kakuzu of today fought for money, the only thing left that he could believe in. It was a hollow existence, but it was one that he had been good at. Even Akatsuki recruited him by promising him vast amounts of money, and he'd even taken on the title as the organization's treasurer.

"That's it." Kakuzu said as his shoulder fixed itself. He was prepared to remove his Akatsuki cloak to continue battling with the Sannin, "It seems I really do have to go out of my way to show you just where you stand."

"_Kakuzu. Hidan."_

The sound of a disembodied voice in his head prompted him to stop mid-action. He knew who that was, 'Leader-sama.'

Talk about terrible timing. And he couldn't reply, because unlike their 'all-powerful' leader neither of them had telekinetic capabilities, long-range or otherwise.

"_You've taken enough time off to tend to your personal business. Now that Kisame has thoroughly recovered it is time for everyone to get back to their assigned missions. There is work to be done, and there's trouble mounting on our plans. Report to a safehouse and get ready for a meeting at once."_

"Grr…" Kakuzu seethed quietly while he heard an annoyed 'Aw man!' from Hidan who jumped through the wall of flames separating his battlefield from his more maniacal partner, "I take it your brains weren't scrambled enough to miss that message."

"Time to go?" Hidan asked, patting out a flame on the sleeve of his cloak, "Pssht. Well I guess I killed enough people already as it is. It'll suffice for Jashin-sama I guess." Even though he really wanted to finish those Hyuuga and Aburame brats, "You didn't kill the old bat yet. What, is she immortal too?"

"Not likely." Kakuzu said before he and Hidan used Shunshin to move a ways away from Tsunade, "I'll be back… to collect my money. More important matters beckon at the moment."

Clenching her fists, Tsunade thought to go after them, but decided against it. They weren't going off in the direction that she'd broken off from Naruto in, thus he wasn't the matter of whatever business they were talking about.

Come to think of it, they probably didn't even know he was there if they were present solely due to Kakuzu's greed.

Waiting for several moments until she was sure a roundabout attack wasn't coming, Tsunade called out over the crackle of the flames in the field, "Kids!"

"Tsunade-sama." Good. They were alright. The bug kid being the one to answer so quickly signified that much, "Are you unharmed?"

"It'll take more than some ragdoll human to finish me off." Tsunade assured them. A part of her was greatly impressed by the fact that they hadn't been killed. If Hidan was half as dangerous as Kakuzu, a two-on-one fight against him still probably wouldn't have worked out in their favor, "Come on. The last rendezvous point is the bounty station. Let's go."

There was still work to be done. All of this was not about to be for nothing. The worst ten hours that she'd had in quite a long while.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Konoha Cemetery)

For Yakushi Kabuto it had been a hard night's work after he finished spying on Jiraiya and Danzo in the Academy. There was one more thing he wanted to do before leaving. He'd wanted to do this for quite some time, but the moment he did so he knew his cover would be blown, whether it appeared that he'd gotten away clean or not.

Sure, working in the hospital he'd gotten plenty of DNA samples from the shinobi that had come through, alive or dead, but for the most part they were usually nobodies.

No, if he wanted the best material for the jutsu he was looking more into he had to get it from the best place possible. Most of the most powerful shinobi of history were already dead and gone. There was no better place to retrieve substantial remains of powerful individuals.

He had to depart soon though after covering his tracks. The sun was almost up and after this there would be no coming back. It was fortunate that the graveyard already sat at the outskirts of the village, he could make a quick departure and make tracks to the nearest border.

"Yakushi-san."

Damn it.

Turning around, quite a distance back, Kabuto turned to see Umino Iruka coming his way. The friendly schoolteacher with the scar across the bridge of his nose and the brown hair in the high ponytail. Double damn it.

Pasting his best cluelessly pleasant smile on his face, Kabuto turned to greet the chunin who seemed a bit confused at his presence in this environment, "Good morning Iruka-sensei. What are you doing out here so early?"

"My class is meant to clean and tend to the graves today." Iruka informed him, looking around subtly, "What are you doing out here so early?"

What could he say? That he was out there to visit the graves of his former teammates before he had to take on a shift at the hospital? No. Iruka was astute enough to know the kind of shifts that a genin-level medic-nin would be allowed to take. Even if he was twenty-three years old, he was still a genin, and he wasn't an exceptionally talented enough medic-nin (as far as Konoha knew) for him to be allowed to ignore this.

Thus was the curse of having a cover of a talentless ninja that allowed him to avoid scrutiny for as long as it did.

He couldn't say he was out to visit the grave of a patient he'd gotten attached to that had died. Then there would be follow-up questions that he couldn't answer, that would lead him into a trap.

"I know what you've been doing here Yakushi-san. It's rather appalling."

A hair-raising shiver went down Kabuto's spine at hearing the cold tone from the usually quite amicable man in front of him. It was a complete shift in demeanor from just a moment ago, "You just arrived here as I was preparing to leave Iruka-sensei. I don't see what's so appalling about visiting a grave."

"How about robbing them?"

Without another word being said, Kabuto slipped a kunai into his hand and attacked Iruka who seemed to be prepared for the attack, defending himself with his own kunai, 'Hm. He's so out of practice his movements are dulled.' Kabuto thought to himself with a smirk, "I wonder how you even found me. I erected a barrier around the graveyard to let me know if anyone was going to step onto the premises while I was doing my work."

"I'm a sensor ninja. I could sense that you had a barrier up." Iruka said before Kabuto disarmed him, losing his own kunai as well in the process. At least they were on equal footing without any weaponry in hand, "I don't understand why you would do something like this now of all times. Even as a genin you would have to know something about the spy threat. You know there won't be any leniency given to you once you're captured."

Kabuto couldn't help but laugh out loud at that point. It was just too much. Iruka had him red-handed but wasn't even aware of just how serious the situation was. He wasn't just some depraved grave-robber, "…Let me tell you something that's just between us Iruka-sensei."

'The way he moves.' Iruka thought to himself, preparing for a taijutsu battle until he noticed something that wasn't right. Something off-putting, 'That's not the way a genin moves. Any genin.' Kabuto's body language wasn't that of a hack ninja.

Iruka knew ninja body language. Even though he was just a chunin, he'd made enough genin out of academy students and seen enough chunin and above in his career to perceive that about the people that he saw, able to size them up moments after seeing them.

Five hand-seals came from Kabuto with an ease that can only come from practice and an expertise that seemed inconsistent with what records there were on him. Iruka wouldn't claim to know Kabuto's entire career rundown by heart, but he'd been in the most publicized chunin exam in history, and there had been some information about him that everyone had been privy to for background, "Chakura no Mesu (Chakra Scalpel)."

Both of Kabuto's hands were bathed in visible blue chakra, the sign of a rather high-level medical jutsu. Was he actually going to fight with that? Who was this man?

"Just between you and I Iruka-sensei…" Kabuto said as he faced Iruka down, "…I'm the spy you've all been looking for."

Before he could ask why he'd divulge such information without reason, Iruka felt a sharp pain in his heart from behind and turned his head to see Kabuto standing behind him, "Guh! C-Clone jutsu?"

"No." The Kabuto behind Iruka said as the one that had been in front of him collapsed lifelessly, "A surgically altered corpse. But that's not important. You know why I would have told you something like this? Because you're going to die here. Because I want them to know that I was here, it'll be like a big calling card saying, 'Kabuto was here.'"

"Why?" Iruka asked, feeling the damage to his spine to go along with his heart injury. He couldn't even move his arms. This was not good, "You were a Konoha ninja. For years."

"I've been splitting my allegiance all over the place actually. Blame Shimura Danzo." Kabuto said in a stone-cold tone, "He set the foundation to make me who I am. The 'roots' if you will."

With that, Kabuto removed his glowing blue hand from Iruka's back, removing the Chakra Scalpel and allowing the man to fall to the ground so that he could take his leave. What a shame. Oh well, what kind of spy let himself be known on the way out without leaving a few bodies in their wake?

Now it was all a matter of getting to the border where he wouldn't be so easily pursued any further. He'd have a good two hours of a headstart before anyone even probably figured out that he was the perpetrator for sure and sent a tracking squad after him. So there was no time to dawdle.

"Goodbye sensei. Orochimaru-sama is waiting on me to return." Kabuto said as he left the graveyard in a Shunshin.

And he did leave. He left a wide-eyed Iruka there on the ground, bleeding internally amongst the gravestones, breathing languidly because of what had happened to his lungs, unable to even move a muscle due to what Kabuto had done to his spine.

"Ugh." He couldn't move and there was too much fluid in his lungs for him to breathe. It was too early in the morning for anyone else other than him to be there because it was his job to be there. His eyes peered up at the sight of the sun slowly rising as his own was starting to set.

There was one more thing he could do as he felt himself get cold and his chakra started draining to preserve his vital bodily functions, and it didn't require hand-seals, but for it to be useful it would take a massive amount of chakra.

When he first taught Naruto Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu), Iruka warned Naruto about putting too much chakra into the jutsu when he didn't need it. It was just something that had been a side-effect of Naruto's massive reserves and lack of real experience controlling it.

The thing about the jutsu was that if you put enough chakra into the sonar burst, others would be able to pinpoint your location as well from using the jutsu. That was normally a detriment to the jutsu, but in this case it would serve a positive purpose.

'Enough chakra' for Iruka at this point to register enough of a pulse for others to feel it and find reason to investigate meant sacrificing the rest of his own dying reserves. But he was too far gone to be saved anyway if he didn't do it regardless.

'At least…' Iruka thought to himself as he mustered what he had left in the chakra department, 'At least I can maybe get them a quicker lead on Kabuto.' He couldn't leave them a message, so alerting them in advance was the best thing he could do.

As the sun hung in the sky, Iruka figured that he could leave it in the hands of his village. Not to avenge him, but to keep whatever Kabuto had obtained from Konoha from harming other denizens of their home.

XxX

(Southern Hi no Kuni Bounty Station – Daybreak)

A by now healed Naruto moved the rest of the way at the head of the Team 10, travelling to the last rendezvous point for the entire Tsunade escort squad. Ino had done a good, quick job of fixing him up and repairing his skin for him (relatively quick as it only took fifteen minutes), though she was still extremely unnerved by the fact that he'd done such a thing to himself.

Either way, the mission was still on and they needed to keep going to get the obscenely high bounty off of Tsunade's head per the mission parameters. Not too much farther though, as there was a rather large, very conspicuous building sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

"What's this place even supposed to be for?" Ino asked as they caught sight of it and landed directly across the large dirt road in front of it. She was tired and dirty and desperately wished that they could go back to that awesome hotel from the night before so that she could be pampered, "Guys? You were the Fire Daimyo's men, do you know?"

Naruto gave her an 'I don't know' gesture, as he really only remembered things that he was going to be dispatched in order to handle personally. Shikamaru had an idea though, "I'm pretty sure that this is supposed to be a traveler's rest stop, but no one comes here anymore."

With the current influx of inn towns granting travelers a more comfortable place to rest for the night, and many more that allowed other amenities more lavish than that, overnight traveler lodgings that were free were starting to become obsolete.

The building actually did look rather old though, giving Shikamaru's guess credence.

Also giving him credence was the fact that Akamaru walked out of the front door carrying a lowly cursing and complaining Kiba on his back with blood coming down his legs, "That place is fucking gross." Kiba said to himself and to a whining Akamaru, "Hidden behind a urinal in a dirty public bathroom? Really?" Needless to say his senses had been assaulted.

"Whoa." Naruto said upon seeing Kiba's bleeding form on his trusty ninken, "What the hell happened to you?" The skin on his legs happened to be all torn up, and he'd seemed to have lost quite a bit of blood, presumably having taken more than one blood pill to replenish it from the rate it seemed to be coming out of him. Akamaru's white fur was getting stained red.

"You know…" Kiba said upon first realizing that Team 10 was there, "Anytime the resident medic-nin on that squad wants to come over here and stop me from bleeding out, that'd be just great." Akamaru barked in agreement.

Upon realizing that he was talking about her, Ino grumbled and quickly made her way over to her former Academy classmate, "…Not a medic-nin…" And she wasn't. She just knew a little bit for just in case situations.

"Close enough. Be easy woman."

"So what happened?" Naruto asked as he jogged over to Kiba who was being set down on the ground to be healed, "You just came out… alone. Shika and you both split up to join back with your right teams. What's up?"

"Yeah about that. They were fighting some Akatsuki guy with Tsunade when they told me to go ahead." Kiba had to say something else to keep Naruto from turning in the direction where he figured they'd be in and heading off that way, "No, no, they're coming this way right now. I can smell them getting closer."

"What the hell were _they_ doing here!?" Naruto exclaimed. They'd just gotten through dealing with Itachi and Kisame before taking this mission and two more came forward to take them on, "Man." When it rained it poured. That was all he could say.

"I hit one of those guys flush with the Tsuuga and he got right back up like nothing happened." Kiba recanted, wincing as the green glow covered Ino's hands and went over his injured legs, "They had some seriously strong chakra. And those guys are supposed to be after you?"

"Did you get any names?" Shikamaru asked, "We've only got two. There are supposed to be nine in all."

"No." Kiba said with a shake of his head, "Hinata and Shino sent me away so fast I wasn't even able to size up the whole situation before I left."

Ino continued fixing Kiba's wounds with the Mystical Palm medical technique for a few minutes longer when the remainder of the squad that had seemingly joined up while on the run made their presences known. Team 7 and Team 8 landed, surrounding Tsunade who took note of Team 10 and Kiba with Akamaru.

"Oh. That's good. You're already here." Tsunade said as she walked over to the others, "Everyone still have all of their fingers and toes?"

"Well someone didn't have their skin for a little while at one point." Ino chimed in, shooting a look at Naruto who just gave her a shrug for the four-tails side-effects, "But other than that, yes. I guess we're all okay."

Hearing that someone didn't have their skin for a while got Tsunade to instantly crane her head towards Naruto who knew what was coming and put his hands up defensively, "Before you say anything else Tsunade-baachan, it was completely unavoidable. We didn't have the time for a fight without it. We had to catch up with you."

"And you had time to shorten your lifespan, burn off all of your skin, and tire yourself out?" Apparently that was a bit of news to the vast majority of the squad that hadn't been close enough to feel Naruto's power surge or bear witness to what he'd done, "You never look this haggard brat."

Naruto found that there wasn't much he could say to that other than the following, "…We still beat you here didn't we?"

Tsunade just stared at him for several seconds before dismissing him, "The only reason I don't flick you halfway down that road back to the capital is because I'm sure the Yamanaka girl wasted a lot of time and chakra fixing your broken-down ass."

"Love you too."

Sasuke crossed his arms over his chest and squinted at the sunlight hitting him in the eyes, "What about the mission? This is the bounty station, so don't tell me all you guys have done is stay out here and fix Kiba."

"Asshole." Kiba said before pointing out a blood trail that led inside and back out to where he wound up laying down for Ino to heal him. By now Hinata was assisting as well shortly after seeing her teammate on the ground, "I already went inside and back out. I thought your eyes were supposed to be good."

Sasuke scoffed and turned away from the Inuzuka youngster while Sakura asked the question that everyone else there wanted to know, "So what happened? Did you handle the bounty?"

"Yes and no." Kiba said, looking away from everyone else while his healing continued, "There were some things I could do, some things I couldn't do. It's complicated."

Yes and no? What the hell did that mean?

"Uncomplicate it then." Shino insisted behind his shades.

Growling at him momentarily, Kiba then decided to launch into explanation as Tsunade was now paying rapt attention to him, "Uh, I couldn't take the bounty off per se. The guy said that he couldn't do that since he's just the payout." Cracking her knuckles with one hand she slowly began stomping her way towards the bounty station, "I already threatened him."

"You're not me." She said as she planned on busting down the damn walls until she found the guy in charge.

"You've got to find the guy that set the bounty if you want to do anything about it. Even if you kill the guy inside another black market manager'll take his place." There were black market bounty stations all over the country.

And whether they knew it or not, even if Tsunade remembered the town that had the banker that she'd borrowed from and didn't pay back, Kakuzu had quite successfully scared him deep into the boonies in order to hide.

Bounties didn't really come off anyway. The person that commissioned it already put the money forward to be paid out. Team 10 knew a lot about this kind of topic because their sensei Asuma had a huge bounty on his own head that he loved bragging about, and Team 8 knew because they were a good tracking team and trackers were good at hunting runaways, nuke-nin, and bounty heads.

"So what do we do now?" Naruto asked, scratching his head, "We can't get it off of her without finding the guy that put it on her to begin with, and I really don't remember the guy so I know she doesn't." She'd done the same thing to so many creditors over the years, so she wasn't going to remember one in particular, "Shizune-neechan might, but I doubt even she would."

"Well I did do _something_ that'd help." Kiba said as he began to feel the relief from his injuries healing up. He still wondered how he got them but he could find that out later, "You're not gonna like it though." He said to Tsunade, "…Because the only thing I could really do was change the bingo book entry to protect you some more."

"What? How?"

Needless to say, Kiba really wasn't excited about what he had to say next, knowing what he was privy to about Tsunade, "Well, I kind of had to get the heat off of you somehow, so I used your name and ninja ID to have them update your profile rundown to align you back with Konoha. At least now that'll stop villages thinking they can recruit you."

"But now I can't leave Konoha whenever I want." Tsunade seethed, making it look like she wished to strangle the dog-attuned chunin where he laid. How he even got her ninja ID number was beyond her, but it was basically as good as making an official statement on her behalf to the world, "…Sarutobi-sensei's going to love that."

"Sorry!" Kiba apologized, trying to protect himself as he scooted away from Tsunade and his own medical attention on the ground, eventually finding Naruto and Sasuke to use as a shield, "I tried for forty-five minutes and I couldn't think of anything else to salvage the mission with, can you?"

Tsunade tried to come up with something and stopped and started several times, but nothing came out of her mouth. Eventually Naruto spoke up and chimed in, "Oh come on baa-chan, you basically moved back into Konoha already, and you know you're still not gonna take missions anyway so what's the problem?"

In response, all the Sannin did was buck threateningly in Naruto's general direction to send him taking off away from her and her rather volatile temper.

"Oh my." Hinata said as she was able to see how far and fast Naruto had gone in such a short time with the Byakugan, "I didn't know Naruto-kun was so fast."

"He'd better be fast." Tsunade kept a deep frown on her face until she turned in the direction that she could see Naruto running down the road. Walking until she was at the front of the whole group she actually let a smile onto her face now that no one could see , if only for a moment, "Alright everyone, let's go home. Who knows how the place fell apart without you all there." She said sarcastically.

She didn't know it at the time, and neither did any of the rest of them, but it really didn't turn out to be that sarcastic in the long run.

* * *

Guardian Days 12

(Two Years and Four Months after Shikamaru and Naruto's Acceptance)

This year's chunin exam had taken place in Kumogakure once again, another sign of Kumo's growing strength, and again the Fire Daimyo wanted to be in attendance for the festivities. Needless to say, the man got what he wanted, especially when it came to things like this. Once again all Guardian hands were meant to be on deck and indeed they were, but much like it did a year prior, something major happened to Naruto.

In the course of the festivities, a few wagers were made, some between people with vastly differing luck, and that led to bets being made that could not be backed up.

Tsunade and Jiraiya owed Naruto money, because apparently he was great at picking out dark horses for winning their way through rounds in the tournament. They paid him the only way they had to do so after they'd lost all of their gambling money to him and some of the other Guardians at some point.

At the close of the chunin exams, Naruto was told by Jiraiya who his father was.

Talk about a culture shift.

He kind of shut down after that, and wasn't rightfully fit to carry on with the important guard duty for the long trip back to the capital of Hi no Kuni if he couldn't get his head straight by the time they were slated to leave the next day.

Naruto had left Kumo for a bit of air. A bit of air must have meant leaving and heading out roughly twenty to thirty miles outside of the village on a walkabout, because that was what he did. It didn't take Shikamaru that long to find him, although the latter wasn't pleased to do so.

Kaminari no Kuni had a lot of mountain ranges, and the only thing more annoying for a guy like Shikamaru than having to walk was having to walk around in a mountainous place.

"You gonna go back yet?" Shikamaru asked as he walked with Naruto through some gigantic watery valley covered in clouds and fog, "Seriously, if it's walking around you want to do, wait for tomorrow. You can do all of the walking you want during the escort back."

"Can't smoke indoors in Kumo, you know?" Naruto said with a cigarette in his mouth that was more ash than actual cigarette at this point. The sound of a waterfall filled his ears and he turned in the direction that they heard it from, "Hold on one second."

Naruto looked down at his hands before charging off in the direction of the waterfall, shouting at the top of his lungs. Shikamaru flinched and cringed when he saw Naruto slam his hands into the waterfall and cut a split straight up the middle that destroyed the top of the fall.

Huh… well someone finished their wind manipulation training didn't they?

The perturbed blond landed back at Shikamaru's side, his cigarette remains now non-existent due to the downward force of the waterfall he'd just split, "Sorry about that Shika. You were saying?"

"You get that out of your system? You feel better?" Shikamaru asked before pointing in the general direction of Kumo, "Can we go back now? I don't know what's wrong with you."

"I just found out my old man is the Yondaime Hokage."

"That's… awesome."

"I know."

"…That's so troublesome."

"I know."

"Are you mad about it?"

"Not mad."

"Emotionally distressed?"

"Dude, no."

So he knew who both of his parents were by now. It had to be a shock to the system for sure though. And Shikamaru couldn't relate, so he had absolutely nothing to contribute to help out at all other than just being there, "Want to destroy some more stuff before we go back?" Shikamaru offered.

Looking around and finding that there was a lot of barren rock and absolutely nothing else around them, it kind of set Naruto's mind right there, "Yeah, just a little bit more."

There had been a plan to form a Rasengan and from there, Shikamaru didn't know what Naruto was going to do other than tear up what he had the energy to, but they were quite rudely interrupted before that could happen.

"Ye~~~ah!"

Both young Guardians were forced away from each other by a large figure crashing down into the water between where they had been standing just moments before. Whether it was an attack or a falling chunk of mountain they didn't know, but both were prepared as if it were an attack.

This was what they got for leaving the party it seemed. Shikamaru blamed Naruto, but now was not the time for that.

As everything around them calmed, they could easily tell that it was a person that had taken a huge swan dive down on top of them. A very muscular, dark-skinned man with odd-patterned white hair, a goatee, a white Kumo headband, and small sunglasses with a bull's horn tattoo on his cheek. He wore Kumo's white one-shoulder flak jacket with no shirt underneath, a red rope around his waist, white and red hand and shin guards, seven swords on his back, and a tattoo with the kanji for 'iron' on his right shoulder.

"Now, now, now." The burly man said, gesturing his arms flamboyantly, "What'chu two doin' on my training ground?"

Despite being separated, Naruto and Shikamaru both looked at each other confusedly. Tactful as ever, Naruto spoke up first, "Uh, who the hell are you?" Stay smooth Naruto, budding jinchuuriki extraordinaire.

"You don't know Killer B fool?" The large Kumo ninja asked, seemingly incredulously at the ignorance of the two foreign shinobi, "Ya 'bout to get an education on Kumo's rules!" Seriously, who didn't know who he was? He was a hero! A superstar, "Listen and learn before you get burned!"

Once again, both younger men were at a loss for words, "…Is he saying he wants to fight with us?" Shikamaru asked with a raised eyebrow, "I can't tell."

"I don't know." Naruto replied, wondering if he should pull his machete or if that would be a horrible idea or not, "You're the smart one. And why the fuck does he keep rhyming? Stop rhyming!" He then blinked and amended his statement, "…Actually I don't mind the rhyming, just rhyme better!

The abnormal Killer B responded to Naruto's shout with a middle finger sent his way, "Jinchuuriki-sama doesn't have to take that from you, you're just a snot-nosed baby that's tone deaf too!"

"You're damn right I don't have to take this from you."

"Naruto, I think he's talking about himself."

"That would mean he's a jinchuuriki Shika."

"I am a jinchuuriki ya brat! _The_ jinchuuriki as a matter of fact!" Killer B stated, throwing his hand into the air with his index and pinky finger forming a pair of horns in the sky, "_Whooo! _It's true boys and it ain't trite, the great Eight-tails will end your life!"

"Eight…"

"…Tails…"

Naruto smacked his lips in thought before asking the next most important question that came to mind, "And how much can you actually control?" Please say three tails or less. For the love of his own bravado please say three tails or less.

"Ha! Been training since I was small, so the great Killer B can control it all!"

All eight tails.

Concern over his parents was the last thing Naruto was really worried about at the moment. He could dwell on that later. Right then he and Shikamaru had to worry about how to get themselves out of trouble for apparently trespassing on the training grounds of the perfect jinchuuriki, because they weren't going to even try and fight him.

Even if they survived a fight with him they weren't going to win it, and it would have started an international incident.

But running away didn't make them any less manly did it?

Hopefully they never did anything to piss that person off in the future.

* * *

Jutsu List

Fuuton: Akao Shimpuu (Wind Release: Red-Tailed Typhoon). S-rank ninjutsu, offensive, all ranges. Highly specialized, to even utilize this jutsu wind release mastery is required as well as a minimum of four extra appendages in addition to arms. This is not a problem for a jinchuuriki such as Uzumaki Naruto, but even for him it requires a minimum of four tails to generate the fan motion that provides the 'kick' of the jutsu. Holding highly pressurized wind chakra in one's hands, Naruto will project it and allow the chakra tails to blow it away from him with pulverizing cyclonic force. If the flow is reversed it can also be used as a method of suction. Theory of additives says that the more tails used in the jutsu, the more powerful the wind motion.

Jujutsu: Chimei Setsuzoku o Seigyo (Curse Technique: Controlling Fatal Connection). Hiden, ninjutsu, defensive, all ranges. Another jutsu discovered by experimentation of the techniques of the Jashin religion, it is similarly activated with the drawing of the religion's symbol, but on the body of the user. Of lesser priority to Hidan in battle than Jujutsu: Shiji Hyouketsu (Curse Technique: Death Controlling Possessed Blood), he deems this jutsu less useful as well. Hidan is put in a more compromising position, unable to torture or kill his enemies himself, but anyone that attacks him while he holds this jutsu active will inflict the same injuries upon themselves. When he takes damage his skin momentarily takes on the grim reaper appearance to signify the link being temporarily made.

* * *

**Alright guys, I can safely say that I'm never doing that again. Too many running battles at once, and though I'm advancing the story in several different directions for later it still made for a hellacious write.**

**Now I've got a few days off, and I'm going to go enjoy what's left of my downtime before I have to start filming and editing a whole new project entirely because the grind apparently never ends.  
**

**Later days. Kenchi out.**


	57. Time Teaches Harshly

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. In a very short amount of time I will own a college diploma however… which is great, because if I have a roll of toilet paper in one hand and the diploma in the other I have a choice of what to wipe my ass with.

**Chapter 57: Time Teaches Harshly**

* * *

The door to Naruto's apartment opened as the grimly black-clad blond walked in and shut the door behind him. Moving to the first chair in the dwelling he could reach, he sat down and put his hands over his eyes, elbows on his knees.

Upon returning to Konoha, the first news he was hit with was extremely dark. Umino Iruka, the man that had been his first sensei and given him his foundations as a ninja, the man that had taught him the sensor technique Chakura Hankyouteii no Jutsu (Chakra Echolocation Jutsu) and the useful trap-barrier ninjutsu Fuubaku Houjin (Sealed Bomb Square Release), he was now gone.

There was good news that the spy that had been plaguing Konoha intelligence for years had been finally exposed as Yakushi Kabuto. But that news was extremely bittersweet, as it was only learned after he was already gone, having taken Iruka's life before leaving.

That little portion of intel hit some of Naruto's other comrades harder than it did him. He didn't know Kabuto that well, but Kabuto had hung around Team 7 quite extensively over the years. He'd taught Sakura and Ino Shousen Jutsu (Mystical Palm Jutsu), he'd treated them when they went to the hospital for minor injuries, he'd worked under them on routine missions when they were gaining experience as chunin.

Chouji, Sasuke, Sakura, and Ino all felt betrayed. They'd been the closest to Kabuto.

Neji, Lee, and Tenten kept kicking themselves because they'd missed it. It had gone right over their heads as they'd been on the task force to locate the spy.

Kiba couldn't believe that his instincts hadn't tipped him off. With Shino it was hard to tell what he was thinking about it all. Hinata had been moved to tears to have to say goodbye to their sensei in the manner that it occurred.

Naruto just felt pissed.

Going to the funeral and seeing all of his Academy classmates and many others that had been close to Iruka over the years mourning just pissed him off more. He didn't cry. He couldn't. Not because it wasn't cool, or because he didn't feel sorrow, but because he was seeing so much red for the entire service that any tear of sadness that would have come to his eye would have evaporated before it rolled down his cheeks.

It was all the more terrible because they knew who'd killed him. They knew him in what they thought was personal manner.

They befriended that bastard. They made him one of them after the chunin exam in Tetsu no Kuni. It didn't matter to them that he was a low-level genin, or that he was eight years their senior. His team had been slaughtered by Gaara during the competition and he'd been left alone.

Nobody else cared after the initial pity wore off. No one in his Academy grad class gave a damn. No one did except for the twelve of them, and it was more than likely a part of his ruse the entire time.

"_Don't look back in anger boy."_ Naruto could hear Jiraiya's voice in his head even right then. The man would oftentimes try to talk him down whenever he saw Naruto getting angry about something, _"Hate is a cycle Naruto. Someone wrongs you, so you do the same to them in return. Even if you kill them, that person will have someone that will feel you wronged them by taking the life that you took. Where will it end?"_

He heard it off and on for three years while Jiraiya taught him. Jiraiya's words had a point. He had plenty of reason behind them, but adhering to them was something else altogether. He couldn't do it, Jiraiya couldn't do it, no one he knew that was a ninja could do it.

He had hate in him. Hell, he had a big old fox comprised mostly of hate sitting right in his belly. Did he have the propensity to forgive to that extent though? To forgive someone like Kabuto?

If he saw Kabuto in the desert, dying of thirst, alone, with no visible method of survival available, and he asked Naruto for one drink of water, would he be able to give it to him, would he keep walking on without stopping, or would he stop, stand, and wait for Kabuto to die off so that he could see it in person before moving along?

And Naruto couldn't answer that question. Hell, saving him wasn't even an option in that scenario when Naruto first thought of it.

His head lifted up when he heard a quiet knock at his front door and found Ino standing there dressed back in normal clothes, "Hey there stranger." Holding a melancholy smile on her face as she looked over and down at the seated Naruto, "I figured you would have changed by now. The funeral ended three hours ago Goldie."

"I just got back. I stayed there for a while after… at his grave. Went to see mom and dad for a bit too, talked to them." Naruto said, looking up at her as she took her sandals off at the door and headed on in, "You're never gonna give that key to this place back are you?" He didn't really want her to give the key back. He was just busting her chops a bit, or trying to at least.

She just shook her head and walked over to him to set a hand on his shoulder, "How are you feeling? You were closer to Iruka-sensei than any of us so…"

"You don't want to hear how I'm feeling." Naruto said in return. Seriously, he still held the man in high esteem. When he first came back one of the earliest things he did was seek out Iruka to show off how much he'd improved on the first personal jutsu the man taught him, and now as far as he knew he was the only one left that knew how to perform the damn thing.

Hands on her hips, Ino just kept looking him over before she started tugging at him to get out of the chair, much to his confusion, "Come on, up. Go get changed, you're coming to spend some time with everyone else today. You're not staying by yourself like this. It's not good for you."

It caught Naruto by surprise at first, but to his nature he had to act the ass about something like this just to be a bother. Digging his heels in, he significantly slowed Ino's pushing of him to his room, "Oi, are you asking me or telling me?"

"Telling you obviously. Sometimes you're not smart enough to make your own choices because if I hadn't shown up you'd have sat here by yourself for three days straight."

"… Wait, no I freaking wouldn't have!" He wasn't some charity case that had to get his ass kicked out of funks when he was in them. And with that being added on to the fact that he hated being told what to do in any and all circumstances, it didn't make him very cooperative.

"Yes you would have. You do the same thing whenever you're super-sad or really put-off about something." Ino argued in return, "It doesn't happen very often with you but when you sulk, you sulk hard." Naruto harrumphed as they eventually did make it to his room and Ino gave him one last shove past the doorframes.

"So damn bossy." Naruto grumbled, shirking off his black formal-wear shirts before realizing that Ino was still standing there with her arms expectantly crossed, "Are you gonna ogle me while I change Miss Bossy?"

"You don't seem that bothered by it 'Sergio.'" Freezing just as he got his shirt off, Naruto slowly turned back around to a grinning Ino, "I know what I want for my birthday~." She said in a singsong voice before putting her hands on her hips, "You thought Shino could keep a secret like that from me?"

"…Yeah, I did."

"Why? It's not national security."

"He's Shino!" Naruto's continued tirade about how someone like Shino seemed like they'd never talk about any secret that they found out ever was cut off when Ino stepped forward and put a hand on his cheek, "Ah, what? What'd I do?"

"You see?" Ino said, smiling up at him while rubbing his whisker-marks, "That's why I want you to hang out with the rest of us on a day like today. Even if was just for a little bit, I made you think about something else didn't I?" She planted a kiss on his cheek and backed off out of the room, shutting the door upon departing, "Now be good and get dressed."

Naruto just stared at the shut door before he finally blinked and snapped back to normal. This time he did indeed choose to do what was requested of him without a fuss, throwing on his normal clothes and equipment to go out. Grieving with people would be more helpful than doing it alone… especially since he wasn't much of a drinker, which was the method of solo grieving that most self-destructive people took.

Did she just mind-screw him? Nah. Nothing chakra related even happened. They just talked, and she was persuasive… and soft… and smelled really good. Kami, that scent lingered. Definitely not a mind-fuck though. He felt fine.

"_I don't need chakra to mess with your mind Goldie-kun."_

"Get out of my head woman!"

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Hyuuga Clan Compound)

Hanabi was a Hyuuga through and through. Quiet, respectful, polite, yet rather prideful in her status as a clan head's child and her skills, making her at times a bit haughty. She was a fierce top genin of Konohagakure no Sato, and a lethal kunoichi.

The thing about her was though, was that when she liked someone it was extremely easy for her to open up to them. And when it was around someone she _really_ liked, especially back when she was a little girl, she might as well have been seven or eight years old again right then and there.

Which was why a beaming Hanabi sat casually in the lap of Naruto who was visiting his Hyuuga Clan friends on their home property. Her beloved Naruto-oniisama didn't drop by the rigidly stuffy Hyuuga Clan premises often since returning to the village, but he had on this day to visit her and his friends, including her cousin and her sister.

Neji sat calmly by Naruto on a slight hillside slope that rested right by a gently moving stream, but other than biding a nervous hello, Hinata then became conspicuous by her absence. She greeted him well enough, but then excused herself.

Her face had progressively been getting redder and redder as they conversed, and Neji and Hanabi had given her rather pitying looks as she departed, so she might have had allergies to whatever was down by the riverside.

The jounin of the younger Hyuuga members had his eyes closed as he patiently listened to the sound of the running water, "You seem very troubled Naruto." He said, though he could figure why. It got to him as well. Even though Iruka hadn't been his sensei in the Academy, he was still a Konoha ninja and it had been part of his job to catch the spy when this incident occurred, "I am sorry for what it's worth."

"You didn't do anything wrong Neji." Naruto insisted with a slight smile, as much of one as he could muster given the topic material anyway, "It wasn't just you or Lee or Tenten. It was all of us. We all knew who Kabuto was… or we thought we did anyway." Neji nodded, but still didn't like it. Either way, Naruto looked down at the smaller girl in his lap and got her attention, "How are you holding up since the funeral Little Firecracker?"

Hanabi squirmed uncomfortably at the mention of the most recent funeral that she had been present for. She had been in Iruka's class for the previous school term before she'd graduated and become a genin, "I've been training Naruto-oniisama. I still have to make a strong showing at the chunin exams even though I'm a rookie."

Naruto did. Hell, Hinata had made it to the finals. Neji had as well and had even dominated an entire round of the proceedings before being forced to bow out in the quarterfinals. Maybe being put in a life-threatening situation or several would be just what she needed to cheer up. That or getting the chance to beat Kono-baka into the dirt.

"Make it to the finals and I'll show you something good in the month you'll have to train for them." Naruto bribed her, developing a big grin when he saw her eyes go wide. The chibi-Hyuuga planted a big kiss on his cheek and ran off to go train just in case she wasn't quite ready and needed a bit more before the time for the exams came. Anything from Naruto would have to be good.

"Hiashi-sama would probably thank you for motivating her." Neji said with a smile as he could see Hanabi still running off to find a place to get to work with his Byakugan, "But I thought you were a mentor to the boy that happens to be her rival."

"I kind of am." Naruto replied, lying back on the grass to stare up at the sky, "I made the same deal with Konohamaru. It cheered him up too after all of the stuff that happened around here."

Neji nodded before his smile turned into a smirk, "…If they both make it to the finals you're going to try to teach them the same jutsu aren't you?"

"Oh Kami, the thing about it is that I was actually thinking about doing that." Naruto admitted with a chuckle, "It'd be amazing."

This was good. He needed a laugh nowadays. First with the mission to Mizu no Kuni where they managed to lose the jinchuuriki Yukimaru, and then on the last mission with Tsunade which was a success for the most part, but upon returning they were met with quite a bit of tragedy.

Not quite the glorious return home to past normalcy that Naruto had expected and dreamt of while toiling away as a Guardian Ninja, just waiting for that chance to come back home and show everyone what he was made of.

"Hey Neji." Naruto started to say, "Do you ever wonder at what point you've got to stop living up here… and start living down here?" He expressed this physically by moving his hand from an elevated position in the air to a significantly lower one.

In return, Neji just gave him the driest look he could with his featureless eyes, "Naruto, neither of us have had an actual day off in weeks until now and your first mentor was just killed by a spy that I was responsible for finding. Would you mind saving the introspective comments for another time? You're not good at them. What say you Hinata-sama?" He asked, raising his voice at the end to make sure he was heard.

"Eep!"

"Yeah, seriously." Naruto said, turning in the direction that he knew she was hiding in just at the top of the grassy slope, "I can sense stuff, remember? I know you're there Hinata. Come on over already. Come on."

Hinata poked her head up from the crest of the little hill and laughed a bit nervously, forgetting that Naruto was technically a sensor ninja to an extent before walking down and sitting down a little bit higher than Naruto and Neji in the grass, "H-Hello Naruto-kun. I didn't mean to make it look like I was avoiding you, I… I just didn't know what to say when I saw you."

"Meh, you don't have to say anything." Naruto insisted as he lay back in the grass and faced the sky, "I know you're a good girl, and it'd probably be uncomfortable to try and act like what happened a while ago didn't happen. Thanks for taking on the Akatsuki the way you did too."

Neji wasn't very happy with Naruto about that one, until it was explained that it was totally unavoidable.

On the way back, Naruto had explained it to anyone that hadn't already known yet amongst his crew of friends that he was the container of the Kyuubi. The only ones that hadn't known were Hinata, Sakura, and Shino, and two of them had basically deduced that there was something strange about Naruto's chakra ever since the chunin exams.

"You know." Naruto commented idly, a small smile growing on his face, "I had a joke with Iruka-sensei. I told him that when I became Hokage I had a good way to help lower the pressure with some students. I was gonna give him my progress report and he was going to read it to the kids, and then when they started making fun of it and asking whose it was I was gonna show up and scare the hell out of them."

He used to drop by for a few minutes and just chat and joke around with Iruka. He had tons of stupid little anecdotes like that about how what he was going to do. He would do this and that when he got promoted, and he would do this and that with the Academy when he finally became Hokage.

It was now that he realized that he had sorely taken for granted the fact that he always just assumed that Iruka would be around to see these things happen.

He'd taken for granted the people around him, as if they would always be there.

His thoughts were interrupted when he found a delicate hand resting itself on his shoulder. A comforting gesture, and it came from Hinata of all people. When Naruto turned to look over at her he saw that her face was as red as a cherry, but she still managed a legitimate if not very hard to maintain smile.

"Thanks a lot." Naruto said earnestly, grabbing her hand and giving it several pats, "You're a really good girl you know?" She fell backwards into the grass and Naruto just shrugged before returning to his own idle thoughts, "Yeah, that's the spirit. Relax."

The poor thing's face was awfully red. She was so nice for hanging out with him and Neji even though she was allergic to… whatever was around there making her face that color to begin with.

Neji just shook his head and followed everyone else's lead in laying back on the grass and staring up at the sky as the gathering lapsed into silence, "…I don't see what Shikamaru sees in this." The Hyuuga genius commented.

"Yeah, I know. This is so boring." Naruto said in agreement before bringing up an option, "Wanna spar or something?"

"Naruto, I'm on a team with Maito Gai and Rock Lee. Don't you think I get enough of that already?"

"Yeah but I haven't fought you in three years! Come on, don't you want a rematch?"

"Not today."

"…"

"…"

"Your cousin is totally adorable by the way."

"Yes, I guess Hanabi-sama is rather-."

"No, I meant Hinata this time. Look at her." Naruto said, not even needing to direct his attention over to Neji to tell that he'd turned his head in his direction so fast that his neck was probably sore, "I could go over there and cuddle up with her right now."

To his credit, Neji did not allow the veins around his eyes to bulge and place the Byakugan into use. That genius label might have applied to the battlefield more than anything else, but he wasn't a slouch anywhere else, "You're trying to goad me into a fight aren't you?"

"…Is it working?"

XxX

(Kumogakure no Sato – Raikage's Office)

Samui and Karui had expected the furniture to fly after they made it back to Kumo and reported not only the failure in their mission to bring Tsunade back to the village with them, but of the death to both Omoi and Darui.

It had been a sobering trip back for the two women. Even with Samui's injured leg that Ino had treated enough to send her off to the next stop, the pain didn't matter much to her. She was mostly numb in mind and body except for when she thought about the scroll that contained the bodies of her longtime teammate and their team leader who was one of the most important men in Kumo.

Well… _had_ been one of the most important men in Kumo.

But once they'd actually gotten to the Raikage and delivered to him the news, and the scroll that neither of them had tried to open since Samui had watched Ino seal it away while in Karui's body, the man took the news with an unnerving silence.

A simply sat at his desk, hands clasped together in front of his mouth pensively as he stared down at the scroll lying there on the surface before him. He had been that way for nearly an hour, and neither of the girls, nor the Raikage's lovely assistant Mabui, had said a word.

"How did they die?" A asked. His voice boomed even though it was the quietest any of them could remember hearing him speak before, "What killed them?"

From their report, the mission had been a complete mess that had devolved into a free-for-all involving more than one village. Hell, the only major village that _didn't_ get involved in this was Kirigakure, but that was probably because Konoha and Kiri were getting along on increasingly better terms recently for some reason.

"It was this guy from Konoha. Uzumaki Naruto." Karui answered first, fists shaking at her side as she remembered seeing him polish off Omoi, "He already had Omoi beat, but then he shot Omoi with some ash grenade thing that blew him out of the water before he could get himself together."

She neglected to mention that Naruto had been provoked into retaliation by Darui's attack against a person that wasn't even involved in the direct conflict at hand between them.

Was it tactically a good move for him to take a shot at Ino? Of course it was. She wouldn't have seen it coming, it would have freed up Samui and Karui to come and help him with a more difficult opponent, and would have given them a three or four-on-one advantage.

Still though, that all mattered if he'd hit her, and the third guy that could control his shadow was sweet at picking his spot when he did to step in because he saved her from that fate. Thus the only thing he did was piss off Naruto who responded in kind by attacking their vulnerable teammate.

Jinchuuriki were kind of a nasty lot for the most part, notorious for rather violent outbursts, and that manifested itself during the mission in the straightforward, brutal way that Naruto disposed of Darui and Omoi. His temper had clearly been lost.

"Darui was killed by the most powerful wind ninjutsu I think I've ever seen." Samui said as she had been the only one between herself and Karui that saw the end come for Darui, "It stripped a twenty foot trench into the ground at least a quarter of a mile away."

A scoffed in return, "That's all?" It was more than Darui could muster, but Darui had never been a battlefield-warping kind of ninjutsu specialist. He was finesse and speed, winning battles with versatility. From the sounds of things, the Kyuubi jinchuuriki just chose to flat out overpower him, and even that wasn't a small feat as Darui still had more raw power in his techniques than most Kumo ninja could muster.

There was no way he was going to make his right-hand man anything other than someone that was significantly heavy-handed in how they attacked. With Darui's Ranton and Black Lightning… there shouldn't have been anyone in Kumo other than Yugito, Killer B, and himself that could take Darui out and be able to walk away with any kind of ease afterwards.

But that didn't take into account fighting the Kyuubi jinchuuriki.

A had seen Naruto before. He'd seen him several times. He was rather underwhelming and not very impressive for all of the potential that he had. But then again he'd been a young teenager, so what could he really have been expecting?

Last time he'd seen him, Naruto had been one of the Guardian Ninja meant to protect the Daimyo during Kumo's last chunin exam that they had hosted, and the last he'd heard of him during that event was that he and the Nara kid that seemed to be joined to his hip had fled like rabid dogs back into the village gates after taking some kind of walk to the Valley of Clouds and Lightning; Killer B's training ground.

He could easily guess why they'd been sprinting back as fast as they could when he knew that the site was Killer B's training ground of choice. He'd made a point to get his share of laughs out of the Kyuubi jinchuuriki running away from the Hachibi jinchuuriki when he'd been behind closed doors and could do so freely.

It wasn't very funny now.

He vengefully wished that the little punks had been dumb enough to start a fight with Killer B that day so that they'd have been killed or scarred (mentally or physically) for life. None of this would have happened if they had been.

And now the yellow-haired loudmouth was strong enough to kill Darui and Omoi by himself in battle.

The thought caused a quick burst of lightning chakra to layer A's body for a split-second, getting the others in the room to flinch involuntarily.

"What do we do now Raikage-sama?" Mabui asked. She was a pretty, dark-skinned woman with green eyes and light grey hair done professionally in a bun, two bangs framing the sides of her face and wore a very professional high collared dress shirt and skirt.

"What we do is refrain from letting this slip to Killer B until I can call him here and tell him myself." A ordered, trying to run damage control. Times when he was the most even-tempered person in the room were few and far between, but he would definitely take the news of Darui and Omoi's demise better than his little brother would.

Killer B was unpredictable. But the one thing you could always count on was thinking of the worst possible option that he could take in any given situation… and then multiply it by five. That was to be the expected response from the 'Guardian of Kumogakure' when it came to anything that could rile him up.

Which was why he felt a pending sense of dread when he saw the pensive looks on the faces of Karui and even Samui.

"We ran into B-sensei on the way to the tower." Karui said guardedly, bracing herself for A's anger, "…He already knows."

"And he was on the way to the Valley of Clouds and Lightning when he left." Samui added to try and give her lone remaining teammate a bit of backup in explaining things to their leader, "But he's never to leave the village Raikage-sama. Do you really think he would?"

To his credit, A did not fly off of the handle immediately. He simply took a deep breath and heaved a sigh before his massive hands took hold of his desk from the underside. With no movement more complex than standing, A flung the desk through the nearest wall with a loud bellowing yell that could be heard from end-to-end in the village, "GODDAMN IT!"

XxX

(Meanwhile – Konohagakure no Sato)

When you had a weakness you had to work to make it as unnoticeable as possible. It wasn't Naruto's favorite way to train, but when everyone kept making fun of you for having a glaring Achilles' Heel in regards to genjutsu and genjutsu defense, you had to do something to remedy that.

Sasuke wasn't one to help with that even though his optically activated genjutsu was the kind that he was most afraid of facing (see: Itachi). It was one definite advantage he had over Naruto before they would have their inevitable pissing contest of a rematch and he wanted to keep that edge. Naruto couldn't blame him really.

Sakura wouldn't do for this kind of thing. She was better than Sasuke at genjutsu, true, but most of her genjutsu required a trigger of some sort, and Naruto already knew how to deal with that.

He wasn't so terribly hopeless at genjutsu. It was just that the only person he'd fought that used it extensively just so happened to be the genjutsu boogeyman.

Luckily, he did have someone to go to that had probably forgotten more about genjutsu than he'd probably ever learn.

"I've never been to Kurenai-sensei's place before." Naruto remarked, hands up behind his neck as he allowed Ino to lead the way and show him where to go, "I thought that she lived in an actual house or something, not an apartment, and I… learned something new from Hinata, so I owe her one."

"You didn't know where Kurenai-sensei lived because you were so scared of her you didn't bother to find out." Ino pointed out, bumping Naruto with her hip as they came up on an apartment complex, "Luckily, I know where everybody lives, because it was my job to know everything about everybody all the time."

"Why didn't you tell me then when I asked?"

"Is it so wrong to ask for a favor for things?"

"I asked for an address."

"Payment is usually required for goods or services rendered Goldie-kun."

Shikamaru kind of got tired of hearing the ongoing spiel and rolled his eyes, "If you knew everything about everybody like you said you'd know that while we were gone Naruto got a fian-."

Cue a quick grab around the waist from a chain before Shikamaru found himself flung up onto the second level of the apartment by Naruto. He expected something like that though, so Shikamaru's feet planted themselves on the railing, safely getting him up to the next floor.

"Hey thanks Naruto." Shikamaru said with an infuriatingly calm smile for just getting thrown twenty yards across and at least fifteen feet into the air by a chain that had come out of his friend's arm, "I didn't even have to do take those troublesome stairs."

Ino just stared up at Shikamaru wondering what the hell had just happened while Naruto gave the lazy genius a death stare of warning, mouthing, 'If you tell her about that I'll-.' Complete with dragging his thumb across his throat slowly and pointing at him for emphasis.

Either way, the moment died down and all three members of Team 10 found themselves up in front of the door that was meant to be Kurenai's. A few knocks on the door and they received no answer.

Which was annoying since Team 8 apparently didn't have practice today, nor a mission, and even if they did have one, Kurenai hadn't been on a mission in a month or so.

"Maybe she's out?" Ino wondered, flipping back her ponytail as the continued to stand outside, "Goldie?"

"On it." Naruto drew a lockpick set from his supplies and got to work on the door before Ino snapped his goggles on his forehead, "Ow! What?"

"I meant sense inside for her, not break into her place!" Ino complained. Breaking into the homes of ninjas traditionally wasn't the best idea.

"Hey!" Naruto replied with a sharp look her way, "Sensing into people's houses is rude! That's like unwritten sensor rule number two. Why do you think Hyuugas don't turn their Byakugan on every two minutes?"

"What's the first rule then?" Shikamaru asked.

"I don't know, they're not written down remember?"

The three way argument would have continued, but a series of hard bumps from inside caught their attention. Remembering the events of the past few weeks that had not endeared Naruto to be very trustworthy of the safety of his loved ones inside of the village he quickly undid the lock, no one dissuading him to do so, before all of them sprang into the house silently.

The living room was a mess, and all three spread out to search for danger or an attack. Ino headed for the kitchen, Shikamaru watched the door at the ready with his shadow jutsu, and Naruto took his machete and his ability to use clones into the back where the rooms were.

He could sense life in one of the rooms just around the corner and positioned himself in a place to retaliate. He then dropped his jaw and then his machete on the floor with a clang, because he'd found Kurenai. She had been with Asuma... without clothes… doing adult things.

"Naruto what are you doing here?!"

"Naruto, get the fuck out of Kurenai's apartment!"

What Naruto had just seen could never be unseen.

XxX

(Ten Minutes Later)

After coming across Asuma and Kurenai in the midst of copulation, Naruto slowly exited the back and went back into the living room to sit down, looking pale and lifeless with a haunted look in his eyes.

Shikamaru's face had been red and even Ino had slowly walked back into the living room, guessing what must have happened from the sounds of things and the hushed tones coming from the back even then.

The teenage team of chunin just sat there like scolded children in silence until Asuma walked out from the back in the black pants of his usual uniform, looking rather displeased at the lot of them… and the fact that he couldn't smoke while he was inside of his girlfriend's place.

He tried to be cool about it though, "I figured that if this was going to happen it would have happened back when you were twelve or something. You see, at least then I'd have had some remorse for you seeing that." Asuma explained as he stood in front of the trio, "You're sixteen going on seventeen now, and that ship has sailed. What the hell did you break into Kurenai's apartment for?"

"Loud bumps." Naruto said, not willing to piss off his jounin mentor any further by beating around the bush, "We were outside, it sounded like something was happening inside…" And with the way that Iruka had been killed less than a week ago by the traitorous Kabuto, it stuck in Naruto's craw, "We came in."

"Knock next time."

"We did knock." Ino defended in an embarrassed huff, "Loud. Maybe if you weren't making that headboard bang against the wall so hard that we thought a fight was going on in here you would have heard it. And why's the living room trashed?"

"Because this is where we started, but that's not the point." Asuma hurriedly dismissed, ignoring the suspicious glance that Naruto, Shikamaru, and Ino gave the couch they were sitting on, "What do you want?"

"Naruto sucks at genjutsu, Kurenai _doesn't _suck at genjutsu. He wants to pick her brain for a bit." Shikamaru summed up their reason for being there in the most basic terms he could, "Naruto, is this worse than the time at the capital where you caught Jiraiya in your room with those three-?"

"No, that one was way worse." Naruto interjected before Shikamaru could finish that statement, "It was my bed and we just got back from a mission. But at least Tsunade-baachan beat his ass after she found out about it."

That and aforementioned incident aside, Naruto had always wanted to see Kurenai-sensei naked anyway… and she'd been on top when he walked in, so that made it more tolerable. There was something off though.

"Why did I sense three chakra sources from outside though?" Ino's eyes widened and Shikamaru's nose began to bleed a bit at the question until Naruto cleared it up after seeing them, "No! Not that, there were only two people in there! Jeez, you guys are messed up."

Kurenai walked into the room at the point, wearing a clean robe that she was able to find after cleaning up from the extracurricular activities of her and Asuma. Upon hearing what Naruto had said, she walked over to Asuma and let him wrap an arm around her waist, "I didn't think your sensor jutsu was that strong Naruto."

"Well yeah." Naruto said, smiling at remembering Iruka teaching him the jutsu, "Iruka-sensei said I'm better at it than he is. I can sense through walls if I put enough chakra into it."

It still hurt a bit to talk about Iruka, but he could still swell with pride when it came to his first teacher and what he learned from him. Bragging made him feel much better about bringing him up, even in passing like this.

"People too apparently."

"Huh?"

"People too." Kurenai repeated with a motherly smile, "Because you sensed through me, or inside of me actually." She placed a hand on her stomach and everyone got the reference… mostly because Asuma was grinning like an idiot until Kurenai elbowed him.

Rubbing the sore spot where he'd been hit, Asuma couldn't lose his grin though, "So kids, questions? Concerns?"

"How far along is she for Goldie-kun to sense a baby?" Ino asked, bewildered at the news. She knew that Asuma and Kurenai hooked up, but she didn't know that it was that serious between them, "This is just… wow."

"Two and a half months." Kurenai answered, figuring that now was as good a time as any for people to find out about her pregnancy. She wouldn't be able to hide it for that much longer anyway.

Shikamaru just held up a finger and alternated pointing at the two of them before giving up on coming up with anything snarky to say. What was there?

Naruto just got up and shook Asuma's hand with a blank expression on his face before grabbing Kurenai and giving the surprised older lady a big hug, "I'm gonna be somebody's godfather! Sweet!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell makes you think you're going to be my kid's godfather?" Asuma asked, amused at Naruto's reaction.

"Who else would be better to look out for your kid than a badass jinchuuriki?" Naruto asked before listing off other reason why he'd be great for it on his fingers, "Kids love me, I spent the last three years as a bodyguard for the most trouble-prone noble ever, the floors of my apartment smell of rich mahogany, and aside from that… who else ya got lined up for the job?"

Dead silence.

The to-be parents really hadn't thought that far ahead. Their jounin acquaintances weren't really the best choices for such a thing, for various reasons. Kakashi, Gai, Anko, take your pick. All of them had something seriously wrong with them. But their students weren't nearly as screwed up as the full-grown adults were. At least not yet.

But wait. Naruto and Shikamaru had just come back from the Guardian Ninja. Damn it. They were already too far gone to salvage sanity-wise. Naruto definitely was. He should know. But in a pinch… if he had to choose.

Asuma stared at Naruto before turning to Shikamaru, "Shika. Godfather. How about it?" Lesser of two evils.

"What?" Shikamaru reacted immediately. He didn't want anything to do with kids right now. That was bad news for a guy like him. Responsibility? Ick, "Hell no. Let Naruto do it. He wants to do it."

"I want to do it so bad." Naruto confirmed, looking eager to have the ceremonial title bestowed upon him, "Do I get a hat like if I become Hokage, or a sash like my Guardian one? Or maybe being godfather is how Ero-sensei got his kickass horned headband? Is that thing ceremonial? Because it damn sure ain't practical and he never told me how he got it."

"If it was for being your godfather why would it say 'oil' on it dumbass?"

"Shut the fuck up if you don't have a theory Shika. You don't know how he got it either."

And these were the two front-running candidates that would take care of Asuma and Kurenai's unborn child in case something bad happened to the two of them. God help them.

Ino raised her hand idly as if she were in school, "I call godmother." She said with a brilliant smile.

Kurenai just gave Team 10 a strange look while Asuma palmed his forehead hard, "You can't call godparent status Ino. It doesn't work like that. We have to pick you and then you can accept if you want."

"Oh." The blonde Yamanaka said in understanding before blinking several times in thought, "Well in that case I'm with Goldie-kun. Who else do you have lined up for the job? Team 8?"

"That's actually a great idea." Kurenai pointed out, now feeling significantly better about the whole idea of the kids they trained being godparents as long as they were the kids that _she_ trained, "Why don't we go that route?"

"What's wrong with my kids?" Asuma asked, not recalling that only thirty seconds ago he was dreading all of the ways that Naruto would be a horrendous influence on his kid. He'd seen what Naruto had done with Konohamaru, and while it was funny when it was his nephew and not really his problem it wouldn't be so funny when it was his actual son or daughter, "…Aside from the obvious."

"Naruto smokes-." Kurenai flatly stated.

"-_I _smoke." Asuma replied while cutting her off.

"Yeah, Asuma-sensei smokes and you fucked him." Naruto said before quickly covering his mouth in embarrassment, "No! I mean-! Well I don't know how to put it any differently and you did. I'm sorry."

Kurenai didn't flip out on him for the extremely blunt comment. She just looked over at Naruto with a raised eyebrow before getting back to Asuma, "-And Naruto's tact is a bit lacking." She added to her previous statement, "Naruto honey, I love you but I really can't trust you to be responsible around a child."

Naruto just nodded in understanding. If he had kids he probably wouldn't want 16 year-old him raising them either… which was kind of weird to think about actually.

Ino got up and latched onto Naruto's side in a big hug, "Oh, it's okay Goldie-kun. You'd be like the fun uncle. You know, the one that the kids love but the parents secretly hate because he's got no concept of productive child-rearing whatsoever. It's not your fault."

Asuma snorted at Ino's cheering up of Naruto, "Kurenai, you think Naruto's bad? What do you think Kiba would do? Hana or Tsume would have to look over his shoulder every five minutes to make sure everything was alright. Kiba's like Naruto, but without the child-friendly traits."

"He's got Akamaru. Kids love dogs."

"Big dogs eat little babies."

"There's always Shino."

"Repeat what you just said and keep a straight face."

She was unable to do so. Nobody could. Imagining Shino taking care of a child that was not supposed to be raised to be an Aburame was just a priceless sight. He wouldn't know what to do.

"I'm just gonna throw this out there and point out that none of this has anything to do with genjutsu. Just saying." Shikamaru said, relaxing down on the couch, 'I am not getting involved in this talk. At this rate I'll be godfather to two couples' kids… and both couples are standing together.'

Even if one of the two couples hadn't hooked up yet. It was only a matter of time.

"Genjutsu later, godparents now." Ino said before turning her attention back to her sensei, "Now gimme godmother. Come on." She wanted a little godson or goddaughter to spoil in the very near future.

"If I'm not godfather you're sure not gonna be godmother Ino-chan." Naruto said, "They'll probably get Hinata to do it or something if she wants to." Ino growled to herself at the thought of her rival in romance getting the completely meaningless title of godparent over her. Let it be known that Yamanaka Ino could get petty when the mood struck her.

Ino just cut her eyes at her jounin sensei and his pregnant girlfriend, "This isn't over. I'm going to make you realize just what a perfect choice I'd be. I've got so much love to give!" Her grip steadily tightened on Naruto who started looking around a bit fearfully for something to Kawarimi with just in case, "I'd give that baby so much love it'd drown in it! Drown in it!"

"So you'd spoil our kid rotten just like you were."

"Of course I would! That'd be my job."

XxX

(Some Time Later – Akatsuki Hideout)

"Orochimaru eh?" A thick, hunched figure in an Akatsuki robe commented as the communication jutsu that had previously been linking all of the Akatsuki members together ended, "He's turning into a real nuisance." The puppeteer of the S-rank organization thought aloud.

Heh." Sitting on a rock nearby, Deidara spun his straw hat in his hands idly with a smirk on his face, "Taking billions from the Gato Company after Gato was killed in Cha no Kuni… getting his hands on a jinchuuriki with a natural affinity for controlling the Sanbi. It looks like old snake face is building himself a legit fighting force here. Why'd you let him do as he pleased for so long?"

"Because he wasn't a threat Deidara." Sasori commented, cutting his eyes at the explosives specialist, "There were more important things to tend to after Itachi sent him running off with his hand missing and his tail between his legs."

"Ah, ah, ah." Deidara replied, wagging a finger chidingly, "Sasori no Danna, the guy was your partner before me. Are you seriously telling me that you didn't think Orochimaru was dangerous enough to recover and rebuild without Akatsuki backing him?"

Not enough to form a hidden village, that was actually hidden by the way, that was growing in strength to the extent that it was. But that was what had happened. Then again, that was why they had been slated with the mission to locate Orochimaru's most important chess piece in the Sanbi jinchuuriki, Yukimaru.

Who better to try and find Orochimaru's ace in the hole than the only member of Akatsuki that had partnered with him before his attempt to take Uchiha Itachi's body?

"We need to find him quickly." Sasori said as he began making his way to the exit of the hideout impatiently, "I know what he's going to do. And if we're too late in finding the brat with the Sanbi I don't think I want to face off with the person that'll have it when we get there."

"So are you just going to foreshadow or are you actually going to tell me what that means, un?"

"Shut up and lead the way Deidara. You know this country better than I do."

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Ichiraku Ramen)

"So you spent the whole day with him yesterday? Alone this time?" Tenten asked, swirling around the food in her bowl with her chopsticks, "You've been spending a lot of time with Naruto-chan since the funeral." She grinned at bringing up the old nickname she referred to Naruto by back when they were genin. He hated that, "Why don't you just make your move on him already?"

Ino blew her blonde bang out of the way of her eye with a huff as she moved her own bowl out of the way, "It's not like it's that easy. This isn't just any regular guy I can woo with a wink and a pretty laugh. This is Goldie-kun. He's different. And I don't want to get him right now anyway. With Iruka-sensei dying recently, that'd hang over the relationship the whole time if I could even hook up with him right around now."

She didn't want to get him while he was vulnerable emotionally. She specialized in the psychological states of people, and there was almost never anything healthy about a romantic relationship that began under tragic circumstances.

"Where is he right now?" Tenten asked, "This is kind of his spot, so should you really be talking about this when he can pop in any second?"

"He and Shikamaru had to show Asuma-sensei a jutsu or something." Ino answered, setting her chin down on her arms on the counter, "Some kind of Guardian thing, super dangerous, blah-blah-blah. I don't know yet."

Naruto had been training extremely hard since the funeral as well, and it was all Ino could do to make him take some sort of a break lately. She knew why he was doing it, but she couldn't rightfully say that it was healthy either.

"Sorry I'm late!" They were then joined by the pink-haired member of Team 7 as Sakura dashed underneath the curtain and took her own seat with her fellow kunoichi, "I got held up from practice. So what's going on?"

"Ino's trying to figure out how and when to bang her teammate." Tenten quipped, not balking when Ino fixed her with a glare, "Pretending that you're not isn't going to make doing it any easier."

A smile came to Sakura's lips as she threw an arm over Ino's shoulder, "Ino-pig is finally all grown up, switching her attention to a man she can actually get. Good of you to leave Sasuke-kun to the right woman." And by right woman she meant herself of course.

"Goldie-kun is ten times better than Sasuke." Ino replied, narrowing her eyes at her old friend and rival. They weren't fighting over the same boy anymore… but that didn't mean they couldn't fight over which boy was better, "I'm past the pretty boys with kekkei genkai. Yamanaka Ino needs a real man."

"And that real man is Naruto?" Sakura said dryly, "I'm going to actually give you a chance to amend that statement in any way you see fit before I actually jump on you for that. Outside of fights he's totally immature."

Tenten was just amused at the path of the conversation and wanted the flames to be fanned hotter, "Come on. Naruto-chan isn't that bad."

"Right? Listen to Tenten." Ino said as she mounted her counteroffensive against Sakura, "I'm not amending anything. He's totally responsible or else he wouldn't have been a Guardian Ninja. He's definitely more fun than Sasuke is. And I know that Goldie-kun would be into having a relationship with someone." Possibly with her due to their previous interactions.

Hell, just the prospect of someone getting in a cheap shot on her in a battle angered Naruto enough to go four-tails to make sure he got the people that did it back, damn the consequences. As scary as that thought was, it was kind of sweet. That meant something. It had to.

"And Sasuke-kun isn't?"

"You know he isn't." Ino began to preen, growing in confidence as she carried on boldly, "At least if I had sex with Naruto I know he'd definitely be into it. I'm pretty sure there's a good chance he'd break me before he was done too." A big grin spread across her face as Sakura's face reddened, "Jinchuuriki stamina don't you know?"

"Oooh, well that's always fun." Tenten chimed in from the sidelines, "Do go on. And Sakura? Do you have anything to say in Sasuke's defense?"

Sakura wanted to say that Sasuke wouldn't be a slouch when the time came for things to get physical… probably. The problem for her though was still trying to get Sasuke to see her as more of a woman, not just a teammate. A problem Ino didn't seem to share.

"Yes I do as a matter of fact." Sakura rose to the bait/challenge eagerly, "There's something to be said for a woman willing to wait for a man Ino-pig. It's not all about sex, it's about being faithful too."

Ino gave Sakura a dry stare once the topic of faithfulness was raised, "…I've been waiting for three years while Naruto's been off at the capital, surrounded by noble floozies, some insane chick with a shamisen, the worst adult influence I can possibly think of for a teenage boy, and Kami knows what else."

"-With only Shikamaru to keep him from doing something completely stupid." Tenten added, a smirk growing on her face, "That is pretty patient. You didn't even take any sucker dates with other guys in the meantime either. Someone cares."

A thoughtful expression presented itself on the Team 10 kunoichi's face as she tapped the side of her bowl, "If I read Goldie's mind to see if he banged anyone while he was a Guardian would that make me a bad person?" Ino asked innocently.

Sakura just recoiled in shock, "Yes." She said plainly, giving her an anxious look with her green eyes, "Yes it would."

Behind the counter, Ayame just shook her head while leaning on the surface a few feet away from the conversation, "You do know that I've heard everything you said this whole time, and that Naruto comes here all the time right?"

Ino's eyes widened at forgetting a cardinal rule of eating establishments and information; don't say anything in front of the staff that you were uncomfortable with being passed around openly. Looking around at her surroundings and then down at her almost finished food she then realized why Naruto constantly shot his mouth off after eating there since childhood, 'It's this place! It's so comfortable it makes you not care about the things you say!'

As if she could read Ino's mind herself, Ayame's smile just stretched a little bit further, "Does anyone want anything else to eat?" She asked, angel-eyed informant to the stand's most loyal patron that she was.

XxX

(With Naruto – Elsewhere in Konoha – Kabuto's Apartment)

He wanted to junk the place. The first thing Naruto wanted to do after he'd taken Shikamaru, Kiba, and Shiho over to Kabuto's place was to tear it apart. But they'd come there for a reason and they couldn't leave without finding _something _useful about the bastard.

Sadly, that was slow going. Even with Kiba and Akamaru's noses it was next to impossible to find anything useable when it came to tracking Kabuto down. If they could find him now, they would probably find some important Otogakure base or something, but they weren't even having any luck with step one of that plan yet, let alone steps two through infinity.

"It's like nobody even lived here." Kiba said, shaking his head after searching around for an hour. Akamaru whined and laid down on the floor at their lack of success thus far, "What the hell man? How long could a guy use a place and not leave any kind of ambient scent behind?"

It didn't make any sense. It went against everything he'd been taught about tracking. Everyone's home was supposed to have some sort of scent that was signature to them. It made tracking down missing-nin from one's own village much easier.

Unless Kabuto soaked everything he everything he owned in disinfectant or something every single day, there should have been some sort of distinguishable smell there.

"I wasn't expecting much, but this is annoying." Shikamaru said, looking over Kabuto's living room. The place seemed totally impersonal, "Kabuto was a genin for years before we'd met him and this is the only place he's had to himself." He thought deeply before turning to Shiho with an idea, "Wait, Kabuto doesn't have any family does he?"

Shiho had brought Kabuto's record and upon having some attention given to her by Shikamaru she endeavored to be of assistance as she flipped through what files on him they had. Most of it by now was more than likely bunk, but for reference's sake she'd brought it along in case there were any useful parallels, "Ah, let's see."

Naruto and Kiba even stopped searching around and waited to pay attention to see what Shiho had to say. That was a lot of pressure for her. Not only to try and look good in front of Shikamaru, but the others took her word seriously enough to closely listen.

"Well, it says here that Kabuto was found on a deserted battlefield when he was seven. The former captain of Konoha's Medic Corps who found him, Yakushi Nono, adopted him." She read, basically summarizing the info that she was flipping through, "He went into the Academy at nine, graduated at ten amazingly enough, and then he languished as a genin until the age of twenty-three until… well you know."

Shikamaru took all of that in before finally saying something, "That doesn't make any sense. I read those files." He took what Shiho had away from her to look through them and found a docket on Nono complete with a profile picture.

"No." Naruto said, shaking his head as he corrected Shikamaru once he got a good look at Kabuto's apparent adopted mother, "That doesn't make any sense because I know that lady. She used to run the goddamn orphanage at the edge of town I used to be in until I got the apartment!" He bellowed, remembering vague bits and chunks from his early toddler days.

"Why'd you say used to?" Kiba asked, wondering why Naruto was flipping out so hard.

Naruto tapped his finger on her picture. Yes, he definitely remembered that woman. He could never forget a kindly smile like that back in the days when the ones he received were few and far between. But she always had one for him. There wasn't much to recall that far back, but that memory was prominent.

Then she just up and disappeared and no one ever saw her again.

He still remained at that orphanage though until he was old enough to be gifted his own place to stay by the Hokage. As much as it was a shame to realize nowadays, eventually the kindly caretaker that had only been in his life during the portions of his of it where memory was hard to come by slipped into the deep reaches of his mind.

"Kabuto's seven years older than us." Naruto said, "If Nono adopted Kabuto and put him in the Academy I think I'd remember him, or he'd remember me. I don't, he didn't, so that means that he wasn't in the orphanage when I was there."

Shikamaru gave Naruto a dead-severe look after his short tirade, "Are you sure?"

Naruto nodded, "If I'm wrong Kiba can shave my head with my machete and take pictures." The Inuzuka ninja's eyes lit up at the offer on Naruto's pride and honor. He was serious.

Shiho couldn't help but feel her face going redder and redder at what she was reading. This was horrible contingency. Who used to keep archive records before she got the job as a genin? They needed to be hanged and shot for negligence. She could have done, and did do, a better job back when she was a twelve year-old genin under apprenticeship.

The records said that Nono disappeared _before_ Kabuto ever enlisted in the Academy. Either the person in charge of admissions was bribed or was just stupid.

"Complete incompetence!" She shouted, surprising the three chunin in the room with her, "If someone kept decent records, none of this would have happened to begin with! Iruka-sensei wouldn't have been killed, and our codes wouldn't have been leaked to the enemy for the last ten years!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Shikamaru walked over to her and set his hands on the back of her shoulders, rubbing them to calm her down before she strangled someone. The girl was certainly spirited about her job, "It's not your fault. It's none of our faults. It's just troublesome that we're the ones that are figuring this crap out when older people should have been on the ball. It's good that we got it now, so just calm down."

It took a few minutes, but the blonde bookworm's breathing did even out and she calmed enough to take her glasses off and wipe the fog off of them after she'd steamed them up out of her anger, "It's okay…" She said to herself, "It's alright. I'm fine. Thank you Shikamaru-kun."

"Well who was in charge of Academy admissions?" Kiba asked, feeling Shiho's anger for her, "If they're still alive I'll just bust their ass for you. I'm really pissed off about this. Who overlooks that on someone's entry forms?" Taking the files to look over Kabuto's Academy admission paperwork, he went wide-eyed, "Whoa, too late. One of us already busted his ass."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Shikamaru wondered. Kiba's outlook certainly changed in a hurry, "Admissions is an Academy grunt job. You're basically a male secretary and do paperwork all day."

It was one of Shikamaru's ideal jobs to have as a chunin. All he ever wanted out of life; minimal responsibility, little manual labor. A trained monkey could do that job, but they had people do it and they paid you for it. All you needed to work that job was the ability to read and thumbs. And not even thumbs on both arms, just a thumb on one hand, which was why it was an entry-level Academy position.

"Admissions _is_ an Academy grunt job." Kiba explained with a smirk growing on his face. For once he knew something that smartypants Shikamaru didn't. He liked that feeling, "Back when Kabuto entered the Academy the guy in charge of admissions was…"

"Was?" Naruto asked, about to punch Kiba in the stomach and take the files to read them himself if he didn't give them the answer.

"Just wait, I'm letting it build for dramatic effect." Kiba said before yelping in pain when Akamaru bit down on his ankle, "Ow! Fine, traitor. The guy doing the job back then was Mizuki-sensei."

As in their former teacher Mizuki.

As in the guy whose ass Naruto beat ragged for tricking him into stealing the Scroll of Seals after he failed his grad exam and subsequently trying to murder him and Iruka.

Shiho just watched them all look at each other with similar bewildered expressions before venturing to say something, "…So I should probably get all of this written up and see if we can't get Mizuki transferred from prison to interrogation." She asked, getting unanimous nods from them all, "Should I request Yamanaka Ino-san to do it?"

Naruto was about to say yes until Shikamaru covered his mouth to stop him from talking, "No. Request Morino Ibiki."

Ino would just wind up reading his mind, no matter how upset she'd be while doing the interrogation. Ibiki on the other hand would break that son of a bitch first if he didn't cough up the intel on the spot.

Shikamaru could be remarkably vengeful and devious when he felt the motivation, and if Mizuki was what he thought that he was he felt entirely justified to be so.

XxX

(Outside of Konoha's Gates)

Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo were fairly talented shinobi. They had been promoted to chunin through the exam system when they were still teenagers which was pretty impressive at the time, and even though they weren't anywhere near getting promotions to jounin anytime soon they were still rather reliable.

They were experienced, they were both still very young at the age of 28, and they knew how to do most if not all necessary jobs that a ninja at their level would need to know how to do excellently.

Still though, it had been a while since they'd seen anything this weird happen at the front gate.

A quarter of a mile down the road they could see a figure sitting down in the middle of the dirt path, not moving an inch. He'd been there for a few hours now, but he wasn't doing anything. Entire teams of shinobi returning from missions and leaving on others had passed him, as did just regular visitors to the village, but so far no one had said a thing about him other than that he was just looking straight ahead and seemingly waiting for something while scribbling away in a notebook and muttering rhymes to himself.

"Go see what he wants." Kotetsu demanded of his partner as they stared at the man. He was far enough away that they couldn't make out any of his features, but they were sharp-eyed enough that they could clearly see he was there, "If someone higher up comes around and asks us why we didn't go check this guy out we're gonna get our nuts toasted."

"It could be a trap." Izumo responded, "What if he's just waiting for a Konoha ninja to get close to him and then BAM! Kidnapped, killed, used as breeding stock."

"Who would use us as breeding stock? We don't even have kekkei genkai."

"Neither does the Sandaime. Awesome in of itself is an inherited trait, and that's super-valuable you know!"

"Great, so that still means we're safe."

"…Why do you have to be like that man?"

"Screw this." Kotetsu said, "Even if he does kill us, if he's there doing wrong and we get in trouble for not doing anything about it Ibiki'll safety pin our scrotes." Both men looked at each other and shared sickened looks, "Well, if he does attack us look at it this way; we're within screaming distance of the village." Both of them fist bumped and sighed before heading out to get to the bottom of things.

Both walked down the path to reach their target with a paranoia in their bellies that can only take form after years and years of dodging death and dealing it right back. And it only got stronger as they got closer.

"Kotetsu if one of us dies, can I have your conch mace?" Izumo asked under his breath.

Ignoring that, the long-standing chunin finally reached the strange dark-skinned man in white. A Kumo ninja of all things from the looks of his flak jacket and headband, and man he was carrying a lot of swords.

"Uh, can we help you?" Kotetsu ventured to ask tentatively, "Is there any reason a Kumo ninja would be sitting right here in front of the gate? Do you want to come in or something?" There wasn't any word that anyone from Kumogakure was supposed to be on the way to Konoha. No messages or anything of the sort.

"Nope, nope. Killer B's just fine no doubt, waitin' here for Mr. Nine to come out."

Both Konoha chunin looked at each other strangely before Izumo just decided to speak up, "Who's Mr. Nine?" Because he knew pretty much everyone worth talking about inside of Konoha's gates, it came with the territory of manning the front door almost every damn day, and he hadn't heard of anyone that would go by that title.

"Well I didn't think I'd meet a person that could flat out beat a messenger hawk here all the way from Kumo!"

Turning around, Izumo and Kotetsu saw a man standing on the top of the gateway, obscured somewhat by the setting sun at his back as he jumped off and into the air. He was able to clear most of the distance between them in one mighty jump before landing on the ground with a crash of wooden sandals smashing into the earth.

They of course knew who this was and saw fit to move out of the way, "J-Jiraiya-sama."

"I'll take it from here." Jiraiya told them, shooing them back to their post as he walked up to Killer B, "The Hachibi jinchuuriki."

"Yeah? What's it to ya old man?" B said brazenly, still sitting stubbornly on the ground, apparently with no machinations on budging anytime soon, "If you ain't got Mr. Nine in that big-ass scroll you're totin', you should probably keep on moving and I ain't jokin'."

"**B, this man isn't a weakling. This is Jiraiya of Konoha's Sannin. You've heard about this guy."** The Hachibi warned Killer B from inside of his body, **"Don't do anything hasty. The entire reason you're sitting out here and waiting on Konoha's jinchuuriki is because you didn't want to do something that would make too much trouble for Kumo with Konoha yet."**

'I ain't gonna fight him Eight-O.' Killer B thought to his biju, 'Just lettin' him know what the drill is.'

With a sigh, Jiraiya sat down in front of Killer B, right there on the road with him, "Well you see, I can't let that just happen either, because if Naruto comes out here you'll challenge him, and he probably won't back down because he doesn't give a damn about his own wellbeing. And I can't just let you kill him. I won't just let you kill him."

Killer B just nodded and began sizing Jiraiya up. He was pretty mellow, but he was completely serious about staying there and not letting him get to Naruto. You heard enough about world-famous shinobi that you expected them all to be a certain way. It was always interesting to see what they were like up close and personal.

Jiraiya pulled out a notebook of his own and began flipping through it with a pen in hand as well. If he was going to be sitting there all evening he might as well do something productive and work on his next book, "And I've got to find some way to get you out of here because the longer we're here the more people will talk, and once this gets around to Naruto, short of Sarutobi-sensei himself ordering Naruto to back down he probably won't do it."

Luckily, Naruto's preoccupation with something unhealthy in trying to find some way to pursue Kabuto would keep him from getting involved in something even more unhealthy; a battle with the perfect jinchuuriki.

'He's not ready for that yet.' He was getting there, able to keep control when Jiraiya loosened the seal and forced Naruto to undergo the four-tails transformation, but from the way it hurt him and how he couldn't go any further than that, he still had quite a way to go, 'To take on a jinchuuriki that can unleash the full power of the Hachibi, he's definitely not ready.'

And honestly even if he was, Jiraiya didn't want that battle being fought anywhere near Konoha. The sheer amount of power that Naruto would need to clash with that beast of a man… if he ever gained it, that fight definitely wouldn't be taking place just outside of the gate.

"Is there any way we can handle this without all of the violence and the big explosions and the blood?" Jiraiya asked, perusing his own book notes while Killer B looked over his rhyme book, "I mean this whole thing is getting old with Kumo and Konoha going back and forth."

"What'chu talkin' bout fool? Don't talk history with me like I study the shit."

"Eh, Kumo ambushes the Nidaime Hokage and kills him, Konoha busts Kumo's ass for the rest of that war. Kumo kidnaps our last jinchuuriki Kushina, Minato gets her back and busts Kumo's ass again for the rest of that war. Kumo tries to abduct the little Hyuuga girl thirteen years ago during peace meetings to stop another war and your kidnapper gets offed, but you end up getting fooled in a switcheroo when you try to blackmail a Byakugan out of the deal anyway."

"It wouldn'a gone down like before though, not with Killer B on the battlefield yo!" Killer B boasted with a wide grin, "Even if we fought that war, Kumo woulda won fo' sho'."

They probably would have. Konoha had taken substantial damage during the prior war and the destruction that had occurred from when the Kyuubi had attacked just added onto that. Three years wasn't a good amount of time to recover from those things and fight a war.

…This was going to lead to another one of those if the world leaders hadn't learned from history, because small skirmishes at the borders and across the countryside in countries all over led to the last big one.

The quickest path to war that Jiraiya could think of was Kumo's jinchuuriki battling Konoha's jinchuuriki. If Naruto lost, that would let the entire world know that theirs was subpar to Kumo's and it would lead to no shortage of chest-puffing, even though Naruto was better than many elsewhere.

If Naruto won, compounded with the fact that Naruto had already killed the Raikage's right-hand man, it would piss A off even more and he probably would start a war to save face.

These stipulations weren't even taking into consideration the possibility that one or the other would die in battle. If one or both were killed during the fight all bets would be off and a war would definitely happen. And the one being killed would more than likely be Naruto unless Killer B was the type that was gracious in victory.

"So you think that you can just saunter on up here and challenge Naruto to an old-school moonlight duel?" Jiraiya asked, "…And you think I can possibly let that happen? Because he'd definitely accept."

"I ain't leaving 'till Mr. Nine comes out." Killer B repeated. And really there were no grounds to use force to remove him. He wasn't doing this inside of the village, he hadn't declared that his intentions with Naruto were to inflict harm on him, and he wasn't really doing anything. He was just sitting there. Attacking him first without the slightest grounds to do so would definitely lead to an international incident.

Nobody wanted to fight Killer B, period. That was just unintelligent, and not only for the political reasons

Jiraiya just sighed, "Yeah, we've already established that." This was going to be a long wait. That particular entrance and exit to the village was officially closed down for the time being and the entire road was locked down to divert travelers another way. No one was to go that way until the all clear was given, and word about what was transpiring there was to kept as low-key as possible.

At least Hiruzen was on the ball with this one for sure, but waiting out Killer B might be more difficult than anyone figured it would be.

XxX

(Konoha Intelligence Division HQ – Cold Interrogation Room)

Naruto stood behind the one-way mirror of the observation area and looked through it to see one of his former teachers, Mizuki, sitting in a chair while tightly shackled, arms behind the back of the furniture.

Time in prison had apparently done him good physically. He was ripped, and it could be seen even through the prison uniform he was wearing.

Kabuto was a spy that had been ferrying off Konoha information to Orochimaru, keeping the smaller Otogakure one step ahead of the competition long enough for them to build up substantial resources and power.

If Shikamaru's hunch was on, there was no way Kabuto would have gotten into the Academy without an inside man.

"You know, staring at him like that isn't going to magically get him to spill everything he knows." Ino's voice rang out in Naruto's ears before he felt her delicate weight drift over his back and the fabric of her Konoha T&I uniform, wrapping her arms around his neck fondly, "How are you doing Goldie?"

"I don't know." Naruto said, setting his head against hers and shutting his eyes, "Iruka-sensei's funeral was a week ago. Should I still be this mad? I've never had this happen before. Having someone close to me die I mean."

"It's not just that an important person to you died Naruto." Ino said, enjoying the close contact for as long as she could get it, "Someone that you thought was trustworthy did it, and he screwed us all over. Kabuto won't get away with it."

It wasn't Kabuto getting away with it that he was afraid of. Karma had a way of getting its knee up into the groins of others one way or another.

Jiraiya warned him about what hatred could lead to. Hatred was the thing that gave the Kyuubi influence over him. Naruto of all people couldn't allow himself to walk around with his anger stewing. But he just didn't know how to let it go.

His loved ones could dull it. Training could put it at the back of his mind for a short while, but he couldn't keep it out of his head. If he actually came across Kabuto he didn't know what he would do.

"I don't know." Naruto said, "I mean, we're kind of late to get our lead from here aren't we?"

"We have to start somewhere." Reasoned Ino. She had a point. Mizuki was probably the best starting point that they had to go from, "Come on. Don't get all drab and frowny on me now."

Naruto turned his head and looked into Ino's eyes to find her doing the same with him. She grinned at their proximity and pushed her forehead against the goggles on his in something of an intimate gesture.

He'd been through a lot and seen a ton of things, but Naruto was really a bundle of nerves when it came to the topic of intimacy with Ino. Training with Jiraiya and living with the people that comprised the Guardian Ninja took away every last scrap of his shame in almost every definition of the word, but this woman made him feel like he was twelve and just getting used to receiving positive attention from a pretty girl.

"Hey." Naruto asked, swallowing to get his swagger back and muster his nerve up again, "Ino-chan."

"Mmm?"

"When this is over and you interrogate Mizuki, would you maybe want to come with me somewhere?" Man, the way he said that was so uncool. He learned how to better talk to girls and even operated smoothly around Ino before. But that was for play, 'That was so lame! You couldn't have thought of something more awesome to say than that?'

Ino on the other hand didn't seem to be flustered in the least, "…Are you asking me out?" Her father didn't raise her to be meek and indirect about how she felt, and she was just glad that Naruto finally seemed to be getting over whatever hang-up he had when it came to getting closer to her.

"What? Pssht. No." Ino gave him a deadpan stare before placing a hand on the top of his head and shutting her own eyes, as if she were about to use her mind-reading jutsu, "Yes. I'm asking you out damn it. Don't read my mind."

"I'd never dream of it dear. And I'd love to." She gave him a peck on the cheek and a wink for his troubles, "You don't have to be so nervous. It's just me. I'm not gonna poison you or something for saying something silly. I'm used to it by now after all."

That was nice… and somewhat backhanded, but hey whatever. Ino was Ino, and if she wasn't her he wouldn't be into it.

The sound of a door opening in the interrogation room separated the two, which was odd because from inside the room no one could see them behind the one-way mirror. Ino's father Inoichi was the one that had entered, and Ino felt kind of weird doing anything like that with her dad within sight, even if he had no idea what was going on behind that glass.

Inoichi just paced in front of the table that Mizuki was seated in front of, rubbing his chin as Mizuki just watched him walk around.

"So are you letting me out of prison at last?" The former teacher sneered, "Almost four years of prison time with no end in sight just for attacking Uzumaki of all people? That seems really harsh."

"You have a point." Inoichi said, stopping to face the disgraced chunin, "Getting beaten up by a kid that technically hadn't graduated the Academy had to be enough of a punishment huh? I wonder how well that went over for you in prison when everyone found out about it." Mizuki growled at him angrily at the humiliating defeat being brought up.

"I didn't lose to a boy." The former schoolteacher spat bitterly, "I lost to the Kyuubi."

"The Kyuubi had nothing to do with it, but whatever makes you feel better." That wasn't the point of this little session though, "Tell me, about thirteen years ago or so, were you approached about entering a Yakushi Kabuto into the Academy as a new student?"

It was best to get down to brass tacks to get this over with as soon as possible. No sense in beating around the bush. They'd go in headfirst.

Instead of denying anything or trying to feign ignorance on the matter, Mizuki just began to chuckle. Soon however, that chuckling erupted into full-blown laughter that grew more and more maniacal and mocking in its tone.

"Oh, oh this is just too good." Mizuki said, calming down as an actual tear of mirth came to his eye, "Oh… it took you that long to catch on? Honestly, that's just priceless. I didn't think it'd go under the radar really. I figured you'd bust him in school, and then after he actually graduated… but years rolled by and nothing. Man oh man, when I heard you put him in that chunin exam that got projected all over the place… I fucking died laughing in my cell and nobody knew why."

He even managed to get two more kids in Kabuto's class to defect to Orochimaru for power as well. What were their names? Yoroi and Misumi. Whatever. They died years ago, so they weren't really much more than grunt material. Still, every army needed foot soldiers.

"So you were bribed after all." Inoichi said with a dark look on his face, "Even back then Mizuki? Unforgivable." And this was the man that they'd put in charge of their children for so many years?

Mizuki just shook his white mane of hair around, "Orochimaru-sama understands what makes a man like me tick. All of this village's talk about the Will of Fire, and protecting the people, and all of that crap… the only things that matters are power and understanding the truth."

"Why are you freely telling us all of this now?" Inoichi asked, "I haven't even begun to interrogate you yet."

"Because none of what I've said matters. Nothing I just told you is actually important." Mizuki said with as much of an arrogant shrug as he could muster, "It doesn't matter that you've got me trapped here. You can interrogate me all you want, you can try your cheap mind reading jutsu and it still won't work. I'll tell you what's going to happen the moment you do." He jerked his head to the entrance, "The minute you try to pull something that's actually useful out of me I'll be getting up and walking out of that door."

The Yamanaka head narrowed his eyes at Mizuki, who was far too smug for his tastes. But why? He was a prisoner, but he never seemed to see going to the Konoha Strict Correctional Facility as anything less than a mere setback according to reports on his progress.

But he wasn't talking either. At least not about anything more than propaganda and drivel about how out of the loop they were. So Inoichi had to try and call his bluff.

Walking up to Mizuki who was grinning with his head lowered, Inoichi shut his eyes and placed one hand on his head. He didn't have the mind reading amplification machine available at the moment, but there was no rush. He could take all the time he needed to break through whatever mental defenses Mizuki had set. He had to have them because he was so confident that Inoichi would never find anything.

But once the connection was made and Mizuki's entire body was forced to relax and succumb to the jutsu, something in his throat seemed to relax and force him to swallow. Both Naruto and Ino saw that behind the one-way mirror and wondered what the hell it was. That was an actual object, "Goldie-kun…"

"I saw it." Naruto said before noticing black markings under the short sleeves of Mizuki's prison-issued uniform. Those weren't there before, "Wait, those look like seals." The walls were too thick for Naruto to try and sense through, but if he'd been able to he would have been able to feel Mizuki's chakra intensity spike.

The only indication they got that something was happening was when Mizuki's muscles suddenly expanded and he broke his bindings behind his back. Inoichi quickly snapped out of his jutsu and put his arms up in time to block a punch that knocked him into the mirror hard enough to crack it.

Not wasting a moment, Mizuki broke through the door and out into the hallway only to meet Naruto coming out of the adjacent viewing room to face him, Ino rushing past him to get into the interrogation room to ensure her father was alright.

It took a second for Mizuki to recall who it was standing in his path to escape granted to him by Kabuto's experimental drug and cursed seal, but the features were the same as someone he knew just a little bit more grown up.

Naruto just stared him down and noted that he had some strange black markings on his face as well that looked like tiger stripes.

"Well if it isn't Naruto." Mizuki said with a laugh, making great efforts to look as big and imposing as possible, "Rematch time!" In a sudden move he lunged at Naruto, grabbing for his throat only to miss the strike and hear the jingle of a chain. Looking down he saw a single tight loop around his waist sticking tightly and felt himself get yanked directly backwards, "What kind of-?"

"Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Naruto slammed a Rasengan directly into the base of Mizuki's spine, driving it deep enough to carve a mark into him. It shot Mizuki down the hall like a bullet, but the chain remained wrapped around his waist and pulled him back and up into the air… through the ceiling. He was then slammed back onto the floor on top of his head, hard enough to bust the floor, "Setsudanki Kujo (Slingshot Extermination)!"

Mizuki stuck straight up in the air, half of his body driven through the floor. This was the sight that Ino and Inoichi saw when they the dutiful daughter helped her father up and out of the interrogation room.

"Rematch over." Naruto quipped, reeling the chain back into the tenketsu in his arm that it had extended from underneath his arm-warmer, "I think I win again 'ttebayo."

Inoichi just stared at Mizuki as Naruto plucked him out of the hole he'd created down to the lower floor and dropped him on the ground. He wasn't moving, but he wasn't dead. Naruto hit him in the spine and then slammed him on the top of his head, "Did you paralyze him?"

"You still needed him right?" Naruto asked, not sparing Mizuki a second glance. He was just a ghost from his past that could start him on a trail to get to Kabuto. That was all, "Freaky-weird cursed seal and everything. That's something."

"You didn't answer my question Naruto."

Naruto just shrugged, "He broke out. He attacked you and me. Now he isn't gonna do that again. Yay."

The Guardian Ninja group didn't have a lot of wiggle room to fuck around in their work. You had to have somebody killed? They killed them. You had to keep someone alive for some reason? You'd better tell them what condition you needed them in beforehand or you'd be getting back whatever you got. No complaints allowed after the fact.

Ino just looked down at the broken criminal and then to Naruto before raising an eyebrow, "Anybody ever tell you that you fight scary now Goldie-kun? And who's fixing this by the way?"

Silence lingered between the three of them until more ninja that had been populating the building at the time came to secure the area and find out what was going on.

"…Genin?" Naruto answered questioningly.

Inoichi nodded absently, "Yeah, that's a D-rank mission."

"What about him though?"

"Ino dear?"

"Yeah…" Ino said, kneeling down by Mizuki to begin working on healing him as best as she could on-site, "I'll make sure he can keep going." Her palms began to glow green as she held them over Mizuki's wounds, "Did I ever tell you I really don't like this job daddy?"

Inoichi just sent a wry smile down to his daughter in return, "You think I do?"

XxX

(Undisclosed Location – Otogakure Base)

"Good to have you back Kabuto-kun." Orochimaru said with a rather twisted smile as his right hand man, lead scientist, and top medic finally returned to his good graces permanently, "The prodigal son returns and all of that other sentimental noise."

"Aw I'm touched Orochimaru-sama." Kabuto replied with a chuckle as the two of them walked through the dark corridors of the hidden base, "But since I'm here I've got to know, how is your pet project coming along? I haven't seen Yukimaru in quite a while."

Ah, the Sanbi jinchuuriki. So devoted to his words. He swore that he would make the young man strong. Give him the power to protect the people that were important to him, such as another of his elites in Guren.

He never told him exactly how he was going to ensure that the boy gained that power. It would be obtained through him. Through Orochimaru taking his body and making it his own. Yukimaru could live vicariously from within his consciousness him the way that the other souls he had shoved aside to take their bodies did.

The loss of Otogakure's land holdings in Mizu no Kuni was a shame, but it was not a sacrifice without benefit. That stone had almost been bled dry by the time that he'd gotten what was left of his investment out, right before the base quite literally fell.

"The loss of Kimimaro and my lovely island facility was a shame." Orochimaru said, never losing his smile as the extremely pale man led Kabuto along, "Kimimaro was a strong enough to take on and hold his own against my former comrades in Akatsuki. It's hard to believe that he was defeated by Konoha's imperfect jinchuuriki."

"I think Naruto-kun is an interesting fellow personally." Kabuto offered as a rebuttal of opinion, "We were 'friends' for a while after all." The humor from that wasn't lost on Orochimaru who actually laughed to himself, "I killed his first teacher before I left. An unfortunate run-in."

"Oh, I'm sure you're so broken up about it." Orochimaru quipped, "But I have no use for a jinchuuriki that can barely control the beast inside of him. Yukimaru is the perfect host body. His chakra quells the Sanbi. If he had the will to do so, he could control its powers freely."

And that was what Orochimaru planned to do once he was inside of his body. With all of that wonderful power in the palm of his hand he could finally begin his push to getting everything he wanted for himself.

He would need Kabuto to oversee the last few modifications he wanted to make to Yukimaru's body before he would take it over. He couldn't wait. Kabuto couldn't have taken to departing from Konoha quickly enough for his tastes. He wanted him to get right to work as soon as possible.

As far as Orochimaru and his 'little' operation in Otogakure was concerned, things couldn't have been going smoother for him.

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Hour 0)

"This is totally retarded." Shikamaru said, sitting on a chair in Naruto's apartment right next to the tenant of said apartment, "Why do you have to test your jutsu on us Ino?"

"Yeah, what if it backfires?" Naruto said, slightly nervous when it came to assisting his kunoichi teammate with one of her odd clan ninjutsu, "Your jutsu is scary. It messes with minds and stuff. I don't like that."

Ino stood behind them both and rested a hand on each of their shoulders, "Don't you two worry about that. It works perfectly and I can definitely do it. Besides, when I master it well enough I can start learning more complex techniques, like stuff that involves hitting more than one target with one jutsu! Isn't that awesome?"

Shikamaru and Naruto both looked at each other before speaking in stereo, "We can already do that with our stuff."

"Well unless I'm using a poison jutsu I can't!" Ino barked back, cheeks turning red at being the only one without a signature jutsu that could affect multiple targets, "Look, just help me. I'll do the jutsu, make sure it works, and that'll be that."

Shikamaru just let out a groan that translated to him consenting to help, but not being very excited about it. Naruto nodded his own consent, but idly wondered why they always had to do these kinds of things at his house.

"Alright." Ino said, stepping back twice behind them and taking a deep breath before forming a brand-new hand-seal. Crossing her forearms in front of her body, she touched the thumb of both hands to the ring fingers and took aim at the two of them through the space provided to target them, "Here we go. Shinkoukanshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Exchange Jutsu)!"

She could feel the connection of her chakra to theirs and quickly uncrossed her arms before releasing her ring fingers and thumbs from their positions, the jutsu completed. Honestly she was excited at the results. She'd never executed that jutsu on people before.

"Whoa." Shikamaru's voice said, but it didn't seem like the way he would talk at all, "Ino-chan is this how you feel whenever you switch bodies with other people?" Standing up, Shikamaru's eyes looked down at his hands and the rest of him as if it were completely foreign, "This is weird. Hey Shika, your body sucks! Train harder! I feel like a good punch would break me right now!"

"That's why I don't get hit idiot." Naruto's body said in an unusually lazy inflection. His blue eyes were barely open as if it took too much effort to do so, but they weren't squinting as Naruto was known to do from time to time, "Your body feels like I'm moving in fast-forward or something. All of this energy is so troublesome."

Ino pointed between the two of them to make sure she had things straight, "Okay, so Goldie-kun is in Shika's body and Shika is in Goldie's body. Sweet, it worked. I'm _so_ ready for the next tier of techniques!"

"Yeah, yeah good for you." Shikamaru interrupted, clearly uncomfortable in the foreign skin, "Switch us back already. This is lame."

Ino rolled her eyes and tried form the necessary release command hand-seal to do just that, "Alright. You're no fun." She then found her hand stopped by Naruto grabbing onto it, "Shika-, I mean Goldie, what are you doing?"

"Yeah…" Naruto drawled slowly, "I'm not ready to go back into my body yet."

"What?" Needless to say, both Ino and Shikamaru were surprised. One of them was greatly displeased, "What the hell do you mean you're not ready to go back yet?"

This was a golden opportunity for Naruto. It had been a _long_ time since he'd been able to release his mischief valve and vent a little with some old-fashioned debauchery. And for once he could do whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted and receive no negative consequences for his actions later on… because they wouldn't be his actions. They would be Shikamaru's actions.

If Naruto knew Ino's Shintenshin no Jutsu he'd have done that crap all the time just to mess with particular people, but as far as he knew there was probably some code that kept them from using it so liberally.

Naruto did not have such a code, and did not have to adhere to theirs if there was indeed such.

Also he owed Shikamaru seven times over for times back at the capital where Shikamaru had gotten one over on him for kicks. That damn prank he collaborated with Jiraiya on that involved Shizuka and Kotoko wasn't going to be very funny by sunset.

So basically, game on.

"I'll see you guys-." Naruto looked over at the clock on the wall before giving up trying to come up with a decent time, "-Whenever I get bored. Later!" He jetted into his room and out of the glass door onto the balcony where he proceeded to jump off and take to the streets, "Damn it, Shika's body's slower than dirt!"

It was like running with weights on compared to his body. Everything felt more sluggish. It was terrible.

Oh well. He didn't need to be a superhuman jinchuuriki athletic marvel to make a public nuisance of himself. If he played this right it was going to be the best day ever.

Alarms went off in Shikamaru's head as he jumped up to give chase-, "Naruto you son of a-!" -And wound up overshooting his leap and smashing his head off of the top of the doorframe to the bedroom. Naruto's body was way faster and stronger than he was used to. It was like being on steroids all the time, "Ugh, I hope he felt that. But that would mean I felt that too. Troublesome."

Ino just held her hand over her eyes in a mortified manner and shook her head, "Oh, this is going to be one of those days isn't it?" She moaned negatively.

She just wanted to make sure she could utilize a clan jutsu on human beings the way it was intended to be used. Was that so much to ask? And now Naruto was going to domestically terrorize Konoha… or something.

Come to think of it, he never did tell them exactly what he was going to go do.

"Well?" Shikamaru asked expectantly, "Switch us back already."

Ino just threw her arms out haplessly, "I can't just do it whenever. Goldie ran out of range. We'd have to chase him down and keep you both nearby if we wanted to break the jutsu that way." They both had to be well within her field of vision at least.

That wasn't what the young Nara genius wanted to hear.

Shikamaru sat up on the floor and rubbed where he'd bumped his now blond head, "Okay if this jutsu works like the rest of your mind switching jutsu Naruto felt me bump his… my… his… _this_ head. So he probably knows that anything he does to my body his body will feel." Ino nodded.

That definitely meant that Naruto wasn't going to purposefully do anything to his body that would be harmful, not that he thought he would in the first place. That was a bridge too far for someone like Naruto to take even on his most mischievous day. He wasn't going to actually hurt anyone, so at least there were rules established to this little game then.

Looking at the body he was currently inhabiting, Shikamaru looked up at Ino who seemed confused on what to do. He could work with this though, because while Naruto was in the more advantageous situation Shikamaru had the stronger body to work with as soon as he got used to it.

Shikamaru was in a body that finally matched how his mind felt, and he didn't have to do lick of the borderline insane training or the hard work that Jiraiya forced Naruto to put in to get it.

Now he could either take the high road and use his powerful temporary body and unparalleled intellect for good as in stopping Naruto from terrorizing the village in his body, or he could take the low route and fight fire with fire by completely blasting Naruto's reputation and standing amongst the people the way Naruto was about to blast his.

Shikamaru took a moment to think on it before slowly getting up and walking outside, "I'll be back."

Ino just watched him calmly leave and shut the door behind him, but she knew that tone. This was completely surreal, and more importantly all her fault. If she couldn't stop the two of them, horrible things were going to befall Konoha until one of those two destroyed the other.

Well not really, but it was going to get very ugly.

Looking at the clock, Ino grimaced. Seven hours. That was when the jutsu would end and they would return to their own bodies. That wasn't fast enough, which meant that she had to do something about it.

If she couldn't undo what she'd caused before things heated up that village wasn't lasting until 8 that night when the jutsu would end, that was for damn sure.

"Crap. I'm gonna need some help."

* * *

Jutsu List

Setsudanki Kujo (Slingshot Extermination). B-rank taijutsu, offensive, mid-range. Naruto can trap an opponent in his chakra chains and use his honed physical strength and his malleable chakra chain to lift them off of the ground and forcefully slam them down from an elevated height. The effectiveness of the technique is all a matter on how Naruto drives his opponent down; he can kill them, cripple them, or debilitate them depending on the method he uses.

Shinkoukanshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Exchange Jutsu). Ninjutsu, supplementary, mid-to-close range. A Yamanaka Clan jutsu, the user takes aim at two targets and forces them to switch minds temporarily. It is a fine scare tactic for interrogation and is a building block technique that enables Yamanaka Clan members to begin learning top-shelf combat ninjutsu involving their clan specialty. Can also be extremely useful in battle, as it operates under the same principle as the other Yamanaka possession techniques; i.e. damaging one will hurt the other equally as well. Thus killing one while this jutsu is in effect will result in the death of both.

This jutsu will wear off on its own after a certain amount of time, but that time can be sped up by the two jutsu victims wasting chakra.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Konoha Shinobi

Mizuki

**Ninjutsu: 3  
Taijutsu: 3  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 2.5  
Stamina: 2  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 22.5**

Kumogakure Shinobi

A (Raikage)

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 35**

Killer B

**Ninjutsu: 4.5  
Taijutsu: 5  
Genjutsu: 3  
Intelligence: 3  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 4  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 32.5**

* * *

**Alright, so I'm officially two summer classes away from finally getting my damn diploma and walking out of my university four years older than when I went in, with a mountain of debt that will keep me under thumb for quite some time. But at least I picked a major that has actual job demand and a decent upward mobility for people that are good at it, so my chances of getting out of it are better than a lot of graduates I think.**

**And then if I wind up becoming a famous fighter or something this is all moot anyway, because I'll be tying people into knots for my money.**

**Yeah right. Who am I kidding about that one?**

**But anyway, with my spring semester completed I have a week off before I have to destroy my mind and sanity for one more five week period during a summer semester, and I will never set foot into another school setting for the next ten years at least.**

**Once again, you do not care about that, but I'm just so stoked to almost be done for good. It almost offsets the crippling fear of not knowing what's going to happen next. I've put out this huge-ass chapter to celebrate.  
**

**Anyway, this chapter, I've had my fill of battles for a while, so we're going to be setting some things up. More character interaction and development and all of that good stuff, and I hope you enjoy. **

**Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go vent and rest after a three week period of final projects and exam work. Commuting sucks.**

**Kenchi out.**


	58. The Icarus Syndrome

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. But things like this exist for a reason. We needs to dull our senses from time to time, so here you go.

(P.S. You may or may not know that I posted a chapter 57 due to the fact that when I did it, this site's alert system was down. Just making sure you know so that you don't realize something's off when you get to the end of this, like you're missing a chunk of story.)

**Chapter 58: The Icarus Syndrome**

* * *

"Hawks."

"Toads."

"Hawks."

"Toads."

This argument had been going on for several minutes, as Naruto had run into Team 7 on his way to some personal property that he'd just recently found out about, and Sakura and Chouji decided that they would go along with him to keep him from being by himself.

Conversation had eventually broken down into Sakura asking Naruto what it was like to have access to such legendary summon creatures such as the toads. At that point Sasuke smirked and added his own input, more or less saying that toads were alright, but compared to hawks they blew.

"Hawks are better dobe." Sasuke said, still smirking at the fact that he was able to goad Naruto into an asinine argument that he couldn't win in his opinion.

It was an argument that Naruto was in until the finish for, "And I'm telling you that they aren't bastard! If you want a cool summon you've got to go with toads!"

"Hawks can fly and they're the fastest summon in the world, even faster than snakes."

"Toads are the best for actual battles. They can actually hold stuff, make hand-seals, and do jutsu."

"Hawks have wind release just from flapping their wings, and if you want a hawk to hold something that's what talons are for." Sasuke added to his own side of the debate, "Let's not forget this important fact either. Hawks eat toads."

Naruto just glared at Sasuke for bringing conventional facts of nature up. As if he didn't know that himself, "I'd love to see your boss summon even try to eat my boss summon." Gamabunta would gut and stuff that oversized pigeon, "Hawks don't even have Sage Mode!"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at that statement and good-natured Chouji just had to ask the question that was on everyone's mind, "Naruto, what's Sage Mode?"

Realizing that he couldn't really talk much about that subject, Naruto just cleared his throat, "Ah, just a really kickass technique that the best toads know how to do." And could teach to humans if they so felt like they were physically capable of learning it, "The point is, hawks can't do it. All hawks can do is caw and poop from really high in the air."

That struck a chord with the sole Konoha Uchiha who glared at Naruto for that crack, "I'll remember that the next time you're falling hundreds of feet to your death."

Tiring of the argument between the two powerful chunin, Sakura found that the world had given her a bit of a gift to stop the senseless banter without having to clock anyone, "Uh I think we're here guys." She said, pointing at a bit of a rundown shrine with the swirl mark of the Uzumaki Clan symbol on the awning outside, "I think this is what you're looking for Naruto."

Naruto nodded and stepped forward, "The Uzumaki Clan Mask Storage Temple." He said to everyone else and to himself with a nod of confirmation before taking a deep breath and shouting to the sky, "WHY DOESN'T ANYONE EVER TELL ME ABOUT ANY OF THIS SHIT!?"

First the fact that his clan actually used to mean something in the world, and now that they had property in the village?

Sasuke hated agreeing with Naruto, but in this case he couldn't find a reason not to, "Honestly, it's not like there's anyone else in the village that could or would take care of this place but you. I don't get why the Hokage didn't tell you about this place until now." If he had been in Naruto's shoes he would have been plenty upset about not having access to the things that his clan had amassed and left behind over the years.

The reason Hiruzen was telling Naruto about his clan's land holding now was because of the fact that he wanted Naruto to remain in the village and refrain from leaving for as long as possible, at least until they could find a way to remove Killer B without him knowing.

There was another reason that he hadn't told Naruto about the mask temple sooner. A very good reason. But none of the young chunin present were privy as to the reason why. Very few people actually knew what the function of the temple was.

"Well what are we waiting for?" Chouji asked as Sakura was the first to walk up the steps to go inside of the dilapidated building.

As the rest followed inside, they were a bit wary of going much farther as the floor creaked with every step they took inside. Support beams from around the ceiling had fallen all over, and wooden pillars were cracked and broken, "Kami." Sakura said as she watched where she put her feet on the wood, "Father Time sure took a sledgehammer to this place didn't he?"

"It's a fixer-upper." Naruto said with a wide grin, leaning against a pillar until his arm broke through the weak surface, "Whoa!" Pulling his arm free he dusted splinters off of his arm-warmer and carried on, "I can totally rebuild this place."

"You could always D-rank it out to some genin squads." Chouji offered with a grunt of effort, lifting up a fallen pillar so that everyone could progress inside past a blocked doorway, "You've got the money right? All those Guardian missions?"

"And the S-rank from a while ago." Sakura added, sweeping down some cobwebs out of her way, "Come on Naruto, work the system that tormented us as kids."

"The only way I'm not doing this myself is if I can get Hanabi and Konohamaru's teams to do this so I can order them around." Naruto said with a wide grin, "But they're about to do the chunin exam, so I'll just make some clones and do it myself when I get some free time. Maybe if I have enough money and there's enough space I can build a house out here on the property. That'd be cool right?"

"Hey."

Everyone heard Sasuke call out from a different room of the temple and followed the sound of his voice to enter some kind of room dedicated to something. Directly in front of the doors there was an ornate podium surrounded in a display of black flames on the wall that had twenty-seven creepy oni masks hanging there underneath three Uzumaki Clan symbols.

"I think this belongs to you too Naruto." Sasuke said dryly as everyone else entered and stared at what he was looking at.

They were all certain that he was right, but Naruto had no idea what the hell he was looking at, "…So what the hell am I supposed to do with a bunch of masks? I mean they're kind of cool and everything, but like…"

"No, I get what you're saying. But there's got to be some kind of practical reason that they're here." Sakura said, walking up onto the podium to reach for one, "May I?" She asked, getting a nod from Naruto and taking one down to study it, "These are in great condition. Not a speck of dust on them or anything."

Something about a few of those masks felt wrong. She didn't know any other way to put it, but some of those masks felt, not cursed, but like there was dangerous power flowing through them and they had some kind of purpose. So in short, yeah, cursed.

"Put it on." Naruto said, getting Sakura to freeze in place, "Come on. Go for it."

The pink-haired kunoichi scrutinized the face of the creepy demon mask closely for several seconds before feeling a serious sense of dread and shaking her head, "No. Hell no. Not a chance. You put it on."

"You're already holding it Sakura." Naruto said, him and Chouji standing a safe distance away just in case it was cursed or something, "Just put it on your face." Why would he be obligated to put one on, because he technically owned the place and all of the masks?

"Why?" Sakura was not comfortable about this in the slightest. She'd seen movies that started like this, "If I wind up going insane and going on a killing spree I'm starting with you Uzumaki!"

Naruto and Chouji looked at each other before Naruto found a respectable way to respond to that, "If you go insane and start going on a killing spree, I'm the first one out that door and I'm sealing you in here."

"Okay, okay, okay." Sasuke said, moving forward to take the mask from Sakura. Her hero. He wouldn't let her do something so potentially dangerous on his watch, "Sakura's not wearing this. Naruto make a clone."

Tilting his head in confusion it took a few seconds for the reason why to sink it before Naruto palmed his goggled forehead hard, "Right. Gotcha. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" A hand-seal and a puff of smoke later, and a second Naruto appeared at his side, "Good luck bud. Godspeed."

"Thanks Boss." Naruto's clone said to him before giving him a bro-hug and moving forward to face his fate, snatching the mask away from Sasuke and Sakura, "If _I_ go on a killing spree I'm probably going straight for the eyes just so you know."

"…Thanks?" Sasuke didn't know whether to thank Naruto's clone for the warning or get pissed that Naruto's first plan in a no-holds-barred battle was to go straight after his eyes.

Naruto's clone took several deep breaths before simply going for it and placing the mask onto its face.

It was at that point that Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, and Chouji all realized exactly why the Hokage had never told Naruto about the mask temple back when Naruto was a child; because he was _not_ ready for the responsibility of overseeing it.

When a temple had a mask in it that would allow you to be possessed by the Shinigami… you had to be extremely careful with it.

If there was a mask that did that, were there any others that could do anything else?

XxX

(Ninja Academy – Hokage's Office)

Elsewhere, Hiruzen had a horrible chill down his spine that in the effort to keep Naruto busy and in the village doing something productive he might have just done the equivalent of giving a monkey a lit explosive tag to play with.

But he had to put that aside for the time being due to his current visitor, someone that he had seen time and time again grace his presence to converse with him or more commonly argue with him about something that he had done or wanted to do.

"Danzo." Hiruzen said, setting aside his daily busy work to make time for a talk with his old friend and rival, "What can I do for you today?"

Never one to mince words over what he required from the Hokage, Danzo looked around the room with his one squinting eye as the other bandaged one remained covered, "You probably already know what I'm going to speak with you about but there is a clear and present danger just outside of the village gates."

"I have Jiraiya handling it diplomatically." Hiruzen tried to assure him, "If anyone can reason peacefully with this man it is him."

Sure, he was outside waiting on an apparent showdown with the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, a lynchpin ninja in Konoha's forces despite his age, but was it really a battle he wanted? And if it was a battle that he wanted, could Jiraiya cool him down or somewhat deter him from actively seeking out a fight?

This would mark the second jinchuuriki that wanted a piece of theirs in a fight in addition to Gaara, a ninja of their Suna 'allies'.

"There is no diplomacy with Killer B." Danzo said as if this were something that he didn't need to tell Hiruzen, "Kumo's A-B Combo are very rarely reasonable men. There is no possible way that this ends well for the village, so I beg of you now to take action. At least this way we can prepare in advance for-."

"-For war?" Hiruzen finished for Danzo, setting aside anything else that he might have been doing with a sigh, "I don't understand you old friend. Why are you always so quick to move to the solution that will lead to the most bloodshed? You and I have both lived through the same conflicts. Why would you want to subject our children to that hell?"

"Because war is necessary, and it is inevitable." Danzo explained on his end, "No matter what move you make here, eventually it will occur. It's a matter of time. The question of who is the most powerful village has been in doubt for several years, and it's almost come to a head time and time again."

You could only have so many near-misses until the time finally came that you couldn't avoid it any longer. It was a fight that Hiruzen had managed to deter twelve years ago at the cost of Hyuuga Hizashi's life, but Kumo simply kept knocking at the door. Eventually they were going to break down the doors of the mansion to take the keys for themselves, or Konoha was going to have to do something to stop them once and for all.

That was the way Danzo saw things.

"If you've lost the stomach to do what is necessary before it is too late, perhaps you should think about handing the position of Hokage off to another." Danzo said with a magnificent poker face, "You're not getting any younger you know."

"I do know, and I plan on handing it off." Hiruzen said, "The moment I find someone that breaks through and shows me what is required of a Hokage to lead. Now is that all you came to speak to me about?"

"I don't want to waste too much of your time Hiruzen." Much to the Hokage's surprise as he thought he knew his friend well enough to figure he was about to settle into a long debate with him about what to be done with Killer B just outside of the village, "I just wanted to make sure that you knew what the score was. You're tiptoeing through a minefield here. Every time we've tried to extend an olive branch to Kumo we've been burned because of it."

With that he departed the office of his rival and oldest friend, taking note of every shinobi who passed him in the halls. After all, Konoha already had one confirmed ninja that had been in its midst only with the intent to spy. He would never know that he was the one that had given that ninja the deep cover training needed to perform such a task.

Upon reaching a stairwell that would have led up to the roof, Danzo stopped and ensured they were alone before one of his younger Root operatives appeared in a Shunshin comprised of ink, kneeling in front of Danzo.

"Danzo-sama. Orders?" The young man asked obediently.

"Stand Sai." Danzo ordered, getting just that from the artistic shinobi, "Continue monitoring the Kyuubi jinchuuriki. Take Hyo and Fuu with you to fill out a squad. Do not allow him to leave the village under any circumstances."

"And of the Hachibi jinchuuriki?"

"I have Torune and a larger team committed to keeping an eye on Jiraiya and Killer B." With orders to act and exterminate with extreme prejudice should Killer B prove to be too great of a threat to be allowed in such close proximity to the village.

His run-in a bit over a week ago with Jiraiya had not vanished from his mind. As the kind of man and ninja that he was, Danzo had a long memory and whenever he thought about it the feeling of Jiraiya's hand wrapped around his throat subsisted even then.

Still though, if the Kyuubi jinchuuriki was powerful enough to establish this incident by killing someone as notably powerful as Darui, the Raikage's right-hand man, perhaps it was time to get the return on his investment that he'd gotten Orochimaru to experiment on him for all those years ago? Control of the Kyuubi jinchuuriki would mean strong leverage over the village.

Yes, perhaps it was time for that idea to begin manifesting itself in earnest.

XxX

(With Naruto – Outskirts of Konoha)

Ino didn't know exactly where Naruto had planned on taking her when he picked her up from work at noon, but she was totally into getting some alone time with Naruto. She didn't get much of it between all of the work at Konoha Torture and Interrogation, being asked to work at Yamanaka Flowers by her clan, training, and all of the insane b.s. that they routinely got themselves into.

"I'm so proud of you Goldie." Ino said as she and Naruto walked through a forested path around the back end of the village, "You took me out to lunch to a place that didn't serve solely ramen. It wasn't so bad was it?"

"You act like I eat ramen for every meal." Naruto replied with a roll of his eyes, "I know how to eat at other restaurants. I'm a grown man for crying out loud!"

"Oh calm down." The purple-clad kunoichi told her date as she latched onto his arm tightly, "So what do you plan on showing me? You said there was some place you wanted to take me."

"Yep."

"Any hints?"

"Nope."

"Do I have to read your mind or drug you?"

"I wish you wouldn't."

It didn't take too much longer for the two of them to come to the same grounds that Naruto had gone to before with Team 7 to make sure it wasn't so dilapidated that he wouldn't want people close to him to see it.

Ino really started to be interested when she noted that their path wound up being paved with brick and started taking them underneath large red torii gates. They were going somewhere important, but she'd never seen this part of the village before.

"Where are we going?" Ino asked again upon seeing a faded swirl mark that had been put into the ground to signify clan grounds.

"My clan's property." Naruto answered for her benefit this time around. He looked over at her and saw that she had her mouth slightly held open, "I know! I didn't know my clan even owned any property until two days ago!"

After making it through the last torii, they found themselves in a courtyard with only one building at the end of it, a somewhat rundown temple. It was the only building in the area, but there was plenty of free space on what could be perceived as Naruto's land.

"Wow." Ino said as she looked around what she could see. She let Naruto guide her by the hand over to the stairs of the temple to sit down out front as she took it all in, "So now that you know about this, what are you going to do with it?"

Naruto gave her a big grin and pointed behind them, "I want to fix this place up and then I don't know. Maybe build a house or something if I have enough money. That sounds good right? What do you think?"

However long it had been since anyone had tended to the grounds, it looked like it needed a lot of care, but there seemed to be ample space for whatever else he wanted to do. After all, he was just one person, so he definitely could have done something else with the property if he wanted to.

Seriously, now it was just getting ridiculous. First the whole clan thing that they'd found out about only after they'd become genin, then they learned who Naruto's father was years later, and now finally his clan actually had some land in Konoha, and this was the first he was hearing about it.

But Naruto wasn't upset about it, or at least had long since vented his frustrations audibly in some manner previously, so Ino figured that getting all bent out of shape about it wouldn't do anyone any good. She just sighed and set her head on his shoulder, putting a smile on her face when Naruto wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in close enough to set her whole body on him, "Missed you." She whispered.

"Hm?" Naruto hadn't heard her due to how quiet she was and set his head on hers while rubbing her back, "What'd you say Ino-chan?"

"Nothing… just noticing how nice it is out here."

Yeah, it was pretty nice out there. Naruto hadn't really noticed that the first time he'd come there with Team 7 with him being pissed off about the fact that it was the first he was hearing about his temple grounds, and the insanity with the mask that his clone put on inside of the temple, but it was pretty peaceful, like an actual clan ground but much smaller.

"So do you want to go in and check out the temple?" Naruto asked Ino. Though he really didn't want to go back in there after the first Shinigami mask scare his clone gave him and Team 7, it was his responsibility to care for these grounds.

Ino got off of his shoulder and looked over at him with a raised eyebrow, "You know, no one's out here. If you wanted to make out you don't have to take me inside a dusty old temple for more privacy."

"…"

"…"

"Are you serious?" Naruto asked, really stunned at what Ino had just figured his motivations for taking her inside to be. He'd been so surprised he'd let out a pulse of chakra from his body involuntarily. What she said hadn't been the case, but now that he thought about it that seemed like some kind of roundabout way to goad a girl into doing something like that, "Ahem… I mean, that wasn't why I wanted to take you inside but…"

"…But?" Hopeful could have been a very accurate word that one would have used to describe the tone of the ponytailed blonde.

Naruto opened his mouth to say something when the reverb of the chakra he'd sent out came back to him, "…I feel like six chakra signatures all over the place around us right now."

"Oh that is just the lamest excuse ever Goldie-kun!" Ino shouted, smacking him hard on the shoulder, "If you're afraid to kiss me just say it. You don't have to make up a fake-." She was promptly shut up when Naruto grabbed her laid a serious kiss right on her mouth without hesitating or looking like he'd been considering it for a moment.

She sure hadn't been expecting the smooch, or the fact that he was willing to use tongue with her, but sometimes surprises were nice. Good surprises were extremely rare when you were a ninja, and for Ino this definitely counted as one of those rare ones.

After a long while Naruto broke the contact, with Ino trying to follow his lips until it was clear that the kiss was over. Once again he opened his mouth to speak, but had to take a moment to savor just how distinctively sweet Ino tasted. Huh, she wore lip gloss today, "Don't ever tell me I'm afraid to do anything. But I'm dead serious. There are six people watching us, all over, and I think one of them is the guy that spied on us on Sasuke's property."

Still a little out of it from having her breath stolen away via a searing kiss, Ino's primary thought had been to wonder where the hell Naruto had learned to kiss like that. But fortunately her mind quickly caught up to what he'd said to her about their being watched.

Ew, voyeurs.

"Well get them out of here." Ino asked of Naruto quietly, "Scare 'em off or something." She really didn't want something like this to ruin their moment, and if they hadn't attacked by now a fight wasn't their motivation for keeping an eye on them.

Scare them? One of those fuckers wasn't afraid to try and fight five-on-one against Naruto, Sasuke, Kiba, Chouji, and Shikamaru at the same time. How the hell was Naruto by himself going to scare six of them? If they were anything like the one guy that Naruto had fought he wasn't sure they knew what fear was.

"Oi." Naruto said loud enough to be heard elsewhere, "I know you guys are here. Go away." He received no response from the trees, "…Ink guy. Get your guys to go away. I totally know you're there." He started pointing around in the exact areas he could sense them, "Fine. Ino-chan."

Nodding, Ino dropped a smoke bomb and two quick figures dashed out of the cover into the forest, quickly finding themselves pursued by the mysterious spies in question. Back at the temple though, Naruto and Ino emerged from just inside of the mask temple.

Kage Bunshin and Henge.

"At some point that's got to stop working, right?" Ino said with a smirk as it didn't seem like Naruto could sense anyone around them any longer, "We've been doing that since we were genin."

"I would have done something else, but I'm not sure Oiroke no Jutsu would work on these guys."

"I thought I told you never to use that again."

"You told me never to use it in front of you again, not to never use it again period." Ino merely stuck her tongue out at Naruto after his smart-aleck response and bumped him with her hip to prompt his second response, "Come on. Let's go out and circle around the outside of the village to lose those guys."

"Right behind you stud." Ino teased as she followed after him.

That clone trick wasn't going to work for long so they were going to double around and go to see someone about this, because it damn sure wasn't acceptable.

XxX

(Some Time Later – Ninja Academy – Hokage's Office)

"Alright dad…" Asuma said, rubbing the bridge of his nose in an exasperated manner, "Between Root tailing him and the whole Killer B thing, we've got to think about getting Naruto out of the village for a while until things cool down."

That would more than likely piss him off though since being sent away for any prolonged period of time would have to come with questions that would probably upset him when answered. So you had to make sure wherever he went was worth it.

"You aren't thinking of going with him are you Asuma?" Hiruzen asked, smoking his pipe, "You do have my to-be daughter-in-law with child to worry about."

"Naruto is basically one of my kids already." The bearded younger Sarutobi said with a grin before it dropped off of his face, "But I see your point. Still…"

"Where would you send him?" The wizened Hokage asked, earnestly seeking his son's council on how to see to one of the only students that he'd ever taken. It had always done his heart good to see Asuma get so reinvested back into the village after taking on Team 10 as his own, "It would have to be somewhere good. Were you to allow him to get stir-crazy that would make things worse than leaving him here."

Asuma took a second to think about it and lit up a cigarette before asking Hiruzen to hand him a map. He received it and traced his finger all over the borders surrounding Hi no Kuni before tapping the portion that he found appropriate, "There. Send him there."

"You're certain?"

"Oh yeah, he'll love it."

"…He still has to complete the mission that goes with this territory." Hiruzen said in a warning manner, "It will be difficult."

"So? You act like that'll matter any." Asuma replied. He had all of the faith in Naruto that he needed to have after Naruto and Shikamaru had returned from the capital and after seeing what they could do upon returning to Konoha, "We'll get a good team together. Ino wants to interrogate Mizuki so she'll stay behind, and Shikamaru will want to as well."

True enough. Doing missions never bothered Naruto. As long as he could get into it, and it would only help him get into the work more if it was in a place that he could get excited about working at. Breaking up Team 10 for the duration of this mission though wouldn't be popular with Naruto, but given that Ino had a previous commitment and Shikamaru wanted to follow Kabuto's trail to everywhere he could do so for as far back as he could in the village, it would be for the best.

The team wouldn't really be the problem though. The issue would be Naruto leaving in the first place.

But at this time, Hiruzen was one to realize that for once Danzo had a point from their earlier meeting. Perhaps this time he needed to be as direct and straightforward as possible. As the Hokage he had to put his foot down every so often and this was one of those times.

"Inform Naruto to put a non-Team 10 squad of four together for a mission and have them assemble at the main gate."

XxX

(With Naruto – The Next Morning)

With Naruto's network of friends in the village it was fairly easy to quickly get a team together after Asuma came to him the previous afternoon following his sort-of date with Ino. When he heard where he'd be dispatched it almost made up for the fact that he was going to be going without Ino or Shikamaru.

Well Ino could keep him in the loop as she'd mastered her telepathy by now, so he wouldn't go uninformed. She could tell him what was happening at nights with her interrogations and Shikamaru's findings if they weren't forbidden from telling him what they'd come across, so that wasn't going to be a problem.

Making it to the front gate according to the orders from Hiruzen, Naruto wondered why it was shut and under guard from the inside since even though it was early it was past the time that they would open up for commerce.

Either way he was told to wait, and it turned out he wasn't the first one there as Rock Lee was already waiting and doing sit-ups, counting them off into the seven-hundreds without a sign of stopping anytime soon.

Meet teammate number one.

"Has he been at this for long?" At Naruto's side Tenten walked up, shifting her travel pack on her back as she deadpanned a stare at her Team Gai teammate. Couldn't he take some downtime even before a mission? Now was not the time or place to pop out one-thousand sit-ups.

Naruto just shook his head at her question with a shrug, "I don't know. I got here right before you did." Looking to his side where the shorter bun-haired kunoichi stood next to him he bid her a smile, "Morning Tenten."

"Good morning Naruto-chan." She said with a yawn. Normal people would just be waking up right now, and she herself hadn't had to wake up that early since she'd been promoted and didn't have to show up for every single one of Lee and Gai's crushing morning training regimens, "So who's our fourth?"

Opening his mouth to say who their final teammate would be, Naruto was cut off by a Shunshin happening right nearby the two of them, revealing Sasuke standing there as if he were paying them no mind. Showoff. He knew exactly what he was doing.

It wouldn't be surprising if it turned out that he'd been waiting until the moment someone brought him up, even in passing, to make his appearance like that. He _was_ trained by Kakashi after all.

"Are we ready to go?" Sasuke said, skipping the formality of greetings, not that Naruto or Tenten expected him to give them both a smile and a handshake before they all went off on their merry way. He tried to ignore Rock Lee's continued exercises, but really couldn't after he stopped and jogged over to the three of them, "Lee."

"Sasuke-san! Naruto-kun! Tenten! What a splendid morning to take such a mission together!" Lee said, clearly as fired up as ever to get things started. It was partially infective as Naruto was getting excited, but Tenten had seen it way too much to get anything out of it any longer, "I believe if we leave now and hurry through the countryside nonstop we can arrive at our destination in-!"

Tenten cut him off before he could go off setting some ridiculous pace that none of them would be willing to keep up with after they started travelling, "Stop… just stop Lee. No matter what, it'll take at least two days."

Lee visibly deflated, putting a silent smirk on Sasuke's face and eliciting a remark from Naruto under his breath, "I really hope you won't be a buzzkill like this for the whole mission Tenten."

"There's a difference between being a buzzkill and actually wanting to feel my legs after we get to where we're going." Tenten argued with a roll of her eyes, "You have no idea unless you spend years dealing with _that_ teammate."

"I'm lucky." Sasuke said, momentarily interjecting his own opinion to stir things up, "No one on my team is _that_ teammate."

"You killed Lee's vibe." Naruto said, patting the poor taijutsu specialist on the back, "No wonder you haven't been promoted yet. You've got to get that whole motivational leadership thing down."

"I haven't been promoted yet because I need some sort of elemental proficiency and the only element I'm proficient in is 'Weapon'." Tenten said before taking a second to realize who she was talking to, "Oh, no wonder I can't get my point through on this. You are _that_ teammate."

Naruto looked absolutely affronted at the accusation, "I am _not_ THAT teammate!"

"It isn't Shikamaru, and Ino doesn't have nearly enough spaz traits to be the one, so it's you!"

This was the scene that the Hokage of all people came upon as he walked with Kakashi, Gai, and his son Asuma, "Uh…" Kakashi whispered to their overall superior, "Are you sure we should let them go on the mission like this?"

"They're fine." Asuma said with a smile of confidence, "Watch. Hey! You guys want to switch off of this mission? You don't seem to be getting along that well!"

Finally having gotten the attention of the teenage squad of chunin the responses were unanimous in their own way. Sasuke just sneered at the idea and gave a single shake of the head. Lee snapped out of his funk and rapidly shook his own in the negative.

Naruto and Tenten just looked at one another before addressing Naruto's sensei with raised eyebrows, "You think we're not getting along?" Tenten asked, somewhat bewildered at the thought, "That's crazy. This isn't me and Naruto-chan not getting along."

"Yeah." Naruto confirmed, "I've been training and fighting with Tenten since the week I graduated. This is how we are… fucking tomboy."

"Dumbass dandelion."

"I'll cut you."

"I'll cut you worse."

"I'll cut you deeper!"

"I'll cut you with more stuff!"

"Ahem." Hiruzen cleared his throat to put an end to that, prompting Tenten and Naruto to bury the hatchet with a halfhearted single-armed hug… before Rock Lee grabbed them both and started shedding tears at how dynamic and youthful his friends were. Gai was about to join in until Kakashi reminded him of right place/right time by jerking him back by his shoulder, "Well, shall we then?" He walked ahead with the three jounin and raised his voice to a booming degree, "OPEN THE GATE!"

The massive main gates to the village slowly began to open wide, confusing Naruto, Sasuke, Lee, and Tenten as to just what was going on. All they could really do was follow behind.

It was weird though. The four adults ahead of them looked like they were the ones marching off into battle despite the fact that they were the ones that were supposed to be heading off on the mission.

"Gai-sensei." Lee said, willing to voice his ignorance to the current situation aloud, "What is going on? Why are you and the other sensei escorting Hokage-sama outside of the village walls?"

"Don't worry about it Lee." Gai assured his similarly attired student, "Just keep on going on your way. You have your mission to go and do. We have ours."

Cryptic answer aside, that didn't sit very easily with any of the younger crowd there. Nothing seemed to be outside, but two dots farther down on the road. Naruto, curious as ever, let out a pulse of his sensor jutsu only for his eyes to widen and more questions to spring up.

He sensed Jiraiya, that much was clear. But the person with him, his chakra was massive. After he'd gotten accustomed enough with his jutsu to feel out the signatures of other he learned what to search for when it came to gauging levels.

He found that he had so much chakra the only way he could accurately sense it in others was in trying to compare it to his own as a base. Very rarely did people ever measure up closely on the scale that his was set to. But the dark-skinned guy with sunglasses on the ground didn't just measure up easily.

That man had more chakra than Naruto did, and it was just as intense if not more.

'This guy…' Naruto thought to himself in alarm, 'His chakra is stronger than Asuma-sensei's, Sadao's, Kimimaro's, that Darui guy's, Hokage-jiji's, even Gaara's and Fuu's!' And there was only one way that could be possible as far as Naruto had come into contact with thus far.

The two of them actually locked eyes in a stare-off that caused Naruto to freeze in his tracks on the road in an effort to size the guy up. A Kumo ninja. He'd seen more than enough of that flak vest that he wore to know that much even if he couldn't see the insignia on the white headband.

Wait, he'd seen this guy before.

Scratch that, he'd seen this guy more than once.

Oh hell, Killer B.

And suddenly things started linking up in his head logically. Crap, who did Naruto kill in Kumo's pecking order?

"Go on brat." Jiraiya said sternly, averting his eyes from Killer B to make sure his student understood the score, "You've got a mission to do."

Basically he was telling him to toss off in so many words, because this was out of his league. And that hurt. He was strong enough to face off with Orochimaru's top bodyguard and Akatsuki, but he wasn't good enough to deal with this?

But Jiraiya wasn't really leaving room for argument, and from the looks of things neither were any of the jounin senseis or the _Hokage_. Naruto simply walked past and tore his eyes away from Killer B's to continue past.

This was basically an armed escort. Three of Konoha's strongest jounin, one of the Sannin, and the Hokage himself standing between any potential conflict between Naruto and Killer B. The thing about it was that it wasn't a case of overkill. It was an entirely appropriate amount of force given the circumstances and the individuals involved.

"Hachibi-sama'll be here when you get back Mr. Nine." Killer B said with a big grin, "You can run but'cha can't hide." He was going to have his words with Naruto, and he wasn't going to leave until he did. It was as simple as that as far as he was concerned.

…

He wasn't sure if he understood that correctly, but just in case he did, motherfucker! Did he just call him out?

Oh hell no, that simply would not stand.

Before Naruto could even turn on his heel to offer his reply, he felt the pressure of both the Hokage and Jiraiya fall on his shoulders. Double kage-level intent all leveled at him? He swore his heart missed a beat before getting back on track.

"I thought I told you to leave." Jiraiya said to Naruto, voice leveled with emphasis, "You don't want to keep the clients of your mission waiting, do you?"

"Listen to Jiraiya." Hiruzen followed up, "Actually, listen to me. _Go_."

And when the Sandaime Hokage said to do something with that kind of emphasis behind it you didn't say anything, you didn't sit around and think about the possible consequences of skirting the order. You did what he said, and you did it double-time.

The entirety of Naruto's team, Naruto included, took off to travel quickly through the trees.

They all waited for enough time that Naruto, Sasuke, Lee, and Tenten would have made it a good distance away from their location, and then the Hokage approached Killer B himself, "So you've seen Jiraiya say as much, but now I feel I would be remiss if I didn't say as much as well. I'm not going to let you fight with Naruto. You and I both know he can't defeat you."

There wasn't even any need to hide it. Everyone there knew it.

Oh sure he would scrap until the bitter end, come when it may in that ill-fated battle. Naruto knew enough about fuuinjutsu and about being a jinchuuriki that he'd be dangerous enough to make a move if given enough of an opening, but that just wasn't realistic. The experience as a ninja and as a jinchuuriki that Killer B had simply dwarfed Naruto's, and the sheer amount of power the man had at his disposal was more than Naruto could draw upon without going berserk and ruining everything.

And even then Killer B could still beat him.

The Hokage himself even considered the fact that Killer B could beat him in direct combat.

Killer B still just shook his head, "Still not leavin'." The Eight-tails jinchuuriki said as he slapped the ground, not caring that there were now four powerful ninjas telling him that no fight was going to occur (not counting the Hokage), "Nope, not a chance."

Asuma just heaved a heavy sigh and sent a look Jiraiya's way. The man had been out there for two days already, "So do we start doing this in shifts or what?"

"That seems fair." Kakashi said, stroking his chin in thought, "…But if you don't feel like going first." He then turned his attention to Gai, "Jiraiya-sama's been keeping watch over our guest Killer B for two days already. Anyone that can do such a thing has to be extremely youthful." The eyes of one person in particular lit up at that prompting, "I wonder who can stay out here with him the lon-?"

He didn't even need to finish the sentence before Jiraiya found himself picked up from his spot on the ground and moved aside, "Hey! My ass finally made a good groove in the road in that spot!" He was pissed because he'd finally gotten ultra-comfortable sitting in the road, and because he'd been doing some good training while not moving an inch that whole time.

"But Jiraiya-sama, you've been here for two days!" Gai said, sitting on the ground and gladly taking his place, "Surely such a show of youth as that should be given the chance for others to prove their own! My eternal rival Kakashi has made a grand point in how we can show B-san-." He ignored the correcting yell from B of 'Hachibi-sama', "-How youthful our village is in our endeavor to prevent our two hot-blooded jinchuuriki from confronting one another!"

Kakashi gave Asuma a pat on the shoulder, "There. I bought you at least five days before we have to switch shifts."

Hiruzen just shook his head beneath his Hokage garb. Since he usually saw them inside of an office during briefings he at times grew used to seeing them all uptight and overly official. Their respective eccentricities could be lost on him after a time of only meeting with them in formal circles.

After years of that, sometimes he could forget that even in the field his jounin weren't that much better than the kids that they'd trained, "I really wish you wouldn't play on Gai's quirks like that Kakashi."

"Hokage-sama ever since my cute little genin team all got promoted I have three regular forms of entertainment in my life at this point." Kakashi said, listing things off on his fingers, "Reading, cultivating my mastery in sarcasm and snark, and actively messing with Gai's head. Don't make me lose one of those things. Please."

XxX

(Hi no Kuni Countryside)

The team travelled in relative silence that seemed to drag on and on. And no one seemed too excited to break it after what had occurred outside of the gates of their village just a little while ago.

Looking between everyone there, Tenten saw the hard countenance on the face of Naruto and the attempt at Sasuke to brush off everything that had just happened. Just like Lee, she was sort of out of the loop on this whole thing, and she wasn't particularly a fan of being left in the dark.

She hadn't been when she learned that Naruto was a jinchuuriki, and that hadn't changed much since then.

"So." Team Gai's resident kunoichi said as she and her three other teammates travelled through the trees, "Anyone gonna tell Lee and I what that was all about?"

"I admit to being curious myself." Lee said, as the two of them hadn't been privy to the events of the mission that the entirety of the Rookie Nine had taken due to their own homefront concerns.

"It's a long story." Sasuke of all people said, having also much like Naruto broken down the chain of events as to what had just happened, only more so because he still remembered the Omoi boy from the final section of the chunin exams.

Raising an eyebrow at the fact that the normally reserved Sasuke felt the need to say anything at all, Tenten just felt more of a need to figure out what was going on, "We've got a long trip."

Alright, and with that Sasuke's bluff that it was too complex to get into went straight out the window, "Okay, it's not a long story then. On the last mission we all took, Naruto killed the Raikage's right-hand man and Killer B's student."

Way to be delicate in your approach Sasuke.

Naruto already knew that Killer B was there about what had happened on the last mission, but just how personal it happened to be was news to him, "What? I killed who? Why didn't anybody tell me that after we all sent in reports? I wrote their names in there and nobody said shit to me about it!"

"Do your own research idiot." Sasuke said to him as he hopped from branch to branch, "If you wanted to know, that's what the archive library is for."

"Why would I research people I already killed?" Naruto asked loudly, offended at the library remark. He went to the library… sometimes, "It was over! They're not coming back to fight me again! People don't just come back from the dead and stuff!"

Oh if only he knew yet.

"So it is revenge then." Lee said with a contemplative tone, "Perhaps you should apologize Naruto-kun."

Everyone cringed at the thought of doing such a thing, even Lee, and he was the one that had suggested it. Ninjas didn't apologize for killing the people they fought. Shit happens and you knew what you signed up for, the fact that you were an adolescent notwithstanding. Get over it.

Ninjas did not apologize. For anything. Ever. No matter what.

"Fuck that." Naruto didn't even need to take a second to shoot that one down, "Do you know how many people I had to kill as a Guardian? What qualifies him to get a sorry if no one else does? Nobody ever apologized for trying to kill me before, even my friends, _Tenten_."

Tenten gave him an indignant look at Hey, what did he want from her? Sure, he'd been fresh out of the Academy when they'd first fought, and sure she'd pelted him with a nonstop barrage of deadly weapons, but in her defense he came at her with a ton of clones.

"But I'm not apologizing." Naruto continued to say, "Kabuto… he killed Iruka-sensei, and I'm not expecting or demanding an apology out of him." No, he was just going to kill him back when he got the chance.

…Kind of like what Killer B was probably going to do the moment he was able to as well. Damn it. That kind of debunked the point he was trying to make. It seemed that Sasuke was about to shed light on this until he received a pointed look from Naruto letting him know that he was already aware of the hole in his logic.

"That whole pride thing only really works out when he's not stronger than you." Tenten said, "You saw all of our senseis and Hokage-sama out there, and they were still treating him like he could break through them at any second and get to you."

Yeah, Naruto saw it. He also saw that Killer B had called him out (at least he was assuming that was what had happened), and the collective elites made him walk away… like a pussy. Naruto's Hokage forced him to back down and bitch out.

Team 10 were no strangers to and had no aversion to cutting out and running away. It made the bulk of their better strategies and led to some of their better wins. Even so, Naruto was not a fan of it by any circumstances but his difficulty drew the line at direct insubordination to Hiruzen, and he was going to do what the man said when the law was laid down. Out of respect and out of fear.

"Yosh! There is nothing that we can do about it now!" Lee said, trying to get things back on track. Say what you wanted about how he acted day-to-day, he had a strange way of keeping things in perspective, "Let us continue on to the youthful village of Takigakure!"

Right. Takigakure. That was where they were going for their mission.

Well at least Naruto had that to look forward to. And the work they had ahead of them would keep his head on straight more than anything else.

XxX

(Some Time Later – With Shikamaru – Konoha Archive Library)

Since the whole thing with Mizuki, Shikamaru was doing his absolute best to follow every touch of Kabuto's career history that he could with mission briefings from people that had worked with him abroad, briefings from the jounin sensei of Kabuto, Akado Yoroi, and Tsurugi Misumi.

Steadily he managed to stitch together a lengthy breakdown with a massive bulletin board that his mom wasn't keen on letting him keep in his house, thus he took it elsewhere. Fortunately they were more than willing to keep his work at the library and were even willing to archive it as an official case.

It was pretty easy to finagle after Shiho more or less went on the warpath in regards to past incompetency in such a sensitive focus of village affairs such as theirs. Such a tiny girl, and only sixteen. She was surprisingly fierce in regards to things like lapses in village intelligence.

Such a thing was not as troublesome a trait for the female to have as he'd seen most women in the world to possess. He could actually relate, because having the wool pulled over his eyes so casually set him off as well. He didn't want to get obsessive over the whole thing, but he definitely planned on getting this put together enough to start dealing some damage back in return.

"How's it coming buddy?" Chouji asked, arriving with Shino of all people, and bearing lunch that they set down on a clear space on a library table, "I ran into Shino and he wanted to come too."

The heavily concealed Aburame didn't say anything, instead investigating much of what Shikamaru had done, "How long have you been here?" The body of work spoke for itself to the amount of time he'd put in over the last few days.

"Since this morning." Shikamaru said taking a moment to sit down. He wasn't really hungry, but he needed something or else he'd probably crash at some point, "I'm starting to get an idea of how this guy operated." Eating was too much of a bother right now on second thought. He was on a bit of a roll, "Look."

"I'm assuming these blank spots are lapses in the record." Shino said, pointing out how many of them there were, "Parts where Kabuto could be considered unaccounted for."

"Yeah." Shikamaru confirmed, "He didn't have many for the first few years after he graduated. Two years later he started taking part in chunin exams, every single year until the one we were all in together where his teammates died. Then he stopped."

Shino nodded and kept looking over everything with an analytical eye behind his sunglasses, "These times when he was unaccounted for only seems to occur on missions where he was a good distance outside of the village... and chunin exams."

God, the chunin exams had probably been like Christmas to that guy. Since they could take place in any hidden village he had a free pass to go anywhere during that stretch of time, he had a free opportunity to gather information on any ninja he could find, and since it was a test of his own capabilities as a ninja his jounin instructor had to be hands-off and let him do his own thing with all of the extra bodies populating the villages.

And when they took place inside of Konoha it was probably all the easier for. With the security in regards to the foreigners, no one would be looking at some marginal genin from the actual village the exam was taking place in.

Chouji sat his head on the table and raised his hand as if he were in school, "So we've got tons of dark spots, and totally nothing at all before the guy was nine years old."

"No, we've got something." Shikamaru said as he pulled out a map of the Elemental Nations with some general areas circled out on it, "We can break down that there may be Otogakure holdings in these places. His amount of taken missions abroad picked up after the last chunin exam he took part in years back, so maybe we can use this to get some scouting teams together to check out the places that we can."

Not only that, but what Naruto had said before had something to it. His 'adopted' parent had been the matron to Konoha Orphanage before her disappearance. He had yet to look into that as he wanted to do the actual archive work first, but that was going to be next.

Shiho made her way over as she found it nice to stop in and check on Shikamaru when she had some downtime in her work. Once again, she found him dutifully plugging away at trying to piece together what he could that would not only help them find Oto hideouts around the country, but also doing what he could to ensure that none of what happened with this whole spy situation could ever happen again.

It was so admirable. The people around Shikamaru called him lazy more often than not, but it was clear that they just gave him a hard time for fun and could see the thing about him that she liked the most. He didn't do it often outside of points when it was needed, but when he applied himself to something there was just some part of him that shone through, like flipping a switch.

Chouji noticed the codebreaking specialist looking at Shikamaru with a small smile on her face and just shook his head before turning his attention to the food he brought. If Shika wasn't hungry right now and Shino wasn't willing to dig in yet… he might as well eat.

XxX

(Disputed Border of Tsuchi no Kuni and Takigakure-held Lands)

"Tch, this Orochimaru thing is cutting into my art time." Deidara said as he and Sasori walked alone on a desolate, rocky plain, "There's nothing out here worth wasting an imaginative explosion on, un. Now you know why I was so willing to ditch my village."

"You talk too much Deidara." Sasori said as he glared ahead of them from underneath his hat, "My spies have told me that there are problems in this area. Takigakure and Iwagakure think it's one another trying to scout out the border to gauge how well an attack would go."

It sounded like Orochimaru's m.o. to cover the tracks of his own misdeeds by starting trouble between two or more outside parties. He'd probably be found closer to where the border split between three different countries. He loved using places like that to hide, and with good reason.

And aside from that, there was nothing like a good war to keep people from realizing that they were supposed to be looking for you and worrying about what you were doing.

"He's certainly got a bunch of his little bases popping up all over the place." Deidara said with a chuckle, "Trying to make a franchise out of the Otogakure name I'd presume. You've got to be proud of your former partner for having ambition like that."

"Do you ever stop talking?"

"Cut me some slack Sasori no Danna. Hunting for a snake is boring. There are so many holes you can't tell which one he's in." The rogue bomber said with a grin underneath his hat before suggesting an alternative activity, "We can go and get the Nanabi while we're here. That would probably be way more entertaining. I heard that the jinchuuriki can fly and can't be injured. Interesting right?"

"Very. Feel free to disregard Leader-sama's orders. Go ahead. I'll wait for you to return and I'll report on your progress when it comes up."

"…On second thought, that can always wait."

XxX

(With Naruto – Takigakure Limits)

Well this was just as annoying as it was the last time he'd come there. Since the entrance to Takigakure was supposed to be hidden, there was nothing to do but hang out around the general area that the village was known to exist in, waiting for a patrol of some sort to reach them and escort them in.

"Can't you just sense out the entrances or something?" Sasuke asked, sitting on the root of a tree in small forested space by a stream near the others on his team, "You've got that jutsu of yours right?"

Naruto shook his head, "They keep a barrier ninjutsu up to disguise it. I can't bounce my chakra off of it to make the effect of the jutsu work for me and find it. You might be able to see it with the Sharingan, but I don't think you can either."

"If Neji were here he'd have a better chance of seeing it, but they'd probably capture us for looking for their entrance on purpose." Tenten said, checking over the equipment she had with her just in case, "So we're here to deal with some border dispute? We're not really diplomats."

"It's not a diplomatic mission in nature." Sasuke said, whipping his hair out of his eyes, "It's just that if we don't find what we're supposed to be looking for we're probably going to wind up watching the start of a regional conflict between Iwa and Taki."

"And Taki's the only one willing to put anything up on the table to try and figure out just what's happening." Naruto continued. Since this was a mission that was brought to him first he already knew the deal, "Iwa's not our biggest fan, and everyone kind of thinks that they want a fight anyway."

Tenten sat her cheek in one hand and mumbled under her breath, "It's amazing how you know the political climate hundreds of miles away but you don't know the general briefing on the backstory of the guys you've fought."

"Quick, name something that doesn't have to do with weapons." Naruto replied instantly instead of rising to the barb, "Right now. Go, go, go."

"Um, ah… uh…"

"Time's up."

While Tenten stuck her tongue out at a victorious looking Naruto, Lee raised a point while using the down time given to them to do some one-armed pushups, "I do not understand why Iwagakure would want to take part in something as unyouthful as a confrontation that at most would only move the border a few miles one way or the other."

It was because a fight between Takigakure and Iwagakure would easily favor the latter depending on how serious it got. If it could go into the realm of an actual armed border dispute but stop just short of breaking out into a full-on war Iwa could come out looking all the more stronger because they outclassed Taki for the most part. If it could be ended before becoming a full-blown war, they wouldn't have to deal with Konoha who would more than likely stand with Taki but would also do whatever they could to keep war from actually occurring.

Naruto knew of this because there had been tensions rising over the years between the two villages and he had a 'sensei' in regards to his jinchuuriki control that he routinely travelled out to work with while he'd been a Guardian, so he was aware of enough of the local happenings through her.

Both Iwa and Taki had been the victims of brutal attacks on the borders that left no survivors, and it was of the mindset that one had been the first to instigate and the other retaliated in kind. Neither chose to claim responsibility in the slightest for the deaths, and with no other culprits in sight, nor any reports to shed some light on what was really happening in the region things were starting to boil over.

These things kept happening too frequently whenever teams were sent out to do missions or patrol the area a little too close to the border, especially over the last year.

The thing putting a rush on this situation in particular was the fact that this year the chunin exams were to be held in Iwagakure. If war wound up coming to pass, the exams would have to be canceled or at the very least moved with Iwa and Taki both unable to take part. Even moving the exams in of itself could stir up its own beehive of trouble as the remaining villages scrambled to determine a replacement host village.

There was probably going to be some fighting on this mission, which no one on the Konoha team was really against. Some more than others clearly.

"I am so excited!" Lee jumped up from his pushups and started throwing shadow kicks at the air, "We will have the chance to be heroes! The people that prevented a war!" Things like this were the reason that some people became ninjas to begin with.

"Or the people that started one." Sasuke said on the tail-end of the green-clad ninja's statement. He received a round of glares from Naruto and Tenten for the comment, "What? If he's going to one end of the spectrum I can point out the other possible outcome can't I?" It kind of went without saying that failure would more than likely result in the exact opposite happening though.

And just like that, Tenten was no longer the walking buzzkill of the team. That spot had been firmly ascended to by Uchiha Sasuke, heir apparent to the title that he had been from the outset of the journey.

"You stayed positive for as long as you could didn't you Sasuke?" Naruto was actually impressed. He lasted three days without bringing down the mood of the squad, that was worth a pat on the back, which Naruto gave him.

"Shut up, and don't touch me dobe." Sasuke's eyes flickered to the trees around them as he saw Naruto grow more attentive to their surroundings as well due to some unseen alert he himself had been privy to, "Incoming."

That was the cue for everyone to get up into formation and look alive. Just in case this was an ambush or something they would be prepared. Oh would they ever be prepared.

Eight Takigakure shinobi landed surrounding the quartet of Konoha ninjas, each faction sizing the other up, as was the custom of intelligent warriors coming across one another for the first time. After a few moments, the leader stepped forward from the Taki crew, "The Konoha team dispatched to deal with the mission we sent them I presume?"

"Greetings from Konoha…" Naruto said with a big grin, "…Where 'amazing' happens." That wasn't their village slogan but damn it, it should have been. Rock Lee seemed to dig it from his reaction of a hearty thumbs up.

The leader of the Taki squad looked at Naruto strangely while Sasuke muttered something about him being an idiot and Tenten held her hand on her forehead, wishing that she'd gagged him before others arrived, "Uh… huh? You're the leader?"

Well, that was a point of contention. They hadn't really established a leader since they were all the same rank. Tenten technically had seniority, but only by a year so that criteria didn't matter.

And if no one was volunteering, Naruto certainly wouldn't be shy about taking the reins. At least he wouldn't have been until Sasuke cut him off and spoke first, "No, I'm the leader."

Sasuke looked around to see if anyone not named Naruto had a problem with that, actually finding that Tenten was relieved. The far lesser of possible evils as far as she was concerned.

She actually covered Naruto's mouth when he realized what had just happened and was about to verbally protest, allowing the Taki squad leader to take enough time to see that Sasuke was more than likely affiliated with the Uchiha Clan.

"Hm, Uchiha. Appropriate." They were entirely willing to accept Sasuke as the leader of this crew, "Very well then. Blindfolds." Sasuke narrowed his eyes and everyone else got defensive, forcing him to explain, "We need to ensure that we take measures to protect our village's location."

Sasuke's eyes moved to the other Taki ninjas around them before shrugging as if he were unconcerned, "Fine. Go ahead." And with that, the four of them were blindfolded, 'Like this is really going to do anything. Even if Naruto can't sense the entrance itself, we're still going to know how we got there.'

Because the real reason Naruto knew that they were coming to begin with was because he had clones watching over their rest spot when the Taki ninjas arrived. But they were just going to keep that little fact to themselves.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Otogakure Base)

It was a fine and banner day as far as Orochimaru was concerned, or at least it would be in a matter of minutes. Years of preparation, planning, and development would lead to him taking one giant step closer to being the perfect being.

Kabuto's return was a boon in regards to completing the preparations for Orochimaru's next vessel. Things went much quicker and smoother, and now it was finally time.

Otogakure was booming with the influx of money swindled from Gato Company during his 'partnership' with the weasel that thought having a mind for industry was enough to get involved in the ninja business; enough to fund the formation of three separate hidden villages, all going to bolster his already existing forces.

Just thinking about all of the experimental modifications that this money would allow him to dip his feet into, things he'd already dipped his feet into testing on his own ninja force… it made him smile every time he stopped to think about it.

All of the figures of influence around the Elemental Nations that he could bribe and lure into bed with Otogakure. There was so much to be done! So much that could be done still!

Walking through the dark halls of his hideout, Orochimaru arrived to his intended destination, smiling like a Cheshire cat at the sight of Kabuto seemingly waiting out in the hallway for him, leaning against the wall by a closed door, "Kabuto." The Sannin said in greeting, "Are things finally ready?"

"Yes." Kabuto answered, "Yukimaru's already been prepared. It's strange." The medic and spy said, "You would expect someone in his situation to feel fear or some sort of hesitance, but he just said his goodbyes to Guren, Kidomaru, Tayuya, Sakon, to me, and he's just waiting there with a smile. He knows exactly what's about to happen."

There was facing something with your head up, and then there was what Yukimaru was doing. He seemed excited to do whatever he could to further things for Otogakure and for Orochimaru, even knowing that he was going to lose his body.

Orochimaru just chuckled and shook his head, "Kukukuku… do not question the power of purpose Kabuto. There aren't many things in this ugly world of ours that can make a person whistle their way to the execution block quite like the thought of believing that what is happening to them is happening for a reason. That something is happening to them for the greater good at large, it can make a man or woman accept almost any fate that befalls them."

It was times like these that made Kabuto see what kind of a man Orochimaru was. He could bend others, draw upon their own insecurities, make them want to better themselves for his sake. He did not rule by fear despite the fact that he struck terror into the hearts of any who had come across him. He didn't have to. This man could take the broken and the downtrodden and make them march over the edge of a cliff for him.

He didn't obtain the allegiance of his key players in the same manner twice, which made him all the more incredible. Say what you would of how he treated most of his underlings as disposable, but the man could lead to get the results that he wanted, "Whatever you say Orochimaru-sama."

"Trust me." Orochimaru said as Kabuto went to grab the knob of the door for him, "Do not deride young Yukimaru for his dedication in the face of oblivion. Celebrate him. If all shinobi were this accepting of their position in the grander scheme of things… the world would be a much better place."

It just so happened that Yukimaru's position was to assist in the ascension of a God to achieve the pinnacle of possible existence.

As the door opened, Orochimaru stepped inside and saw the gentle magenta eyes of the youthful Sanbi jinchuuriki, who was already dressed in clothes meant to be an exact replica of Orochimaru's. His body was significantly longer and more grown than when Orochimaru had picked him up from Mizu no Kuni, the fruits of the experimentation done to augment and speed his growth.

Even so, the boy was still as docile and gentle as ever. The pale green-haired young man had a calm, tranquil smile on his face as he saw the leader of Otogakure enter, "Orochimaru-sama. Is it time? Is it finally time?" The door shut behind his benefactor, only reinforcing that it was the moment he'd been prepared for.

"Yes child." Orochimaru said with a smile that while meant to be disarming and reassuring, would cause the hair of anyone else to stand up on the back of their neck out of fear, "You've done so very well for me since I've found you and discovered your talent. I'm very proud of you. Everyone is."

And those words seemed to mean the world to Yukimaru, bringing tears to his eyes, "Thank you. Kimimaro… before he died he always told me just how much of an honor this was. He and Guren always used to talk about how special you had to be just to gain your notice, and now-." He couldn't even finish what he was saying before he found himself choked up by his emotion.

"You've earned it." The white-skinned master of the ninja arts set a hand on Yukimaru's shoulder as he began to cry, "It's alright to feel overwhelmed, just as long as you're ready." Yukimaru couldn't say anything. He merely nodded and smiled up at Orochimaru with two eyes full of tears, "You won't feel a thing, it will be over before you know it, and afterwards you'll be with me for all eternity as I unlock the secrets of existence."

Yukimaru merely closed his eyes and accepted. He had no home, no purpose before his ability to partially control the Sanbi into with his chakra had been discovered by Orochimaru. These few years had been the grandest of his young life as he had been trained to properly harness his chakra and use the shinobi arts, and now he had the chance to do something important.

And so he was more than willing to accept his role with open arms and closed eyes.

"I'm ready."

Thus he never actually laid eyes on Orochimaru shedding his body like snakeskin, revealing a secondary form of a towering white snake with a body composition of smaller white snakes with a monstrous head, its mouth wide open and set to devour the boy.

"Fushi Tensei (Living Corpse Reincarnation)!"

XxX

Kabuto just walked away from the room as he could hear Orochimaru's true form getting to work on making Yukimaru's body his new vessel.

It would be a quick transfer of Orochimaru's soul supplanting Yukimaru's own. The boy was entirely too weak-willed, not meant to be a shinobi, with his only real use being as a shell to keep the Sanbi in for Orochimaru to use as his own biju. The Sanbi would do nothing because of the nature of Yukimaru's chakra, which would become a part of Orochimaru's chakra and allow him to easily control the creature when combined with the willpower of the man.

'As if he needed it.' Kabuto thought to himself as a morbid smile peeked through on his face, "I wonder… just what can Orochimaru-sama do with all of that power at his disposal?"

If ever there was an interesting time to be on Orochimaru's side… Kabuto had definitely selected the best time to leave Konoha, for certain.

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Hour 1 – Naruto's Side)

After going a few miles away from his apartment, Naruto had come to the stark realization that in his haste to take advantage of this bounty of revenge that had been dropped in his lap he had no earthly idea what he was going to do with it. He needed some time to think, and in that time he also realized that Shikamaru's wallet was full.

He thought about heading off to binge on some ramen, but figured that even if Ichiraku's wasn't the first place that Shikamaru would try to trap him he still wouldn't enjoy it as much as he would have in his own body. So he needed to do something else.

A lesson that Naruto had learned as a young man from Tsunade that he could carry with him forever was perhaps one of the most constant ones that had been driven into his skull via repeated exposure to Tsunade's complete lack of luck in this particular avenue.

Never gamble with your own money.

And he wasn't. He was using Shikamaru's money in order to gamble with someone that had no shortage of funds.

'I can't get a read on him.' Naruto thought to himself as he sat across a table from Sasuke, both holding a full hand of cards, 'Is he bluffing? And why is Shika's body sweating so much?' Of course, he was still inside of Shikamaru's body due to Ino's earlier jutsu snafu that he was going to take full advantage of for as long as he could.

CAW!

A hawk perched on Sasuke's forearm let out an ear-splitting cry as another landed on the table and a third landed on Sasuke's opposite shoulder, all of them staring holes through Naruto and letting out loud sounds.

CAW!

'Why does Shika wear a leather jacket in the middle of Hi no Kuni?' Naruto thought to himself, tugging at one of the sleeves on Shikamaru's choice piece of clothing that was his own for the time being. Looking up, Naruto saw a fourth hawk sitting on Sasuke's other shoulder.

CAW!

'Relax.' Naruto thought to himself with a confident grin, 'This hand is unbeatable.' And indeed, he had a royal flush of hearts. But as he put his cards down from in front of his face he saw two more hawks. One in Sasuke's lap and the other right on top of his head, and now all six were cawing audibly at him, 'What?'

Naruto didn't even see or hear him summon any of them. One or two was weird enough, but this was getting ridiculous, and now he was looking all over the room for anymore. And they were everywhere.

CAW!

Standing on the mantle across the room.

CAW!

Standing on the shelf right above the doorway.

CAW!

A picture on the wall with a gigantic image of a hawk's head. Probably Sasuke's boss summon, and it was drilling into his soul with its stare.

CAW!

They were everywhere. He was surrounded by avian. Releasing a pulse of his sonar jutsu from Shikamaru's body to see just how surrounded he was, Naruto went wide-eyed and looked down, '…No.'

Poking its head out from underneath the table right in front of him was one last hawk, staring right up at him with cold, soulless eyes.

CAW!

"And I fold…" Naruto mumbled, putting his cards down on the table facedown as Sasuke just continued to smirk at him. Shaking his head, Naruto just stood up and emptied his pockets out onto the table, "…Take care of Shika's-, I mean my money."

Holding his head, Naruto just ambled out of the room and Sasuke's house wondering what the hell had just happened.

Sasuke shook his head and dispelled all of the hawks out of the room, reaching across his table to rake in his winnings, "That was weird. Shikamaru's usually harder to clean out than that." Whatever, it was free money. He wasn't going to complain.

(Hour 1 – Shikamaru's Side)

"Okay, I can't find him." Shikamaru said aloud as he walked down the street with his hands shoved into Naruto's pockets while shifting his shoulders around uncomfortably, "Why the hell does Naruto wear this stupid harness for the machete instead of keeping it on his belt like a normal ninja?"

He'd already set up his first and possibly biggest prank on Naruto as a retaliatory failsafe in case he couldn't stop Naruto soon enough to keep him from doing tons of damage to his reputation throughout the village. Everyone needed a contingency plan after all. It would be his ace in the hole that he'd remember to disarm once this all ended.

But for now he had a body with way too much energy, and no idea where to find the real owner of said body. He was dreading what nefarious acts Naruto could be committing with free use of his body. Consequence free mischief.

There was nothing stopping Shikamaru from doing the same thing though. But all he wanted was his body back!

Wait, if he ran out of chakra the jutsu would undo itself and put both of them back into their own bodies. So with that in mind, Shikamaru decided to kill two birds with one stone, "Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu)."

As he stretched out his shadow, Shikamaru saw that it was _way_ too big. As in he covered the entire road in his shadow all the way down the block and captured every single person on it, causing widespread panic.

"What's happening?"

"Oh Kami, it's an attack!"

"ANBU! ANBU HELP!"

Shikamaru couldn't have let go of that jutsu and disappeared to elsewhere fast enough. He was fairly certain that getting Naruto thrown into jail or at worst interrogated was well over the line of good taste that he knew Naruto would never cross today.

He definitely had not been expecting what had happened though. All he wanted to do was catch one or two people as he walked by so that he could make them do embarrassing things like pick their noses or grab girls' butts. Stuff like that. Not terrify thirty people just out trying to get by in their day-to-day lives.

His chakra control in Naruto's body was horrible! Was this what Naruto had to deal with all the time? No wonder all of his jutsu had to cost a normal person an arm and a leg's worth of chakra to perform them. That was the only way he could execute anything! Shikamaru couldn't bend that gigantic shadow! And he felt like he was giving himself an aneurism trying to condense the size of it!

If Naruto tried to use a jutsu that didn't take as much to activate and relied more on control it was like trying force a river's worth of water through a turkey baster. No wonder Naruto couldn't do a regular Bunshin to save his life! Good lord! How he accomplished any E-rank jutsu back in the Academy was beyond Shikamaru.

So he couldn't waste and exhaust Naruto's chakra to speed this up. That'd take longer to do than Ino's jutsu would even last for. Maybe he could knock himself out? No, that wouldn't work either. Naruto was tougher than Shikamaru was. Even if Shikamaru had enough heart to knock himself unconscious, there was still a good chance that it wouldn't put Naruto down as well.

Oh well. While he was thinking of something epic to do to Naruto he might as well get started wrecking his reputation with something simple that would take no real effort whatsoever and would give him time to come up with an actual slew of pranks.

Thus Shikamaru simply stripped out of all of Naruto's clothes in the middle of broad daylight on an open street and calmly walked around town as if he wasn't basically naked.

"S'up?" Shikamaru said as people stopped, stared, and pointed at the abject nudity as he merely played it off as nothing important at all. To be completely serious, it wasn't anything important, not to Shikamaru, "It's a nice day out right?"

Why would he care? It was Naruto's body, not his. To Naruto's credit though, his muscles had some definition because some girls were definitely looking. He worked out.

Walking past a group of village women that were stuck staring at the blond-bomber's fit form, Shikamaru lazily tilted his head upward in a greeting to the ladies, 'Yeah… I'm gonna strip what's left of his shame that working for the Guardians didn't already take away.'

Speaking of stripping, he decided that since he'd gone this far already he was going to go ahead and lose the boxers too. Why not? You only get the chance to publicly mortify your teammate to this degree in life once on average.

You know… unless you both had temporary runs as male strippers for mission related purposes. But that was neither here nor there.

(Hour 1 – Ino's Side)

The only place that Ino could go to get any sort of assistance that wouldn't cause any bigger problems than the two young men involved in the to-be trouble happened to be someone entirely out of the loop. She needed someone that could possibly be a figure of authority. Something like that was hard to come by, as there were very few people that both Naruto and Shikamaru would listen to.

There were two choices as far as she was concerned.

She could select Tsunade. That woman put the fear of Kami into both of them, and for good reason, but then again that would probably end up with more destruction than what would be prevented by her involvement.

No, she needed someone that Shikamaru would respect and hold in high enough regard to listen to and someone that Naruto loved enough to actually adhere to admonishment from. A tall task indeed, as Naruto's instincts for basic insubordination ran deep. Ino had to pick someone that Naruto would feel bad for disappointing.

"You need my help?" Shizune asked, feeling odd at being put on the spot in the middle of the Jounin Standby Lounge while she was visiting friends, "Well I don't know. What makes you think I can stop either one of them?"

Ino just gave her a deadpan look, "Okay, go ahead and pretend that you didn't keep Goldie-kun in check for three years back at the capital. But just remember sister that I'm an interrogation specialist and you're a really bad liar."

Was it really that easy to see through?

The dark-haired medic sighed and held her head, "How bad is it going to get?"

"You tell me." Ino replied, "Goldie-kun took off when he figured that he could use Shika's body for as long as he wanted like he'd been waiting for a moment like that for a long, long time."

Oh hell. Apparently Naruto did hold grudges. She knew that all of those practical jokes that Shikamaru had managed to pull on behalf of the other Guardians wouldn't be allowed to go quietly into the night.

As Shizune's face fell, Ino's hopes of bringing this to a close by finding and reasoning with Naruto began to falter, "…Was it really that bad?"

"It varied." Shizune admitted before listing incidents on her fingertips, "There were the times that Shikamaru managed to pawn 'guard duty' of a particularly touchy-feely noble girl named Naho onto Naruto, those happened a lot. Then there was the time that Shikamaru distracted Naruto to allow one of their comrades to put itching powder in his arm-warmers. And then there was the time where he somehow sicced both Kotoko and Shizuka on him at the same time before setting them on each other."

"That doesn't sound like Shika at all!" Ino cried out. Most of those things seemed like they'd take way more effort than Shikamaru would ever put forth without reason, even if he _was_ that devious a person.

Boredom did many a devilish thing to a man. Aside from training and doing missions there wasn't really much safe for Guardians to do when on the premises. It was a free-for-all prank war that they all started for whatever reason, but eventually instead of just fighting each other all of the Guardians who were admittedly lesser pranksters turned on Naruto en masse, and went to Shikamaru for good ones.

They realized what a bad idea this was after Naruto realized they were ganging up on him and brought down his unholy vengeance upon them to such a degree that no Guardian ever chose to rise against him again, present or future. At least as far as pranks went.

All except one.

Shizune explained the chain of events to Ino with a hollow expression on her features, "…And Naruto-kun was never really able to get Shikamaru back with anything because he either knew things were coming and avoided them or somehow turned them on Naruto instead."

That was the price of engaging in a battle of wits with a genius. Naruto's mind might have been scary, but Shikamaru's was far more so.

Ino felt like she was getting it by now, "So my giving Goldie-kun Shikamaru's body was basically giving him the golden ticket to prank Shikamaru without having to actually prank Shikamaru." She wished she would have known this before testing out a body-switching jutsu on them.

Shizune nodded before her eyes went wide. Ino had neglected to mention at the outset of their conversation what exactly she needed help with, just that she needed her help before Naruto and Shikamaru destroyed the village trying to one-up each other somehow, "YOU SWITCHED THEIR BODIES!?"

After cringing at the volume, the teenage Yamanaka hurriedly shushed Tsunade's apprentice as multiple eyes in the Jounin Standby Station looked over at the two of them after Shizune's shout, "Yes!" She hissed in a quiet voice, "Can you help me stop them or not?"

Well that all depended. How much personal responsibility would she feel if Naruto and Shikamaru wound up causing the sheer amount of physical and mental damage throughout the day that she knew they were going to?

"Did you hear?" One of the jounin in the lounge said with a laugh as he was telling them about whatever he wanted to talk about, "Naruto just got through walking down a main street in the village totally in the buff. Did he lose a bet or something?"

Both Ino and Shizune sat off to where they had been previously conversing, faces in shock. Shizune's was totally red, either from embarrassment or anger, it was hard to tell which. Ino's was more along the lines of a thoughtful sort of shock, as she was debating on whether or not she would have wanted to see that for herself. Sure, it was Naruto's body, but Shikamaru was inhabiting it so would that have made it weird or what?

Either way, there was one thing that she could think to say, "…I think Shika drew first blood on this one."

* * *

**And that's what I've got for you for now. Thanks for following along with the marginal ramblings of a madman. Now I need sleep before I continue my final battle with higher education.**

**There can be only one.**

**Kenchi out.**


	59. A Fever of Spite

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, so I can't change anything about it. But if I could make a suggestion, might I suggest more cowbell? It's the hot new sound of the future.

**Chapter 59: A Fever of Spite**

* * *

After being led through underground paths and forced to swim underwater again and again, eventually the blindfolded Konoha team wound up on a shore outside once more judging from the sound of birds and open air… which were basically telltale signs that you were back outside.

The blindfolds were taken off of the eyes of the drenched foreign shinobi as they were able to look around. There was a massive lake and the biggest tree that any of them had ever seen in their lives dead center in the village as the lake flowed out down a huge waterfall at the edge of town.

The portion of Takigakure that was lived in by the general populace sat around the outside edge of the lake, with trees and buildings, which were of course dwarfed by the size of the main tree of the village that seemed like it could fit all of the settlement inside of it, using either its width or its height.

Really, enough couldn't be said about that goddamn tree. It was absolutely gargantuan. Bigger than anything in Konoha by far, even the Hokage Monument. It had to be at least a mile in circumference around its base.

"So." Naruto said as everyone on his team with the exception of Lee seemed to be irritably trying to dry themselves off, "Do all of you guys have to do that every single time you leave the village? That whole swimming thing?"

None of the Taki ninjas said anything in response, instead continuing to lead the Konoha team across a long bridge built over the lake to the island that the great tree was situated on.

Lee leaned in to Tenten who was still rather upset about having to swim just to get into a village as an ally, "That probably means no." He whispered to her way too loudly to be the least bit subtle.

"Uchiha." The leader of the Taki escort team said to the apparent leader of the Konoha visitors, something Naruto was still stewing a bit over, "You are aware of just what the situation our village has asked yours to interfere in entails aren't you?"

"That if we're unable to find the real source of the upheavals around Tsuchi no Kuni's borders you're probably going to have to go to war with Iwagakure." Sasuke said bluntly, "Yeah, we know."

As callous as it sounded, what did they expect or want him to do, freak out and panic? Sound timid about it? No. There was a problem that they'd been called to look into, and that was what they were going to do. They would search as hard as they could, and they would come back with what they found.

It was information-gathering. A 'gimme' mission that had been given to Naruto and company in order to get the former away from Killer Bee, something that they were all just now realizing after the run-in outside of the village. Technically the only possible way to fail this mission was for all of them to die so that no one came back to Taki to give any kind of report at all.

Barring that vastly unfortunate outcome, there was really no possible way to screw the pooch on this one. It was almost idiot-proof as far as B-rank missions went.

Well, it was B-rank in Konoha's listings because while it was dangerous and required actual ninja work, its consequences wouldn't affect them to an extremely heavy degree… as far as a war occurring between an ages old enemy and an ally would anyway. For Takigakure, due to the sensitivity of the mission content and the potential fallout from its outcome far outweighing how it would affect Konoha, it was A-rank.

So while there was no way to really fail without the team being annihilated, depending on what they came across the consequences of their work could have been huge.

Strangely enough, Sasuke's no-frills attitude didn't ruffle any feathers amongst the Takigakure escorts. In fact, seeing someone so down to business and ready to roll made them feel better than the originally disjointed feeling they'd gotten from the visiting team.

They would have felt a bit more confident if the team didn't consist entirely of teenagers, but hey. They didn't request any names when the mission request went out, so that was on them.

"Why couldn't Neji go on this thing with us?" Naruto asked the remaining junior members of Team Gai. When he'd recruited Tenten and Lee he expected Neji to come along for the whole combo package, but he was unable to join, thus he grabbed Sasuke who was pretty much down for anything with action, "I mean, not that it's not _great_ having Sasuke here and everything-."

"Hn."

"-But he was really vague about why he couldn't come."

"Oh-ho." Rock Lee just waved the whole thing off as normal for how things sometimes went with Team Gai, "Neji had to bow out because of 'clan responsibilities.'" They were very used to that, as ever since becoming a jounin, even as a Branch House member, Neji was rather important to Hyuuga Clan inner workings now, "He is required to do so from time to time."

"Clan responsibilities?" Naruto asked with a raised eyebrow, "You can use that as an excuse to not do stuff?" And Shikamaru hadn't been trying to abuse the hell out of that little loophole to get himself out of doing missions and other things since they'd come back? Outrageous.

"Yeah, as far as I know." Tenten said with a shrug. She wasn't a clan child so she didn't have any clue as to how they worked outside of what she already knew from interacting with Neji, "It has to be legit though. You can't just say it, you've got to be excused and the time off has to be applied for by the head of the clan I think."

"Well I'm technically Uzumaki Clan Head aren't I?"

"You're the only one."

"Right. Uzumaki Clan Head."

"…Naruto, you can't knock off from work and say that it's for clan business."

"But it is! I've got property to fix up and a ton of weird masks to figure out what some of them do!" And after finding out what one of them in particular did, it was probably for the best that he got to the bottom of that as soon as possible before someone got hurt. More than likely him if he were to be honest about it.

The last part got Sasuke's full attention though, "Wait, you're still going to fool around with those masks after what happened the last time?" He asked with a smirk, remembering how Naruto hightailed it out of the temple as fast as he could after they all saw the shadow of the Shinigami behind Naruto's clone, "Playing with fire aren't we?"

Yep, because nobody paid attention to the fact that he ran away too. And man did he run away. If Naruto was perceived as being in the lead it was only because Sasuke Shunshined out of dodge before Sakura or Chouji saw the yellow/blue/orange blur bolting through the door and followed suit.

"They're there for a reason, so I'm gonna find out what they can do." Naruto replied stubbornly, "If any of 'em can even do anything else at all that is."

"Well look at you, all proud of your clan secrets." Sasuke… was he actually trying to razz someone? Holy crap, someone was feeling loose today if he was willing to joke around like that. He normally didn't give a damn about anything going on around him, but apparently having another last survivor of a long-gone clan made him more cordial in regards to Naruto?

It was the leading theory that the others were working with at least.

But for the time being during the walk across the large bridge it had to be noted that Takigakure was absolutely gorgeous. Pristine, crystal clear water. And it was probably a D-rank mission to tend to the tree and to the lake because Sasuke could see tiny specks on the tree moving around as well as on the far shores.

Actually there was one coming their way.

And it was glowing green.

And it had wings.

And it had dropped him seven stories through a canopy of trees before.

…And it was coming their way. Was that established already?

Chunin exam flashback aside, Sasuke found that it wasn't him that wound up being plowed into by the flying figure. Naruto was, putting Lee, Tenten, and even Sasuke on instant guard until they heard Naruto actually yell at the person, "Don't drop me! This isn't funny Fuu, I swear I'm gonna-!"

"Yeah, yeah…" Takigakure's resident jinchuuriki said with a roll of her eyes as she carefully landed and dropped Naruto to the surface of the bridge once they were low enough to safely do so, "You still love to run your mouth don't you? I thought you liked trying to hug me."

"Not death hugs a hundred feet in the air!" Naruto bellowed at the lithe girl. She hadn't changed a bit from the last time he saw her, and flying still wasn't as cool as he thought it would be years ago before he'd actually experienced it several times. No thanks, "I'm meant to stay on the ground! If someone wanted me to fly, that's what my powers would be!"

"Yes, because _I'm_ such a fan of being hugged with a chain." Fuu replied, hovering in circles around them, "You can stick to me like flypaper anyway so it's not like you'll ever fall off. And even if I dropped you, your powers would probably let you live through it."

The Takigakure ninjas were rather stunned at seeing Fuu get along so well with someone. She was more approachable than she used to be years, and had developed a bit of a personal sense of humor, but that went past grabbing up random foreigners and scaring the hell out of them.

Then Naruto started yelling at her while using her name and it became apparent that they knew each other, "Oh, you two are already introduced?"

Fuu flittered around momentarily before shutting off her chakra wings and landing on the bridge, hands on her hips, "Yeah, remember when sometimes I'd get to go on vacations and leave the village? I was going to help this guy with some things."

"Freelancing missions were you?" That was something highly illegal for a ninja loyal to a village to do.

"What?" The mint-haired young woman recoiled in shock at first before recovering, "No! I was training him! He's a jinchuuriki and my control is better than his." Speaking of which, Fuu gave Naruto a stern look that seemed to be expectant in a way, "Now, are you any better than that pitiful mess that almost wiped a village off the map trying to use four tails?"

"Yes." Naruto grumbled under his breath, "Just because you're older than me doesn't make you a better jinchuuriki you know." He thought that he'd been doing rather well with only three years to learn how to work with his biju.

"It kind of does since you didn't know anything about it until you were twelve." Fuu pointed out, "That put you behind the curve straight out of the gate. Others start training as jinchuuriki the second they're able to. If you don't have something about you right off the bat to help you along it takes a long time to master it."

Naruto looked around at the other Takigakure ninjas that had been escorting them and saw something that he hadn't seen the last time he'd been around Fuu and other ninjas of her village.

Pride.

A smile came to his face at the implication. The last time they had been afraid of her, even scorning her presence even though she was the strongest of them and loyal to the village. Apparently Fuu's bit of an attitude adjustment had done more than just made her easier to be friends with. She'd managed to turn the corner so to speak.

Even just now when the apparent Taki ninja in command had chided her for perhaps freelancing missions outside of the village on her own time, it had been done in good-natured jesting.

"Come on." The lead Taki ninja said with a smile that he quashed behind a veil of business, "Let's meet with the village leader and you can be fully briefed on all you need to know to run your mission."

XxX

(With Shikamaru – Konohagakure no Sato – Ninja Academy – Hokage's Office)

Shikamaru couldn't help but be scared to death of what he was about to do. Walk into the Hokage's office and present a case to him. He needed the man to help fill in any of the blanks that he might have had left, but he needed a few more things confirmed to complete the blank spots in the case that was Yakushi Kabuto.

This wasn't his thing…

He didn't go out of his way to do things like this. He'd worked for the Fire Daimyo, yes, but he'd never actually done anything to interact with the man or put himself out there any more than he needed to amongst those in higher stations.

If he was serious about this, he probably should have taken it all to his dad Shikaku, or to Asuma. Someone, anyone but just as long as he didn't wind up doing it himself.

To hell with it. He'd come all that way, and it would be a real drag to have to go back after gathering up all of the relevant paperwork and records he could find to argue his case. And then he'd have to explain to whoever he chose to act in his stead what he wanted to convey to the Hokage.

…Actually, doing this himself would probably be much less work all things considered, even if he was uncomfortable with it.

"Damn it." Shikamaru muttered to himself, knocking on the large doors in front of him. He steeled himself as he heard a muffled, yet powerful grant of permission for him to enter. Taking a deep breath he entered the office and found the regal old man in charge of Konoha painting a portrait, "Hokage-sama."

"Ah, Shikamaru-kun." Hiruzen said, greeting the young genius with a smile, "What can I do for you?"

"I just needed you to clarify some things for me." Shikamaru said, standing off to the side as Hiruzen continued to paint, "Ever since… the spy incident, I've been trying to put together the pieces of just how this happened. You know, so that maybe the next time the writing is on the wall we can see this sort of thing coming."

He had expected the Sandaime Hokage to be more cross when the situation with Kabuto's spying came up, but he was entirely calm and understanding.

"Hindsight is oftentimes the most humbling teacher." He said, taking a moment from painting to empty out his pipe and put in more tobacco, "But if you fail to heed its lessons you are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again." Sparing a glance in Shikamaru's direction he bid that the young chunin come closer to talk, "I am by no means a perfect Hokage my boy, your sensei will be the first to bring that up. By all means, speak."

Okay, so Shikamaru had been given the green light. Time to bring this whole thing home. Hopefully he wouldn't have to write an actual report afterwards, because it would prove to be a long one.

"Alright, the rest is on record. I've got a friend reassessing all of Konoha's permanent records right now keeping the things I've dug up on hold for me to get back to if you want to see it, but for now I'll just get to the things that are relevant to the heart of this." Shikamaru said, trying to keep his nerve and sound as official as he could, "Yakushi Kabuto. His records show that he was adopted by Yakushi Nono, but these things don't show up on her record. In fact, her record is sealed two years before he was said to be adopted."

Which was something strange in of itself.

"Ninja records aren't sealed in the village with the exception of those worked into rotation in ANBU, and those are only for the duration of their tenure there." Ninja records for ANBU closed until their stint was over, and they reopened when a ninja rejoined the conventional forces, "So if her records never reopened she either died in ANBU, or is still part of them. But that can't be either, because Nono is officially listed as M.I.A., and she has been since two years prior to Kabuto's adoption. What do you think so far?"

"I think I need to start cleaning house in the village's records department." Hiruzen grumbled bitterly, "Unacceptable. Continue."

A smirk came to Shikamaru's face despite the situation. Knowing that Hiruzen was seriously taking stock of what he had to say was starting to loosen him up a bit, and it was clear he cared about the content of the conversation. That was good. Maybe something could get done after all.

"I went to the Konoha Orphanage to see if anyone remembered Kabuto and Nono. They did." Shikamaru said, "Kabuto was taken out of the orphanage at the age of five, but didn't show up in any record until he was enrolled at the age of nine. We were already told that this was a ploy by Orochimaru, but we're going past that. Nono vanished two years after Kabuto was taken away. This is where I'm hitting a wall."

"Allow me to break that wall down for you Shikamaru-kun." Hiruzen said, his gaze hardening and the puffs of smoke coming from his pipe growing more and more angry in the cloud formation as he listened and stitched parts of his own knowledge into Shikamaru's report, "You've done such a good job, and I think I can fill in the gap here. Yakushi Nono I believe was taken into a sub-division of ANBU. I believe that Kabuto was as well."

"They have that?"

"They _did_. They still do, but I've outlawed it."

"Then how does it still exist?"

"Because _I _never controlled it."

Shikamaru's mouth was stuck wide open upon that admission from his village leader, "What the-? How could-?" He didn't know what to say. What could you reasonably say and not get punished for it? There wasn't anything, "…Why?"

"Remember that I told you about hindsight? I always felt that foresight was the much more desirable teacher, but he's more fickle in his choice of student." Hiruzen said cryptically, "I made a mistake. I felt that my top rival Danzo, who is a worthy ninja in his own right, shared the same desire to protect the village as I do. And he does, but his methods do not coincide with our Will of Fire. By the time I ordered Root to be disbanded, it was too late. They are trained only to heed his command, not mine."

Not unless their orders from Danzo were to listen to him, but that would be too easy.

"So why not do something about it?" Shikamaru asked. This was the Hokage he was talking to here. Put some heads on some sticks damn it! This was basically treason they were talking about here, "You've got the entire village behind you."

"Things aren't that simple Shikamaru." Hiruzen said with a frown, "As simple as that would be, Danzo is not a weak man, even in his current state, I'm certain of it. If he didn't possess the power to back up his actions from the shadows he wouldn't have risked maintaining Root. Not only that, but these are all shinobi trained like ANBU. And from the sound of things he's recruited orphans. Children no one would miss."

"He could have gotten to Naruto." Shikamaru soberingly thought aloud, "If he was recruiting orphans and got Kabuto from the orphanage that Naruto was in-."

"He would never have laid a hand on Naruto and he knows it." Hiruzen stated firmly, "It's why he's never tried to. There's a reason Naruto refers to me so fondly. Because I kept him close when I could. I kept close when I had the time to, and when he was old enough to enter the Academy, they did it there in my stead. Naruto's a more public figure than you know, and Danzo could never have gotten Naruto without letting the whole village know that he did."

"But that still doesn't explain why you can't do something about Danzo."

"He has always had heavy supporters all throughout the village, all throughout clans in our village. Your clan more than likely has its share." Hiruzen explained with a sigh, "They believe in his way of operating when things go wrong for us, and he could easily drum up a civil war whether I kill him or not. My support is waning in my twilight years, and with recent events it has more than likely decreased further. As the Hokage I do have absolute power, but with that absolute power there are many pitfalls."

Danzo, the man knew the atmosphere of the village. The man knew human nature. The man was also convinced that after surviving three world wars and seeing the ideals of the men that led the village in those times, those ways simply did not work in ensuring Konoha's prolonged safety and prosperity.

No one respected the foundations lain down since Konoha's founding days more than Hiruzen did, so he hated to admit it but Danzo had a point.

He allowed Root to exist despite the order over fifteen years ago to dissolve it. Sometimes there was a need to do the jobs too dirty for Konoha to be affiliated with. Danzo was his chief rival and his best friend in previous times. His love for the village rivaled Hiruzen's, and he picked out the missions that Root took, knowing full well that conventional Konoha forces could not be found involved in these things.

His methods left many holes however, and the plausible deniability that Hiruzen had that kept Konoha from being considered responsible for Root's actions also meant that he wasn't privy to many of Danzo's methods. Deep cover spies were always the sort of thing that Danzo adored as far as usable resources went.

But with the utilization of children in the manner that he used them, that was a sticking point. Before he couldn't prove that this was what he was doing. He steered clear of village orphanages to recruit, except for this instance with Kabuto.

These methods seemed to have created a monster that struck at Konoha's vitals, parasitically leeching info out and off to Orochimaru. No wonder the man had managed to always be one step ahead no matter what, because he managed to turn a Danzo-trained double-agent spy to his side and use his own reach inside of the village to place him in prime position back within Konoha.

"So you either need a replacement or something big to turn public opinion if you want to get things to build against Danzo." Shikamaru mused aloud.

Telling them that Kabuto was originally Danzo's fault wouldn't work because Root wasn't commonly known enough in the village. A handful of ninjas would get the reference. To the rest, ANBU was ANBU, and there were no subdivisions.

Hiruzen was impressed by Shikamaru's knowledge of the political climate of the village. Apparently he'd picked up more than just fighting skills by working in the employ of the Fire Daimyo.

Shikamaru hadn't even noticed Hiruzen stand up from where he'd been sitting until the old man set his hands on his shoulders gratefully, "I can see why Asuma grew so fond of his team so quickly, with children like you, Naruto, and Ino to take care of." The surprise on Shikamaru's face at the praise couldn't be schooled, "Please, keep up the good work."

Really, this boy was so intelligent that Hiruzen was finding it prudent to award him with promotion of some sort. Not a full jounin promotion, but a specialist promotion. A tokubetsu jounin promotion. With his intellect there were plenty of positions that could do with that kind of talent. He clearly had a knack for investigation, and recent events showed more than anything else that they desperately needed someone that could see past the b.s. and get to the real.

It was hard for Shikamaru to not be taken aback at directly getting praise from the Hokage. That wasn't supposed to happen for a guy like him. He was supposed to fly under the radar, be strictly middle-management and retire just around the beltline of the ninja organizational system.

Guys like that weren't supposed to be given props by the Hokage. They were important cogs in the machine for sure. Necessary parts, but they were parts that were supposed to be nondescript and replaceable.

All Shikamaru could really do was walk out of the office after nodding slowly.

Damn it! He was aiming for mediocrity! Lead or get out of the way, and all that jazz! Well in this case he just wanted to get the hell out of the way, and he was screwing that up!

…He blamed Naruto.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Outside the Gates of Konoha)

It was now Asuma's turn to stakeout Killer B.

Seriously, he had better things to do than have a staring contest against perhaps the biggest threat to stand at the gates of Konoha since the Head Ninja of Kumo waltzed in and thought it would be cool to leave with a Hyuuga souvenir.

"This sucks." Asuma muttered, not caring that Killer B was well within hearing distance, less than ten feet away, "Look, you might as well go home and we can work this all out some other time. I'm not letting you kill my kid."

"Mr. Nine's your brat?" Killer B questioned in a rhyme, "I ain't seein' that."

Oh, he hadn't been taking him seriously when he said that Naruto was his kid did he? No, no, no. Only one man could really claim to be that kid's father, and he wasn't nearly fast enough or blond enough, "Well no, he's not really my kid, but it feels like he is a lot of the time. I'm proud of the little shit. I'm proud of all three of the kids from my Team 10."

"I was proud of Omoi too, but then he ran into your little dude."

"Naruto's not little, and he didn't start that fight." Asuma asserted, "He just did what I taught them all to do." Asuma's first rule of being a ninja was to do no harm… unless you mean to do harm. Then do LOTS of harm, "I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're wrong to be looking for a fight from him. I would if I were you. I'm just saying that unless you plan on going through me, at least three other top jounin, and maybe the Hokage before you get it, you're not getting it."

Killer B shook his head resolutely, "You're hurtin' my head with your weak-ass prattle. Mr. Nine don't want you fightin' his battle." He'd met Naruto before, and he never forgot another jinchuuriki, "This ain't about Kumo vs. Konoha or nothin' like that. This is just between him and me, got it?"

"That's not his choice and it sure isn't yours, to just fight like that."

"Why the hell not?"

"The both of you have responsibilities. Big responsibilities. And you want to throw it away for a stupid fight?"

At that point, Killer B grinned, but it wasn't exactly in joviality, "The only responsibility either of us have to anybody else… are the biju we've got stuck inside, right?"

"What does that matter?" Asuma asked, "It doesn't change anything."

"Yeah it does." B insisted, "'Cuz if we didn't have 'em, nobody'd be tryin' to stop us if we wanted to get at each other's throats if we really wanted, ya dig?" He had a point and he was set on making it, "It'd just be two ninjas out for a scrap, instead of all this political crap."

It was hard to get to past all of the slang and bad rhyming, but Asuma was a particularly smart guy and eventually cracked the code. Killer B had a point. The only reason this was some huge issue was because he and Naruto were jinchuuriki. If they didn't have biju inside of them, this wouldn't have been half of the big deal that it currently was.

It was only a matter of time before A sent someone to get B away from there, but they wouldn't be able to budge him either. Not unless A came himself and Iron Clawed him away from his waiting spot.

So was Killer B saying to Asuma in so many words, that for all his talk of seeing Naruto as one of his kids he still saw Naruto through the glass of labeling him a jinchuuriki before he labeled him a ninja?

Oh, that was a cigarette-worthy remark. Asuma had to pull the last one in his pack out in order to calm himself down before he felt the need to do something dumb about that. Talking the guy out of camping in front of their gates to wait for the resident Kyuubi jinchuuriki to return apparently wasn't going to happen.

At that point, Ino, Kurenai, and Hinata began walking into Killer B's sight from the village gates. He regarded the incoming ladies for a moment before returning to his patient and stubborn display of waiting Naruto out.

"That's really Killer B." Kurenai said as she and Ino drew closer, "Kumogakure's perfect jinchuuriki."

"Perfect jinchuuriki?" Hinata said in a questioning tone, "…Kurenai-sensei, just what does that mean?"

What it meant wasn't really a pleasant thought as far as the most experienced of the kunoichi there could figure. These girls had never seen a biju in full attack mode, but Kurenai had. It wasn't really the sort of thing that you could ever forget, and anyone that ever lived through one could never undersell just how awesome the power of one could be, "It means that he not only has full access to the power of the Hachibi, he can draw upon it whenever he wants. He can even transform into it if he felt like it."

Killer B was notably good with the abilities granted to him by virtue of his mastery over his biju's powers, and he had a reputation even outside of Kumogakure for being extremely reckless in battle with that power. So much so that legend had it was the only rule the Raikage could truly grant B was that he was expressly forbidden to transform within the limits of Kumo.

Hinata's pale eyes went wide before she drew upon her Byakugan to check him out for herself. She'd never seen that much chakra in any single person before in her life. The only person she'd ever find a close comparison to would be Naruto.

Ino scrutinized Killer B as closely as she could from where they were walking over to him from. Her sensing ability wasn't nearly as strong as Naruto's as she hadn't finished all she needed to learn from Inoichi yet, so while she knew that he had a lot of chakra, she couldn't feel just how deep the ocean of energy inside of him ran.

"This is Killer B?" Ino said quietly as they got closer to where Asuma was sitting, "He doesn't seem scary. Not like Fuu used to seem. Not like Gaara still does seem."

Kurenai just shook her head, "I can honestly say with full confidence that Killer B is more powerful than both Gaara and Fuu. He could probably handle both of them at one time if he had to." He had more experience than both of them combined and had actually fought during the last world war, "A fight with a jinchuuriki is like a battle against no other force on this planet."

"Just being a jinchuuriki doesn't make him scary though." Ino said, explaining her previous statement, "If it did then Goldie would be absolutely terrifying because he's got the strongest one inside of him doesn't he? But he's not."

Even in the creepy-intense red fox shroud he used to blow Darui off the map, she was never afraid of Naruto. Someone with a lot of power wasn't something to be afraid of just for the power itself. What was worth being feared was the kind of person behind the power.

Finally reaching where Asuma was situated, a bag containing food was set down at his side, "Oh hell yes. You're an angel Kurenai." Asuma said, putting out his cigarette as his stomach sounded off from hunger, "Did you bring me any more cigarettes?"

"I'm really not going to facilitate a habit that I hate Asuma."

"Damn." It was worth a try to get more nicotine though, "So what are the girls doing here?"

"Both of them kept me company and they've been arguing on and off about the godmother thing all day long." Kurenai whispered to him quietly so as not to rouse another fight between the two kunoichi, "So how is it going so far?" She then noticed the empty pack of cigarettes on the ground next to him, "…Nevermind."

Asuma just grunted in return before turning his gaze to Ino, "Hey." She was still observing Killer B intently, forcing Asuma to whistle sharply to get her attention, "Hey, Ino. Did he make it to the border?"

Knowing who Asuma was talking about despite her temporary lapse in concentration, Ino smiled and nodded, "Actually, he made it with the others to Taki by now. I'd let you talk to him for a progress report the way he talked to me, but they wouldn't let me borrow a chakra transmission comm. device to bring out here. I can't find him from this far away without one."

"You can't play with all of the toys the Intelligence Division made just because your old man's one of the top brass." Asuma said, waving off her reasoning for not trying to establish telepathic contact with Naruto, "Thanks anyway though."

"Yamanaka girl." Killer B said, privy to the entire conversation, "You've got that telepathic stuff right? Well tell your boyfriend we've still gotta fight. He can run, he can hide, he can flee, but he can't duck the Killa B!"

Ino slowly turned her head to Asuma who had 'busied' himself by digging intently with his face inside of the bag of food that had been brought for him. In his defense he'd been out there for a whole day and things were boring, "…Asuma-sensei did you-?"

"Naruto-kun is _not_ her boyfriend." Hinata emphasized, arms crossed over her chest, glaring daggers at Ino. It was amazing how quickly she could flip the switch of her personality when it involved Ino, "He's her teammate."

Kurenai didn't know if it was a good thing or not that Hinata had found a rival in Ino over the years due to Naruto. It made her more decisive in her actions, broke her significantly out of her shell, and somewhat gave her the defiance she needed to break through and become a chunin.

The female jounin just looked between Asuma who seemed to be trying to disappear into his takeout bag, and Ino who was doing her best to hide her face from Hinata, more than likely due to the expression she had of a cat that had devoured the canary, "I feel like the entire point of what's supposed to be important about what he said to Ino just went over everyone else's head. Come on girls. Be careful Asuma."

She planted a kiss on her man and with that, she and Hinata headed back to the relative safety of the village gates, the latter shooting a look at Ino's back that meant there would be some man-related arguing going on once they got out of sight of the super strong foreign ninja.

Making sure that she was outside of Kurenai's sight, Ino slid over to Asuma and quickly dropped a twin pack of cigarettes into his bag before moving past him. When noticed what he'd received, he just looked over at the retreating Ino and grinned victoriously.

"And that's why you're my favorite." Regarding Killer Bee once more, Asuma held up the spoils of his female student's grace for unsaid explanation, "Sometimes you've got to enjoy the little things."

XxX

(Disputed Border of Tsuchi no Kuni and Takigakure-held Lands)

"It's just creepy." Deidara said, waiting along with Sasori in an area full of large spiky rock formations for one of Sasori's spies, "Your sleeper agents I mean. To think, you had one in Orochimaru's employ for all these years? Why didn't you use him to get Orochimaru's location any sooner?"

"Because he oftentimes wasn't with Orochimaru." Sasori said in return, "He was a spy for Orochimaru in Konoha, so they were rarely together routinely enough but he is Orochimaru's right hand man, so he does know of important locations and other things that have kept us on his heels."

How else would they have found out that Orochimaru had been in possession of the Sanbi to begin with? That wasn't really information that someone like him would have let leak lightly. It was how they sent Itachi and Kisame to Mizu no Kuni to find the exact location.

They found out because Kabuto had told Sasori that Orochimaru had his hands on a biju of his own.

And speaking of Kabuto…

The purple-clad medic appeared in a bow right in front of Sasori, his head lowered, "You cancelled your jutsu Sasori-sama. What do you need from me this time?"

"You're back with Orochimaru aren't you? Tell me where he is."

"You couldn't have picked a better time to go after him given the situation." Kabuto reported to Sasori, "Shortly after my return he quickly switched bodies with his handpicked Sanbi jinchuuriki."

Deidara heard this and punched a rock near where he was sitting, "Damn it! If he's already got it that just makes him way more dangerous than he already was, un!" The chances of capturing him without killing him so that they could extract the Sanbi had dwindled extensively, "So now what?"

Kabuto spared Deidara a glance before returning his attention to his master, "This could be the chance you need though. Orochimaru-sama is new to the body. As it is now, you would have the advantage if you took him on now. He has the remainder of the Sound Four protecting him due to his vulnerability in his state of adjusting to the switch to Yukimaru's body."

"And?"

"That's it. He has Oto's other elites spaced out across his holdings." Kabuto said, "Otogakure is expanding and gaining more influence than just in Oto no Kuni." Which was a feat in of itself. He had enough power as it was to depose a daimyo and take over a country as his own, and this was before now when he had even more power.

Sasori's eyes narrowed behind the veil over the lower portion of his face, "Show us where he is."

"Of course." Kabuto said before jumping off to lead the way to Orochimaru's currently occupied hideout, "It's not far from here."

Allowing his sleeper agent to lead the way, Sasori turned over to Deidara, "Come on. Let's get this over with. You know how much I hate wasting time."

Deidara got up and stretched before following along, "…Those sleeper agents are really creepy, un."

Something about Kabuto just didn't sit right with him. He had confidence in Sasori's ninja mastery, brainwashing of his subordinates obviously included. It had never burned them before, but there was just something he couldn't put his finger on when it came to the silver-haired medic.

XxX

(With Konoha Team – Near the Border – Pass of Tranquil Respite)

With the request from Takigakure to add an observer of theirs onto the hired team to make sure that Taki's best interests were kept, Fuu had been allowed to tag along and aid the Konoha team. It wasn't just as an overseeing position. Due to her knowledge of the area it was good for everyone that she was there, and the fact that she had a positive relationship with one of the team members in Naruto would ensure that everything went smoother.

"So you're sure?" Fuu asked, noting an area pointed out on the map as a great place that could or would be used as a hideout, "I mean, with this border there's a lot of ground to cover. How could you narrow it down to here in particular?"

There was a mightily scarred piece of the terrain marred from battles past sitting below them off of the elevated position they were scoping out the landscape from. Never recovered skeletons clad in ragged uniforms, temporary encampments, moss growing over every rock, tree, and transport cart that hadn't been moved in almost twenty years.

If you stood on that hallowed ground it was as if you could feel the ghosts of the departed still issuing orders and battle plans to their equally deceased comrades. Saying that it was haunted wouldn't have gotten you an ounce of derision in either Taki or Iwa, which was another reason why no one went there.

The place that had been agreed upon as the first checkable location for Orochimaru's base was an old site of a battlefield from the Third Shinobi World War that was now a veritable graveyard. It was an untouched monument to the losses suffered from both Taki and Iwa during the last major war that had engulfed the ninja world.

Taki, Konoha, Iwa, Kusa, all had spilled blood on the field this day. Some more than others.

It was taboo to be used as a passing area, or any sort of border point between the local ninja powers. Out of respect for the sacrifice of both sides from the battle it was to be left alone and was given the name the Pass of Tranquil Respite; for all of the souls that had gone to rest after their deaths there.

According to Fuu when it had been brought up on the map, this fact was what made it the single most likely target for a place where Otogakure would establish a hideout. It was clear by now that inviolable matters and things that were meant to be sacred really didn't mean much of anything to Orochimaru, and that trickled down to his underlings.

"Well…" Naruto said, stroking his chin in thought, "…It could be the fact that experience tells me that the last few times I had to deal with anything Oto-related in a country with ninja villages, as a Guardian Ninja and a Konoha ninja, it always happened around the border and they _always_ stay around the place that the ninja forces on both sides of the margin won't fuck with even if they already know they're there somewhere."

The last time they had a badass hideout island mixed in with dozens of other potential smuggler's cove hideout islands in territory disputed between at least three different countries. And none of the countries could be caught touching that zone unless they were spoiling for a war with the other countries. That kind of made it easy for Oto to do whatever they wanted in those places.

That was kind of extra-lengthy to say though, so he didn't, but Fuu was still certain that there was a second part to that, "Or?"

"-Or the fact that Sasuke's been looking at a fucking forest fire at the back end of this place all the way from here ever since we stopped, and I can sense the chakra flying off of it without even trying to feel for it."

Fuu turned her head to look off of the cliff that she and the Konoha team had taken a short rest and noted that indeed, miles away on the horizon she could see smoke drifting into the air. She had to squint to see it. Since they were extremely elevated, Naruto's sonar-esque sensor jutsu had a clear path to feel the fire that made it, and that it was from chakra.

He could have said it in less of a blunt manner. Nicer or not, friendly love of Naruto for making her mellow and getting her started on the path to being respected in her village or not, she was kind of tomboyish about getting shown up and she still had a nasty tic of a temper

Giving Naruto a saccharine sweet smile, the seven-tails jinchuuriki pointed over to their left in the opposite direction of the ledge, "Hey, do you see that mountain over there?"

Naruto turned and squinted his eyes appraisingly before grunting, "Uh… that seems more like a plateau to-." THWACK!

Sasuke, Lee, and Tenten just watched without flinching as Fuu effortlessly backhanded Naruto hard enough to send him flying off in the direction of the none-too-nearby mountainside… err, plateau-side. And nobody really cared that much.

Whether it was wrong or not, seeing Fuu hit Naruto to vent her own temper gave Sasuke an easy feeling in his stomach. If he could live vicariously through another person for a split-second he would have chosen to live through Fuu right at the point that her white-clad arm collided with the unsuspecting Naruto. It was beautiful.

Because he'd wanted to do that every day for as long as he could remember. He couldn't though. It wasn't very becoming of his image, because real talented shinobi didn't need to hit people when they were annoyed.

When Fuu noticed Sasuke looking at her she stood up and put her hands on her hips, "Yes?" She vaguely remembered dropping him several stories at a high speed at some point in the past.

"I know you almost killed me before and everything…" Sasuke started to say, standing up from where he'd been crouching to look at the map, "…But I honestly would have paid someone money to do that to him, to hit him that hard, and you gave it to me for free. Thank you."

That was the most he'd said to someone he didn't really know when it wasn't necessary for him to speak in quite some time, so it was clear that Sasuke was really quite happy with her, even if he completely refused to emote.

"Are you sure it was such a good idea to hit Naruto-kun?" Lee asked, trying to gauge just how far Fuu knocked him, "The mission has just begun for the most part. He could have been hurt." It was generous to say that he 'might' have been hurt. It was common knowledge that Naruto's head was full of concrete and other heavy building materials, but by now everyone remembered just how devastating Fuu's strength could be.

Fuu just grinned and held up the back of her hand, "I kept an open hand. He's fine." To emphasize this point, Naruto returned to the party a matter of moments later, thus showing off one of the reasons that Fuu liked him. He was damnably tough.

"Ah, you bitch." Naruto said, walking back to his teammates, wincing at Fuu's swatting of him, "That really hurt. That was like a 3.6 out of 10 on the Tsunade-scale." He wasn't sure how far he would have gone if a gigantic rock face hadn't been in the way of his trajectory.

"See?"

"Alright that's enough of that." Tenten said with a sigh. She'd already checked through every scroll she had on her person and was more than ready to roll, "We still haven't proved that Oto is the cause of the disturbances until we get some solid evidence so…" Without saying anything else she dropped off of the side of the cliff and ran her way down the side.

"Tenten is right!" Lee exclaimed, "The fate of a village is in our hands and we cannot fail!" Following suit, he swan dove off of the edge and freefell for quite a ways, "Watch me Gai-sensei!" He said, flipping through and planting his feet on the side of the wall to sprint his way down similarly to Tenten.

Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other for a moment before Naruto shrugged and offered a suggestion, "I'll take the high road."

"I'll take the low road." Sasuke said in return, "…And I'll finish this mission before you." Naruto responded by maturely flipping him the bird.

Sasuke just rolled his eyes and vanished in a Shunshin while Naruto dropped his machete at the edge and used his connected Chakra Chain to bungee his way down. Any effort to show off was quickly outdone when Fuu let her chakra wings sprout from her red cylinder on her back and just flew her way down there.

Nothing beat the power of flight when it came to cool methods of transportation.

They were meant to split up and search the area. Everyone was meant to rally upon the agreed place after finding the base, making contact with the enemy, or after three hours no matter what. In case of problems, flares were meant to be fired.

XxX

(With Sasuke – Battlefield Lowlands)

Sasuke was considered a genius sort of ninja as far as his generation was concerned. He was smart, knew enough about fighting and operating in all kinds of conditions under any kind of pressure, and was perhaps the most versatile ninja out of his extremely talented graduation class.

The thing was, while he didn't let his emotions get to him very much, when something really irked him or got to him one way or another he was slow to forget, and was quick to react to it in some way, usually violently.

He remembered every person that ever defeated him or wronged him in some way. The reason he was able to let it go with Fuu was only because Taki and Konoha were supposed to be friendly, and because Naruto and Fuu were rather close.

So when he started seeing spider webs bigger and neater than anything that could have been created in nature, he instantly remembered the time years ago when he and his team had been attacked by a group of four Otogakure shinobi that had hurt Sakura and Chouji, as well as branded him with the Cursed Seal of Heaven.

One of those pricks apparently made webs that couldn't be cut. Kind of like these.

It would be prudent to allude back to Sasuke's elephant-like memory when it came to being wronged. Because when Sasuke held a grievance with someone he also had a propensity to make poor decisions.

Once again, these poor decisions oftentimes circulated around the intent to commit violence.

"Huh." Sasuke progression in his area of the old battlefield came to a halt when he felt that he'd walked directly into where his enemy would have wanted him, "You know, this is enough evidence to me that Otogakure is the cause of the problems in this area-."

He then expertly dodged six large golden blades thrown at him with acrobatic dexterity.

Landing on the ground, Sasuke's face barely registered that he had to do something combat-related, one hand carelessly on his hip as he finished his thought from before, "-But I think I'd rather bring back a corpse for good measure."

Several double-layered complete spider webs flew through the air at Sasuke who once again dodged them all, letting them splat and stick to the walls of the canyon-like area he was confronting his enemy inside of.

From deep within the canyon area, the tan-skinned, six-armed Kidomaru had a clear line of sight on Sasuke from a long distance. To get to him, Sasuke only had the option of coming straight ahead, making him an easier target as the canyon narrowed the closer the path went to reach the spider of a man.

"Ooh, someone leveled up." Kidomaru said after watching Sasuke confidently avoid his ranged attacks, "It looks like I can enjoy this more than the first time when I beat on the pink-haired girl and the fat kid. It was like playing through a tutorial." As he spoke, his cursed seal began to spread over his body,

"You can't kill me apparently." Sasuke said, staring straight through the darkness with his red Sharingan activated to accentuate his glare as he dodged another quick barrage of webbing and weaponry from his enemy, "Tch."

"Orochimaru-sama doesn't need you alive anymore." Kidomaru said, his hair growing wild and white with his skin growing dark red. He pulled away the headband he wore to reveal a third eye on his forehead, "He could still use your eyes though. I'm gonna get so much XP after finishing this quest. Kumosoukai (Spider Web Unrolling)!"

After activating the second stage of his Cursed Seal, Kidomaru used four of his arms to instantly throw out a large spider web in front of his own location, meant to keep Sasuke from doing anything to get to him even if he did get close enough to harm him in the slightest. Simultaneously, he expelled golden webbing from his mouth that he manipulated into a large bow, using multiple threads of webbing attached to the walls to give extra tension to the weapon.

Sasuke came to a stop in his rush upon seeing the web. Apparently neither Sakura nor Chouji could break it with their conventional methods, but that had been back when they were genin.

As Kidomaru formed a golden arrow from the same material, he used all eight of his limbs to aim the weapon. It didn't matter where Sasuke went to in the canyon, there wasn't anything he could do to get out of his line of sight, "Alright let's see if you can set a high score here in dodging these shots."

He neglected to mention that he had never missed a target with his arrow.

SQUELCH!

With the shock of horrible, piercing, splitting pain, Kidomaru was brought back to the land of reality harshly. Genjutsu was a terrible thing.

Sasuke stood directly in front of Kidomaru's protective web, five meters away. He had aimed a long blade of blue lightning through the holes of the web, not even bothering to waste time cutting through it to kill him.

"Chidori Eiso (One Thousand Birds Sharp Spear)." As Sasuke spoke, Kidomaru gasped in pain, losing the grip on his bow and squirming around in his firing position. Sasuke kept his hand up, keeping the extended blade of electricity right in place. The chirping noise of the jutsu muffled his death throes, "You lose."

"H-H-How!" And he wasn't talking about the jutsu. He wanted to know what Sasuke had done to get the drop on him that quickly.

"Sharingan genjutsu." Sasuke said, not that it mattered now, "Anko was right. The cursed seals really do rot your brain if you thought for one second I hadn't learned new ways to deal with people like you."

"H-Hax! I call hax! Where's the admin? I need a patch!" The ranged specialist of the Sound Four sputtered bloodily until Sasuke forced the end of the jutsu to branch in several different directions, effectively silencing him forever in gory fashion, "K-Kkkkkkkhhh!"

Sasuke held the jutsu until he saw the light fade from Kidomaru's eyes and his cursed seal recede, turning his features back to normal. Huh, was he smoking too?

Now that felt like gratification. Nobody fucked with Team 7 and got away with it, even more than three years after the fact, and no one stuck a demonic hickey on Uchiha Sasuke's neck without paying the price. They were the reason he was introduced to Anko, and that was reason enough to extract his pound of flesh right there.

Pulling his arm back, drawing the Chidori Eiso out of Kidomaru's chest, Sasuke cut through the webbing and walked into Kidomaru's hiding spot. He reached down and grabbed the headband with the musical note on it for proof of Oto's presence, "Hn."

Before leaving the lowlands and proceeding to the rally point, Sasuke spared Kidomaru a partial glance before going on about his way. The look of alarm permanently frozen on Kidomaru's face was duly noted.

"…Well don't look so shocked."

XxX

(With Naruto – Moss Rock Road)

People had strange reservations that were completely unreasonable, illogical, and unexplainable.

Moss creeped Naruto out. He didn't know why, but it just did. So when he found himself on a portion of the landscape that was completely covered in moss, it kind of made his skin crawl. Every tree, boulder, cliffside, and stretch of dirt had moss all over it.

"I hate doing missions that have to do with Otogakure." Naruto said to himself as he searched around, trying to get himself the evidence he needed to avert a war between two hidden villages, "The places they pick give me the creeps."

The fact that the place might have been haunted wasn't exactly helping either.

"_So you're the loser that killed that mindless piece of trash Kimimaro. Come to think of it, thanks a lot for that. The rest of us hated that bastard."_ A disembodied voice echoed out in the open air from seemingly nowhere, _"I know it'll probably get me in trouble if anyone hears it but you, but you're going to die here anyway so I guess it doesn't matter."_

Naruto's hands fumbled for his machete before he let go of it in a bit of a panic, "What was I thinking? You can't kill a ghost with steel." Laughter echoed out over Naruto's apparent fear.

"_How'd you ever beat Kimimaro? Did he trip and fall on his own sharp-ass bones? Did he sneeze and stab his own brain? Hahaha."_

Naruto kept things going this way before he suddenly felt a nibble at the end of the line so to speak. He dealt with the condescending laughter until finally rolling his eyes and sharply yanking his own arm at the wrist, "Setsudanki Kujo (Slingshot Extermination)!"

Literally ripping his target from an elevated rock wall, a target that screamed all the way down, Naruto twisted his body and slammed the hidden Oto figure all the way down to the ground, hard enough to smash a crater into the moss-covered path.

Yeah, it was hard dealing with being laughed at, same as it always was, but it helped when you were the one that was in on the real joke. The one that ended with you dragging your enemy out of their hiding place and dropping them on their head.

But it didn't really kill this guy. As the smoke from the newly created hole cleared, Naruto saw a white-haired, pale-skinned guy with dark lipstick wearing beads and the tunic with the purple rope belt that most high-ranking Oto shinobi wore.

There was more though.

Protecting him from the attack, were a pair of hands and legs sprouting from his back, helping him brace for the impact and negating most of the damage the move would have done. Freaky, "And how exactly did trash like you manage to get one over on me?"

"I knew you were there jackass." Naruto told him with a wide grin as he retracted his Chakra Chain. Seriously, it didn't matter what you'd done in your life; become a chunin, live for three years as a Guardian Ninja, kill the top-level bodyguards of your enemy's leader. If you acted a little strange or like an idiot, no one would take you seriously until it was too late, "You used chakra to throw your voice."

Even when he concealed himself inside of rock, he gave up his location the moment he had done that neat little voice-throwing chakra trick that tons of ninja knew. He hadn't done a bad job in concealing himself, but his overconfidence in thinking that he could taunt Naruto that way was his folly.

"Well aren't you just special?" The odd-looking Oto ninja stood up with a sneer on his face, "Brother, I guess we haven't taken enough out of Konoha for their liking. It looks like they want to just give us their heads now."

A second twin of the strange man stood up from the crater as well, "Shut up and kill him already Sakon. You can preen when his team is dead. Konoha ninjas never come alone."

"You're always so boring Ukon." The first brother, Sakon, said as he let his cursed seal take over his body, "Kabuto got to lead these puppies around by the nose for over ten years. We can't take our time and have our bit of fun with them?"

Upon being reminded of Kabuto, Naruto's body went still while the strange brothers argued about the merits of taking their time with him or wiping him out quickly.

Iruka, and all of the other people that had more than likely suffered when they'd gotten too close to the truth of Kabuto's cover. All of Naruto's friends that had gotten close to Kabuto and who had considered him someone trustworthy, one of them even. And he just spit in their faces. Waited until he was behind closed doors so that he could laugh at them for allowing him that close.

Slowly, Naruto shakily placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, the sound of his lighter flicking getting the attention of both Sakon and Ukon once more, "You see? And here he waited so patiently for us to finish fighting, just so we could-."

"Enough!" Ukon said, advancing his cursed seal to its second level, giving him red skin, plated scales covering the left side of his body, longer white hair, and a horn on his forehead, "It doesn't matter if Kabuto did this or that with them. Kill him already."

Naruto reached into his travel bag and held the warning flare device in his hands, pondering if he should use it or not.

…Nah.

In the time it took him to decide on firing the flare or not, Sakon and Ukon surrounded him on both sides, both with a fist cocked back to take his head out with a punch. Having held his breath from a deep inhale, Naruto spewed forth a plume of ash from his mouth that concealed his body, "Moegara Nagare no Jutsu (Cinder Stream Jutsu)!"

Both brothers immediately dodged the scalding hot material by the skin of their teeth, "So this is the one Guren told us about." As they moved away, they noticed a chain surrounding their position in a circular pattern, "Brother, don't touch that chain!"

Good advice. From the way that the weapon sharply shortened its circumference inward, either or both of them would have been cut into two segments had any part of them touched it.

Running back in the direction of one another, the bodies of both Sakon and Ukon merged and jumped straight up to avoid the chain closing around them. That sprang the trap of several Naruto clones using that opening to attack.

Gritting his teeth, Sakon grew two extra legs from one of his own, courtesy of Ukon inside of his body before spinning and kicking with all of the force that their combined legs could muster with the addendum of the cursed seal, "Tarensenpuu (Multiple Connected Whirlwinds)!"

The fierce short-term cyclone deflected Naruto's incoming clones and dispelled them, revealing some of them to be the trap Ash Clones that he utilized in tandem with his Shadow Clones at times.

"Numbers don't matter with us!" Sakon bragged after killing off Naruto's clones. Looking down he could see three clones surrounding the position they were going to land inside of, "You one-trick pony!" A shadow covered him from above, prompting the Sound Four member to turn his body and react, "This is just getting repetitive!"

"Is it?" Directly over Sakon's head, he saw the original Naruto, grinning up a storm, fingers held in the bird seal, "Sorry about that."

The banter was a distraction to allow Naruto's clones three clones to distribute their Chakra Chains amongst each other under the surface of the mossy ground in a triangle pattern with one hand, and throwing their respective machetes into the air at the original Naruto.

Confused, Sakon had no idea how or why the chain-connected blades didn't clash off of each other or skewer Naruto. In fact, it seemed that he was able to set his hand safely on the three of them once they stopped in midair, "Fuuinjutsu: Sanhou Fuuin (Sealing Jutsu: Three Directions Seal)!"

Eyes wide, Sakon landed on the ground and saw a spiral marking and a sealing formula underneath his feet, "Damn!" He quickly tried to free himself from the seal interior, but found a white translucent barrier repelling him and keeping him from leaving, "What is this?"

Naruto balanced himself in a crouch atop the tetrahedron comprised of his clones' chains as they diligently maintained the connection, one hand on the ground and one in the air, "Sealing jutsu. It'll last until I break the linking points, but when that barrier disappears, so does everything in it."

He had to dispel all of his clones at once instead of one at a time, otherwise it would simply let Sakon go instead of seal him away.

"You trash!" Ukon roared with a wall of spittle flying from his mouth as his head appeared from Sakon's neck, "Someone from a softhearted village like yours doesn't-!"

With a hand-seal, Naruto dispelled his clones and their chains in unison, ridding the dimension of the two brothers and only leaving a large triangle marking on the ground where the seal had been established.

Naruto had used clones in the past to test the airless void that he wound up condemning folks to with that jutsu. It made purgatory look like a waiting room. Sakon and Ukon, the poor bastards. It almost made Naruto feel bad, but a battle was a battle.

Chakra Chains were so useful. They were versatile weapons in pitched battle, and since he could form them into patterns they could be starting points for sealing arrays. Maybe with enough practice he could make them in the air instead of needing a surface?

Wait…

"Fuck! I just sent my evidence to another dimension!"

BANG!

In the sky a bright flash of an exploding flare went off and Naruto bit his lip before taking off in that direction. There wasn't anything he could do about causing Sakon and Ukon to fall prey to his seal now. He'd caught them and finished them. Now all he could do was move to assist whoever was calling for help.

XxX

(Elsewhere in the Pass of Tranquil Respite – Skies Above the Battlefield)

This was officially the worst-case scenario as far as Fuu was concerned. After being repeatedly warned for years by Jiraiya and Naruto that the Akatsuki organization was after jinchuuriki and could attack her at any time, that had manifested itself in the form of an ambush.

She had been trying to case the area from the air, allowing everyone in her team to cover all bases. Seriously, she wasn't expecting to run into anyone else that could actually fly as well. Especially someone that wore a black cloak with red clouds on it.

"So you're the Nanabi jinchuuriki?" Deidara asked, sitting on a giant clay bird in the air, Fuu hovering in front of him with her wings out and beating, "Look at this. Sasori no Danna came here looking to kill a snake and I found a beetle."

When they'd found the entrance to the hideout, Sasori had demanded that he be allowed to handle Orochimaru by himself, basically ordering Deidara with threat of death that he remain outside and let two old teammates hash out their issues from the past.

Fuu had shot off her flare when she realized that she was being tailed. No one would be able to get through the air to help her, so if this turned out to be more difficult than she could handle she had to find some way to goad Deidara to the ground.

"Get bent." Fuu said, eyes glowing green as she rushed forward with all of the speed her wings could put behind her, "Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow)!" Leaving a green streak of her chakra in her wake, she lashed out with a devastating power punch that missed when Deidara jumped off of his bird, allowing it to dive and enabling both to avoid her harsh taijutsu.

Falling through the air only to be caught by his bird, Deidara turned his head around with a grin and formed a half-ram seal, "So easy. Katsu." With that, a small clay insect he'd dropped on Fuu after dodging her punch detonated on the red cylinder on her back. The blast covered her body, but her body didn't fall from the sky, "Ooh, she's pretty tough."

Fuu jetted out of the blast cloud in hot pursuit of Deidara, "You have to hit me harder than that to even put a scratch on me!"

"Haha! You shrugged off the C1!" Deidara shouted in excitement, "Finally! I love fighting against jinchuuriki! I can start showing you the real limits of my art, un!" After all, she was durable enough to take it, "Let's see what you've got!"

A determined look came to Fuu's face as she formed a tiger seal to build her chakra lethally, "Suiton: Mizu Kamikiri (Water Release: Rising Water Slicer)!" Shooting her hands out in two knife-handed thrusts she shot off two separate lightning-quick jets of water to try and cut Deidara out of the skies.

He was able to direct his clay bird out of the way, allowing the water jutsu to fly past him. Down on the ground, he saw them effortlessly raze down a row of trees where they made contact. That would have effortlessly ripped his bird and him apart if it had touched him. It was a straightforward jutsu, but with enough power behind it to clear a forest.

"What an interesting girl." Deidara remarked to himself, the mouths in the palms of his hands chewing up more clay for devious usage, "This is going to be a worthwhile display of my art."

"Fine." Fuu said, finding Deidara's bird to be extremely fast for a hunk of clay. Shutting her glowing, solid green eyes momentarily to focus, she sprouted two more wings, giving her a grand total of four to boost her speed two-fold, 'Okay, it looks like it's time to put this control to the test, so let's make this happen Chomei.'

XxX

(With Naruto)

Swift healing from dangerous injuries was a nice trait to have, and it had honestly saved Naruto multiple times. As a matter of fact, it was a highly contributing factor to why Naruto was so tough and lived long enough to get as strong as he did. It was easier to fight through the pain of devastating wounds when you knew you were going to bounce back from almost anything within a handful of days.

Hell, aside from that, Naruto had probably the strongest voice in the Elemental Nations as well. A strong enough yell from him when drawing upon the Kyuubi's power could destroy things with varying degrees of severity. Along with that, when Naruto put his wind mastery to use along with the powerful chakra that came with his biju he could honestly see where the stories of flattening mountains and causing tsunamis with swings of its tail came from. He wasn't even using half of the chakra that the Kyuubi had at its disposal and he could still wreck some extensive amounts of space.

Still though, whenever Naruto compared his abilities to those of other jinchuuriki…

Gaara had complete control over sand and an automatic defense that could stop almost anything, and it was still getting stronger. He could also fully transform and use Shukaku's miniature and giant-sized forms. Fuu's biju granted her a minimum level iron-hard carapace, super-strength that didn't seem to have a limit to it, and the ability to fly.

Naruto didn't even want to start with Killer B.

Contrast those with super 'getting-your-ass-kicked' powers, and sometimes it made Naruto feel like he'd gotten the short end of the stick. He wondered if all jinchuuriki did that, matched up their powers to those of others.

It was an especially prominent mindset when Naruto was currently tapping into the Kyuubi's chakra just to keep pace on the uneven, rocky ground with Fuu and whoever she was fighting in the air. Damn, he wished he had wings.

"**I'll remember that the next time someone fillets you like a river bass."** The Kyuubi said inside of Naruto's head, **"I'm assuming that as usual you're lacking a plan."**

"Well gee, how the fuck do you expect me to reach her?"

CAW!

From behind, Naruto was swept up onto the back of a low-flying gigantic hawk being directed by Sasuke, "Need a ride dobe?" He asked smugly as they swung upward into the sky to try and give chase.

"…Toads are still cooler than hawks."

"Whatever you've got to tell yourself."

Had… to refrain… from punching the smug. It was not the time for it, "Where are Lee and Tenten?" Naruto asked, staying on topic despite the fact that he was pondering the merits of strangling Sasuke with his Chakra Chains from behind. Just a little bit.

That was a good question coming from such an idiot, and one that Sasuke couldn't aptly answer. He hadn't seen them while flying on his hawk to react to Fuu's flare, and he'd been scanning the ground looking for teammates so they could all link back up together, "You think they're alright?"

"They were supposed to stick together, so I'm not worried about them." They had better teamwork than any other combination of the current squad, so if anything befell them they would either be just fine, or make a big enough ruckus that they would have been easy to find. That being said, his previous statement was a lie, "Can you help Fuu? That guy's Akatsuki."

"Sure." Sasuke said, able to somewhat analyze the aerial battle as they started getting closer. He could definitely make out the black cloak with red clouds, same as Naruto obviously had, "I'm warmed up enough for a real fight."

And he was motivated as well. Akatsuki, the same group that his brother Itachi was a member of. He was going to take that son of a bitch down and plug him for all the information he had on the wayward Uchiha.

Oh, and he'd help Fuu too. That was supposed to be important.

"They're all supposed to be badass." Naruto warned Sasuke, preparing his Chakra Chains for a sudden departure, "If he fights anything like Itachi did-."

"He won't fight anything like Itachi does. He's too flashy. I can see that from here." Sasuke said, cutting the blond off with a narrowing of his eyes, "Just get off before I kick you off."

"Ooh, did I insult you? I didn't know you were that sensi-TIIIIIVE!" A barrel roll from Sasuke's hawk sent Naruto flying off of the back of the summoned creature. Luckily he had prepared his chain for his safe descent by that time, "Ha! Next time you try to kill me, bring your A-game jackass!" Naruto taunted on his way down to the ground.

"…Moron." Sasuke said before turning off to head in the direction of Fuu's ongoing conflict with Deidara.

Now, the smartest thing to do would have been to fight just enough to free Fuu up and then _leave._

Leave.

Leave, because there was no practical reason to fight this battle or even stay in the general area. But in the panic he had failed to inform anyone else that he had their physical proof that Oto was responsible for the regional upheaval, that they could have gone back to Taki, and then could have gone home.

If he hadn't been blinded by the sight of the telltale cloak he could have told Naruto where they stood mission-wise before they'd split back up, taken Fuu and then run, with Naruto more than likely able to find Lee and Tenten in a timely manner. They all could have regrouped and left together, or at least caused Deidara to rethink the prospect of fighting two jinchuuriki, two Konoha chunin, and an Uchiha that could outfight a run-of-the-mill jounin without extreme difficulty.

Hence a reason that Sasuke had not been promoted to jounin yet despite getting the nod for chunin on his first opportunity years ago. He was a highly talented shinobi, with the potential to become one of the best to ever hail from the leafy green village of his birth. He was intelligent, and had a mind for combat. He knew what he was doing as a ninja.

…But when Sasuke was coaxed in a direction due to anything having to do with his own personal grievances, none more personal than the one that Deidara was indirectly connected to by virtue of his Akatsuki attire, he tended to get tunnel-vision (ironic due to his kekkei genkai) and make bad decisions.

Staying in the Pass of Tranquil Respite any longer than they had to for any reason whatsoever would later serve to go down as the absolute worst feasible thing that could have happened. To most of the people present in the minds of those that were there for the following events and survived it.

XxX

Kabuto had been true. He'd led Sasori right where he needed to go. Straight through the front door, no warning for Oto, and no surprises for him. He was quite destructive at the entrance. A good number of those fires probably hadn't gone out yet, but that wasn't his problem.

That wasn't to say that there was no opposition. There just wasn't any significant opposition as far as one of the most powerful shinobi ever produced by Sunagakure was concerned.

Sasori led the way in, and thoroughly painted the walls of the base red with the blood of every fool Otogakure ninja that felt the need to try and impede his path. They battled desperately to keep him from reaching their master, his former partner. Unfortunately, nary a scratch was laid upon him.

Stepping over the fallen bodies of dozens of dead men and women, Sasori continued to be led all the way to Orochimaru's room by Kabuto, who merely stood aside to keep from getting in Sasori's way during the slaughter.

"Orochimaru has garnered himself some loyal pawns since his departure from Akatsuki." Sasori commented, a steel scorpion tail coated with blood hanging in the air from beneath the back of his Akatsuki robe, "No sense of self-preservation amongst the lot of them."

Kabuto didn't answer, instead leading Sasori to a single door along the corridor, "Here."

"Stay out of the way Kabuto." Sasori ordered, causing Kabuto to move far away from the door. And it was a good thing that he did, because the moment he was a distance that could be considered clear, a blade skewered its way through the door from the inside and straight through the face of Sasori, pinning him into the far wall of the hallway.

"Kukukukuku… I do love having company. And an old partner to boot." Orochimaru's voice echoed from within as the sounds of his footsteps echoed out in the dark, candlelit room, "Sasori; still wearing that ugly puppet armor as your skin are you?" With a twist of the handle he effortlessly popped the head of Sasori's durable puppet armor off, dropping it to the floor in a lifeless manner, "I did always hate that form."

Remaining still on the ground for only a moment, the back of the puppet opened up and from within came a young-looking man with messy red hair and calm brown eyes, wearing an Akatsuki robe; Sasori.

Despite getting his primary puppet's head obliterated, he didn't seem to be extremely out of sorts, "You always did have a trick up your sleeve Orochimaru. But it ends here."

"Oh I don't think so." Walking into clearer light, Orochimaru's face was covered in bandages that he pulled off to reveal his usual pale skin and yellow eyes, "Unlike you and your disgusting human puppet technique, I've finally made the true stride to my immortality. A body powerful enough to house my soul forever, and enough chakra to allow me my goal of obtaining the Sharingan without requiring a living Uchiha. I am just a fingertip away from becoming the perfect being."

"You're weaker now than you ever have been before." Sasori pointed out, "Even in a jinchuuriki body, you're not used to it. All of the chakra. You don't know how to control it."

"Hmm." A dark smile came to Orochimaru's lips, "If only, if only." He said sardonically, "If only the body I'd taken over had been particularly selected to be a jinchuuriki due to the way its latent chakra resonates with the Sanbi. Now that would be a fortunate turn of events wouldn't you say?"

"You're bluffing." Sasori produced a scroll that he planned to use in order to summon something.

"Am I?" Orochimaru's tongue extended from his mouth in an eerie fashion as his normally yellow eyes gave off an ocean blue glow, "Look into my eyes Sasori. The truth is, I have full control_._" It wasn't the usual air of smugness one could perceive from Orochimaru's words, the kind that he was willing to back up if pressed to do so. This was different. He wanted to back it up, "You weren't sent here to take the Sanbi from me. The only thing you were sent here to do… was to _die_."

Sasori's face actually showed a significant semblance of annoyance at Orochimaru's, "You always did like to waste time talking."

"You can still help me though." Orochimaru assured the puppet master, "I find myself in need of a proper test. A test of just how far my limits are now." And he only had one question as his peculiar grin spread across his face and his body became swamped in visible blue chakra, sickly wafting off of him, "Will you help me… my old friend?"

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Hour 2 – Shikamaru Side)

'Okay, so I've already checked Ichiraku, the view spots for the Hokage Monument, the top of the monument, our training field, doubled back to his apartment, and he hasn't been to any of those places yet.' Shikamaru thought to himself while still in Naruto's body, now fully clothed once more, 'So he's definitely going to try and screw me over if he hasn't already.'

Did he really deserve to have to fight this struggle?

Well he did bestow the feminine trifecta from hell upon Naruto at the same time with the cheerfully homicidal Kotoko, the obsessive Naho, and determined Shizuka back at the capital. That might have been a toe over the line. And then there was the time he convinced Jiraiya that it would be a great idea to take noble women back to Naruto's room for some adult activities since he didn't have his own room when he was there. Oh, and the time he laced Naruto's hand-rolled cigarettes with Ino's psychotropic serum and recorded the aftermath for posterity.

…Oh yeah, he needed the full-court press on this one.

Nothing he could do in Naruto's body would make him waste enough chakra to end the jutsu sooner, but there was one jutsu that they had shared knowledge of. One that Naruto couldn't abuse in his usual manner due to the lack of chakra reserves Shikamaru had.

"Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)." Five clones popped into view, and Shikamaru didn't feel the slightest bit of pull on his chakra. If he'd have done that many in his own body he'd have been sucking wind and would have felt lightheaded by that point, "Find Naruto. Search everywhere, flush him out, I don't care what you have to do to do it. Dispel when you see him. I'll do the rest."

Until then he would continue fighting fire with fire and keep up the war of attrition with Naruto. He just needed to think of something effective to follow up with. And think he did, scenario after scenario. He just wasn't expecting to hear anything back.

"**What the hell is with all of this noise? I can't sleep with all of this thinking! SHUT UP!"** Shikamaru froze in place at the deep growling voice in his head until it stopped and one of almost astonishment took its place, **"Oh this is just great. The wrong monkey is driving the ship. Fucking fantastic."**

Oh shit.

"**I should have known it wasn't Naruto from all of the activity in here. He doesn't even think this hard during a fight. Eh, this could be entertaining. What's your story?" ** Shikamaru didn't know how to respond to the nine-tailed biju, especially out loud, **"…Use your thoughts, not words. I can hear everything you think genius. Now why are your minds switched?"**

'To fuck with Naruto?'

"**Oh. Excellent. Go ahead. Just so long as you don't do anything I have to heal." **It was as if Shikamaru could see the image of a mighty fox lying down inside of his head, **"I thought this was actually going to be dangerous for a moment until I realized it was **_**you**_**."**

'You know me?'

"**Naruto sees you almost every damn day. Of course I know you whelp. Anyway, if you want ideas I'd love to see the little bastard suffer."**

'…I'm listening.'

"**Step one, tap into my chakra. Treat it like reaching out for my hand inside of your head, and just tug. It's easy."**

'…I'm not going to do that.'

**"Right.** **Even though you're lazier than hell you're the smart one that won't take my power without any consciousness along with it to control it." **Shikamaru would definitely be the one to look that gift horse in the mouth unlike most jinchuuriki,** "Nevermind then, not breaking out today. And stop all of that goddamn thinking! It echoes in here!"**

"I need my body back." Shikamaru said to himself as he walked along more hurried in his steps than before his conversation with the Kyuubi, "I need it back right now."

(Hour 2 – Naruto Side)

"I'm a jerk." Naruto said to himself as he stuck an extremely large roll of duct tape into an inside pocket of Shikamaru's jacket. He could see why Shikamaru walked around in it all the time. It was durable and really useful with all of those pockets, "But he fired the first personal shot. Let's see how he likes coming home at the end of the day."

Naruto had done enough on Shikamaru's home turf for now. Messed with his room, booby-trapped his personal items. Basic opening salvo stuff. He had one last whammy for later revolving around Shikamaru's home life, but that would be kept in the holster until the very end. An absolute last resort.

Shikamaru knew exactly what this day was going to consist of when they'd switched bodies and Naruto had taken off. He wasn't a fool, which was why he took the time to make a preemptive strike. Word travelled fast in a hidden village, and within minutes Naruto had already heard that Shikamaru had stripped naked in his body and walked through town with his business swinging for the world to see.

Son of a bitch, it was so crude and simple that Naruto never figured Shikamaru would do it. It just didn't seem to be his style. He probably planned something more complicated and it backfired, so he went with the easy ploy to get something on the board in a hurry. It was not effective however.

Big deal. So the village saw him naked and now knew how on-point his body was? It wasn't even that embarrassing, especially if he wasn't even there at the time. Shikamaru was missing the point. That wouldn't linger. Not in a way that would actually resonate. People wouldn't care about that by tomorrow, especially if he just owned up to it.

That was Shikamaru's problem. He was wonderful at planning elaborate ploys, but when it came to what the end results of what those ploys were supposed to be he was an amateur.

No, Naruto was trying to think deeper. The things that he did today were going to affect Shikamaru for at least the next week in one way or another. Shikamaru's strike was preemptive and he drew first blood, but everything Naruto did on this day would be precise, and would run deeper than just embarrassing him for a few days.

He tried to keep a grin off of his face, because Shikamaru didn't grin, but it was just so hard to do.

"Hey Shikamaru." A random Nara Clan ninja greeted as Naruto (still in Shikamaru's body) made his way through the clan-owned grounds, "…Did you just come from tending to the deer?" He sounded suspicious of him.

And then Naruto realized that being in Shikamaru's body and doing so much as walking around the village in too many different places could be a problem. Shikamaru didn't do things. Ever.

What would Shikamaru say? Think, "Yeah…" Naruto drawled with a sigh, "Mom said I do too much of nothing on my days off. I mean that's what they're for right? Tch."

That seemed to do the job, as Naruto was allowed on past. He fought the urge to click his heels together in midair at dodging that bullet. He was feeling so good, he figured he was untouchable from that point on.

Before he could ponder what other plans of action he could enact without violating the bodily harm rule of engagement, he then came face to face with a gamebreaker as he reached the Nara Clan meeting house on his way out of the clan grounds.

The scar-laded, goateed Nara Shikaku, Shikamaru's father. And he wasn't fooled for a second, "Really?" Shikaku said in a dry tone of voice, "This is what my son lets happen to him on his days off?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about dad. Are you feeling alright?"

"Shikamaru would have just said whatever and left, so you're definitely not him even if you're in his body." Shikaku said, "I know what this is. Inoichi did the exact same thing to me and Choza back when we were younger to test that Shinkoukanshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Exchange Jutsu). Choza wasn't ambitious or malicious enough to take off in a joyride in my body though."

And Naruto thoroughly broke. Damn that deadpan stare. It was like looking into the blackest pit in existence.

"It's for a good reason." Naruto said hurriedly, face thoroughly reflecting that he knew that his divine mission of vendetta could end right there, "Shikamaru has this coming, he's an evil mastermind, and this is the only way I've got a shot at ever getting him back for all of the shit he did at the capital. I'm not gonna do anything that'll actually hurt him, I swear to Kami."

Fuck.

But Shikaku didn't say a word to expose him to the rest of the clan, instead taking the time to contemplate his actions before gesturing his head to the back of the room to a board on the wall of the Nara Clan meeting house that depicted jobs that were supposed to be done by different clan members.

And there were quite a few vacancies for the next week.

On another wall, Naruto found a display case full of stamps with the kanji of Nara Clansmen names on the bottoms. This was almost too good. But Shikaku couldn't be… could he?

The elder Nara just smirked and walked past Naruto, "Ah, my arm is tired from _assigning jobs for the week to the rest of the clan_. This job is such a drag. You mind taking over for me _son_?" And like that, Nara Shikaku was officially Naruto's hero for the rest of the day.

"Meh, if I have to." Naruto said in Shikamaru's dull tone, but he couldn't keep the Cheshire grin off of his face as he searched for the stamp that had Shikamaru's name on it. The dirtiest, heaviest, most time consuming jobs on that board were calling for blood.

As Shikaku left Naruto to give his son undoubtedly the most difficult jobs in the most quantity of any other member of the clan, he could only chuckle victoriously to himself.

If Shikamaru wanted to think that he could use the fact that Shikaku was whipped by his wife to his advantage, and then make fun of him about it like the teenager that he was, Shikaku had no problems with letting Naruto exact his own measure of vengeance and living vicariously through him.

Especially since half of the jobs he'd wind up giving Shikamaru were ones that Shikaku would have had to do himself.

"WHO TAPED ALL OF THE DEER FOREHEAD-TO-FOREHEAD BY THE ANTLERS!?"

"SHIKAMARU!"

Before the echo of the Nara Clan member from before even stopped reverberating through the forested area, Naruto ran out of the meeting house with only Shikaku seeing him and ran for the exit of the clan grounds as quickly as Shikamaru's feet would carry him, "Shit-shit-shit!"

Shikaku couldn't do anything other than stare until he vanished from sight, "…I can't help but think about the frightful headway that kid would make for the village if he put that sort of energy into actual sabotage." He then noticed one of the other younger Nara clansmen reading something with interest as he walked past, "What's that?"

"They were giving copies of this away for free all over the place." The Nara teenager said, "You want to see? I know people that would pay money for this."

Shikaku took the small paperback book and read the open page that was available only to find himself staring in disbelief at the sheer audacity, "Naruto's going to have to hit a little bit harder next round."

That was just not fair son.

(Hour 2 – Ino's Side)

After hearing about the chain of events that had been set into action by Ino wanting to improve upon her jutsu she'd recruited not only the help of the only adult she could find that could actually get both Shikamaru and Naruto to listen to her in Shizune, but also someone that could help her find them both in Kiba.

Kiba's reason for joining in was purely out of self-preservation. If he was as close to Ino as possible, he and Akamaru wouldn't be targets when the two of them really started to cut loose on ruining village life for each other by antagonizing the general populace. Whatever kept him out of the crosshairs when this got out of hand was right where he wanted to be.

So Ino had the voice of reason, she had the tracking specialist, and now she needed to know if there were any tricks she could use that would actually stop them without having to hunt them both down. The only place to go for that was the man that had taught her the jutsu in the first place; her father Inoichi.

"You're telling me that there's no trick to actually stop them?" Ino asked, following her father through the halls of Konoha T&I Headquarters as her enlisted comrades followed behind, "What are we supposed to do daddy? Track them down and catch both of them to keep them in the same spot?"

Inoichi spared Ino a side glance as he was on the way to another meeting and Ino had caught him just leaving his office, "Honey there's no trick to this that I didn't already tell you. If Naruto split and Shikamaru did as well, that's your only option other than waiting out the jutsu's limit."

"That's not an option."

"What do you really think they'll do with five hours left?" And to be clear, yes he'd already heard about the giant shadow terror attack and the Naruto walking around naked thing. Now it was starting to make sense.

"I'll answer that question with an observation daddy." Ino said perkily, "Goldie-kun is more motivated than he usually is to get Shika back for whatever he did to him while they were Guardians, and Shika is a genius with all of Goldie's chakra… and he can make clones too so him actually having to do work isn't a problem today. Now you tell me how dangerous the both of them are."

When she put it that way… it sounded pretty bad. But they were just two chunin.

A worker in T&I ran up to Inoichi at that moment in a panic, "Sir! Every Academy textbook was replaced with copies of this!" He handed Inoichi a modest-sized paperback that was entitled 'Modern History of Hi no Kuni', much to everyone's confusion, "…And I think they're on display for free in retail stores."

Inoichi raised an eyebrow and opened the small book to a random page, going wide-eyed as he went back to the first page. Apparently there was a table of contents, "Um, did Naruto ever say that he was going to produce memoirs of his time working as a Guardian Ninja?"

Alarms went off in Ino and Shizune's head from that moment, "…No. Naruto doesn't write anything unless it's a seal. Ever. Why?"

"Well it's not so much that this was written than compiled." Inoichi said, bracing himself for the quite understandable wrath that was to ensue from his daughter. Normally he'd stop her, but he wasn't sure if he'd be able to this time, "It's basically random embarrassing pictures of Naruto, and the back and forth letters you wrote each other over the last three years."

He barely finished his sentence before Kiba snatched the book out of his hand and started reading for himself, much to Ino's chagrin and to a lesser extent Shizune's, "Oh man. Oh man. Oh man. Shikamaru is a horrible person." He said, descending into almost evil snickering, "I need to show this to Hana. She'll never let Naruto live this down when she sees him again if she gets her hands on this." A bark then came from Akamaru, "Oh, _and_ Hinata! Oh, that's going to be great. Man, you're so screwed Ino."

Needless to say he was enjoying this thus far, and he knew that he'd made the correct choice in getting involved. He'd been looking for something useful to get into today anyway.

"Oh wait, listen to this." Kiba said, curbing his laughter for a moment in order to read, "This is epic, from last year, September 23rd. _'Hey Goldie. It sucks that you and Shika weren't here for my 15__th__ birthday, but you were really on the ball making sure your gifts got to me early. I really appreciate just what kind of exotic stuff you can get anytime around the capital, but if I had my choice of present it would have been you here, all wrapped up just for me in a-.'_"

"-And that's enough of that." Inoichi said, snatching the book back out of Kiba's hands, "I knew I should have screened those damn things coming in and out of my house."

"All of Naruto's are totally innocent." Shizune assured the father, "Only a few of Ino's are even slightly suggestive and since they weren't blunt they went straight over his head, bless his heart." Ino turned to her dangerously with the obvious question hanging, "…I might have read some of them when I took them back and forth to make sure either of you weren't writing something you shouldn't." Ino just groaned in exasperation, "How did he even get any of them?"

If staring at an object could cause it to burst in flames for her clan, Ino would have set that book ablaze in the middle of Kiba's readings, "When I find you and switch you back you're a dead S.O.B. Shikamaru." Ino said, grumbling to herself as she stormed her way out of the facility with Shizune and a still laughing Kiba following, "Not cool."

Actually, instead of switching him back she'd rather switch him with a rat, or preferably with something small, slow, and defenseless that she could easily step on the spine of.

"And things are going to get worse?" Shizune said quietly as they started to follow Ino over the rooftops.

"I'd say they're going to get better." Kiba said with a grin as he moved forward to take the lead and search before Ino could yell at him to do so, "This is going to be the best day ever." Akamaru agreed with a loud bark.

* * *

Ongoing Stats (Out of 5)

Takigakure Shinobi

Fuu

**Ninjutsu: 3.5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 3.5  
Strength: 5  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 3**

**Total Score: 29.5**

Akatsuki

Deidara

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 3.5  
Intelligence: 4.5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 3.5**

**Total Score: 32**

Sasori

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 4  
Genjutsu: 4  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 34.5**

Otogakure Shinobi

Kidomaru

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 2.5  
Genjutsu: 1.5  
Intelligence: 4  
Strength: 2  
Speed: 3  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4**

**Total Score: 25**

Sakon

**Ninjutsu: 4  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 2  
Intelligence: 2.5  
Strength: 4  
Speed: 3.5  
Stamina: 4  
Hand-Seals: 4 **

**Total Score: 27.5**

Orochimaru

**Ninjutsu: 5  
Taijutsu: 3.5  
Genjutsu: 5  
Intelligence: 5  
Strength: 3.5  
Speed: 4.5  
Stamina: 5  
Hand-Seals: 5**

**Total Score: 36.5**

* * *

**Oh no. Orochimaru's super-charged and ready to send a message. And what's up with the conspicuous by their absence Lee and Tenten? Oh well, that's what I'm doing this for; so I can answer the question my damn self.**

**Alright, that's all I've got for you this time. Hope you enjoyed. Laughed a little, cried a little, maybe died inside a little. As long as you felt something.**

**Kenchi out.**


	60. Rise of the Leviathan

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If only I had the spark of genius to come up with a novel idea that millions around the world would love and shell out money for. Damn it, how hard could this really be? I've got to have something up in my head worth some money.

**Chapter 60: Rise of the Leviathan**

* * *

Ino's short, manicured fingernails drummed dully off of the surface of Naruto's kitchen table as she seemed to wait, killing time for something. In all actuality, she was waiting for nothing. Her mind was ill at ease as she remained in Konoha while her… boyfriend(?) was out on a mission to Takigakure.

Was he her boyfriend?

Sure they'd had that moment at the mask temple and everything, and the date before that, but it was hard to tell where she stood with him. She had the key to his home that he'd never asked for back, she never saw him around the village with other girls in a one-on-one setting like the one they'd had, nor had she heard of anything like that either in the village or at the capital.

Meh, all of this deep thinking regarding a relationship with a boy was too much. Why couldn't Naruto have been one of those sorts that just thought she was hot above anything else and tried to impress her or something? That would have made everything so much easier.

"Ugh, I might as well just take a nap in Goldie's room and head on home before dinner." She said to herself, blowing her bang out from in front of her eye.

A knock came to the door, much to Ino's confusion. Either way, she got up from her seat and headed to the door to find out who the guest was. Didn't they know that Naruto wasn't there? It seemed like the kind of thing that Naruto would have told his landlord before heading out and the kind of thing that most people who would have come to see him would have been informed about as well.

Upon opening up for company, Ino raised an eyebrow at the sight of Hinata standing there, "Uh, Naruto still isn't here. He's on a mission to Taki. I could have sworn you knew that already though."

"I know." Hinata said in return, "He asked Neji-niisan if he could go but I told him he was busy. He asked me as well, but I had to decline also." She seemed extremely put out by admitting such.

Really? Hinata turned down a mission with Naruto on it? That didn't sound like something she'd allow to happen if she could help it. Ino herself wasn't allowed to go because the higher-ups were afraid that Team 10 would be too dependent on working with one another to succeed in their missions. Why that was such a bad thing, she didn't understand so long as they won, but orders were orders.

Having stood outside for long enough, Hinata gave a slight bow out of respect before making her request, "May I come in?"

It wasn't really Ino's home to invite anyone into, but in that same vein she probably shouldn't have been there to begin with either. Moving aside to let the elegant young woman inside, Ino closed the door behind her and leaned against it, "So you already know Goldie's not here. Why did you come then?"

"I could see you inside, so I decided to stop by."

"You looked inside of his apartment? Do you do that kind of thing a lot?"

"N-No." In hindsight, Hinata could see how admitting that she'd used Byakugan to look inside of Naruto's apartment could be seen as a bad thing, and it was extremely embarrassing to be put on the spot by Ino's Cheshire grin, "I was just watching over a friend's home while they were away. Why were you here?"

Ino's grin became more of a nervous expression as she had the spotlight shined on her instead, "Ehe… well, I used to come here every few days to take care of the place back when he'd been gone, and I still like coming here when I don't have anything to do or anywhere to be. That's weird right?"

Hinata held up her fingers as if to say a little bit and sighed, "I thought when Naruto-kun came back I'd have the heart to do something about how I feel. But I guess with everything else that I've grown in from having to face it, when it comes to him it's like I'm still twelve years-old and in the Academy again."

"That's not true. Even if you still don't make many moves on him, the old you wouldn't have even done anything to put yourself in a position to be around him." Ino deadpanned, "You definitely don't have that problem now." She was pretty good at getting in the way whenever Ino was around for sure, "Not like me. I don't have a problem showing him how I feel, it's just that with everything that keeps happening I don't have a lot of chances to try and make something happen."

They spent a large amount of time together, but it was always training or doing missions, or her day job. The interrogation force was supposed to be in control of background checks for all of Konoha's visitors and potential residents, even if they were civilians. It was an arduous and boring job, and it was honestly the part she liked least about Konoha T&I, other than the drab grey uniforms.

In between all of the conventional ninja work and how busy she was working her extra job as an interrogation specialist, it seemed like Ino could never get a moment together with Naruto that didn't revolve around work or someone trying to kill one or both of them.

"He loves you. You know that don't you?"

Ino's blue eyes snapped wide open for a split-second before suddenly turning to Hinata who was looking out of the window after saying her alarming statement, "What now?"

"Naruto-kun." Hinata emphasized, "You don't even have to try with him, that's the thing about it. Between you two it's effortless. Hanabi so badly wants me to find a way to be with him, so that she can really call him her big brother, but I'm not sure I have it in me."

No, this couldn't be. She was giving up? Now? That just seemed wrong, "I'm not with him yet. We had one real date, it doesn't mean _that_ much. And oh Kami, why am I telling you things that would keep your from actually giving up on my man?"

Because he was indeed HER man… even if he didn't know it yet.

"I'm not giving up until I hear it from him that you and he are together." Hinata clarified with a wave of her hand, "I'm saying that you have too much of an advantage to ever lose, so when I win you don't have any excuses to throw at me."

"I wouldn't throw any excuses at you to begin with." Ino insisted, looking away and crossing her arms over her chest, "Momma's been barking up this tree for three years, and if you think I'm gonna let off because you came here to talk to me face-to-face you're mistaken." She said, referring to herself in the third person before opening one eye to look over at Hinata, "…We're still friends aren't we? The last thing I wanted was to start another thing like the one I did with Sakura coming out of the Academy."

"I think the fact that we can actually carry on a civil conversation like this without insulting each other or fighting means we are."

"Good. Now, since you can see through things, I want you to tell me what Goldie's packing below the belt these days."

"W-What? What in the world makes you think I'd know that!?"

"Really? You're going to tell me you've never looked? Hanabi's looked. I _know_ you have."

XxX

(Near the Border of Tsuchi no Kuni and Takigakure-held Lands – In the Skies)

"She's a fun one, un." Deidara said to himself as he found himself in a dogfight with the chakra-winged Fuu in the air, "…Never fought a jinchuuriki that could fly before."

And she was tough enough to deal with his lower-leveled explosives without flinching, meaning that he would have to bust out the higher-grade ordinance to put this bad little girl down. She could more than likely deal with it, so he didn't have to worry about killing her by accident. If he did that, the leader would have his balls in a salad shooter.

"I'm so gonna pull your spine out!"

Of course, he had to think about number one first; himself. If that girl got her hands on him he didn't doubt in the slightest that she would indeed try to make good on her threat and reach into his back to pull out his backbone. She was probably strong enough to do it as well from what he'd heard.

She was getting faster and faster, having sprouted four wings instead of the two she'd originally used to fly. Her speed was great, as she constantly managed to make passes at him to try and take his head off with a punch or a kick. This really was a dangerous girl.

"Keshi Gomufera (Eraser Blow)!" One of these deadly punches actually cut straight through Deidara's large clay bird, destroying it and dropping him straight downward. As he fell a smirk came over his face and he made the hand-seal he used to detonate his explosives. Feeling something crawl on her bare midriff, Fuu noticed the clay insects that had stuck to her person after she'd gone through the bird like a hot knife through butter, "Damn it!"

"Katsu!"

Deidara fell as he watched the blasts engulf Fuu up above him in a chain explosion, "That didn't do it, un. If I want to take her down I need to get her off-guard. Otherwise she'll just armor up and endure it." The smoke cleared only for there to be no Nanabi jinchuuriki in sight, "Oh, that can't be good."

Fuu's tanned arms wrapped around the front of Deidara's body, holding him tightly in place while he got a face full of Fuu's madly grinning visage. She took a quick dip up into the air before sending them both on a nosedive down to the ground, adding a spin to it all. As she dove down she squeezed Deidara hard enough to crack and break bones only to find him surprisingly… squishy.

She'd grabbed enough people and given them squeezes to know that they shouldn't have felt like that. Her breath hitched in her throat when Deidara lost all of his color and turned out to be a replacement with a Clay Clone. Her arms sank into its body to better trap her against it.

But when did he ever substitute himself with a clay fake?

"Katsu!"

This time when she was caught in the explosion, Fuu had been in the middle of a fairly elaborate action that she couldn't save herself from, even if she'd been prepared to endure the damage from the detonation, she had been on a crash course with the ground that she hadn't had time to right herself from.

Up above on another creature of flight, Deidara watched Fuu crash and take out several rows of trees down below. It was a pretty nasty collision with the ground, and almost anyone else in the same situation would have most assuredly been dead.

But… since this was a girl that had been entirely willing to take several explosives to the face just to get herself close enough to punch him, and since he could see with the scope on his left eye that she was still conscious and trying to get up again, there was no such thing as overkill in this case.

The mouths in his palms chewed up more clay for a bombardment from the air before Fuu could take flight again, "I've never fought anyone that I could actually show this much of my art to closely before. I really appreciate it!" Talking to himself, he almost missed the dangerously quickly approaching noise of chirping before he heard the tail end of it at the end of his sentence.

"Chidori (One Thousand Birds)!"

A high-speed blur flew through the air with a blue tip at the front of it and almost cut Deidara in half had he not been grossly experienced at aerial combat. He managed to maneuver his clay bird out of the way, but wondered really what the hell that had been. Watching a summoned hawk turn around in the air, Deidara caught sight of Sasuke standing on its back as it flew, "Oh really now? Well I didn't expect her to really be here alone so I guess this fits."

Sasuke had found it complicated to keep up with Deidara and Fuu's midair dance, mostly because of Deidara's actions as Fuu had simply taken the direct path of charging through every explosion he'd set for her.

When Deidara finally stopped in a position that allowed him to use his hawk's speed in a straightforward charge to maximize the surprise factor, he took his shot. Unfortunately his hawks weren't much for maneuverability when it was going as fast as it could, so when he missed he missed hard.

The blond bomber smirked at the sight of his second opponent as they had seemingly stalemated, "Well, well, well. You certainly went for the jugular didn't you?"

"No, I probably wouldn't have killed you with it." Sasuke said, glaring Deidara down with his Sharingan, "I've got a question for you, so having you die wouldn't have been what I really wanted. I just want to know one thing. Where's Itachi?"

The pleasant look on Deidara's face immediately shifted to one of complete distaste. Disgust even, "How should I know and why should I care where that bastard is? Somewhere dead at the bottom of a ditch with a sleeve of shuriken up his ass hopefully, un."

Well that was expressive.

"Why the hell would you even want to know where-?" Deidara asked Sasuke before taking a good hard look at him and ceasing in his question, because it had answered itself, 'Come to think of it, he does look a bit like him… and those damned eyes… it has to be.' It hit him like a bolt of lightning and he wondered why it had taken him so long to get the picture, "…Oh, you're his brother. The only one he didn't kill."

Sasuke's eye twitched out of suppressed rage. He had to refrain from killing this guy. At least until he got something useful out of him, "Just tell me where Itachi is already."

"Yeah, you definitely are." Deidara continued, ignoring Sasuke's question, "The littlest Uchiha that wasn't worth the effort. What are you looking for Itachi for? Do you miss him that bad, or do you just want him to finish the job for you?"

...

With that, Sasuke figured that he could hurt him pretty badly without necessarily killing him. It couldn't have been that difficult to manage, to leave something of Deidara to interrogate.

He was definitely going to try.

From his hands, Deidara spat the explosive barrage that he'd prepared to blast Fuu with at Sasuke instead, "Both of us have something in common with hating Itachi, but more than anything else I hate your eyes!"

The Chidori in Sasuke's hand was used for a different purpose after the chakra's intent was converted, "Chidori Senbon (One Thousand Birds Senbon)!" Letting a spray of electric needles forth, Sasuke hit all of Deidara's explosives mid-flight, allowing him to fly past them without being harmed.

'Damn! He can disarm them!' Deidara thought to himself, diving directly down with his clay bird before Sasuke could reach him, 'A fight like this won't work. I need to play this better.'

It pissed him off that his art was being marginalized into having to be hidden to be effective, but sometimes the best art simply didn't get recognized for its superiority.

Sasuke gave chase down into the trees, turning things into a dangerous dodging game with the trees. It would be an easy matter to find himself trapped by one or more of Deidara's explosives, and he wasn't let down in that regard.

Instead of merely chasing after Deidara's clay bird in front of him, Sasuke found himself and his hawk surrounded on his other three sides by birds that had hidden themselves until he'd passed by them, 'I never even saw him make those things or let them loose.'

"Katsu!"

As Sasuke prepared to defuse the explosives with his electricity, they detonated before closing in on him close enough to do any damage, covering his entire line of sight with smoke.

Exiting the blast smoke he came face-to-face with a large clay dragon with its mouth wide open.

The C2 level of Deidara's explosives. They were stronger than the C1 versions that he'd been using. Bigger too.

Gritting his teeth, Sasuke abruptly jumped off of his hawk as it was snatched up in the dragon's mouth. The high speed they'd been flying at caused him to hurtle forward through the air dangerously, only having that increase in treachery when the dragon exploded behind him and pushed him ahead even faster, "Gaaaah!"

Too fast!

The right side of Sasuke's body hit the side of a tree, sending him spinning and flipping in a heap as he fell the rest of the way to the ground, hitting it hard and rolling until he came to a painful stop. That could have had a worse outcome. He could have hit a tree head-on and gone splat off of it. That didn't happen, so he had that going for him at least.

Admittedly he might have been a little overzealous in his pursuit. He had an elemental advantage and could have played things at a distance despite Deidara's long-range specialization, but since he'd proven that he could neutralize the explosives he figured that he could roll straight through the mad bomber and impose his will in battle.

Apparently a prerequisite for being in Akatsuki was being damn good in a high-stakes battle, even when you were at a natural disadvantage.

Consequently, no one would ever know about this if Sasuke could help it.

"Ohhhh…" Sasuke moaned as he pushed himself up off of the ground, "Killed my hawk… almost killed me. Asshole." Hearing the beating of wings he prepared for another fight when Fuu landed next to him from elsewhere in the forest, "Oh, it's you."

"That looked like it hurt." Fuu commented, having seen Sasuke's rather catastrophic crash while pursuing him and Deidara, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Sasuke said tersely, embarrassed that something like that had been seen by someone else. It didn't look like Deidara was coming back either. Damn. He'd missed his chance to squeeze some Itachi intel out of someone that would have known something recent, "I think he left."

Fuu grinned and grabbed her own bicep showingly, "Hah, he just didn't want any more of this particular jinchuuriki. I don't blame him either."

Oh God, she could be just as bad as Naruto was, "It sure didn't look that way before I got here." Sasuke pointed out.

Her ego-salvaging gesture shot down, Fuu got a touch more vindictive in return, "Really? And you didn't just get ragdolled through the woods off of a blind bluff?" She already knew that Sasuke had a high amount of pride on his own, thus that sort of a conclusion to a battle hurt.

"…"

"…"

"…No one needs to know any more than the fact that we fought the guy and he got away."

"Agreed. Shake on it. And if anyone asks, I didn't trap myself bear hugging an exploding clay doll."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Elsewhere in the Pass of Tranquil Respite)

Genjutsu was a serious Achilles' heel for one member in particular on Team Gai, even more so when it was sound-based genjutsu, which ranked amongst the most dangerous method of application for illusions that existed in the world.

Rock Lee had found himself ensnared in a trap illusion in a forested area, and was incapable of escaping due to his lack of ability in the ninja arts outside of taijutsu. This became a major problem for his female teammate who was a bit more adept at escaping genjutsu.

It had been a rather difficult battle for Tenten as she found herself at a stalemate with a pink-haired Oto kunoichi wearing a hat.

She had managed to get the two Konoha ninjas right off the bat in a genjutsu, but Tenten managed to break it in time to defend them from a killing attack from three large ogres. From there it became a fairly nasty little game of cat-and-mouse between the two enemy women.

Tayuya had grossly underestimated Tenten at first when she'd been presented with her rather unremarkable at first glance ninjutsu skills, but soon found herself worked into a conundrum against the bun-haired girl. She wasn't a very defensive sort of fighter, and Tenten had the kind of attack that could hit her from almost anywhere. Not only that, but Tenten was willing to use excessive force to get the job done.

If she kept her ogres from attacking Tenten and used them to defend herself, Tenten had free range to quickly get to her teammate and break the genjutsu on him. If she used her ogres to attack as a team and overwhelm her, which they could, that would leave Tayuya herself open for an attack from Tenten that she couldn't dodge.

It was mutually assured destruction if they committed to attacking each other in earnest.

Even if she sent one after Lee to take that possibility away, Tenten had managed to repel the one after Lee and continue defending herself. Either way, they couldn't defeat the other, and this had dragged on for far longer than either had ever wanted a conflict to go.

Breathing heavily, eyes searching around a forest littered in weapons, Tenten kneeled on the ground, hand posted on a large scroll standing up next to her, "This is… annoying." She remarked before joking, "Any chance we can just call this whole thing a draw? I'll grab Lee, you can go back to… wherever you came from, and we can just live to fight another day here. You aren't getting to me, and I'm not getting to you."

From where she was at a significant distance, Tayuya's eyes panned over to where Tenten had somehow managed to cover Lee's body with a large metal protective shell. She'd even taken away that avenue of getting to her, of using Lee as leverage.

'I'm not using the Cursed Seal on this little bitch.' Tayuya thought to herself. But she wondered how long she'd have to keep this up before she got some kind of support from Sakon, or Kidomaru. Hell, not even them. There were tons of other Otogakure ninjas inside of the base that should have been there by now, "The day I call it a draw against some kunoichi that can't do anything else but wing weapons all over the place, hah, I'd sooner off myself."

Insult aside, Tenten was frazzled enough as it was. She didn't need to take a snide remark like that to heart since it was clear by now that if Tayuya could have beaten her easily she would have done it already.

As she looked around, she noticed something about her nearby surroundings that she'd neglected to think of due to the cat-and-mouse game she'd been playing the entire time. Upon doing so, she went wide-eyed and looked around, seeing a way to take the edge, "…Last chance to call it a day."

"Fuck you."

"Alright then." Standing back up, Tenten steeled her expression and flexed out her fingers, "I warned you. Mugen Ryuukamu (Infinite Dragon's Bite)!"

Stealing a small portion of Neji's Kaiten by revitalizing her body with chakra as she spun, the wires attached to Tenten's fingers that manipulated her weapons started to whip around and cause a torrent of bladed, studded weapons of all sorts. A horrible storm of weaponry with Tenten at the eye.

Despite dispelling her Doki to ensure that they weren't at risk of being killed by the jutsu, Tayuya felt safe and sound. All it really took was adequate cover to avoid the attack, and she had that in spades behind a tree. Even as weapons on wires flew past her place of cover, she was able to evade them as long as she always kept a solid surface between herself and Tenten.

SHIK!

Feeling a sharp pain in, Tayuya doubled over and felt two blades buried in the side of her torso after getting around her cover, "Ugh… w-what?"

No, the stupid things had been attached to wires. She hadn't seen that from the range that she'd been fighting the girl from. With the method of Tenten sending them spinning around, they would whip around something like a tree trunk, still making them dangerous despite keeping herself behind something.

Dropping to her knees, Tayuya pulled the short sword out of her side and breathed heavily as she forced her Cursed Seal to activate in order to fortify her body and do damage control on her wound. The sound of a heavy metal thud caused Tayuya to curse to herself. It meant that Tenten had gotten to Lee and was in the process of breaking her genjutsu on him.

"This is bullshit." Tayuya muttered to herself, "I've got to go this far just for two worthless chunin? What a joke."

"Konoha Daisenpuu (Leaf Great Whirlwind)!"

Tayuya found the entire tree limb that she'd been resting on shattered by the powerful kick of green-clad Rock Lee. Better it than her however, as she darted off of separate tree trunks to safely come to a rest on the ground to face him.

Wow. That bastard was fast. It was a good thing she had taken him out of the running early in the fight or else she might have had more issues with staying unharmed for as long as she had. From his stance he was a taijutsu specialist. He didn't even have a weapon drawn.

'This dumbass again.' Tayuya thought to herself, placing her lips up to her flute with a smirk, 'He's still just as screwed as he was the first time. A quick melody and I'll focus back on the girl.' She played her tune, but Lee didn't flinch. He barely blinked and his eyes never unfocused from her, "How the hell didn't that work?"

Lee just continued to stare a hole through her until he tilted his head in confusion, "…What? I am sorry, I could not hear you!" He shouted unnecessarily loud.

"I said how the hell didn't that work!"

"What?"

"Damn it I hate you idiot Konoha ninjas!"

"I'm sorry, I said I cannot hear you! Tenten jammed plugs into my ears, and I was never the best at reading lips! My apologies again!"

Ooh. Well that made sense. Economical little bitch. She carried ear plugs? Who did that? Either way, Tayuya's primary weapon of sound was out when it came to fighting Lee, and he was right there in front of her, "…Well I'm right fucked then aren't I?"

"What!?" Lee asked before noticing Tayuya try to move. Not on his watch. Moving in front of her at a blinding speed, Lee kicked her into the air right through her guard and moved behind her midair form, restraining her with the bandages on his hands as he swiftly guided her into the side of a tree headfirst, "Omote Renge (Front Lotus)!"

From where she'd followed Lee and stopped upon seeing him open the first of the Eight Gates, Tenten breathed a sigh of relief. It was risky to do what she did to Lee's hearing, but for the sake of keeping him out of another genjutsu that he wouldn't be able to escape on his own she had to take that risk.

The reason why she actually carried earplugs? Try being on a team with Maito Gai and Rock Lee and see how long you can last hearing every word they say with their normal lack of indoor voices. Everyone didn't have the patience of Neji.

Making it over to Tayuya's flute, Tenten stomped down on it hard and broke it into bits. Teamwork, you just had to love it.

Lee landed back onto the ground and watched Tayuya drop the four stories out of the tree trunk that he'd driven the top of her head into. Rubbing his head, he was still confused about just what she'd been saying before she made a sudden move and prompted an attack on her person, "I wonder what it was she was trying to say." He voiced aloud only to find the earplugs popped out of his ears.

"Nothing nice." Tenten assured him, a bit miffed at how much more rundown she looked after that fight than Lee did. Other than getting caught in a genjutsu, nothing even happened to him. He was still basically fresh, "Well I think we're good here don't you?"

Lee didn't answer and Tenten had wondered if she'd damaged his ears with the plugs until she noticed what he was looking at; Tayuya getting back up off of the ground. There was no way. She should have been dead. There was no excuse for her not to be.

Tayuya's body lifted up from the ground bonelessly despite her pained moans, "K-Kabuto, you bastard." She said in agony. Just moving around in the slightest was tormenting to her body, "Put me down…"

Both Lee and Tenten's eyes went wide until they heard a quick dragging movement coming closer. Both moved in time to avoid a large constrictor snake from devouring them whole by landing on separate tree trunks.

The creature smashed its massive body into one of the trees and managed to shake Lee loose. Tenten stopped him from falling into the snake's open maw with a timely kunai pinning his still loose hand wraps to the tree and without missing a beat Lee kicked the giant serpent in the side of the head as soon as he was temporarily saved.

It let out a horrible hiss as it recoiled sharply, its head almost bouncing off of the ground. Lee pulled himself upright and ripped his bandages free from the kunai before diving down at the snake and landing directly on its neck with a kick.

With Tenten on the tree, Tayuya's body which seemed to be moving independently of her own will got an angle on her, taking a swing at her that she blocked, 'Ugh. So this is the Cursed Seal.' Despite the angry look on her face, Tayuya didn't seem to be putting any effort behind the struggle other than trying to bite back her own pain.

Suddenly her body went limp again, prompting Tenten to jump down with her in order to secure her opening to attack. Behind her as she did this she heard the sound of wood being broken and saw Kabuto after taking a swing at her with glowing blue hands.

Tenten safety rolled through her landing and Tayuya simply hit the ground doing even more damage to her extensively injured body that she cried out because of, "Be a little more careful you fucking-!"

"Now now, you should really watch your language Tayuya." Kabuto said condescendingly as he looked down at her and Tenten, "You don't want to speak that way to the only person in at least thirty miles that can give you medical attention."

Something about the way Kabuto spoke seemed different from the way he'd sounded in Konoha when he had been friends with the Konoha ninjas he'd gone to the chunin exam finals with. His personality seemed nastier, more befitting of someone that could do what he'd done; betraying everyone that had ever befriended him, manipulating people that thought him a comrade, and murdering a schoolteacher.

Having been a member of the task force that had been put together to flush him out, it was Tenten and Lee's greatest failure to date that they hadn't been able to do anything about him. But that was apparently being rectified by fate.

Paying too much attention to Kabuto however took attention off of his summoned snake, that hadn't died from Lee's heavy kick. Finding an easier target in the second human that _hadn't_ almost broken the only bone in its body, the snake abruptly lunged at Tenten this time.

Reflexes fast enough to react accordingly, Lee grabbed the snake by the tail and pushed past physical limits to keep it in place, "Gate of Healing, open!" Digging his heels into the ground, Lee managed to hold it back short of snapping its jaws around his teammate.

Distracted by the snake that almost devoured her, Tenten wasn't prepared for Kabuto to be as fast as he was, as he wound up right in front of her while her head was still somewhat turned. Noting his presence at the very last moment, she managed to move just enough to have Kabuto grab her shoulder instead of touching at her heart with his Chakra Scalpels.

Simply being touched by the jutsu tore every muscle tendon in her shoulder and a few in her chest, effectively rendering an entire limb worthless. This was an extremely painful thing to have happen to you, no matter who you were.

"Tenten!" Lee shouted, finding himself in a bit of a pinch when the snake's body coiled to try and restrict him. With the grip he had on its tail, Lee was able to jump directly up and tie the slithering reptile into a tight knot in order to subdue it.

Meanwhile Tenten fell to the ground holding her useless left arm. That jutsu made Kabuto's taijutsu almost as dangerous as Neji's. They had no idea he was actually that tough a ninja. Being a spy didn't necessarily mean he was good at fighting, but he'd disabled her without a harsh fight.

"Not bad for someone who failed the chunin exams more times than anyone can count eh?" Kabuto taunted as he moved forward to finish her, "At least this time unlike Iruka you'll see this coming."

"KABUTO!"

Jumping in the air to avoid a chain that reaped through the immediate area of the forest around him, Kabuto found himself kicked through the air by a blue and orange blur that sent him into another tree trunk hard enough to crack it.

'Okay, that actually hurt a bit.' Kabuto admitted to himself as he stuck to the tree and stood up against it to regard Naruto who had helped Tenten back up, "Oh, Naruto-kun. Long time no see." He called out with a taunting level of easygoing tone, and with reason because his automatic medical ninjutsu had already healed most of the damage dealt to him, "Kicking people in the chest isn't really how you say hi to old friends though."

"Why not? Lee does it all the time." Tenten replied, wincing at her bad arm, "Ugh. Damn it, I need to handle this Naruto. Are you alright here?"

"Just get a bit out of the way." Naruto told her, reeling in his Chakra Chain to his wrist to grab his machete and resheathe it, "…We really should have brought a medic on this thing."

"I happen to be a medic!"

"Shut the hell up Kabuto! You know nobody was talking about you!"

Kabuto just chuckled to himself as he smirked down at the young chunin. He wanted to get out of the base and far away from Orochimaru and Sasori, but here he stumbled upon a chance to have a bit of fun, 'I guess I can play around for a bit while I wait for Orochimaru-sama to kill Sasori.'

As his attention was on Naruto, he almost missed Lee sneaking up the back end of the tree to attack him until Lee curled around it to attack from underneath, "Hah!" A diving upward kick was his attack of choice that missed when Kabuto jumped off of the tree, "Naruto-kun!"

Spotting where Kabuto was going to land, on another tree, Naruto grabbed his machete and cut straight through the trunk to fell it just before Kabuto could reach it. Running up the fallen tree as Kabuto stuck to it and found his balance compromised, Naruto hurled his machete at him, missing. Kabuto charged down the trunk and took several stabs at him with his Chakra Scalpel hands until Naruto dodged one aimed at his head and grabbed him by the forearm.

"Tch." Kabuto clicked his tongue as they stuck fast and remained on the falling tree. The impact of their surface hitting the ground didn't dislodge them as they took to temporary log-rolling to stay upright, all the while dueling in close with their sole available bare hands.

Naruto kept checking Kabuto's hands at the wrist and below to keep from being injured by a mere touch and Kabuto kept deterring any chance of Naruto forming a Rasengan or using Giga Shintou to turn his insides into an organ slushy. He simply couldn't make Naruto break his grip due to the tricky Nebaiken style he'd learned years ago.

A highly dangerous and skillful close-range fight that Lee could appreciate the nuances of from where he was helping Tenten tend to her shoulder, "Ow! Lee, pay attention to how you're setting the sling! You missed my arm!"

"Sorry Tenten."

"Oh you're so lucky you're right-handed." Kabuto surmised, smirking despite the dangerous situation he found himself in with Naruto.

"You're so lucky I didn't catch you on the way out of Konoha!" Naruto said, sharply pulling his right hand back in order to retract his machete. At the same time he felt a presence suddenly appear behind him and moved out of its way, allowing Kabuto to maneuver himself out of harm's way of Naruto's attack as well.

Using the fingers on his free hand, Kabuto had used a Chakra Strings technique he'd picked up while masquerading as Sasori's spy to control Tayuya's body. The entire time he'd been fighting Naruto he'd been maneuvering her into a position that would give him a chance to get free. Not only did he manage that, he also forced her to take Naruto's round-trip machete straight through the chest due to the distraction she caused.

Naruto couldn't believe that Kabuto did something so callous to someone that had been on his side. It went straight through with no give whatsoever despite her use of the Cursed Seal at the time. He could see the horror in her eyes before the life faded from them.

Even Tenten and Lee couldn't believe that any enemy they had would do such a thing to a comrade. It was positively despicable.

Taking advantage of this, Kabuto slammed Naruto off of the rolling tree trunk they were on down to the ground below. Both had to separate at that moment to keep from being crushed by the multi-ton piece of wood, bringing them to a stalemate.

"What the fuck was that?" Naruto bellowed at Kabuto, still taken aback at what he'd done to Tayuya, "You killed her just like she was nothing!"

"No. Technically, _you_ killed her just like she was nothing." Kabuto specified, "I just gave you the nudge to do it by scaring you into moving with her body. Silver lining; I'm still fine." That did nothing to stop Naruto from growling at him and to keep Tenten and Lee from glaring at him as if he were a demon, "Oh come on. If it wasn't for Lee-kun here basically paralyzing her earlier I wouldn't have had to use her as a living puppet just to get some sort of use out of her. It's your own faults really."

This was the kind of person Kabuto really was.

There was no mistake. There was no misunderstanding or any sort to cause this happen. His actions were deliberate, his intent was malicious, and there was next to no chance that this man had ever seen them as friends. They had been assets. A means to an end to cast any suspicions of spying off of him at best.

Naruto reluctantly retracted his machete from Tayuya, wincing as he did so. Enemy or not, she had been defenseless and nothing more than a tool for Kabuto to get ahead, just like the rest of them to an extent, "Why? Did us being friends even mean anything at all?"

Kabuto sighed and shook his head in pity before smirking again, "I think I should tell you a little bit of a story to explain the situation. You see there was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Lee asked.

"Don't interrupt." Kabuto insisted before continuing, "That old man took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health." His smirk then grew, "And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You're stupid old man. I'm a _snake_.'

"You done?" Naruto growled after nothing else came out of Kabuto's mouth, "Was that supposed to actually mean something?"

The white-haired spy/medical ninja just gestured grandly to himself, "It's my nature. It was my nature years before I ever met any of you in-person. Some compassion, some camaraderie… that's not going to make someone like me go against who I am as a person. Snakes bite, scorpions sting, it doesn't matter if what they poison shows them kindness or not. Whether we were supposedly friends or not doesn't matter. If you want to blame anyone for why I exist, blame one man; Shimura Danzo."

What? One of the elders? That was the Hokage's old rival for the seat that still had a high-ranking spot in the village hierarchy. What the hell was he talking about?

It didn't matter at the moment though. Naruto hadn't been expecting a chance to take a shot at Kabuto just weeks after what he'd done to Iruka, but he was more than willing to pick up on that stroke of good fortune, "This for Iruka-sensei and all of the Konoha ninjas you got killed by handing off information to Oto." He said as he started tapping into the Kyuubi's chakra for a boost.

Now this was interesting. Kabuto had always wanted to see how he could measure up to a jinchuuriki that knew what they were doing to an extent with the chakra they had available. The fire had been lit, and now Kabuto gleefully wished to douse it with gasoline.

"Are you sure it's just that?" Kabuto asked with an infuriating expression of ease on his face, "Naruto… you were gone for three years. You're a smarter guy than you get credit for. You know just how many opportunities I had to do the same thing to Ino. I'm the one that taught her medical ninjutsu after all." The younger man froze in place at that, "It would have been so easy to just reach at her chest and give her arteries a little snip like Iruka's."

The machete flew past his head and missed into a tree, but also came with the added threat of Naruto using his chain to reel himself in toward Kabuto with a spinning blue orb of chakra in hand, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"

Kabuto evaded the blitz and ghosted a hand on Naruto's back as he passed. The immediate sound of pain was like music to him. He had to have torn quite deeply into the muscles in Naruto's back, 'Temper, temper Naruto. It'll get you into trouble.'

Sliding to a stop in the dirt, Naruto felt the chakra running through him begin to knit his muscles that had Kabuto had severed back together. Damn that hurt. He didn't want to let a remark like that get to him, but he truly would have been lying had he not considered that as something that could have happened.

It weighed heavily on his mind every hour since finding out Iruka's fate until after the funeral. It had been where the bulk of his thinking had rested. Over three years. He'd been right there with all of his friends for three years as if he'd been one of them.

Instead of using them for information or as for alibis or reference, he could have done anything to any of his friends whenever he wanted. He really could have killed Ino if Naruto had pissed him off somehow when they were younger, and done it easily. Any time Naruto and the Guardians did serious damage to Oto ninjas on their assignments, Kabuto could have discovered that he was amongst that group and he could have gotten her hurt or framed her for his actions out of retaliation.

The same went for anyone that had been Kabuto's friend.

He could have ruined Chouji, could have killed Sakura just as easily as Ino because he'd been teaching her as well. Kiba and Shino would never have seen him coming. Hinata… she would have trusted him right until she first felt her heart stop beating. Tenten and Lee had been subjected to Kabuto's treachery right here along with him. He might have been the one to set in motion the ambush that occurred on Sasuke's mission that ended with him receiving the Cursed Seal of Heaven.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu (Summoning Jutsu)!"

Kabuto brought forth a massive snake that he stood on the head of as it stared Naruto down like dinner. He just stared back unflinchingly, making hand-seals that counted and waiting for the exact moment to make his move.

The snake did not disappoint by making an effort to rapidly seize him in its coils and crush him to death. The Naruto that it grabbed was unfortunately an Ash Clone that broke apart to scorching hot cinders, burning the snake's scaly flesh.

A savvy Kabuto ran off of his snake's head down the length of its body as Naruto pulverized its head with a Rasengan, 'His increase in speed and power is no joke.' He wasn't sure he could aptly heal himself well enough on-contact if Naruto hit him with that jutsu.

Diving off of the snake's body before Naruto could begin attacking him again, Kabuto turned in the air and thrust his right arm forward, "Sen'ie Tajashu (Many Hidden Shadow Snake Hands)!" A swarm of a dozen large snakes appeared from inside Kabuto's sleeve, shooting forward at Naruto in an instant.

Mouths open and ready to attack, Naruto spun his loose machete around on the chain connected to it, cutting them all up as if they were running headlong into a fan blade. Kabuto tried to appear behind him in a Shunshin to take a swipe at his neck with glowing blue hands, but he missed when Naruto moved forward and dropped off of the dead snake's head before kicking it to knock Kabuto off.

What strength, to move the head of a snake that size with a mere back kick. Kabuto jumped off in time, darting directly at Naruto mid-kick and lashing out at him. He grabbed the forearm of Naruto when he turned to protect himself and could see the pain in his face from that defensive action.

Not willing to poke the bear too much and stay in that close to a jinchuuriki with their cloak active, Kabuto immediately dove underground with his tunneling jutsu. Naruto immediately reached right into the ground after him and twisted his hands before pulling up sharply, "Giga Shintou (Giga Impact)!"

Before he crushed the ground directly around him with interior wind pressure, Kabuto appeared behind him again poised to strike. Reaching back with a foot that hardly brushed Kabuto's chest with his toes, it still touched him, which meant that with the principles of Neibaiken taijutsu, Naruto had grabbed him by the front of his shirt with his foot.

Buried up to his wrists in the dirt, Naruto flipped forward on his hands and dragged Kabuto with him in his improvised move, slamming him hard on the ground and stomping on his chest to cave it in, revealing that Kabuto to be a mud clone.

Kabuto had resurfaced a safe distance away, adjusting his glasses on his face as he contemplated how this battle was going. Naruto wasn't caught off-guard with really anything that he did, 'And he didn't have the slightest clue about how I fought until now.'

The entire ground at that moment began to shake before the fight could continue in earnest, much to the confusion of the present Konoha ninjas. It felt like the ground somewhere nearby was tearing itself apart. That was the only way they could describe the feeling and the sound.

And that chakra. Naruto could feel it from where they were and it felt horrible. He didn't know what to compare it to because he'd never felt anything like it in his entire life, from anyone or anything.

"I guess our time is up for today." Kabuto said in fake disappointment with a shrug, "You always could try to go after me, but I doubt you want to risk a fight without knowing what exactly that feeling of dread you've got in your stomach is." Without a moment to spare, Kabuto made himself scarce with an underground jutsu, parting with a few more words, "If I could give you any kind of friendly advice, I would run as far and as fast as I could."

XxX

(Some Time Earlier – Otogakure Hideout)

A fan of the cat-and-mouse approach to battle, Orochimaru allowed himself to be pursued through his lair by Sasori and the man's weapon of choice; the corpse of the Sandaime Kazekage that had been converted into a human puppet for use in combat.

It was a constant scene of the two stopping and dueling with blades; Orochimaru's Kusanagi and Sasori's hidden weapons inside of both himself and the Kazekage puppet. Orochimaru would inevitably find breaking off in the close quarters more amusing and would proceed to do so with gusto, much to Sasori's annoyance as he just wanted to get things over with and take him down.

Killing him was beginning to take over as the more attractive option than capturing him alive, "Satetsu Shigure (Iron Sand Drizzle)."

"Kukukukuku… you and your human puppets Sasori." Orochimaru said before turning around and shooting countless snakes from his sleeves to take the impact from the tiny iron bullets shot his way, "Sen'eijashu (Hidden Shadow Snake Hands)!"

A fine mist of snake blood and gore filled the space between Orochimaru and Sasori as their pursuit continued. Even when his face was stained with the bile and guts of Orochimaru's choice summon creatures, Sasori didn't even blink.

The two of them believed in the beauty that was longevity, but that was where their similarities ended. They had supremely different ideas on immortality, ninjutsu, and philosophies on life and power in general. It had been a stable enough partnership, until Orochimaru screwed the pooch and tried to hijack Uchiha Itachi's body.

Sending the Kazekage puppet Orochimaru's way, he maneuvered it ahead of the man and closed in on him in a pincer movement. Using the iron sand of the puppet, Sasori created a wall of iron bars to trap Orochimaru with him. At the same time he lifted one hand of his own to reveal a metal pipe on his palm that he used to spew flames at his former ally.

Still laughing almost madly, Orochimaru modified his body into something of a snake-like form, allowing him to easily move right through the bars of the wall. His Kusanagi sword emerged from his mouth and slashed at the Kazekage puppet as he moved past and further into the darkness of the hideout.

"Is that all you have Sasori?" Orochimaru taunted, his voice echoing through the corridors, "The years haven't been as kind to you as your puppet body would suggest if you've forgotten who you're dealing with to that extent!"

"You have no idea what kind of hell I can bring you Orochimaru." Sasori stated firmly, breaking down the Iron Sand into a new kind of attack for the Kazekage puppet to use, "You can run and hide in your snake hole anywhere you would like. There is nowhere you can go to escape me."

"Escape you? I simply want to make you believe that you had a chance against me my old friend. Tell me Sasori, do you know how you've found the king of all serpents?"

To his surprise, Orochimaru hadn't run that much farther, stopping in a four-way branch of halls with his back turned to Sasori as he seemed to still be laughing to himself. It was annoying just how amused he was at Sasori's assault on his base.

"Can you pull it in with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?"

Sasori had killed all of his ninjas stationed there.

"Will he keep you begging for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls?"

Sasori had tracked him down after years of Orochimaru ducking and dodging all over the ninja world.

"Will traders barter for him? Will they divide him up among the merchants? Can you fill his hide with harpoons or his head with fishing spears?"

Just because he had made himself a jinchuuriki it made him all-powerful? No. Akatsuki had already taken down two jinchuuriki. This didn't make him anything other than a mere man with a boost to his chakra as far as the puppet master was concerned.

Orochimaru's corpse would more than likely be Sasori's newest favorite human puppet after he claimed it for himself and prepared it accordingly. He couldn't wait to add it to his collection.

Dark chakra began to fly off of Orochimaru's body and a large snake barreled down the hallway from another, filling it with its entire body to leave no path to escape as it made to devour Sasori. In return, a pair of propeller blades on Sasori's back cut through his Akatsuki robe and diced up the incoming snake easily, slicing through its entire body as it passed by him. No matter how big and fast they were, disposing of Orochimaru's fool snake summons was child's play.

"You're wasting my time Orochimaru!" Sasori said impatiently.

"If you lay a hand on him you will remember the struggle and never do it again! Mandara no Jin (Formation of Ten Thousand Snakes)!"

Pausing in his speech, Orochimaru regurgitated thousands of large snakes onto the floor that swiftly crawled in Sasori's direction, blades extending from the insides of their mouths as they hissed threateningly. It didn't stop Sasori from blending up these snakes as well once they got close enough. The constant reciting of this rhetoric, the lack of urgency that was in the man's voice, it irked Sasori like nothing else.

"Senju Soubu (Thousand Hands Manipulation Force)!" The left arm of the Kazekage puppet opened up, revealing a compartment with multiple summoning seals inside. From the seals a countless number of puppet arms stretched forward in Orochimaru's direction, holding blades, buzzsaws, and all sorts of weapons, firing gas bombs, kunai, explosives, and anything else he deemed suitable to outfit his creation with.

There was no such thing as overkill when you were an S-rank ninja. There was just being thorough.

So why was that infuriating laughter still present within the smoke and the rumbling of the hideout? That bastard was mocking him!

"Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering! No one is fierce enough to rouse him! Who then is able to stand against _ME_!" The change in tone from third to first person was not missed by Sasori who felt a horrible expelling of chakra and retreated back down the hall swiftly, "Doton: Iwayado Kuzushi (Earth Release: Rock Lodging Destruction)!"

He really was stronger than ever. The cave-in of the hideout was quicker than any other time in the past where Sasori had seen that jutsu used.

There was no lag time, there was no gradual growth of the jutsu's effect. Everything began collapsing in on itself and he had to make a quick move in order to escape.

Transforming part of his body into a snake, Orochimaru dug his way through to the surface as his entire base, built on the blood and sweat of his now deceased grunts, fell in, all in a bid to show his authoritative power and kill Sasori, "Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me!"

With the chakra of the Sanbi running through him freely and surrounding his body, Orochimaru was faster and stronger than he'd ever been, even in his twenties.

Knowing that something was trailing him, upon emerging from the rubble pit that used to be a ninja stronghold, Orochimaru immediately dodged a giant iron arrowhead that released itself to reveal Sasori and a damaged Sandaime Kazekage puppet, "Satetsu Kesshuu (Iron Sand Gathering Assault)!" The mass of iron sand transformed into the sword of a giant before slicing the snake sannin in half with unstoppable force.

The birfucation was clean. Instead of killing him however, it just forced Orochimaru to reattach his upper and lower body with snakes that comprised his insides, "The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin! Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood!"

Just die. That was all Sasori wanted him to do. He didn't want to hear another word from the bastard unless it came with a death rattle. Cutting him would do no good. Orochimaru had a penchant for developing immunities to poisons.

Bringing his massive Iron Sand assault sword back around, he broke it down and recomposed it into an unstoppable pyramid-shaped spear. This was the ultimate piercing weapon in Sasori's arsenal. It was large and fast enough to obliterate anything in its path, and with the metal in Orochimaru's sword it would be attracted to him and would not miss due to Magnet Release.

Flipping an ungodly distance away from Sasori as the spear was created and began to spin to pick up drilling power, Orochimaru landed on the ground, slamming his hands down, "Kuchiyose: Sanjuu Rashomon (Summoning: Triple Rashomon)!"

Three giant-sized gates with horrifying faces rose up from the ground in order to defend Orochimaru from the 'unstoppable' piercing power of Sasori's attack. Despite the preparation, the pyramid spearhead only smashed through one gate and dented the second before coming to a stop.

Sasori growled to himself and watched Orochimaru appear in a Shunshin at the top of the first gate, his physical features completely concealed by the intensity of the chakra, "He makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment. Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair." He slowly drew his hands together and blurred through hand-seals, "…Nothing on earth is his equal—a creature without fear. He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud."

Using the propellers on his back, Sasori flew through the air at Orochimaru at a punishing speed the moment he saw a single hand-seal. Orochimaru and his ninjutsu; it would be his downfall.

Opening a plate on the right side of his chest, Sasori simultaneously drew a scroll from his back and brought forth his most feared technique, "Akahigi: Hyakki no Souen (Red Secret Technique: Performance of a Hundred Puppets)!"

Orochimaru licked his lips in his dark chakra cloak as he finished his last hand-seal, "Fuuton: Kaikan Joukuu (Wind Release: Open Skies)!"

In the air above them, the clouds quickly rotated forming two rings, one inside of the other. Inside of the first ring and outside of the other, the clouds were snuffed from existence, and everything from the sky above to the ground below was torn asunder in a tumultuous, sudden, lethal windstorm.

Sasori's emotionless face was shredded into chunks of wood along with the rest of his body and those of his one hundred puppets right before Orochimaru's eyes. He hadn't seen anything so satisfying in years.

The power of the Sanbi that facilitated that jutsu was delicious. Had he attempted a jutsu of that scope before taking Yukimaru's body he would have risked putting his health at risk. With such a young body to house his soul, with a biju's power to bolster it all… there was nothing he couldn't do.

He could probably use his Eight Branches Jutsu without any adverse effects in the aftermath. Even more perhaps.

Letting the chakra recede so that he could take his normal form again, Orochimaru pulled the Kusanagi sword from his mouth and held it loosely in his hand as he walked through the graveyard of broken puppet bodies.

So many human bodies mutilated and altered to be used as weapons. Sasori had been an artist in his preparation of these men and women for war. This was something that he had always respected about his former partner. With these bodies he had access to oh so many ninjutsu that had been known by their users in life. He had been jealous honestly.

But now he had no reason to be jealous of anyone. Not of Sasori, because why be jealous of a man that could use any jutsu in such a manner when he could do the same with his own body now? Not of the Uchiha for their eyes, because he could take one of the remaining pairs, or go to a man he knew that had several and liberate one from him. It wasn't like his body couldn't take the strain of the chakra drain now, so he could implant one.

The sky wasn't even the limit for him anymore.

SHIK!

Passing by a particular body with a strange core in its chest with a kanji on it, Orochimaru stabbed right through it, eliciting a harsh reaction from the puppet, "Ejecting to a spare body? A paltry trick. You've let yourself become slave to the puppets that you were supposed to be the one controlling."

Honestly, they had been partners. Orochimaru had closely studied every current member of Akatsuki that he could back when he'd been amongst them. He knew of Sasori's little playing possum trick. A man that created a false puppet body for himself would obviously create extras just in case, or even to just tinker around with upgrades on.

"You…" Sasori said softly before his remaining strength left him. Orochimaru had pierced the only living portion of Sasori that existed, "If you do this-."

Instead of hearing him out, Orochimaru just twisted the sword in the core and pulled out the bloody weapon, smiling casually all the while, "Oops. Muscle spasm. My apologies Sasori."

Whatever the now dead puppet master was going to say in warning was irrelevant. If he was telling Orochimaru that there was no going back from making himself a target of Akatsuki, it was laughable to him. Going back to being a nonfactor to those people had ended after he'd left them and taken their ring along for the ride.

He'd been a target from that day forward and while this would only give them a reason to actively pursue them, he now relished the challenge.

Orochimaru arguably had more resources than them. More underlings. Better underlings that would do anything for him. He had enough money to make Kakuzu sell his soul to him as a result of liquidizing the assets he'd filched from Gato. He had the skill to deal with any ability that any member of the organization could throw at him, and the raw power to overwhelm just about any of them.

Hearing the sound of landing steps nearby, Orochimaru turned to regard his new guests on the mutilated portion of forest and base that had served as his and Sasori's battlefield.

Three Konoha ninjas, one injured fairly badly, and one that stuck out to Orochimaru because of what he was; the jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi. Well wasn't that interesting? To think that Orochimaru of all people now had something in common with Uzumaki Naruto. It was enough to elicit a chuckle out of him.

"What have we here?" Turning around he could see the look of shock on their faces at the destruction around them, "Have you never seen the sort of devastation that can be wrought by a sannin until now?"

They could honestly say that they had not.

Now, standing before the third member of Konoha's most legendary trio, the one that they had never seen in person before, he felt to be a completely different level from Tsunade and Jiraiya, even from a first impression.

If anyone knew, Naruto would know, as he'd dealt extensively with them both. Something about Orochimaru though, just looking at the man and being in his presence stirred a primal response in him to stay away, "…Did you do it?"

"Do what?" Orochimaru asked, feigning ignorance as the grin across his face spread wider, "I'm certain that I don't know what you mean."

Naruto already knew from his battle with Kimimaro that Yukimaru had been given the Sanbi only so that Orochimaru could have a powerful, healthy body to take over. That chakra that Naruto had been sensing from afar had originated from right there, in that very spot, and Orochimaru was the only person there.

"You really took over Yukimaru's body didn't you?" He'd been told it would happen, but it was the sort of thing you had to face down in person to truly accept.

"Does that really make me such a bad person? He wanted to be useful, the same as Kimimaro, the same as every one of my underlings that have achieved great things. He wanted nothing more than to make a difference to the people that saw something in him. There is no greater way for him to do so than to be a part of me."

The man was sick.

And his grin simply never fell, "…You want to attack me so badly don't you?" He asked Naruto, Tenten, and Lee, "You know who I am. You know the reputation I have as your village's greatest contemporary traitor. But you also know that you simply don't have a chance."

Like hell they didn't have a chance, "Screw you!" Naruto said in reply.

From behind Orochimaru, a Naruto clone attacked him with a Rasengan, only to have the jutsu stopped by Orochimaru blocking the clone at the wrist and turning to deliver a kick that destroyed it. He'd done it so fast there wasn't even a chance to wage an official assault on him as a team.

Lee and Naruto looked at each other and at the injured Tenten. She still had one good arm and could still fight to a degree, but it wasn't going to be to the best of her ability.

Orochimaru just chuckled and held up the Kusanagi in their direction as he wagged his finger, "No, no, no. I don't want to fight you children. Honestly, I want to thank you Naruto-kun. I've learned that there's more than one way to achieve your goals. I don't necessarily need an Uchiha body to use the Sharingan, I just need a body that can endure the strain that would come with a Sharingan transplant. Like Yukimaru or yours. A jinchuuriki body."

For emphasis, the pale-skinned man began radiating the Sanbi's chakra to show for certain that he'd procured himself such coveted power.

"N-Naruto, is he serious?" Tenten asked warily, taking a few steps back, "He's like you?"

"Don't be silly my dear." Orochimaru said, allowing a Version 2 chakra cloak to cover his body again, "I'm _better_ than him. Unlike Naruto-kun here, this body naturally subdues the Sanbi instead of propagating a constant struggle against it. Its entire well of power is at my disposal if I'd like. And with that in mind, I'd like you to send a message to Sarutobi-sensei for me." A sadistic glint of intent lay in his eye.

"**Run. Run now and don't turn around!"** The Kyuubi howled within Naruto's mind. If he wasn't going to let him out to roam free, they weren't going to survive what was coming next, and he wasn't about to die because his jinchuuriki got squashed, **"NOW!"**

The Kyuubi rarely spoke with such fervor without self-preservation in mind. Even when Naruto fought powerful enemies, the Kyuubi was never so convinced of his incapability to win that it demanded with no concessions that Naruto retreat. He didn't run, and hadn't for a long, long time.

Until now.

He took off as fast as his legs would carry him in the opposite direction, Lee and Tenten following. No one said anything. Even without being sensors, the Team Gai members could feel the chakra exploding from Orochimaru as the trees behind them were uprooted and felled by what was happening with Orochimaru.

His body had grown to titanic levels and had fully transformed. His body took the appearance of a massive turtle-like creature with a large lower jaw, jagged teeth, spikes all over its armored portions of body, two arms, and three large seafaring tails instead of legs. His right eye was closed while the left was open and red.

Still, the Konoha ninjas didn't turn around. They didn't need to in order to know that there was something terrifying behind them. The shadow that was cast over them that took them twenty seconds to move from underneath was proof enough.

"Why can't you do that!?" Tenten asked Naruto aloud as they continued to flee, "Gaara can do it! Orochimaru can do it! What the hell?

"Because it's supposed to be fucking hard to do without losing control!" Naruto shouted right back, "Fuu can't even do it and if Gaara does it someone has to be around that can force him back to normal!"

"This is not relevant to our escape!" Lee chattered, pulling ahead of the other two as Orochimaru's echoing cackles could be heard in the open air in his warped biju voice, "Is this not what one would call a tactical retreat?"

Message sent.

XxX

At a distance, retreating as well on his clay bird, Deidara could see and hear Orochimaru in his transformed state. While he wanted to turn around and go back to tearing Sasuke a new asshole after gaining the edge in the woods, while he wanted to go back and finish capturing Fuu, he was almost out of clay. Feeling Orochimaru transform simply cemented that leaving was the best option.

He'd killed Sasori. That much was a given.

It wasn't worth risking his own life to take them on with sparse ammunition when there would be ample opportunities later. He'd already shown the upstart Uchiha and the mint-haired jinchuuriki that his art was superior, and he'd proven it to Sasori by outlasting the man's lasting art with his own art of a single moment.

Aside from that, the Leader wouldn't be pleased to lose both members of the team of artists in one fell swoop. There were other members of Akatsuki better suited to taking on Orochimaru, and while Deidara wanted to fight him before, now he could definitely admit that it wasn't him.

He would have risked a C3 attack just for the sake of trying to take Orochimaru out, but he didn't have the sufficient clay to do so, just in case it wasn't enough to fell a fully transformed jinchuuriki and he needed more to make his departure.

"This… is an unfortunate development, un."

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Hours 3 and 4 – Naruto's Side)

Shikamaru was a dick. That was all there was to it. Putting out that 'book' for everyone to read… unforgivable. And it wasn't like he was the only one that had some good dirt on anyone, but since Shikamaru had already gone that route simply copying him wouldn't be enough.

Being embarrassed was simply something that Shikamaru found too troublesome to get riled up over anyway. His reputation meant next to nothing to him. The less people thought of him, the less people would ask him to do anything.

Something else had to be destroyed in order to make this right. And several things had to be put into motion. This was merely the next step in flipping his world upside-down.

Naruto had to be extra careful, as Shikamaru had smartened up and finally decided to use all of his chakra that came with his switched body to keep a constant vigil out for him. Clones were everywhere. They were easy to spot though because Shikamaru hadn't transformed them, and they weren't numerous enough to be a real threat because while Shikamaru knew how to do the regular Shadow Clone Jutsu, he didn't know Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu.

So while it took a little bit more wheedling than normal, Naruto was able to slither his way around town to get his sweet vengeance on Shikamaru, 'You send my rep to the hospital, I'll send yours to the morgue Shika.'

No mercy for the merciless.

He'd prepared this routine for a full hour, drawing upon past experiences from a time that he'd rather forget while in the Guardians. Who knew that most unfortunate of times would ever come into play once he was back in Konoha. Life skills; you could never tell which ones would be useful.

Once he felt he was back in practice he headed over to the first home that he was going to try this on.

After a few knocks on her door, it was opened by a curious Kurenai, who wondered why exactly Shikamaru was standing outside of her apartment in a tracksuit carrying a boom box, "Shikamaru? Were you looking for Asuma? He's here if you are."

Asuma was there? Great. That would make this doubly effective if Asuma didn't immediately kill him first.

"Actually I'm here for you." Naruto said with a sigh to play up the illusion that this was Shikamaru and he was doing something that he would rather not, "…I never got you a present after I found out you were pregnant, and I feel bad about that, so if you don't mind I'd like to give it to you now."

Raising an eyebrow in interest, Kurenai wondered what kind of present he was referring to and invited him into the living room to receive it.

Then the boom box went on and the tracksuit came off.

(Hours 3 and 4 – Shikamaru's Side)

With his clones scouring the village looking for Naruto, Shikamaru felt that he didn't need to do anything else until he was found. Thus he retreated to the best place he could think of for a relaxing time; the Team 10 training field.

Naruto wouldn't go there because he knew someone would look for him eventually there and he didn't want them to switch back bodies, so he would avoid obvious places where he would be found. That made it a good place for a nap for Shikamaru.

"Damn it, it's hard to nap in Naruto's body." Shikamaru complained to himself, "He's got too much energy to be lazy with."

Before long he felt four presences join him underneath the tree, with one of them kicking him awake, "Get up Shika, I've got a bone to pick with you." Oh. Ino. He'd forgotten that he'd screwed her to the wall pretty hard with his last stunt. He should have seen her coming on the warpath, "We're going to all find Goldie, and we're switching you two dumbasses back before you two make things so bad no one can fix them."

"I would just like to note for the record that I did not start this." Shikamaru said, barely cracking an eye to look at her, "Naruto was the one that ran out of his apartment laughing like a movie villain."

"Actually you did start it." Shizune said with a very disciplinarian stare leveled on Shikamaru. The kind that told him just how disappointed she was in him for going along with this whole thing, "Naruto-kun might have run away, but you were the first one to do anything to the other."

"Preemptive strike."

"That is _not_ an excuse young man!"

"Either way-." Ino interjected, getting back to the heart of the matter, "-You're coming with us. Now get up. Or-." Ino then threw up the hand-seal to take aim with Shintenshin no Jutsu, "-I can make you get up."

Shikamaru couldn't tell if she was bluffing or not, "You're gonna switch your mind into Naruto's body while my mind isn't even supposed to be in it? What'll that do to me?"

"Nothing. When I take over people's bodies I suppress their consciousness. It doesn't go anywhere."

Sighing in resignation, Shikamaru sat up and brushed grass out of his hair, looking at his friends and figure of authority in Shizune before speaking, "Fine. Whatever. I'm so over this whole thing anyway, I-…" He trailed off and looked behind them with a smirk, "Heh, I knew you'd show up here eventually."

Everyone turned around, thinking he was referring to Naruto only to see nothing. That little opening was all it took for Shikamaru to make himself scarce. Even Kiba had been surprised. Neither he nor Akamaru had seen that one coming, "Did he actually run?" That wasn't a Shikamaru kind of move, "Since when does Shikamaru get up and run?"

"Goddamn it!" Ino cried out, "I fell for that!? Why would Goldie even come here? He'd stay as far away from Shika as he could!"

Kiba gave her a toothy grin and put a hand on her shoulder to cheer her up, "Hey we can still totally catch him. I'm faster than Naruto normally. I know I'm faster than Shikamaru would be in his body. Let's go-."

A crushing amount of killing intent was leveled upon the entire field from out of nowhere. It felt like Asuma, but Ino had never felt Asuma truly in a rage before. She didn't even know he had killing intent, let alone that it could be that powerful.

"WHERE IS SHIKAMARU!?" Asuma bellowed, appearing in the training field with the angriest Shunshin ever recorded, "I'm going to put a cigarette out in that brat's eye!" The sound of his shouting frightened even Shizune and made Kiba and Akamaru cringe in pain at the volume, "Do you know what he just did at Kurenai's place?"

Ino wasn't afraid because he wasn't angry with her, just Shikamaru, "No, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have said that if you weren't going to tell me anyway sensei."

Miming the strangling of a human neck, Asuma's fingers cracked ominously, "He stopped over… and he came in saying something about giving Kurenai a present… AND THEN HE STARTED STRIPPING! IN FRONT OF MY PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND! AND IT LOOKED LEGIT! WHY DOES HE KNOW HOW TO DO THAT!?"

Kiba blanched at the mere thought. Oh, Naruto was ballsy for that one. That could have gone wrong any one of a hundred different ways, some involving Kurenai turning his mind to mush with an illusion, others involving Asuma skinning him alive, the rest combining the two jounin reacting accordingly, "Why didn't you stop him man?"

"That's not the point!" Asuma insisted while Shizune just stammered and blushed at the thought, "He finished and said he was going to make other stops, but that the one for Kurenai was 'on the house'! Where the hell else is he going?"

"…You let him finish?" Ino asked incredulously, "You let him finish and then leave? How many songs did he do?"

Upon receiving that question, Asuma's anger sobered slightly as he felt the need to defend himself, "I…I don't know. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought Kurenai was messing with me at first, a genjutsu, but I couldn't dispel it."

Ino was not going to shift the blame from Shikamaru to Naruto, who had actually done the deed, because Shikamaru had earned her ire with his little memoirs stunt and the fact that he'd run away again. So he was going to take Asuma-sensei's wrath in the aftermath of this incident if she had anything to say about it.

Shizune leaned over to Kiba and whispered to him while student and teacher continued to talk about 'Shikamaru's' latest stunt. If Ino wasn't going to tell Asuma who had really done it, neither was she, "I'm just wondering, Asuma said something about Naruto mentioning that he was going to make other stops. Does that mean more stripping?"

Kiba just shrugged, "Who else would he go to? How many more women in this village would he actually be willing to risk pulling that crap on, even in someone else's body?" He asked quietly before getting a deep woof from Akamaru that held a potential answer. A very real answer that caused the male Inuzuka to gasp and lower his jaw, "Hana! Mom! Nooooooo!"

* * *

Jutsu List

Mugen Ryuukamu (Infinite Dragon's Bite). Ninjutsu, offensive, defensive, all ranges. A follow-up technique to Twin Rising Dragons, with the countless weapons still connected to Tenten's hands by wire she can use them in a secondary attack that can clear a battlefield area around herself. When aiming before beginning her rotation, Tenten can still aim the weapons with her uncanny ability to analyze distance and defensive capabilities of her enemies, making it a dangerous way to dispose of surrounding forces.

Fuuton: Kaikan Joukuu (Wind Release: Open Skies). A-rank ninjutsu, offensive, mid-to-long range. A powerful ninjutsu, it allows the user to manipulate the air currents directly around them, the area of coverage dependent on the control and sheer power of one's chakra. The only guaranteed safe place during this jutsu is in the center where the user must remain for its duration, or else they risk being subjected to the indiscriminately destructive force of the winds as well.

* * *

**Alright, this is basically the close to this story arc if'n you weren't aware. Orochimaru has taken his place as the biggest of the big bads, the way he should have been presented in the actual series because he's so much better for it in my opinion, and now the rest of the world has to deal with that. **

**Konoha has to come to terms with the ever-growing power of the monster that they created decades ago, and there's still trouble on the homefront both outside of the gates and within that's growing more and more real. So let's do this.**

**Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed. This came without access to my actual computer, so this should let you know how addicted I am to writing this crap by now. It's a drug, and I'm on it.**

**Speaking of being under the influence, oh man. Drunk History on Comedy Central is an awesome show. I just felt the need to put that out there. It's a hilarious way to spend thirty minutes. Give it a try, and if your sense of humor is anything like mine you'd like it.**

**For those in the know, this makes 7 out of 8 for my damn personal challenge that's due on 8/31 Saturday. Time to work on the last leg of it. Hopefully Condit vs. Kampmann tonight on Fox Sports 1 doesn't sidetrack me too much.**

**Kenchi out.**


	61. Homefront Duplicity

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, but this is okay. For I am the Day Man, fighter of the Night Man, champion of the sun. A master of karate, and friendship for everyone.

**Chapter 61: Homefront Duplicity**

* * *

Slogging their way back to Konoha on the home stretch of road, Naruto, Sasuke, Lee, and Tenten had succeeded in their mission for Takigakure. They didn't feel like it or look like it from their demeanor, but when the reports were in, they would receive a 'mission succeed' marker on their records. They'd been thanked for their service and the proof of Otogakure's presence that they'd obtained that caused rumblings of a war between Taki and Iwa to die down.

The fact that they'd gotten more or less spanked and shooed away by Orochimaru like kids was the primary reason that they'd felt like they'd lost. Sasuke had more or less clammed up since completing the mission and heading out for home, and no one was feeling particularly bright and sunny. Even the normally unflappable Rock Lee was a tad bit down in the mouth.

Naruto didn't even complain when Fuu intentionally almost cracked his spine with the goodbye hug he'd asked for/demanded. He'd just returned it and limped out of the village until the injury fixed itself.

Eventually though, he did speak up when he felt the familiar sensation of being close to home. It was time to talk about it before they wrote up their respective reports.

"So does anybody want to talk about what the fuck just happened a few days ago?" Naruto asked aloud to his friends, "Everything was going great and then WHAM! Orochimaru's got a leg up on us and Akatsuki. When the hell did the dynamic shift like that?"

"I wouldn't know," Tenten said, still rubbing at her shoulder that was bandaged beneath her clothes. The Taki medical ninjas had done a good job fixing her up, but it was still very sore and vulnerable, "I'm just now getting used to the idea that you've got the baddest bad guys in the land after something that's stuck inside of you. The fact that one of the strongest ninjas ever just got way stronger is still a bit out of my range of perception."

Lee shook his head in disappointment, "…He allowed us to leave. If Orochimaru had truly wanted to end our lives, I do not think we could have kept him from doing so."

He was playing with his new powers. That was all that was. To Orochimaru, the Sanbi had been the equivalent of a new toy in the hands of a child; playing around with what it could do while trying not to break it or wear it out prematurely.

"Well, at least there's _some _good news," Naruto said, throwing his arms up behind his neck grumpily, "I don't really give a shit about how scary-strong Killer B is supposed to be after looking a jinchuuriki Orochimaru in the eye." The cure for apprehension over something like facing someone stronger than you was facing someone else that was stronger than them, and he believed that Orochimaru was stronger than Killer B now.

"I'm pretty sure Anko has nightmares that start off like that." Sasuke chimed in with a snort.

Everyone went silent again for the umpteenth time since they had departed from Takigakure.

With this, Naruto decided to turn his conversation inward. The recipient of his words might not have been the most excited to hear from him, but that was just tough for him, 'Kyuubi, when you said to run-.'

"**You would have gotten us killed,"** The formerly slumbering biju remarked inside of his head, **"What can you endure taking from me, four tails of my power? Sure, at most you would have been a pesky foe, but all you would have done at most was scratched Isobu's shell."**

'You mean the Sanbi, right?'

"**Yes. That."**

'Wait, no, don't do that. What was with the whole Isobu thing? You knew who you were talking about. Is that a name?'

"**Yes. I know it's hard for you to wrap your head around seeing as who and what you are, but the biju aren't meant to be referred to by the number of their tails. We have names just like you."**

'…Well what's yours?'

At that, the Kyuubi went silent and didn't speak up again. Normally Naruto would have tried to annoy it out of the fox, but what was the point? If it clammed up on him it wasn't going to say anything else no matter how long he pestered it for.

As the party neared the gates they'd left the village through they bore down on the sight of Killer B still sitting in the middle of the road, waiting. Staying there and keeping watch over his actions for the current shift was Kakashi, who had brought the entire Icha Icha collection to read while he was out there.

Upon noticing the four chunin coming up toward them he smiled and waved their way, "Hello all. How'd the mission go?"

Sasuke was the one who responded to his teacher, "We succeeded."

Leaving it at that, Sasuke just passed him by, rubbing at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, something that Kakashi didn't miss. That had been a very Anko-ish thing to do, 'There's no reason he should have done that. He hasn't even had any issues with it since it was sealed away.'

Naruto just shook his head as he stopped for a moment to talk while Sasuke headed on to the village to get back home and keep on training. He didn't blame him. He wanted to do the same thing after everything was over with, "We finished the mission, but it wasn't that great."

"It couldn't have been that bad Naruto-kun," Kakashi insisted, "Everyone made it home from what I can see, and no one's missing any limbs."

"Orochimaru is the jinchuuriki of the Sanbi."

It seemed like even the wind blowing through the trees stopped at that moment.

Killer B, who had been looking at Naruto the entire time expressionlessly, had his eyebrows raise above his sunglasses in intrigue and shock at what he'd just heard. Kakashi dropped his book from his hand onto the ground.

Eventually he responded with a low mumble, "…I'm pretty sure Anko has nightmares that start off like that."

"Yeah," Naruto said bluntly, not willing to mince words so he could get to the Hokage and report this quickly, then find Jiraiya and do the same to him. Both needed to know for similar and differing reasons, "I was there. And you know what's really nice? He's got full control."

"Full control as in-."

"-Full control as in he can transform into the Sanbi and still talk and do what he wants. And that's just fun for everybody," Naruto then turned to Killer B and didn't flinch or look anything less than the man that he was when he walked around Konoha every day. A stark contrast to how he'd been in front of him before leaving, "I'm telling the Hokage that you guys don't need to be out here anymore Kakashi. If B really wants me, he can get me later."

And with that he walked the rest of the way down the road to head home along with Lee and Tenten. If Killer B wanted at him badly enough to stab him in the back, well that was just how that particular conflict was going to happen, because Naruto didn't care if he'd come all the way to Konoha to take his head home with him.

Killer B wasn't the scariest jinchuuriki Naruto had ever run into anymore. He was just powerful.

Naruto realized after the mission had ended that people who had power didn't scare him. No, it was certain kinds of people with power that scared him. People like Orochimaru.

'I can't even imagine…' Kakashi thought to himself, not blaming Naruto for shellshockedly setting the Killer B thing aside in the face of what he knew now, 'Orochimaru has years and years of intelligence on Konoha's secrets because of Kabuto, and now this.'

Suddenly sitting out and making sure Killer B didn't do anything off-kilter didn't seem so important any longer.

XxX

(Akatsuki Hideout)

"Good work," The Akatsuki leader remarked to his remaining members through his hologram after concluding the sealing away of another tailed beast, "That makes the Yonbi, the Gobi, and now the Rokubi."

"Just great," Kakuzu said grumpily to the others present through the connection they all had, "Now the sealings are taking even longer since Sasori croaked and lost his ring."

They had paid the puppeteer his respects before commencing with the now four day sealing process to put the Rokubi away, and after concluding the most urgent matter they finally had the opening to speak on just what had transpired.

It had been touched upon before, but it was better served for after the most important matter had been handled. Deidara simply repeated the show stopping sentence he'd entered the connection with, "Orochimaru has the Sanbi."

They'd all heard it once and were forced to put it on the backburner for the time being. They'd heard it a second time, and there were some that wondered if it had simply been a matter of fatigue catching up to them after the prolonged sealing ritual.

This was why silence reigned between the hologram versions of the remaining eight members. A hologram with Sharingan eyes looked around at his remaining fellow members without remarking aloud. Only his partner would know what his real expression was due to the jutsu connecting them all hiding his face.

"…The fuck?" Hidan said before anyone else had registered the information enough to form an eloquent thought.

Amber eyes on a female's hologram turned to the spiky-headed one with the purple ripple-patterned eyes affixed sharply on Deidara's, "Nagato…" The woman said to him.

"Deidara." The imposing leader said.

"Yes Leader-sama?"

"Explain. Everything."

It was not a request.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Konohagakure no Sato)

"Another," Jiraiya commented, requesting another bottle of sake to replace the one he'd recently finished draining thoroughly of its contents. Moderation was not the word of the day, "Keep 'em coming."

Quick service was the name of the game in a ninja village when it came to all things. Food, and especially drinks of the alcoholic variety, they needed to be provided quickly, because ninjas were rather quick on their own end to drift to the extreme of the dissatisfied customer spectrum. That could be dangerous were it not for the stern laws protecting civilian purveyors of goods from misplaced ninja wrath.

When it came to Jiraiya however, it was still dangerous, laws or not.

A bottle was slid his way from the end of the bar only to be caught by the well-manicured hand of his teammate. The female one. The one that didn't (officially) desert the village. The one that wasn't a new jinchuuriki.

"It's still daylight Jiraiya," Tsunade said, taking a seat next to him without looking his way. Neither of them looked at each other, instead staring straight ahead at nothing but the bottles on display, "After this I don't want to hear you getting on me about my drinking ever again."

"You know Orochimaru-."

"I know. Sensei told me about the little message he said the brat was told to give him by our old friend," Without even looking, Tsunade caught a small saucer meant for her and noticed Jiraiya hadn't been using one at all. She was getting first dibs on that bottle in that case, "…There's not much we can do about it now."

"Not much we can do…" Jiraiya said, quietly parroting her words and getting a glare out of her, "You know, that's almost exactly what sensei said to me when Orochimaru got away in the first place. He said that what happened happened. I tried to stop him and didn't have it in me to get it done, and he didn't have it in him to try at all."

That was the cursed justification for a quitter or a loser coming up short; there's not much we can do about it now, or there's not much that can be done. Any possible way of transforming that sentence simply sat with Jiraiya as a cop out.

There was plenty that could be done. There was plenty that needed to be done.

"You can think that some crap approach like that is going to be fine this time if you want to," Jiraiya said, letting Tsunade finish her drink and refill it before taking the bottle for himself, "I'm tired of him skating for the crap he's done. Akatsuki is going to be at his throat now more than ever, but depending on who he thinks he can destroy first, Orochimaru's got his pick of what to do next."

"You always thought he was the strongest out of the three of us back before he got a tune-up. What do you think you've got going for you now?"

"We're going to find that out aren't we?"

"Jiraiya…"

"Hime, you know as well as I do that things are just going to get worse. This isn't going to be enough for him, nothing ever is."

"…"

The two just continued to drink together in silence.

XxX

(With Naruto – Uzumaki Clan Mask Temple)

A quiet place to train. That was what Naruto wanted. He couldn't go to Team 10's usual place to rearrange the scenery because he'd be too easy to find and distract. He needed nothing to get in his way, and since his training wasn't outright destructive he could do it indoors so that he could hide better.

He'd barely started on sprucing up the mask temple and he hadn't tried to see if any more of them could do anything after his brush with the Shinigami Mask, but it was still an out of the way place on property that no one went to or even really knew existed these days except for him.

It was also kind of ironic that the jutsu he was trying to expound upon was his mother's, and he was doing it on the clan grounds that had been granted to them through their relationship with Konoha.

In the main room of the mask temple, Naruto was seated cross-legged and focusing intensely on the chains coming out of his wrists underneath his arm-warmers. How the hell were you supposed to make a useful barrier with these things? Jiraiya said his mother could do it, but he wasn't getting anything so far other than better chain control, which was nice, but wasn't the point of his working overtime with them.

There wasn't any such thing as mission burnout when the last one ended the way that it had. It had only been a matter of hours since he'd returned home and turned in his report, and he'd spent as much of the time as he could training. There wasn't any time to waste, and training was the call of the hour.

Hitting it three times a day for eight combined hours wasn't enough, even with the other clones he had littered around the grounds doing not only what their original was doing, but other things. He could sleep and rest when he dispelled them all and blacked out.

It felt like one of those days where he'd welcome that, even though he'd been told repeatedly not to use that many to train with. The short-term benefits weren't worth the potential brain aneurism he'd give himself one day, that was what Tsunade and Shizune told him way back when.

Having run things for an entire three hour session, he felt it was time to bring things to a close before he got too many memories at once and wound up hurting himself worse. Standing up, he formed a hand-seal to cancel all of his clones and dropped back down to one knee with a pained grunt.

Hand posted on the ground to keep himself propped up, he shook slightly before standing back up. Oh, if only aspirin worked to solve this kind of problem.

Of course all of the pain did come with something. A clone did figure that working with his clone brethren created more chains to work with. So maybe that was how he could form some sort of barrier. Yeah, that seemed like the ticket, and it would keep him from having to remain still to keep it active, as his clones could do it for him.

During the second session after a short hour-long rest he'd have to dip into that and see what he could do. Sure, he still had to work out the actual jutsu, but Jiraiya had taught him _something_ about barrier ninjutsu, even if he hadn't managed to learn any in between everything else. The few he knew required wards, were too basic, and were simply no good in fights.

And another interesting thing another clone discovered; he could make more chains from his back than from his arms by using his vertebrae. Ouch. That sounded unpleasant to say the least, and a pain to try and control.

Another thing for later.

For now he'd been in that stuffy, rundown temple for a while and needed some fresh air to recharge.

Heading outside, he found a friend of his sitting patiently on the stairs and waiting. He was sure that watching all of his clones dispel at once scared the hell out of her or at least got a good jolt of surprise when it happened, "Hey Hinata. What's up?"

Turning around on the stairs to look at him, she gifted Naruto with a pleasant smile, "Well… people said that you had come back," A frown then came to her face, "They're also saying other things that aren't so reassuring, but I wondered where you were since you didn't go home."

"Well I'm just training here," Naruto said, sitting down with her on the steps to relax for a bit, "I figured, I've got this place so why not use it for a bit, you know? I've still got to get it all sorted and stuff, but it's mine, and I still like it here."

He wasn't going to do anything destructive there until he could pick a good spot for it that he could freely tear up, but as far as the more skill-intrinsic techniques went, that was his place of choice. It made him feel like he wasn't alone, like he had an actual clan watching over him.

It was probably a weird thought, so it wasn't one he was too keen on sharing aloud.

"So, how'd you find me anyway?" Naruto asked Hinata, "This place isn't really that close to the rest of the village, and the only other people I've shown are Team 7 and Ino-chan."

"H-Honestly, I didn't know this place existed until I started looking around. But once I got nearby I could kind of see you-, well, more like your clones."

"Ah, Byakugan."

"Yes."

This was the hallmark of most of the talks that they had. Hinata always wanted to get the chance to talk to him alone, and Naruto was always more than willing to happily engage her in conversation, but they didn't have much in common to propagate productive dialogue.

Even Hanabi did a better job at conversing with Naruto than Hinata did, and she was significantly younger.

Naruto really liked Hinata. She was a good girl and had never done any wrong by him even as far back as the Academy days, but Ino had a better natural connection to Naruto compared to her. Even back when they'd been genin they'd communicated extremely well, along with Shikamaru as well, which had been Team 10's major sticking point that justified sending them into the chunin exams.

All that Hinata could really do was make small talk about general topics. She was still hesitant to try and lead into any sort of more in-depth conversation with him. Thankfully, Naruto was freer-flowing with the words and could make something for them to talk about even if she couldn't, "So how's Hanabi doing? The chunin exams in Iwa are almost here."

Thankful for the talking point, Hinata graciously smiled Naruto's way, "Hanabi-chan is fine. She talks a lot about getting to the third stage so that she can learn something. A jutsu that you said you would teach her if she got that far?"

"Yeah," Naruto said with a sheepish grin, "I want Little Firecracker to do well, and I know she will anyway, but it's just fun when I can fire her up. She tries to act like she's above that kind of thing, but I know she can get just as riled up as anyone else." Call him sadistic, but he thought it would be fun to see just how crazy Hanabi and Konohamaru would get with against other during the whole exam. They definitely didn't like each other.

"She really looks up to you," Hinata commented, "She thinks you're incredible."

"Ahahaha…" He knew as much already, but it was still weird to think about a Hyuuga looking up to him. Konohamaru he understood, because that kid was kind of a punk. But to know that he'd corrupted one as traditionally prim as Hanabi with his pure undiluted awesome, it warmed the cockles of his heart, "I always thought you were a better person than I can be. Really, I'm not so great."

At that admission he sobered up supremely, thinking of how he'd fled from Orochimaru's full power. He'd ran away. He thought he was done with the losing and running away after returning home from the capital. He couldn't even finish Kabuto off because of all of that. He hadn't had any idea that Kabuto had been that tough of a customer either.

He was strong enough to take on the big boys of the ninja world now and win. He'd defeated Kimimaro, Darui, Guren, and more. When it came to the best of the best though, people like Itachi and Orochimaru, he was still behind them.

There was nothing wrong with that from a standpoint of being a splendid ninja, but being a competent high-ranking ninja wasn't enough when you had the baddest on the planet gunning for your throat. The grind never stopped.

"You should never say something like that," Hinata insisted, a frown marring her gorgeous features, "A person like you, what makes you so special, is that you always look forward instead of dwelling on what's already happened. Don't you see? It's because of you that the rest of us moved past Iruka-sensei's death so quickly."

Naruto's eyes went wide at that being brought up, "Really?"

Hinata nodded, "Kiba-kun even said it, that you had the right idea about going on and getting better, so that nothing like that could ever happen to anyone within these walls ever again. Shino-kun agreed."

That was damnably flattering, and he'd never hear it directly from either of those two with their personalities. Taking it from Hinata was as good as the indivisible truth though, because she never lied. But if it was because of him that the rest of the close-knit next-generation that had been students of Iruka got back up so quickly, the only reason Naruto himself went forward so soon was because of Ino.

Looking down at her feet as she kept talking, Hinata moved through her uncomfortable feelings and kept going, "I-It's why I've always thought you were strong. Not because of the Kyuubi, or because you became good enough to be a Guardian Ninja, or anything like that. So don't be down on yourself."

"Pssht, I don't get down," Naruto insisted, squinting his eyes over in her direction, "Hey, by 'always'… do you mean back in the Academy too?"

Now of all times, years after the fact, he'd admit that his performance in the Academy was downright atrocious even in comparison to the kids that didn't even wind up becoming genin in the end. Effort and always moving forward into the next thing even after failing could only count for so much when you went about it as incorrectly as he did.

"Especially back then."

Huh. Well wasn't that something?

XxX

(With Ino – Elsewhere in Konoha – Hot Springs)

For the last several days, Ino had the nagging suspicion that she was being watched. She was just learning how to sense the more subtle chakra signatures around her, so she wasn't particularly adept at it yet even to the degree that Naruto was. Even so, she had the oddest feeling no matter where she went. Short of heading home for the night she always felt like there was some sort of presence keeping an eye on her.

When feeling like that, she really didn't find the idea of being alone too appealing. Even in a place as public as the baths, she would have rather had someone around that could watch out just in case, or if nothing else serve as a useful witness if something went wrong.

"Is there something wrong?" Sakura asked her after being subjected to Ino's freely wandering eyes moving all over the area suspiciously since they'd first entered, "You seem kind of… twitchy I guess."

"Do you ever get the feeling someone's watching you?" Ino asked in return, finding it hard to relax despite their comfortable setting.

Sakura narrowed her eyes suspiciously, "You mean like someone peeking?" She said quietly, shooting her eyes in the direction of the men's side of the bath. That was a fairly long ways away, across the street to the other side of the springs altogether, "I've got a nice little illusion for this situation, just in case any-."

"No, no, no," Ino cut her off before she could cast a blanket genjutsu over the area for naught, "No. I mean, I feel like I've been getting shadowed every time I've gone outside for the last week or so. But I couldn't tell you where it's coming from or who it could be."

"Admirer?"

"No, they've never been that good about hiding from me. And even if it was they would have confronted me by now."

"Stalker?"

"Kami no," Ino cringed at the thought before justifying why it wasn't, "It's not a stalking kind of m.o. because I feel someone watching me all the time except for when I'm at work or at home. If it was a stalker, after they got my routine down they'd pick their spots on when to watch me. They wouldn't keep doing it all the time."

"So someone's actively spying on you?"

"Why me? I'm not even that important."

Sure, she had a job in the intelligence division with torture and interrogation, but she wasn't high-ranking enough to make any fuss over. In the grand scheme of things, all Ino did was the grunt work of actually getting the intel and handing it up the ladder. If anyone were to spy on a member of that division they should have chosen to go after someone higher, at least one of the people that she reported to.

Furrowing her brow in thought, Ino eventually pressed her index and middle fingers to her temple to focus and reach out as far as she could to search for a connection that was somewhat familiar to her, eventually finding one within her technologically unassisted range, _"Shika. Are you anywhere near the hot springs?"_

It took a moment to hear a reply but she knew she'd heard the mental equivalent of a sigh, _"…Yes. What do you want?"_

"_Humph, well you could be a bit more excited to talk to me,"_ Ino insisted telepathically, and from Sakura's point of view it showed all over her face,_ "It's not like we've trained together or gone on any missions in a few weeks now."_

"_The most restful few weeks of my life."_

"_Oh screw you, that's such a lie. You've been doing your investigation the whole time."_

"_You're right. And I've just now had a few days of actual downtime since Hokage-sama dismissed me, so what do you want?"_

"_Go to the hot springs, don't be seen, and do some looking around for me. Where would be the best place to spy on someone on the woman's side of the bath?"_

It took a minute or so, probably of Shikamaru debating the merits of actually getting up from wherever he was to head over to the springs and risk looking like a pervert, skulking around upon Ino's request, but eventually the power of friendship won out, _"Fine. Give me like ten or fifteen minutes and try me again. I'm going over with Chouji."_

"_Thank you Shika!"_ Ino beamed over the connection, a grin spreading across her face physically at netting Shikamaru into sparing a minute to help her out. All she got in return was an annoyed grunt noise, which was weird, because who grunted mentally? It was easier to think words than to think a grunt like that, "It's being handled."

Sakura raised an eyebrow at Ino's assured declaration that the woe she had recently shared with her pink-haired friend was currently being attended to.

"Just like that?" She asked as Ino sank down into the water, "You've been out of it since I picked you up from work. At first I thought it was something to do with Naruto, because Sasuke-kun's been weird since he got home earlier, but now that I know what it is you're over it just like that?"

"Yep."

"Can I ask why, or are you just going to be vague?"

"You'll find out in like twenty minutes."

Any time table given by Shikamaru was always to be taken with a five-to-ten minute lag time added on for safety's sake. Similar to how one on Team 7 was to deal with Kakashi, as they used a minimum of two hours instead of five-to-ten minutes.

XxX

(A Few Minutes Later – Outside of the Hot Springs)

There were many hotels, small snack and sweet shops, and buildings in the hot springs district, which meant many places, many rooftops, alleys, and all other sorts of nooks and crannies to hide in. It was a very easy place to conceal one's presence. All you had to do was ask Jiraiya to find this out.

Keeping an eye on Naruto as Danzo had directed wasn't an option for Sai and his two other cohorts; Fuu and Hyo. After Naruto had compromised them a short time back at the Uzumaki Clan Mask Storage Temple it was decided that it was too risky for Root to directly observe Naruto, thus it fell to observing him secondhand through the people closest to him.

Asuma, Jiraiya, or Tsunade? Fuck no. They were way too dangerous to dwell around for too long. Jiraiya especially since all he needed was a good reason to shove a Rasengan down the throat of anyone having to do anything with Root.

Shikamaru? That boy never did anything. Aside from being too dangerous to shadow, watching him wouldn't garner them any information that they didn't already know.

Thus leaving Ino.

She was slowly developing sensor abilities underneath her father so it was rather dangerous to spy on her too closely, but unlike Naruto her instinctive reaction to things that she felt were off wasn't direct, explosive, or potentially violent. Therefore she was much safer to keep tabs on than any of the alternative options.

If they watched her, eventually she would drift back around to Naruto, as they were teammates and apparently close to having an intimate personal relationship.

Eyeing Ino and Sakura in a women's hot spring that was steadily increasing in the number of women populating the waters, Sai barely blinked at the sight of the well-conditioned bodies of the opposite sex. The physical traits of people, even women, held no interest to him outside of the need to identify a target.

Turning to one of his partners, the masked Hyo, Sai questioned him directly as they watched over the unresponsive body of Ino's fellow clansman Fuu, "Her behavior has been inconsistent with how she's been acting since we've been watching her."

"She's not as good at sensing as Fuu, or even Inoichi-san," Hyo informed Sai, "But with what she is capable of; she has a feeling of when things aren't as they should be, even if she can't tell what it is. This is why we have to stay so far back."

Only Fuu was able to get close with the use of the Mind Body Switch Jutsu of the Yamanaka clan to take over an animal to better observe her. It was safer than any Henge or any sort of jutsu that would cover movement, thus he was their lead man in the operation.

Sai and Hyo only remained in the general area to keep watch over Fuu's body and act as support.

Their bodies then suddenly froze in place entirely, as stiff and unmovable as boards. Oh, that wasn't good.

"You know, girls really don't like being looked at while they're not wearing clothes," Shikamaru commented, appearing behind the Root members as he bound them with his shadow, "I don't know why the police force doesn't post people around to keep watch over this area to keep things like this from happening."

Along with him Chouji noted the identity of one of the two Root members, "Hey Shikamaru, it's that guy that we chased all over the Uchiha District."

"Yeah, we wound up looking pretty hard for you after you went down," Shikamaru said with a small smile, "Now we've got three instead of one. If that isn't something…"

"How'd you even know they were here?"

"Easy," Shikamaru told his rotund friend, "They know Ino can somewhat sense them so they wouldn't get anywhere near close enough for her to ID them, but since she felt them a little anyway they don't know exactly what her range is. At best they had a really good guess, because of that guy I'd wager." He said, pointing to Fuu who was still on the ground motionless.

A bead of sweat went down Sai's face from underneath his headband despite the fact that the severity of the situation didn't otherwise show on his face.

Fuu's body hadn't moved yet, so either he hadn't gone back to his body yet, or he was smart enough to fake remaining unresponsive so that he could wait for an opening. He would have been able to feel all of their bodies be captured, so he knew about it. That was their only chance.

"So," Sai said, trying to buy Fuu a window of opportunity to make a move, "What is it you plan on doing now? You have me, and you have two other partners of mine. What's your next move?"

Shikamaru just pointed at his own head, "We keep running into you guys, and I'm sick of wondering why. Once, twice, yeah maybe I could let it slide, especially since I was told to. Three times or more and it's a damn problem."

"You should have left well enough alone and left us to do our work," Hyo said, somehow managing to come across as threatening despite the lack of any kind of intent or emotion, "You have no idea what you're getting yourselves into."

"No, I don't," Shikamaru admitted, "That's what Ino is for. Chouji?"

"Bubun Baika no Juts (Partial Multi-Size Jutsu)!"

This was it. Sai knew what was about to happen. Shikamaru was going to time the release of his jutsu with Chouji grabbing them all up or smashing them with his own clan jutsu. Shikamaru released Sai and Hyo first, as one of Chouji's giant-sized hands swiped them both up before they could retaliate or make a substitution.

Moving over to Fuu's prone body next, the same precaution was taken to ensure that nothing surprised them. When the shadow jutsu was released and Chouji's free hand swept down to grab him up however, Fuu's eyes instantly snapped open and he leapt at Chouji, intending to draw his tanto and go for the throat.

…At least until his body stopped itself against his will, again. This time it wasn't because of Shikamaru either.

"Shinranshin no Jutsu (Mind Body Disturbance Jutsu)," Walking into the alley housing the impromptu conflict, Ino held her hands in the necessary hand-seal to disable Fuu's control over his own nervous system.

"I had it handled." Shikamaru insisted, alluding to a second version of himself that he'd hidden to sneak around the back of the alley and attack with its shadow from a different angle. Its shadow had been within inches of reaching Fuu before he could successfully attack Chouji

Ino rolled her eyes and focused fully on Fuu, allowing Chouji to grab him with his other enlarged hand and capture him, "Alright, let's have a talk _cousin_," She said, referring to Fuu specifically, "Because this following me around shit is getting old."

XxX

(Late Afternoon – Outside of the Gates)

On the reading binge of a lifetime, Kakashi looked up from his third straight book and over to Killer B who was still sitting around doing nothing. Every once in a while he'd pull out his notepad and write while muttering to himself, but gods this had to be boring, "You know, if you're bored you can borrow one of these to read. I'm already done with the other two."

There was no reason not to be cordial. It wasn't like _not_ being polite was going to keep the bottom from falling out on this situation if push came to shove.

Killer B just shook his head and remained silent. Damn this was slow going.

Eventually, Kakashi felt the weight of a hand settle on his shoulder and looked up to see a smoking Asuma look down at him lazily, "Oh, Asuma. Is it time already?"

"Shorter shifts," The bearded jounin said with a shrug, "There's no need for us to all blow ourselves out for days at a time. That's the reasoning for it that I got anyway."

Kakashi regarded the man closely before sighing and closing his book with a snap after dog-earing his last page, "Well I guess that's that," Standing up while gathering the rest of his modest collection, he gave Killer B a wave and departed with a smile, "Until the next time B-san."

With Kakashi and Asuma trading places directly, the latter sitting in for the former, it seemed to be nothing more than a routine changing of the guard until Kakashi got well out of sight and presumably back into the village.

This left just Asuma and B outside on the lonesome road by themselves.

Asuma's body promptly fell apart in a puff of smoke and left one Uzumaki Naruto in its place, staring the Hachibi jinchuuriki down directly with a cigarette still hanging loosely from his mouth. Killer B raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment. That kid had a really good Henge of the smoking Sarutobi. More than likely because the man had been his jounin sensei.

Naruto was certain that Kakashi had indeed seen through it. He wasn't sure why Kakashi let him sit in though. For some reason, the man was always good to him, and Naruto suspected that it was because of who his father was to Kakashi, but he'd given him this avenue, and he was going to take it.

He had to thank Kakashi for that later one way or another.

So there they were. For some reason, Naruto had found it prudent to sit out and face off with him alone.

For the first time in a while, Killer B cracked a big grin at the sight of his entire reason for being in a foreign country sitting right in front of him, "Looks like you found your heart. I guess we can finally start."

Naruto just blinked and let the ash fall off of the end of his cigarette with a movement of his lips before he spoke, "Alright, let's get this out there. I did what I did to protect my teammate, my client, and myself, so if you want to fight let's just go somewhere safe and do this because neither of us have time to let this sit for any longer."

"…Say what?" Killer B reacted blankly.

"If you want to kill me, fine," Naruto said with a shrug, "Let's just get it over with because there's a line for it. At least if you kill me Akatsuki won't get the Kyuubi, so if I have to fight someone that'll kill me after they beat me, I'd rather it be against you."

"You really ain't scared anymore are you?" Killer B had run up against all sorts, to the point that it had been around a decade since he'd had the possibility of doing battle against someone that wasn't wary of his power. To say that he was skeptical of the fact that one week had changed Naruto's tone on the matter was a nice way of putting it.

"Not of you."

But he wasn't flinching.

In a sudden motion, B extended his right arm and hand in the form of an outstretched fist Naruto's way. There wasn't any killing intent behind it, so aside from following it with his eyes, Naruto didn't budge. He simply held it out in front of him as if waiting for something.

After a few seconds, B frowned upon realizing that Naruto had no idea what he wanted from the gesture, "…So uncool. Bump it fool!"

A… fist bump? Really?

Naruto would have wagered Killer B putting that fist through his skull before doing something like that. He didn't know why, but other than rampant paranoia over who it was in front of him, he didn't see a reason not to. Thus, he proceeded to bump fists.

And there Killer B saw it, promptly understanding everything. Why Naruto fought Omoi and Darui to a fatal degree, and how it had been a meeting of chance on the battlefield. A him-or-them situation. But he got more than that.

Naruto didn't leave after running across Killer B because he was afraid of him a week ago. No, no, no, he was about to deal with it right then and there for better or for worse. Naruto only left because he was afraid of Jiraiya AND Sarutobi Hiruzen, and they had specifically told him to get the hell out of there. It was as good a reason for anyone under eighteen years old to do what one was told.

Being wary of someone wasn't the same as being afraid, and being wary of Killer B's power was just common sense, something that many others would try and doubt that Naruto had. This simply was not the case however.

Compared to what Naruto went on to see on his mission, he wasn't scared of anything that Killer B would throw at him. Whether that was a mistake or not, Naruto stood by it in his heart. Orochimaru; a man that was already one of the most powerful ninjas to ever hail from Konoha. He had then taken on the power of a biju, granting him the body with all the power necessary to back up his technical acumen with the ninja arts.

He had full control, just like Killer B did. Not quite actually, but the end results were close enough to being the same.

In addition to that, he could also feel that Naruto had also recently lost someone important to his life, and he too had come face-to-face with the person that had killed him, someone he'd thought to be a friend before being betrayed. He understood the feeling of wanting to get revenge, which was why he was willing to confront B and get whatever was to happen over with.

Killer B didn't hate Naruto. It was just the nature of the beast of the life that they lived that resulted in what happened during a mission to his student. But still, he cared deeply for Omoi before his demise, and he needed to express that.

Without saying anything else, Killer B's red chakra cloak sprang to life around his body. Not to be emasculated, Naruto winced before drawing upon his own, leaving the two jinchuuriki flexing their chakra muscles so to speak.

They were then promptly surrounded by fourteen armed ANBU in black cloaks with their tip-less tantos drawn.

Killer B and Naruto looked around at their mysterious assailants before looking to one another, the wordless question being if they were with Naruto to protect him. In return, Naruto just shook his head and shrugged. They weren't with him. He hadn't been followed out of the village by anyone, he'd made sure of it. That meant that they had already been there, and they were meant to watch Killer B in case he got out of line.

Flaring his demonic chakra was obviously taken as a judgment call for being out of line.

"Kyuubi jinchuuriki," One of the masked men said in an emotionless tone, "Go back to the village and do not turn around. This is none of your concern."

"…Uh, actually this whole thing is my concern," Naruto tried to reason. He knew he couldn't order ANBU to do anything, but these guys reminded him of the guy he and his friends had taken on in the Uchiha District. He really didn't like that guy, "So if you don't mind, fuck off."

They didn't like him either. He was far too emotional to safely be given control of so much power.

"You _can_ be replaced Uzumaki," Another of the odd ANBU members said, "There are far more appealing candidates that would make for a better weapon than yourself."

Ooh. For those that wanted to try and persuade Naruto to step aside without incident, that wasn't really the best thing to say.

You see, Naruto simply was not a fan of that kind of rhetoric. Because of that, they actually pissed him off significantly, for that reason and the fact that they _really_ reminded him of that guy that was spying on him and his friends. This would mark the second time that they had gotten into his personal business.

They weren't Jiraiya. They weren't Sarutobi Hiruzen. Even if there were way more of them, that meant next to nothing to him. If they were threatening to kill him they weren't with Konoha anyway, since everyone would have to know what a no-no that course of action was, for more than one reason.

Glaring all around, Naruto cracked his knuckles underneath his arm warmers as he addressed the rogue ANBU, "You done goofed," To his surprise, Killer B got up as well, also seemingly eager to fight, and not against him, "What? You're helping?"

"Like ya said to them fake-ass ANBU before, this is yours and mine's score," Killer B said with a grin, "If anybody's takin' eight chunks outta your ass it's gonna be me! Wheee!"

Fourteen on two. A complete mismatch in every way.

"Alright sure. Just don't kill any of 'em. I need to see something."

Pity the fourteen.

XxX

(Thirty Minutes Later – Hokage Residence)

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

Palming a kunai for security, Hiruzen walked his way to the front door of his very large, very well-protected home. The reason he was armed, was due to the fact that people weren't supposed to just knock on the door. Anyone that came close enough was supposed to be given the business by his ANBU guards, and then only after they were cleared was he to then be informed that he had a guest.

No one knocked on his door. That just wasn't how it worked. He was the Hokage for crying out loud! He wasn't in his office or something where appointments and general walk-ins were welcome, he was at home!

And while knocking on the front door didn't exactly seem like the way to go about an assassination attempt on the God of Shinobi, Hiruzen didn't get that nickname without developing a healthy level of paranoia.

Upon opening his front door however, he then realized what kind of person would be brazen enough to come right up to his front step for anything, "…Can I help you this evening Naruto-kun?" The very same person that found it possible to steal the Scroll of Sealing from that very building years ago. Had it really been that long already?

Either way, Naruto stood in front of the Hokage, goggles down and looking like he'd just had himself one hell of a workout as he jerked his thumb in the direction of several bundles of what appeared to be Konoha ANBU, beaten to a pulp with their masks cracked, broken, and missing altogether, "Is this your shit?"

Wow. Someone had been busy. And he'd even brought a grinning Killer B along, who stood by the captured ANBU like they were trophies.

Needless to say, the reason why the Hokage Residence's ANBU guard hadn't responded in a security measure sort of manner was because they really didn't know just how to react. There were only six of them. Naruto and Killer B had apparently just beaten the hell out of fourteen, had neatly tied them up, and had taken them into the heart of the village (more than likely down the main streets in front of EVERYONE) in order to deliver them straight to the head ninja in charge himself.

It was an extremely confusing scenario.

"No it's not. But I can guess who they belong to," Hiruzen said with a sigh before motioning for one of his ANBU guards who immediately came to his side awaiting orders, "Check them over for anything strange. They aren't ours."

It didn't take long for them to discover the strange seals branded on the backs of the captured ninjas' tongues.

"Danzo…" Hiruzen muttered, wishing that he hadn't left his pipe in his study before heading down to answer his door. Some good, relaxing tobacco was just what he needed, but he wasn't willing to bum any of Naruto's low-cultured cigarettes. He had an image to maintain after all.

Naruto's ears felt like wiggling upon hearing a name that he'd heard dropped hundreds of miles away from home a matter of days ago, "Danzo? As in the elder Shimura Danzo?"

"I'm surprised that you know that name Naruto-kun, but yes."

XxX

(Ten Minutes Later – Naruto's Apartment)

Naruto almost burned a path through the village on the way back home. Killer B had even been surprised at the rate Naruto rushed away from the front of the Hokage Residence.

There was too much on his plate and he was being split into too many directions at once, but since Killer B wasn't spoiling for a deathmatch at the moment, Naruto's mind told him to go and inform his inner circle on what he'd gotten from Hiruzen.

On his way up the stairs he almost kicked his own door in after feeling familiar chakra sources within, his friends. As strange as it was that they were at his place while he wasn't there, that saved him the trouble of having to go around and hunt down someone to run his mouth to.

"Holy crap you guys! I just beat up a bunch of-," Naruto stopped himself mid-tirade when he saw three unconscious Root members on the floor of his front room, bound in place by Shikamaru's shadows, "…-These guys. What the hell?"

"Goldie!" Ino beamed up at him from her place on the floor, greeting him brightly despite the hard work she was subjecting herself to. She was kneeled down by the head of one of the Root ANBU, trying her best to crack their mental defenses and get something useful out of them, "Welcome home!"

This was one hell of a welcome, "What are you guys doing?" Naruto asked Chouji, Shikamaru, and Ino as he removed his sandals at the door, "Actually nevermind. I know what you're doing and I think I know why you're doing it, but why are you doing it in my house?"

"Where else were we going to go?" Shikamaru asked, relaxing on a chair while maintaining the rat hand-seal for his shadows, "It's not like we could have stayed in the streets and worked on these guys."

"Literally anywhere else," Naruto responded dryly, taking a seat on the floor next to Ino almost instinctively. Both Chouji and Shikamaru noticed this and shared a look before otherwise brushing it aside, "You could have taken them anywhere else and I'd have been fine with it. I've had enough Root ANBU for one day."

"How many is enough?" Chouji asked from the table in Naruto's kitchen where he was enjoying some leftover takeout from Naruto's refrigerator.

Naruto just shrugged and looked over the faces of the downed fake ANBU. One Yamanaka, one guy that he didn't know at all, and the last one was the guy that he'd already fought once before, "Like fifteen... fourteen maybe."

Ino frowned as her hand moved over the heads of each of the three so that she could work on all of them to crack their defenses, "This is rough," Her free hand brushed across her forehead to wipe away any sweat before it could begin to form, "Whoever sent these guys to spy on me really did a good job in fortifying their heads. Even Juugo wasn't this tough."

"They're from Shimura Danzo," Upon hearing that name, both Ino and Shikamaru focused on Naruto intensely. Both of them knew exactly who that was for different reasons, and what a big player in the village he was, "Kabuto said back when I fought him that he was the one responsible for why he 'existed' or whatever. Either way, when I said it to Hokage-jiji he was _pissed_."

That was interesting. Shikamaru's mind swarmed immediately, the first thought being that Danzo trained him. But that made no sense. If the rest of these ninjas were his, Kabuto didn't fit the bill for a Root ninja whatsoever.

It didn't make any sense. All of these guys would have broken their own necks before allowing themselves to be liabilities to their organization, and their organization was rather extreme on protecting Konoha by any means necessary. They were also brutally direct in their approach.

Kabuto certainly wasn't any of those things. His sense of self-preservation came first above all else, he clearly cared nothing for Konoha if he ferried info out to Orochimaru, and as he was now one couldn't believe Kabuto if his tongue was notarized.

Danzo wouldn't have had anything to do with a ninja like that. Why would he have created someone like that? Someone he couldn't control the way he controlled the rest of his private army?

XxX

(Kaminari no Kuni – With Itachi and Kisame)

Killer B, the most dangerous jinchuuriki currently in existence was absent from his position within the borders of territory held by Kumogakure. That left a gaping opening for a chance to be taken on Kumo's second jinchuuriki.

While a new partner was sought for Deidara in the wake of Sasori's death, Itachi and Kisame were sent up to take care of this particular jinchuuriki. Kisame didn't mind. She wouldn't be that difficult to get a piece of once she got outside of her village, and with Kisame's water abilities he could extinguish the fires that her biju could allow her to create.

It shouldn't have been too terribly difficult a task to accomplish. If they could take down the Yonbi, they could defeat the Nibi's jinchuuriki as well. Kisame wasn't exactly the hugest fan of fire however after the fight he had with the Konoha ninjas in Mizu no Kuni, thus he was thoroughly motivated to take Nii Yugito on.

Kisame kept snickering every so often as they travelled through the country. He had been ever since Deidara had explained everything that had happened on his and Sasori's bid to find Orochimaru, including the part where Itachi's younger brother fought him.

He found it entertaining that of the two remaining Uchiha Clan members, one handed Deidara his ass and the other one seemed poised to do something similar had he not over-pursued and gotten caught off-guard. Pointing out that Deidara actually ran from him was good to get a laugh at the mad bomber going off angrily in response.

"So that brother of yours sounds like he's doing well," Kisame said with a sharp-toothed grin, "Not shaping up the way you wanted him to though is he? He doesn't have the cure to your Mangekyou blindness sitting in his eye sockets yet."

Itachi's eyes drifted over to Kisame underneath his hat and over the raised collar of his cloak, "I would like to know how you think you know that?"

"Know that you're becoming as blind as a bat?" Kisame said with a shrug, "Itachi-san, I spend most of my time around you, and I have for years. Do you really think I couldn't notice your eyesight failing?"

That was the façade of the berserker that disguised the fact that Kisame was a rather intelligent and attentive man. He tried to look past everything on the surface, and was extremely difficult to assure of anything that he hadn't confirmed for himself.

"And this doesn't bother you?" Itachi asked, "That I'm losing my eyesight?"

"If it doesn't have you in a panic, it doesn't bother me," Kisame said, "From what I've seen, you're still stronger than me. So it doesn't necessarily matter yet. Of course we could always go get your brother and fix you."

Itachi didn't let his steps waver in the slightest, playing off the entire matter of his brother coming after him altogether, "He's not worth it."

"Cold-blooded as always Itachi-san." Kisame commented with a chuckle as they continued on. That was why he liked Itachi. Straight to the point, no need for sentiment. The man was like a shark.

After all, he'd already proven that he was willing to devour his own kind to stay alive.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Naruto's Apartment)

As Ino's mind-bending interrogation process continued to drag on later into the night, Chouji eventually shook his head, having moved away from the kitchen table to sit down with the rest of his childhood comrades, "We can't keep these guys here. Not for too long."

Keeping three unconscious ninjas in Naruto's apartment sounded cool (not to Naruto), but eventually something would go wrong. ANBU patrolled along with the military police constantly since the Kabuto happenstance, and if they were caught with these guys in Naruto's place, things were going to get nasty… for Naruto.

"What the hell are we going to do with them then?" Shikamaru asked before yawning audibly, "Fork them over to Hokage-sama? No. Then we'd never get our own answers. This is our problem too since they keep messing with us. I for one would like to at least know what we did."

Over with Ino her brow was furrowed with effort as she rolled through as much as she could of the three Root ninjas' minds, "This is like peeling three regenerating onions. Every time I get through one layer it's never the end of it. It's like I'm going in circles."

"Well focus on one and break them one at a time."

"That's what I did first smart guy," Ino retorted crankily. Who did he think he was talking to, an amateur? Of course she'd done that, "I focused on one, then when I looped around his head for the third time I moved to the next one until the same thing happened. Rinse and repeat. That was when I started leapfrogging between them, and then I started the other approaches. I'm trying every method daddy taught me and I'm hitting the wall here."

Laying down on the floor at Ino's side, Naruto poked Fuu in the head lazily, "Well this guy's a Yamanaka that's older than you, and you're using Yamanaka mind reading moves right? He probably told Danzo how to block that stuff so no other Yamanaka could read 'em. Actually, that Danzo guy probably knows how to stop all of the interrogation techniques from this village."

That brought Ino's attempt to read their minds to an end. Naruto actually had a point. A good point.

Ino had met Danzo, several times over the years. He was very intrigued by the goings-on of the Konoha Intelligence Division, especially that of Konoha T&I, and he was an elder. He was one of the top 5 highest-ranked ninjas in the village. There wasn't really anything info-wise that was above his pay grade.

He probably did know how to block every method of interrogation that Konoha had to offer. He probably had a failsafe for Ibiki's nastier measures just in case these guys didn't have unbreakable wills.

Thinking of this, not knowing that he was sharing that same thought with Ino and Shikamaru, Naruto began looking the Root ninjas over, in particular in their mouths after remembering his time with Hiruzen earlier that evening. Of course, he found the seal on the backs of their tongues, "Fuck. Found the problem. I'm stupid."

"Ugh, a seal?" Ino groaned, sitting backwards on the floor where she rubbed her sore knees from having kneeled on them for hours, "Can you break it Goldie?"

Naruto hummed to himself as he looked it over, "…Maybe. Probably. I can't do it tonight though. I need some more time to break it down,"

He then looked over at Ino and could see her dearth of chakra. Shikamaru had long since stopped holding them with his shadows since Ino had their consciousness in the palm of her hand, making his shadows unnecessary, so he had his chakra. She'd been working nonstop for hours, and that had been after Naruto had shown up. He didn't know how long she'd been into it before he'd arrived.

Sitting up, Naruto put a hand on Ino and shut his eyes, releasing a chakra pulse inside of her to feel how her chakra reserves were holding up. The sensation actually tickled her quite a bit and she squirmed, trying and failing to bite back a giggle.

"Tee-hee…" The red-faced Yamanaka girl couldn't help herself, "What was that all about?" She didn't know what it had been, she just knew that she'd liked it. She liked it a lot.

"It's probably better that I can't break this tonight anyway," Naruto said to the others after removing his hand, "Ino-chan's low on chakra. Even if I could break the seals right now, she doesn't have enough to keep going."

Mind readers worked in shifts for bigger jobs like this. Ino had been doing this alone.

Shikamaru nodded in understanding and rubbed the bridge of his nose, "Right. So we stash them here until morning. First thing, before the sun is even up, we have to move them, because Chouji _is_ right. We can't keep these guys here."

"I've got a place in mind," Naruto volunteered with a grin, "It's totally perfect."

"This is a fucking drag," Getting up from his sitting place Shikamaru enlisted Chouji's help to assist him in moving the bodies somewhere where they could be bound and effectively neutralized until it was time to move them, "I feel like a damn criminal…" He grumbled to himself as he decided that the broom closet was good enough to cram those jerks for a few hours.

It wasn't like Naruto had a lot of space for clandestine activities. It was either the broom closet or the bathroom, and he had a feeling that the resident of the apartment wouldn't have appreciated the latter.

Ino watched Shikamaru and Chouji drag Sai, Fuu, and Hyo off before sighing and almost collapsing back against the wall. She had really overextended herself trying to gut out a long interrogation such as the one she'd just completed, and all for nothing, "Hah… I checked their mouths for anything like suicide tablets and things, but I didn't see the seals."

She assumed that because she didn't know much about seals, she didn't think about checking every nook and cranny for any after doing the usual checks.

"They were at the backs of their tongues Ino-chan." Naruto said to defend her from herself, "You've got to get up in there and pull it out just to see it if they're out cold like they were."

Ino just moaned fitfully and leaned over to fall with her head on Naruto's lap, "…Tired." She could feel Naruto's body shake in quiet laughter at how childish her declaration of her exhaustion sounded. Hey, they couldn't all be walking chakra batteries like he was.

"Alright," Shikamaru walked back into the front from the hallway where he and Chouji had detained the Root members in his supply closet, "Their mouths are covered and those guys aren't going to be able to even move a muscle until I come back to get them, so we're good. I'm out of here."

Following the lazy genius out, Chouji made sure to wave goodbye before shutting the door, "See you guys. I'll bring breakfast!" Well that was certainly nice of him. Chouji was good people.

That left Naruto and Ino, "Ino-chan, go home. We're only gonna be able to get like five hours of sleep tonight and you need to rest to get your chakra back."

"Used too much chakra," Ino said, purposefully refraining from using pronouns to oversell her fatigue, "Carry to room. Staying here."

Rolling his eyes, Naruto swept his arms underneath the backs of her knees and underneath her back to cradle her and pick her up off of the floor. Ino almost mewled into his grasp, grinning saucily as he carried her back to his room right up until he unceremoniously dropped her on the bed.

"Hey! That is not how you put a lady to bed!" Ino cried out, kicking her legs weakly on the mattress. All she got in return was Naruto making a talky hand gesture over his shoulder as he went back into the living room, "You've got to be gentle Goldie!"

"I am gentle 'princess'!" Naruto's voice sounded out through the doorway from the hallway bathroom where he was changing. The door opened and his voice became that much clearer to her, "I dropped you on the bed instead of on the floor, or outside my door, or off of the balcony. Gentle."

Ino pouted, though Naruto couldn't see it. Eventually she started looking around and determined something after getting up to analyze it, "Oh wow, you washed the clothes that I left over here back when I used to sleep here sometimes." They were neatly folded on the top of Naruto's dresser. How considerate.

From the living room where Naruto was retrieving his sleeping roll for camping out, he heard Ino's inquiry and answered her, "Yeah, I didn't see why not. I didn't have that much laundry that week anyway, so it wasn't any trouble."

Having gotten the bag, he carried it back into his room to roll out on the floor when he returned and saw Ino taking her hair out of her ponytail, wearing a set of pajamas that she'd left over there. She'd changed in his room, with it possible for him to walk back in at any given time. She either really trusted him, knew she'd change quickly enough, or part of her wanted him to see her less than fully clothed.

Noticing that Naruto had reentered, Ino turned and smiled at him until she noticed that he was holding his travel bed. Her expression then descended into a frown, "Yeah, you're not using that."

"What? Why?"

"Goldie, I'm not taking your bed from you," Ino deadpanned, "We're both mature enough to sleep in it. We've slept in the same bed before."

"Your dad would murder me." Naruto easily remembered Inoichi's sort-of threat from years ago about his daughter, and how he was trusting Naruto to not take advantage of the fact that she was important to him, and yadda-yadda-threatening dad-yadda-yadda. That was all without him ever knowing about the _very_ close proximity that Ino would often keep with Naruto back when they were genin and she wanted to sleep.

Whether Naruto was stronger or not, Inoichi could still break his brain, and he wasn't down with that in any way, shape, or form.

"Daddy can mind his own business," Ino insisted, crossing her arms sternly underneath her chest as she plopped herself back down on the bed. She hadn't completely buttoned up her top, so it did wonders for showing and bouncing her bosom, "Now hop in scaredy cat."

"**What, are you scared of your human girlfriend now?"** The Kyuubi taunted from inside of Naruto's mind, **"Hahahaha, I'm sure she doesn't bite. Or at least if she does you would probably like it."**

'Don't need the comments right now, thank you! We can talk later!' Naruto shouted mentally in return before remembering that he didn't bother to spell out that Ino wasn't his girlfriend, "…Scoot over," Naruto slid underneath the covers next to a grinning Yamanaka girl, "What are you so super-happy about?"

"What? Who said I was super-happy?" She couldn't even muster the restraint to fight off the grin on her face to give that comment some credibility. She was smiling like a kid that knew she was doing something bad, and she'd been the one to say that they were mature enough to share the same bed.

It was an infectious attitude though, because Naruto returned it full-force, "You need to chill out," Naruto put his hand on Ino's stomach and let out the same chakra pulse as before in the living, only this time it was to tickle her all over instead of gauge her chakra reserves. Hearing her laugh and feeling her squirm next to him only spurred him on, "What? Does that tickle?"

"You know it tickles you jerk!" Ino said between laughs, "Don't give me that crap!"

"Hmm, I don't get it," Naruto feigned ignorance before a look of realization hit him, "Oh, it _does_ tickle! I didn't know that!" He said, letting her feel another pulse that sent her all the way down on the mattress, putting the laughing young woman at his mercy, "I didn't know you were so sensitive either Ino-chan."

After giving her another one, he found himself pulled down by the collar of his shirt, a hair's breadth away from Ino's lips. He could feel her body shudder underneath him as she continued to wriggle about in a more reserved manner, "Goldie…" Ino whispered to him softly, "You shouldn't do that again."

"Why?" There was simply too much 'challenger' in Naruto to obey at first request, at least not until he saw the almost hungry look in her eyes.

She wasn't being playful with him. Those were eyes full of intent, "…Because if you do I don't think I'll be able to control myself," Thighs pressed together tightly, Ino's face was a flushed red as she spoke, "I mean it."

When Naruto gave her those chakra pulses she could feel it tingle all over her body. All. Over. From the top of her head to the tip of her toes, and everything in between.

But in what way did she mean it? Did she tell him that because she wanted him to keep the two of them from doing something that was one bridge too far, or did she tell him because she actually wanted him to be bad and make her lose control?

"Ino," Naruto said to her, slowly rubbing his hand on her stomach, "Do you really want me to not do it again?" He asked her softly, "Tell me right now and I won't."

"And if I don't say anything?"

"…"

"…"

When they both went silent, Ino simply closed her eyes with a smile, allowing him to do as he would. His intent was felt full-force when she felt him call her bluff and force another pleasurable pulse of chakra through her. Oh, that was it. He was going to get it one way or another if she had anything to say about it.

She shuddered intensely before latching her lips onto Naruto's, intertwining her legs with his. It wasn't a chaste little peck on the lips or a first-kiss kind of deal. It was the sort of kiss from someone that knew what they wanted and held no qualms about taking it.

Had he not been warned in advance, it would have caught Naruto by surprise, but knowing how impulsive Ino could be he also knew that she would act on what she said. He hadn't been fully prepared for just how searing the kiss he received was, but he responded to it emphatically.

Hands bunching up Ino's pajama top, exposing the smooth skin of her toned body, he held her close as they explored each other's mouths with their tongues. Any apprehension either of them left had to admitting how they felt about each other vanished into thin air.

Pushing away, Ino planted light kisses on Naruto's jaw before he moved down to kiss at her neck, "Mine," She said to herself quietly as she was taken onto her back, clutching Naruto to her as tightly as she could, "Mine, mine, mine, mine." All she got was a low rumbling from Naruto's throat as he continued to lavish his affections onto her.

While Ino needed to get some sleep, she could always use the excuse of staying up for guard duty as the reason why she didn't get much rest when the topic would invariably come up the next morning. There was absolutely no need to inform anyone that she had basically allowed Naruto to grope and tongue-wrestle her into submission… yet anyway.

Hey, at least when they were finished she'd definitely be more than winded enough to catch a few 'z's, even if she _would_ probably have at least one hickey to show for it. She probably wouldn't even bother using a medical jutsu to make any of them fade, instead she'd probably choose to wear them like trophies until they went away naturally.

It would just be a silver lining on a golden cloud as far as she was concerned.

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Hour 5 – Naruto's Side)

What a workout. All of that male stripping in Shikamaru's body was thirsty work. He really needed to work on his stamina. Luckily, with all of the tips Naruto got from working it in front of the dozens of affluent women in Konoha, he was able at the very least to buy himself a nice sports drink as he hid himself at the top of the extremely tall Kikyo Castle landmark in town.

That was a good place to hide and plan his next move. He'd give Shikamaru a cut of his stripping proceeds of course, but he'd get the most of it. He did all of the legwork after all.

Eventually, Naruto did feel that he had been joined on the roof of the castle. One of Shikamaru's clones must have finally let him in on exactly where he was, "…Took you long enough. You actually tried looking for me after I started getting you good?"

"What. Did you. Do?" Shikamaru asked gravely, giving Naruto the sternest look he could muster in Naruto's body, "Do you know how many people in the village are talking about murdering me for what you did in my body? Asuma-sensei wants to kill me."

There was a lynch mob of the village's men probably forming at that very moment with the express purpose of capturing Shikamaru's body and making him pay for what Naruto did while in his form.

"Yeah, good luck with that," Naruto responded to his friend with a very un-Shikamaru-like grin on the face of his hijacked body, "You upped the ante first with your string of bullshit. I just rose to the occasion. Don't start what you can't finish."

"You started it!"

"I just ran off in your body! You drew first blood, not me!"

"You stripped for women in my body _Sergio_."

"Hey, yeah I stripped in _your_ body. So don't use my stripper alias, use yours like I did. Get it right."

"I'm not ever saying that troublesome name ever again. I don't want to hear you fucking say it," Shikamaru saw Naruto open his mouth and pointed at him threateningly, "Don't you dare."

"…_Shade_ _Jackson_."

"Kagemane no Jutsu (Shadow Possession Jutsu)!" A titanic shadow spread from Naruto's body at Shikamaru's behest, attempting to ensnare Naruto's and trap him, "This ends now!"

Despite the shadow's size and width, Naruto was easily able to evade it, even in Shikamaru's slower-to-react body, and even on a rooftop, "You're not in-synch with my chakra enough to control it right are you? No wonder you didn't just try to exhaust all of mine to end the jutsu early!"

When it came to using jutsu in the other's body, Shikamaru used more in Naruto's body than Naruto used in Shikamaru's, by a large margin. Naruto hadn't wasted a speck of Shikamaru's chakra all day long. He had been afraid that the first time he'd try any of his ultra-costly ninjutsu in Shikamaru's body he'd overload it and drain a huge amount unnecessarily, so he'd been very frugal about using chakra.

Shikamaru didn't have to worry about that at all. Good luck on trying to get rid of all of Naruto's chakra. Even with the lack of control and the abundance of chakra that Naruto had causing Shikamaru to overload everything he threw at Naruto, nothing he had was chakra-costly enough to really dent his teammate's supply.

"Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!" Shikamaru was now willing to harm his own body in order to stop the emotional terrorist inside of it. The mood had officially changed, and Shikamaru needed to stop Naruto before he made the coming days after they returned to their own bodies even more troublesome than he already had.

What normally would have been an extremely imposing attack jutsu of multiple thin shadow tendrils became a massive, bulky black abomination with an uncountable number of dark appendages. It was a rather horrifying sight and would have scared any hardened ninja… that didn't know how the jutsu was supposed to work.

Naruto did know. He knew that there was a reason Shikamaru ensured that the tendrils were always as thin as he could make them, and why he never made more than two dozen or so.

"…How are you even gonna control all of those?" Naruto asked curiously instead of running after he realized that none of the shadow tendrils were moving his way, instead just waving around uselessly, "I can't even count how many you made."

Shikamaru just groaned at the waste of time he'd created. Even if he could focus on any tendril in particular to attack Naruto with, none of them would have really moved fast enough to threaten him, "I thought I'd gotten past the chakra-synching after I made enough Kage Bunshin to look for you."

"Yeah, I'll admit that making clones isn't really as complicated as all of the shadow stuff Shika." Naruto admitted sheepishly.

"EEEEEK! TENTACLE MONSTER!"

Both Naruto and Shikamaru froze at the sounds of alarm they'd heard from the street below. The two then noticed the sight of every civilian scrambling away as if they were extras in a monster movie, pointing and crying out at the sight of Shikamaru's jutsu. Small ninja response squads were flying their way across the far lower rooftops to respond to the would-be threat.

"Take it down!" A ninja shouted from the lower-lying rooftops as many people readied their hand-seals for whatever distance jutsu they had at their disposal. Nobody was willing to get close to a tentacle monster to fight it. To hell with that. Everyone knew what those things did, "Scorched earth!"

The two former Guardians then paid attention to the actual sight of Kage Nui no Jutsu themselves and realized that, yes indeed it was large enough and had the appearance of the aforementioned abomination, "…Put it away! Put it away right now Shika!"

Shikamaru canceled the jutsu and both he and Naruto bailed off of the roof of Kikyo Castle with a pair of Shunshin to evade the multi-elemental barrage, mostly fire, flying their way from below and nearly blowing apart the entire top portion of the castle.

Sure, it was a beautiful, awe-inspiring landmark that was an integral part of the more majestic traits of the village… but there was a tentacle monster on top of it. All bets were officially off. No cost to village infrastructure was too high to exterminate such a natural atrocity. A fate worse than death awaited any who found themselves captured by the dreaded tentacle monster.

(Hour 5 – Ino's Side)

"Oh my…" Shizune muttered to herself, holding a hand over her face as she, Ino, Kiba, and Akamaru stood at the site of the now half-burned down castle that used to be a pristine landmark in Konoha. A piece of history as one of the oldest buildings still standing in the village, and it was half burnt out, "…They burned Kikyo Castle down?"

"Technically they didn't burn it down," Kiba pointed out, trying to be helpful, "Everybody else burned it down. Naruto and Shikamaru were just the reason that they did it. Hey Ino?"

Ino just groaned and rested her head against a wall hopelessly, "I'm so dead when it breaks that this was mostly my fault," Ino cried to herself, "I'm going to get bussed back down to genin all over again… I'll probably even get sent to the correctional facility for a 60-day spell. I am NOT wearing those prison jumpsuits!"

Shizune gave her a hopeful pat on the back and a smile, "There, there. It might not be so bad. Accidents happen," Ino in response simply pointed at the castle, the fire that had been burning it having just now been put out, "This is a ninja village. Property damage happens here all the time."

Not major property damage like this, but it happened nevertheless. The saving grace was that it was a joint effort from not only Naruto and Shikamaru, but also over fifteen other ninjas who impulsively attacked the creature on the top of the castle.

"Mmm…" Ino moaned weakly to the comforting medic-nin, "Just… Kiba, just tell me where they are. We almost got them this time. Next time for sure. Maybe this is as bad as it'll all get?"

Seeing the girl's distressed state, it almost made Kiba feel bad about what he was about to say next, "About that. Good news and bad news," Ino's head slowly turned behind her in his direction, almost a full one-eighty from its previous position. Scary, "Yeah, while I'm not gonna confuse Shikamaru with the clones he made anymore, there's a reason for that. He and Naruto must have cut it really close to getting caught in the fire, because it burned their scents off of them for the time being."

"So you're saying we've got nothing?" Miss Yamanaka was not pleased.

"Uh, yes. Until they actually start doing stuff that restores their scents or gives them new ones, I won't be able to track them anymore," Kiba laughed sheepishly, slowly backing away from the trembling young woman for safety, "Are you alright?"

Ino didn't say anything at first, merely trembling until her arm lashed out and put her fist through a wall. A brick wall.

XxX

"GOD-DAMN IIIIIT!"

Still in Shikamaru's body, Naruto froze upon hearing the loud, ear-shattering yell coming back from Kikyo Castle way, "…Was that Ino-chan?"

Yes, he was going to go the other way. He wasn't going to venture anywhere in that general direction.

As to reasons why, Ino's clear and present rage aside, first of all, he was still ducking Shikamaru after they'd separated. Now that he had the upper hand, he wasn't going to let it go until the jutsu expired, and he was going to burn Shikamaru at least once more while he still had some time left on the clock.

Second of all, he needed to procure himself a change of clothes, because the only pieces of Shikamaru's clothing that survived the fire were his mesh undershirt, his arm-blade attachments, his underpants, and Guardian Ninja sash that served as a temporary loincloth. Even the sandals melted.

Naruto could only imagine what parts of his own clothes actually survived. The only thing he could see definitely surviving the blaze that they'd been in was the harness that held his machete.

Hopefully Shikamaru didn't have anything too devious left up his sleeve. Otherwise Naruto would have to go nuclear in his approach to ensure that he got out of this with the upper hand.

As he retreated to attend to his evil deeds, Naruto just snickered about how he was going to razz Shikamaru after this all blew over, "Heh... Tentacle Monster Jutsu..."

* * *

**Alright, let's handle some things back in Konoha for a bit before heading back out onto the international stage shall we? Let it percolate for a bit and all that good stuff. I've got several things running together in Konoha and next chapter should actually be fun for one that I don't plan on having any real fights in. So please look forward to that if you will.**

**So I set some things up, pulled the trigger on something else, and I've probably given you some questions here that I'm not going to answer until the next chapter rolls around, so I think my job has been done here for now.**

**In Kenchi real world news that no one else cares about, I almost have my car fixed. I've just got to find one more leaky hose and replace it, and my near-dead Ford Taurus will ride again, and just in time too, because I think I've got a pretty significant job as a photojournalist sewn up at my local news studio. That would just be awesome for me.**

**If that works out, everything really will be coming up 'Kenchi', and my luck will have fully swung around from the lukewarm winter, spring, and summer of this year. And I can finally get to work on putting some money away to start paying off these damnable college loans.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. Until the next time guys, Kenchi out.**


	62. The Burden of Knowledge

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. The First Raikage looks like Jimi Hendrix. That's fucking fantastic, and I mean that. I mean,_ just like him_. Oh, sometimes it's the little things that can make you laugh when you need it.

**Chapter 62: The Burden of Knowledge**

* * *

Sasuke's eyes abruptly snapped open as an intense pain flared throughout his entire body, 'Damn it, not again!' He thought to himself, gritting his teeth and trying to force the sensation down through sheer force of will.

When he finally did so enough to get up he stood from his bed and moved through his empty clan home to the bathroom where he turned a light on and stared at his reflection in the mirror over the sink.

His skin seemed to change from a somewhat grey, ashen state to his normal fairly pale complexion while black marks receded from his face to the back of his neck where the cursed seal was situated. Turning his shoulder he could see the entire thing glowing red, even with the countermeasure that had been placed on it years ago.

This sort of thing had been happening every night since the day that Orochimaru had become the jinchuuriki of the Sanbi.

He had the same kind of nightmare he'd had after losing consciousness once the Cursed Seal of Heaven had originally been placed on him years ago, only now it was stronger, if that had been possible.

The first night he'd suffered from it he'd been in his own room in a Takigakure inn, so when he screamed out loud and had to bite back the noise while fighting the cursed transformation away it didn't get him much attention. It was when he had been on the road that it was tougher to hide, but he'd done it well enough in his own opinion. He refused to yell no matter how horrible the pain or the nightmares became.

He didn't need that kind of notice from Naruto, Lee, or Tenten, and when everyone awoke to continue on back to Konoha they just figured his attitude for lack of restful sleep to be a part of his normal, grumpy demeanor.

Breathing deeply, Sasuke splashed some water on his face and turned to look outside of his window. It was still dark, but that was early enough for him to start his day. He definitely didn't want to try sleeping again.

After returning to his room and getting changed into his normal attire for the day so that he could go out and begin training, Sasuke stopped in his halls, sensing something odd from one of the rooms that had been unused for years.

Suspiciously, he opened one of the doors only to promptly wonder if he was still dreaming or not. Either way, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE!?"

With all of the decibels behind the shout, it was sort of disappointing that the recipient of the yelling only dug a pinky in his ear and turned around in the bed, "Yo fool, keep the noise down. Izzat how you treat guests in this town?"

Yes, that was who it was.

"You aren't a guest, you're a trespasser!" Sasuke defended, red Sharingan eyes spinning wildly, "Get out of here! Aren't you supposed to be killing Naruto or something?" He honestly might have preferred that over his personal space being intruded upon.

Realizing that Sasuke wasn't going to leave him alone to sleep, Killer B sat up and put on his sunglasses without ever opening his eyes to find them as he smacked his lips tiredly, "Just can't hold a grudge against Mister Nine, not like that. From bumpin' fists and fightin' with him he's an alright cat."

"…Okay, more important question. Why are you in my house?"

"Had to stay somewhere ya dig?" Killer B said with a grin, "Gave ANBU the slip and crashed here. The one place I didn't see any on patrol."

Sasuke let out an irritated grunt, wondering if he could kick this guy out by force. He had a good chance right? Just because Naruto had been wary of him at first didn't mean he had to be. After all, in his own humble opinion he was stronger than his contemporary rival, "And you chose my house? Out of all of the others you had to come all the way into my clan's district and pick my house?"

"Shit, the rest o' those places were dusty as hell! I got allergies fool!"

"That's because no one's lived here in almost ten years!"

Honest to goodness sorrow bled into Sasuke's voice from the shout, despite his best efforts to keep it from doing so. Killer B didn't react in his usual empty-headed manner, instead regarding Sasuke seriously for the first time, "...You've gotta let that hate go or it'll eat at ya soul ya know?"

Sasuke just glared at Killer B before scoffing and walking off, "What would you know about it?" As his form vanished from the doorway on his way out of his home, his voice echoed back to Killer B again, "Get out of my house," Was the last thing he heard before the sound of the front door opening and closing.

A frown on his face, the Hachibi jinchuuriki heard from his biju within, **"You're not going to convince an Uchiha to drop their hate just like that. That's never how they functioned B. I know you could see it without even having to fist bump with him."**

Killer B just sighed and threw on his Kumo flak jacket before standing up and stretching himself out to start the day, "Boy's got a lotta anger for sure. I never seen that much in one person before. Konoha better keep him in time. With that seal on his neck it'll eat him alive."

"**You felt it too?"**

"O'course I did. Don't sleep on me."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Elsewhere in Konoha)

The morning after wrangling three Root operatives, Shikamaru forced himself out of bed after only a five hour reprieve from the previous night. That simply wasn't enough sleep for him. His premium would have been a solid eight-to-ten hours if he could get it. If he hadn't gotten up though, he would have left Chouji waiting as his portly friend was present right on time to collect him from his doorstep.

So day two of the entire seedy underbelly of Konoha was to commence. Referring to anything as seedy in a ninja village was a stiff claim indeed, but Shikamaru didn't know what else to refer to Root as. They were what they were, and he called them as he saw them.

"It's too early for this crap," Shikamaru said, barely awake enough to walk through the village streets without stepping over his own feet, "Naruto and Ino better be in the same place. If we've got to get her from her parents' place after we check on those three guys we caught I'm going to be pissed."

There were still stars out and crickets chirping up a storm all over the place. The sun wasn't anywhere near peeking over the horizon. This was not the standard hour of Shikamaru-operation by any means, and he was not pleased.

"Don't worry. After we get everyone we can eat breakfast," Chouji said, gesturing to the bag of goods he carried along with them, "That's what got me out of bed so early."

That was Chouji for you, a good-hearted guy with a bright upside about him. He had a bit of a self-esteem issue from time to time, but he was a good guy. As good a guy as you could be when you were a government-sponsored mercenary anyway, which was actually pretty good all things considered.

Upon reaching Naruto's apartment complex and alerting the denizen within as quietly for the surrounding tenants as possible, Shikamaru waited until the door was opened by a bleary-eyed Naruto who stared at the two of them dully, blinking slowly before yawning and gesturing for them to enter.

Something about that put Shikamaru at ease. Apparently the poster boy for perpetual energy had just as much of a time flipping the switch early in the morning as he did. Then again, it made sense. When you started a big engine or a generator with all sorts of power behind it you had to give it ample time to warm up before you could use it right. Naruto was probably the exact same way.

"One sec," Naruto said, slogging back in the direction of his room using the hallway wall as a crutch to keep from zonking out on the floor then and there, "…Need to *yawn* get ready and dressed."

With that, he disappeared back into the confines of his bedroom behind a partially closed door and Shikamaru heard the creaking of a bed. Someone who was as acquainted with that particular piece of furniture such as Shikamaru knew that particular sound as someone _in_ the bed moving around, 'Oh he'd better not have laid back down.'

If he was the one that actually had to kick butts into gear today, hell had truly frozen over.

It took another half-minute or so, but Naruto reemerged and took a seat at his kitchen table, dropping his head on the wooden surface with an audible thud. Clearly the engine inside had not warmed up yet. He felt like Shikamaru, and all he really wanted to do was jump back into bed where Ino was. It was comfortable there, company was warm, and there was really no other place he'd have rather been.

Duty called however, and he had captives in his hallway closet. Sleeping in wasn't on the docket today.

Naruto sniffed around with his head on the table and perked up slightly, "…I smell breakfast," With that, Chouji presented him with one of the quick little edibles he'd managed to get together before leaving his own place of residence that morning, much to Naruto's gratitude, "Is this paying me back for eating my food last night?"

"You could say that," Chouji said with a welcome expression before it fell, "Hey, I thought you said you were going to get ready?" He didn't receive an immediate answer due to Naruto quickly stuffing his face to garner some energy.

It was received a moment later when Chouji and Shikamaru heard footsteps coming from the direction of the hallway. The two visitors prepared for a fight, thinking that somehow one of the prisoners had managed to escape Shikamaru's thorough binding in the supply closet.

Instead they saw a newly awakened Ino, standing at the corner of the hallway similarly to how Naruto had a moment before, her long hair obscuring one of her eyes from view. She spotted Shikamaru and Chouji and waved absently to them before tiredly walking over to Naruto and plopping down on his lap.

It seemed to be almost automatic for the two to share a kiss that neither of them thought anything of, simply as a greeting of good morning.

"…I'll be a few minutes…" She said with no abundance of vitality, "Goldie said I could go first since I'd take longer. Hey Goldie, you kept my toothbrush I was keeping here too didn't you?"

"In the bathroom with mine."

"Mmm-hmm…"

With that, Ino headed back to the bathroom, leaving Naruto to the inquisition from his other two friends that immediately followed. Naruto didn't get why they were both staring at him like they'd just seen the Shodai Hokage reincarnate.

"What?" Naruto asked, temporarily pausing in his devouring of breakfast for a moment, "…What?" Shikamaru just held the bridge of his nose in exasperation and pointed back down the hall that Ino had disappeared down, "Well yeah. She stayed last night. It was late, she was tired, and it's just Ino-chan. What's your problem?"

"You know what my problem is you idiot. Don't try to play this off," Shikamaru stated, "Really Naruto? Ino? Our teammate?"

"Come on, like you're really surprised," Naruto said with a grin slowly forming on his face. So that was the feeling of actually getting something that you really wanted? He'd forgotten what it was like, "It's not like we had se-."

"I don't care and I definitely don't want to talk about _that_," Shikamaru said abruptly, mumbling to himself that he saw this coming way back when, "…Most troublesome couple ever…"

"It took you two long enough though." Chouji said to Naruto after the thought, "You and Shikamaru have been back for a few months. I would have figured that something would have happened way before now. Ino missed both of you while you two were both gone, but she really missed Naruto hard."

In response, Naruto merely puffed out his chest in pride.

Shikamaru just rolled his eyes. Only too late did he realize his mistake of making a big deal of how things turned out with his two blond teammates. Now there was a chance that when Ino caught wind of it she and Naruto would turn on the gag-inducing lovey b.s. in a bid to mess with him.

Within fifteen to twenty minutes, Ino, properly clothed in her usual purple attire for the day, sauntered out of the bathroom down the hallway, moving with a knowingly smug air about her as she went over to Naruto and gave him a kiss on the top of the head, "Your turn Goldie."

The way she basically purred that short sentence to Naruto told Shikamaru that he was utterly screwed once the seriousness of the entire Root situation blew over. Naruto hopped up from his seat and headed to get his things and go into the bathroom next. It would only take him a handful of minutes to get what he needed done.

Ino took his seat and rested her cheek in her palm, smiling lazily at Shikamaru as if she were savoring the discomfort of the situation. She could totally feel it in the air, and all of it was emanating from only one person. Chouji was mostly happy for them, and it showed on his face. The other person present, not so much.

"…The walls in here aren't that thick Shika," Damn it. She probably heard most of what he said, tone included, and knew that she and Naruto could screw with him by overly playing up their relationship in front of him, "I'm not going to hurt him you know. I know you're more worried about something between us going wrong instead of how it'll annoy the hell out of you until you get used to it."

"I never said that I thought you two wouldn't be good together." Shikamaru said with a frown upon being put on the spot, "I knew this was going to happen for years, but actually having it happen… well…"

"I get it. Really. Us seeming good together doesn't matter," Ino admitted with a shrug, her expression growing more serious, "I know just because two people seem like they'll be good together, that isn't a guarantee that they'll make it. If we really broke up I know there's a chance that it could sour everything about Team 10. But I'm dead serious about him. He's the one I want."

Naruto wasn't perfect the way that every girl who was 'in love' with Sasuke back in school claimed the boy in question to be. There were things that she loved and things that she didn't like about Naruto, the same as with anyone else, but that was what made him endearing to her; that he wasn't perfect, and he didn't expect her to be either.

He wasn't someone on a pedestal to live up to or catch up to in some manner, someone that she had to prove to herself and others that she was worthy of. He wasn't someone that would make her doubt her worth or make her feel insecure just by being around. Naruto was the kind of person that accepted her, flaws and all, and she could do the same and be happy while doing it.

"I'm more scared than you are about this Shika," Ino said with an honest, nervous smile, "I'm terrified that I'll do something to screw everything up. That I'll mess everything up so badly nothing can fix it. But that's how I know this is real and not some crush like with 'you-know-who' in the Academy."

"I know that," Shikamaru told her, "I'd never have accused you or thought for a second that you were that kind of person anymore. That was a long time ago," They were damn near seventeen. They weren't kids any longer, "Just be careful."

Gratefully, Ino nodded his way in return before looking thoughtfully down at the table and smacking her lips as she tried to think of the proper words she needed, "Sometimes you have to try and take a chance if you feel strongly about something. That's what I think."

After a few more minutes, Naruto walked back out into the living room, dressed in his usual clothes and strapping his harness around his chest when he noticed how quiet it was, as if he'd missed something serious conversation-wise, "…So are we all ready to go here or what? We've got to move before the sun comes up."

XxX

(Early Morning – Training Ground #44: Forest of Death – Central Tower)

Danzo's cane tapping on the hard, tiled floor echoed out through the open-ceilinged observatory area of the Forest of Death's safe zone. He had been roused by a messenger hours before dawn to meet with Hiruzen somewhere extremely private.

As loathe as he was to go anywhere that smelled of a setup such as this one, he felt that it was one of those 'last chance' kind of scenarios. The kind where if he had chosen to decline the invitation it would have been the final straw as far as Hiruzen was concerned.

Whatever he had been called for didn't serve to prove very good for him, and he had been called before the time for his dispatched Root agents to report in had occurred. He hadn't even gotten his morning briefing of the previous day's happenings from his squads spying around the village.

Hiruzen had requested his presence, and he had been instructed to be prompt. The time to arrive had been a few hours before he was meant to be briefed.

It wasn't going to be an ambush, because he could clearly see Hiruzen. It wasn't going to be an ambush from Hiruzen in particular at least. He couldn't feel the presence of anyone else around either. Even with ANBU, he was well-versed in how they were trained, thus he could tell when he was being watched by Hiruzen's guards.

"I asked you all the way out here because I didn't wish for us to be disturbed Danzo," Hiruzen said, standing underneath the statue of a pair of hands forming the ram seal, "I'm going to be frank and lay all my cards out on the table for you."

"Alright," Danzo said in return, "I have no idea what you're referring to, but I'm listening regardless. What is this all about?"

"Why, your pet project of course," Hiruzen said matter-of-factly, seemingly baiting him with his approach, "You know. Your little clandestine branch of ANBU that I told you to shut down, but you didn't, and I knew all along that you didn't. You've been having them skulk under my nose for the better part of fifteen years."

Danzo didn't even flinch, "I see. And do you have the evidence to back up these accusations of yours?"

"I wasn't aware I needed evidence to take any kind of action seeing as how I'm supposed control the entire village," Hiruzen lazily drawled the way that a man fifty years his junior and more than three levels under his current station would when they were making a point, "However, I'm certain that the dozen-plus emotionless ANBU that have no village identification to speak of are all the physical proof I need to justify anything that I have to say."

"Like I said before; I have no idea what you're talking about."

For the first time in quite some while, Hiruzen flared his sizeable amounts of chakra, blasting Danzo with intent to let him know that he was not going to play his little mind games. His words alone would not be enough to sway him. Not this morning.

"I indulged myself in letting you keep them despite telling you to shut ROOT down because we needed the manpower," Hiruzen stated firmly, "This village couldn't afford an entire organization of the military to close off after the Kyuubi attack, and with the pending conflict with Kumogakure doing such a thing would have been foolish."

"And what exactly has changed now?" Danzo asked, "You should know full well that everything I have ever done, I have and will continue to do for the village."

"You do what you have done for your own views on the village."

"Have my views really been so wrong in the case of protecting Konoha? You would handcuff us in domestic affairs over matters such as ethics and morals," Danzo spat bitterly, "It's a wonder how you ever managed to gain the edge over me with such an idealistic outlook."

Hiruzen sighed with closed eyes before his stern countenance took form, "Have you any idea of what your measures have brought upon us?" He asked, "For the short-term, yes you managed to protect the village, but actions such as the ones you've taken have a nasty habit of coming back to bite you. They already have."

"Such as?"

"Spying on young Uchiha Sasuke-kun."

"He is dangerous Hiruzen, you know this, if only because of the blood that runs through his veins. Now more than ever because of Orochimaru's seal on his neck."

"Were Itachi to discover your scrutiny of his brother, who has done nothing to warrant such, who you swore to him that you would allow to let be, to live his life… what do you think he would say of it?"

"It doesn't matter!" Danzo snarled, "I will do whatever it takes to keep our home safe and strong! He is a threat, and any threat that I see must be dealt with accordingly. Some of these things are closer to our reach than others, and those are the ones that must be handled with extreme prejudice."

"Doesn't it!? The most important of these numerous treacheries, and the one that's stricken home most severely as of late is your actions against one Yakushi Kabuto," The Hokage said, his ire growing, "You created perhaps the greatest deep cover operative one could ever ask for, and he used your own training against you. This is what happens when you handle every matter in such an extreme fashion, you inspire extreme retaliation!"

"You use people and dispose of them when you doubt your ability to control them! You can _never_ be thorough enough to eradicate ill intent when you act that way against everything!" Hiruzen shouted at his old friend, "That is why you can _never_ be Hokage! You claim that Konoha is surrounded by enemies on all sides, but granting you the title of Hokage would set every enemy you've ever garnered on us for putting you in power!"

Upon seeing Hiruzen somewhat lose his composure, Danzo noticeably calmed down, his usual collected countenance restoring itself, "So you just allowed me to do these things? And what am I to you, your rabid dog that you keep patrolling your junkyard? You cannot trust me, yet you still use what I'm capable of to harm those that come to close with ill intent."

"Well that is the reason why we're here," Hiruzen declared gravely, "I'm quite certain that by now you've noticed that I have none of my ANBU guards anywhere inside the limits of Training Ground #44. I also know that you're intelligent enough to refrain from risking bringing your own with you in my presence or theirs. You would never get away with it. You and I are all alone out here. Not a soul within ten kilometers of this exact spot."

Danzo tossed his cane aside, his squinted left eye tightening closed even further, "Yes…? I'm listening." He tucked his left hand inside of the sling that his dark grey kimono formed for his heavily concealed right arm. This smelled of a pending physical confrontation. It was definitely Hiruzen's style.

"Jiraiya is in my office with Tsunade. I've told them to remain there until this ends along with Koharu and Homura, to officially recognize my decision and send it to the Fire Daimyo," Hiruzen took off the stylized Hokage's hat on his head and threw it neatly on the top of the statue behind him, "I was looking for a successor, but I figured that this was the only way I could press you and keep you from fleeing the country. Only one of us is leaving this forest old friend. The one that does can lay claim to the position of Hokage."

'You always were one for spectacles such as this Hiruzen,' Danzo thought to himself. On one hand, it was a straight-up battle against the man that he could never overcome throughout his career. On the other hand, this was everything that he'd ever wanted all lain out before him. All he had to do was put everything on the line to win this battle, and he'd take it all.

But then again, what was everything to him really? Root? Root only existed so that Danzo could enact his will unto the ninja world from the shadows, the only place that he could. If he became Hokage, they wouldn't be solely necessary to do this. If he fell here today, it wouldn't matter what became of them anyway, as he would be dead.

The thought of dying sent a chill through his heart. He was too important to die. Everything that involved Konoha would fall apart without his firm hand guiding it from the shadows.

So he wouldn't die. He would win. He had been preparing for years and years with secret methods that Hiruzen knew nothing about. On the other hand, there was nothing Hiruzen could do that would surprise Danzo.

"You don't know what you're requesting," Danzo said, reaching up to his bandaged right eye to reveal a red glow behind it, "If you think me frail and crippled, an easy kill, I'll simply say that clearly I've done a better job of hiding certain things than others from you… _old friend_."

XxX

(With Naruto – Elsewhere in Konoha – Uzumaki Clan Mask Storage Temple)

"_This_ is your hidden place? Your clan lands?" Shikamaru asked Naruto, watching Chouji stash the last of the Root ninja members in their captivity in a side annex to the mask temple, "…Alright, I'll admit I've never even seen this place before, so that's something."

It took quite a while to get there. On a direct route it probably would have taken them thirty minutes to get there from Naruto's home, but since for safety's sake they had to hide their passengers they had to go roundabout, blowing an hour and a half of time. That gave Naruto plenty of time to study what was up with that seal.

They all thought it would have taken longer from the way he'd been speaking the night before. They would have all been wrong on that front however. Even Naruto thought it would have taken longer.

"Uh-huh," Naruto replied to his friend's comment, listening but not quite listening as he tried to break down the seal on the back of their captives' tongues, "This is… really good," He admitted after studying it all the way up there from his apartment, "Even if they probably weren't trained to resist torture and stuff, they couldn't cough up any information if they wanted to as long as this thing is on."

Even though she didn't like her job, Ino was still an interrogation specialist, thus she was colored intrigued by the prospect of a countermeasure such as that, "What do you mean?"

"This thing'll come on the second they even think about talking about a forbidden topic, like Root I'd guess," Naruto explained, pointing to the two broken lines out of the five forming the array as the emphasis that there were at least two topics out of the available five that had been filled as forbidden to speak on, "It's a juinjutsu, a sort of cursed seal. It paralyzes whoever it's on if they say something out of line."

Shikamaru sighed upon hearing that, "You sound a little too impressed. So you're saying there's nothing you can do about it? You can't break it?"

"Oh hell no," Naruto said, waving his hands defensively with a small smile, "I can totally break it. All I have to do is overpower it. Danzo must be a pretty strong guy, because he set the seal up in a way that makes it easy to apply, but if you have stronger chakra than him you can stop it."

Catching the end of that upon exiting the annex building, Chouji dusted his hands off and joined the conversation, "You know that Shimura Danzo used to be the top rival of the Hokage right? My granddad used to be his teammate back when he was alive and an active ninja. Your chakra is stronger than his?" It was hard to believe, even with the knowledge that Naruto was a jinchuuriki.

"Let's go see," Naruto said, walking his way into the annex where Sai, Fuu, and Hyo were all bound to a pillar. None of the three could move a muscle, but to make sure, Ino pricked the three of them with a senbon coated in paralysis serum, "Hi Sai!" Naruto greeted the one of them that he knew in a fake-excited voice, "Still spying on my friends and loved ones are you?"

Sai didn't answer, only staring impassively at Naruto, his head the only thing that he could move, "So I guess after yesterday, the ugly blonde girl behind you is actually your girlfriend now?"

The only reason Ino didn't belt him in the head out of anger at the insult was because she knew he wouldn't feel enough pain to make letting the remark get to her count. Thus was the negative point to using paralysis serum to interrogate someone; you couldn't use pain to get the job done. Shikamaru snickered at her expense, but he made sure he was far enough out of her range to avoid retaliation.

Naruto didn't even rise to the slight against his lady friend. Instead forcing Sai's tongue out of his mouth with one hand while pressing the index and middle finger of his opposite hand on the seal, "Well that's not a nice thing to say. Fuuin kai!" In a shimmer of black material, the seal disappeared, much to everyone else's amazement.

Everyone's amazement other than Sai's, because this was not a pleasant experience for him. He thought it had been painful when Danzo had first placed the seal on him. It was comparable to someone pressing a brand to you for a split-second when you received a seal on your skin.

"Talking about Ino like that isn't cool," Naruto said, watching Sai gasp and sputter as he recovered from the quite unpleasant altering of the seal, "Besides, what would you even know about how pretty girls are? I beat up like fifteen of you guys yesterday, not one girl in the bunch. Does Root even have girls in it?"

"Of course Root does," Sai replied flippantly, "Sexism doesn't have a place in the ninja world. Danzo-sama recruits men and women alike."

A grin slowly spread across Naruto's face as Sai and Fuu realized in horror what had just happened. Sai had spoken of Root freely and nothing happened to stop him. Ino had pumped them full of interrogation serum the night before to no effect because of the seal, and clearly it was still in their systems.

Naruto had restored Danzo's seal to its original state; the way it had been before he had issued the two topics that would cause a painful shutdown of his Root ANBU. Five black lines, indicating that the seal was once again a clean slate for which verbal taboos needed to be set.

Turning back around to his friends, Naruto offered a gesture of beckoning toward himself, "Come on, admit it. Breaking that thing was specialist kind of stuff right there."

Chouji shook his head and looked at the others who were also quite surprised, "We… really didn't think you'd break it that fast," He said, with Shikamaru and Ino nodding their agreement.

They didn't think he'd break it that fast? Well technically he hadn't broken it, he'd reset it, but the same premise stood. Them not thinking that he didn't have this stuff down pat really irked Naruto however. Over the last three years he'd poured tens of thousands of hours into monotonous seal study via his Kage Bunshin and his own theoretical exercises, and he hated that kind of work!

The only living person he knew of that had thrown more time into it than he had was Jiraiya, and that was simply from the sheer amount of time that Jiraiya had been alive and an active shinobi.

"Recognize me as Konoha's Patron Saint of Fuuinjutsu," Naruto demanded in a sagely tone, "Seals are in my blood. I am fuuinjutsu," He said cryptically before realizing that the reference had gone over Ino and Chouji's heads, "No… literally. I _am_ walking fuuinjutsu. Like, my entire existence has been wrapped up in seals since day one. Ero-sensei said it's like decreed that I have to be great at them or I'm squandering natural talent here."

"Huh?"

"Nevermind."

"Anyway…" Ino grinned as she moved forward and set her hand directly on the top of Sai's head, "…Since you're all talkative now, let's try this again shall we?" And with that, Ino dove back into his head. And it would be a quicker process this time around to get what she wanted since she'd already been through the labyrinth of Sai's mind once before already.

Naruto sat down on the floor and stared at Ino's interrogation process, "Yeah, is it wrong that out of everything I've dealt with, I'm scared of Ino's mind jutsu?"

"Which one?" Shikamaru asked, leaning up against the wall by the door.

"Let's go with the mind reading one. Until she learns something worse, that one freaks me out the most right now."

"Better be careful with her Naruto. You won't be able to get away with anything bad when it comes to her."

"You're not helping Shika."

XxX

(Training Ground #44: Forest of Death)

The mighty tower that once sat at the very center of the Forest of Death stood tall no longer. Hiruzen was honestly disappointed in its construction. It only lasted through three of their combined attacks before it was destroyed.

The ruins of the building surrounded both he and Danzo as he cast away what was left of his Hokage robes, leaving him in his black bodysuit and armored hood, "It's been a while," Hiruzen said with a sigh, referring to the last time he'd been in battle.

He couldn't see Danzo, but he knew he was there amongst the piles of wreckage somewhere. He hadn't chosen to flee into the forest to search for a better battleground yet. No, Danzo would probe him at first instead of breaking away to work on a stratagem. He would try to see what he was up against first.

It didn't take him long to spot his old friend, as Danzo's position was given away by the sound of heavy metal falling away on the ground.

"Time has done more than dull your readiness to fight," Danzo said, the large golden braces around his still concealed right arm on the ground around his position elevated on a tall heap of rubble, "I cannot say I've been immune to its effects as well, but unlike yourself I've taken steps to lessen its properties."

A smirk came to Hiruzen's face as his blood began to boil at the prospect of combat on this level again, "Show me then."

Without a moment of hesitation, Hiruzen Shunshined onto an elevated level and darted over the tops of the ruins to engage Danzo directly. He was the superior fighter at taijutsu, and with Danzo's arm constantly in a sling and those braces, even if it had been a falsified handicap, he had a weakness when it came to hand-to-hand combat on his right side. There was no way he couldn't.

Danzo didn't even try to engage him, forming a half ram seal with his left hand and blowing wind from his mouth to push himself away from Hiruzen's attack. A mere tilt or twist of his head during his exhale was enough to send him flying through the air like a leaf in a windstorm.

This was to his credit as arguably the foremost wind user in Konoha. Danzo dominated with that element, possessing even more skill than Asuma did.

The billowing of the wind from his own escape tactic exposed Danzo's right arm, grey and heavily scarred, that wasn't the most shocking thing about it. It was the grotesque sight of ten Sharingan eyes embedded in the limb from the forearm down to the back of his hand.

Apparently someone had been intrigued by something they'd seen and heard of and decided to take it to the extreme. That was Danzo's style after all; nothing was worth doing if you didn't do it all the way. One could not be half-pregnant after all, as the saying went.

"If that is all I can expect from you Hiruzen, I might as well have not even removed the braces," Danzo taunted, sliding to a stop on the dirt ground a safe distance away.

"When?" Hiruzen asked coldly, finding this sight deplorable. Sure, Kakashi had one, but it was something that he had been given by a dying friend. After how the Uchiha met their end, he doubted they voluntarily donated their vaunted doujutsu to Root out of the good of their hearts. Let the dead rest for goodness sake!

"These?" Danzo asked, holding up his discolored right arm, "Several years. What, did you think I would just allow you to dispose of all of the bodies of the Uchiha Clan and eradicate such a valuable weapon to this village? Even if their bloodline is dead, their power is still of use to us."

"This is what I'm talking about! Why you can never be Hokage!"

"Because I have the stomach to do what is necessary for our home?"

"Danzo! You claim that you've done the things you have for the village?" Hiruzen shouted questioningly, "No! Everything that you've done, you've done for yourself! The evidence is sitting right there in your arm! Why did you need _this_ kind of power?"

Hiruzen was livid.

He was actually angrier with himself than with Danzo however, because he should have known or suspected something about that arm. Why did he never check underneath the bundles that the arm was kept in? Why did no one that should have been suspicious ever bring it up? It was as if something told him in the back of his mind to just ignore it, and strongly.

There was no time for this. The house could be divided no longer. It was time to get this all in order. Word would somehow get out about this, and when it did Konoha would be seen as having gone through a civil war. The quietest civil war in history, but a civil war nonetheless.

Hiruzen continued to wheedle Danzo for his practices that he claimed had always been for the greater good, "How about this then old friend? With your deep cover spies have you ever brought any sort of prudent information forth to the rest of the village, or have you merely kept it for yourself?"

"I don't need to explain myself to you any longer Hiruzen," Danzo said, his voice not lacking a hint of confidence despite its straightforward tone, "I'm going to be Hokage after all."

There was nothing to say to such brazen confidence.

"…Let me show you just how powerful my jutsu can be when I don't have the rest of my village and citizens to worry about getting caught in the crossfire… in case you've forgotten," A stony expression on his face, Hiruzen formed a tiger hand-seal as the entire foundation area of the tower grounds began to liquefy and move in Danzo's direction, "Doton: Doryuu Taiga (Earth Release: Earth Flow River)!"

The resulting mudslide from the jutsu sent the entire surface of the foundation away from Hiruzen, pushing along with it the debris of the tower.

Danzo did his best to ride along safely as he found himself transported into the unforgiving Forest of Death via Hiruzen's attempt at permanently altering the landscape of the vaunted training ground. With his capabilities he could do this and avoid taking any sort of wound or injury the way he would have had he been caught in the moving mud.

'I see,' Danzo thought to himself as he did his best to avert his path with his wind control. He knew it was for naught though, 'This is the depth of how serious you are. It seems I have no choice either.'

Speaking of the moving mud, it began to take the form of a colossal top portion of a dragon's head lifting its upper jaw from the moving mud, an intimidating glow emanating from the back of its throat and aimed straight down the wide path that Danzo was being carried, 'So it seems that you're truly dead-set on ending things here.'

These two approaches to the village affairs could not exist together any longer. They both left a rift right down the middle that people like Yakushi Kabuto easily used to hurt them to the core several times. As of now it was time to cut away the dead flesh.

The only thing left to decide was which side would be regarded as the dead flesh.

"Doton: Doryuudan (Earth Release: Earth Dragon Bullet)!"

An entire section of the impressive forest was brought down with nothing more than two ninjutsu. If the landslide hadn't been enough to dislodge the well-rooted trees, they were torn asunder by massive spheres of scorching rock shot from the dragon's head.

…And it was only the beginning. If Danzo survived that attack, there were dozens just like it awaiting him, and they possessed just as much destructive force behind them.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – Hokage's Office)

It really stuck in their craw, both Jiraiya and Tsunade, due to the fact that Hiruzen had taken it upon himself to end things once and for all with someone that he'd started everything with, but an order was an order. If they hadn't obeyed, after he kicked Danzo's ass he would have kicked their asses.

Even though they both knew they were strong enough to deal with Hiruzen, they were both well aware that the man could take it to them just as easily in battle in return.

"I don't like this," Tsunade groused aloud, eyes gazing out of the window in the direction that she knew the Hokage was off doing battle in, "If Danzo wins, Sarutobi-sensei told us that we couldn't-."

"I know," Jiraiya cut her off, not liking things any more than she did, "He had to dangle that carrot in front of him to settle things up once and for all. If Danzo won, and we just killed him when we got here we'd be spitting in sensei's face. Not to mention it probably wouldn't work anyway."

"Please, even one of us would be enough to take Danzo down."

"That wouldn't be the problem and you know it –hime," Jiraiya almost snapped, "In order to even get Danzo into this situation to settle things with the odds leveled, sensei had to make a snap decision. There was no planning this out, no setting any contingencies. It was a split choice, because any time he'd have given himself to prepare would have done the same for Danzo to come up with a way out. He took that choice away. He had to take this chance _now_ to bait him once and for all."

"Hey dad, I-," Asuma started to say upon entering before finding that Hiruzen was not behind his desk, instead noting the rare presence of Tsunade and Jiraiya, "Tsunade-sama, Jiraiya-sama, sorry. I was looking for Hokage-sama."

Both of the legendary teammates looked at each other before Jiraiya took to be the one to say anything to the jounin Sarutobi, "Your old man isn't going to be in until later. You might want to come back then."

"Alright, well do you have any idea when he'll be here?"

"…No clue really. Could be five minutes, could be twenty hours."

Asuma narrowed his eyes at the extremely vague answer, "Uh huh… and where exactly is he until then?"

"Classified."

"I see."

Tsunade could see where this was going, and while she wanted to be at her sensei's side as he settled up with the source of the village's inner turmoil, as did Jiraiya, they had been told specifically that it was between Danzo and himself. It went back further than any of their lives did, and it was up to him to end things that had begun with the two of them decades ago.

It was clear that all of the secrecy didn't sit well with Asuma from the look on his face. Even if it was an order from the Hokage, for some reason it was harder to simply obey because the Hokage was his father. It had always been that way.

Tsunade and Jiraiya shared a subtle look between each other, both silently arguing over whether or not Asuma had the right to know what his father had gone off to go and do. Yes, they were older and more experienced, but the man was far from a child, and he knew full well when he was out of the loop.

Needless to say, it didn't sit well with him.

"Fine," Asuma said coolly, "I'll find him later then. I've got baby stuff to do with Kurenai later anyway."

"Don't forget, Shizune's still on for her routine checkups," Tsunade pointed out as he left in an effort to assuage the tension between them somewhat, "She's really excited about it, so make sure Kurenai remembers her appointments," She got a nod in return before Asuma departed.

After he did so, Jiraiya shook his head and smirked wryly at the busty blonde, "I didn't know your soft spot had gotten that big. Moving back here must have chipped away at some of that ice around your heart."

"Oh shut the hell up," Tsunade huffed in return, "He's still sensei's kid and the brat's mentor you know. I can't exactly hate him."

"…He can hate us though after this whole thing ends."

"Maybe, depending on exactly _how_ it ends."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Elsewhere in Konoha – Hidden Underground Waterway Facility)

There were more to the catacombs of Konoha's sewers and clean water paths than many citizens of the village would ever know, especially those that had careers in the upkeep and maintenance of that sensitive part of village infrastructure.

The empty gaze of Yamanaka Fuu was straight ahead as he led Sai and Hyo into the underground chambers of Konoha's Root base of operations. Under the arms of the two following Root members were Shikamaru and the heavier Chouji, both defeated and bound.

The entire Root compound itself was like a village underneath Konoha with entrances all over the place, hidden away behind or underneath the properties of civilians, in training fields all over the outskirts of the village, even one around the side of the Academy where the spars between students took place, just to name a few.

It was like an eerie ghost town, as there was no one out and about despite obviously being a place filled with small dwellings for the members of the unit, just large enough to be considered a place to rest and recover from missions. It was easy to tell that however that the majority of Root's manpower rested within these small homes. Very few members of Root, such as Sai, resided above ground.

Stone-faced, Fuu expertly led his allies and their roughed-up captures from the residential portion of the underground stronghold to the more military-based area, down, down, down into the prisoner-holding area.

"Sai."

Being set against a stern voice from one of the Root members populating the business-end of the Root hideout, Sai turned around far enough to catch sight of his fellow blankly-expressive ninja, "Yes?"

Most of the rest of them didn't have names unless they were given one for a mission, so there was no need for an exact identification.

"Your mission from Danzo-sama was to watch the Kyuubi jinchuuriki and those close to him, not to capture them."

"They discovered us. The Nara boy would have never let anything as suspicious as being spied on slide again, and the fat Akimichi wouldn't have allowed his disappearance to be a low-key incident. He would have raised a fuss until we were put in the crosshairs."

The Root ninja stared Sai and his entourage down before nodding and sending them on their way, "This could be good. Danzo-sama could find a use for them on the outside. Perhaps to get closer to Uzumaki than you seem to be able to."

With that run-in dealt with, Fuu, Hyo, and Sai took their two prisoners and placed them into a cell, notably isolated. Root didn't keep many prisoners at all, and never for very long, so there was never any need for an elaborate jailing system.

After setting down Shikamaru and Chouji inside, Fuu moved forward and set his palms on their heads before channeling chakra into them before moving back and closing the door.

"_Ugh, why did I choose to be the unconscious one in the plan again?"_ Shikamaru thought out loud, holding his head where he felt a bump forming, _"It's my damn plan to begin with."_

"_Because it involved you being carried and lying down instead of what Goldie's doing to get in. All you two had to do until now was take a few punches,"_ Ino thought from within Fuu's body, _"When Chouji wakes up and you two are ready to break out we can get started for real. I'm going to go see how far I can get myself and these other two into this place and what we can find."_

"_I'll try not to tug on these stupid ropes and break 'em in the meantime,"_ Shikamaru thought back to her, shifting himself into a position on the floor that made him appear to be out cold, _"You just be careful. Are you sure you can control three people at once?"_

"_Their wills aren't very strong. Even with my control split three ways it's easier than I thought it would be."_

"_Get to it then. When Chouji wakes up he's not gonna be happy."_

Inside of the bodies of Fuu, Sai, and Hyo, Ino nodded and went off to begin her deep infiltration. She was to set explosive tags where she saw fit and make it to a good position to neutralize as much of the base as she could by the time Naruto made his presence known and set everything off. That way this could all be wrapped up in a neat little bow… so to speak.

Yamanaka mind techniques were scary-effective in their subtleties. Mind Clone Switch Jutsu was one of the odder ones that almost worked similarly to a clone jutsu, and since she had to split her consciousness instead of her physical body it was a wee bit more intrinsic.

Just a bit though.

Shikamaru bit back a sigh and shut his eyes, feigning unconsciousness until the time came to become a nuisance. From where he was he could hear discomfort from Chouji, caused by the small toad that popped itself out of his mouth and squeezed itself the rest of the way out.

…Gross.

It was effective for what it was meant to do however.

From the toad's mouth, a spiky head of blond hair emerged. Slowly freeing himself from one of his summon creatures, Naruto took great care to safely cradle Ino's response-less body as he did so. He contemplated leaving her body inside of the toad, but he was quite certain that she'd step on his nads if she returned to her body and found herself alone inside of a summon that she had no control over.

Sitting on the floor in the darkest shadow of the room, Naruto kept Ino's body nestled close to his, protecting it as if she were the most precious object in the world, "So are we almost ready to do this? We've never taken down a whole fortress of ninjas before."

Guardian work hadn't always been bodyguarding the Fire Daimyo and the nobles of his court. The job oftentimes got far nastier than that. They'd taken out enemy strongholds before, from the inside as prisoners actually since it was usually the easiest way by Shikamaru's viewpoint.

It was his favorite way to do so and it played to his strengths instead of direct assaults which would have been more Naruto and Chouji's thing.

"It's almost the same thing as any other fortress. Bandits, whatever," Shikamaru said, noting that Naruto probably didn't even register just how intimately he seemed to be holding their kunoichi teammate, "As long as everything's prepared when we set it off, there isn't going to be much they can do. We've just got to make sure that we don't ruin this place's foundations or we might make some of the village sink inward."

"Really?"

"Yeah, remember, this place is built right underneath Konoha, so we can't wreck too much of it. Who knows what else we'll damage, either up there or down here?"

At that moment Chouji began to stir with a groan, smacking his lips audibly as he began to lift himself up off of the ground, "Blegh. What's that taste in my mouth?" He asked as the weakly tied ropes fell off of his body.

*Ribbit*

Looking down at the hapless toad on the ground, Chouji failed to make the connection and instead took in his immediate surroundings. So the plan had worked and they'd made it in. It was probably for the best that he didn't know where the flavor that he had been required to savor came from.

XxX

(Training Ground #44: Forest of Death – Interior)

Hiruzen landed on a sizeable tree branch as he looked down at the last dregs of his own handiwork. His landslide had carried two miles into the thickly veiled Forest of Death before it finally stopped on its own. With the debris he'd created, and the dragon's head of Earth Dragon Bullet automatically firing explosive rock all the while at the trapped adversary within, he hadn't missed.

He had been able to feel Danzo's chakra within the moving mud he'd had control over. He'd never escaped before finally being blasted with a near-direct hit, but his chakra signature had disappeared.

To say he was a sensor would be a stretch, but he was the Hokage and known as 'The Professor' for a reason. He knew how to do a little bit of everything. Hiruzen knew how to feel out enough of an opponent's energy to determine if he had killed them or not. There had been no tapering off of chakra flow to signify a steadily weakening lifeforce that usually went with the normal death of anyone no matter how they died. It simply vanished.

That wasn't right.

"I am not your equal Hiruzen."

Upon hearing Danzo's voice seemingly come from nowhere, Hiruzen leapt dozens of yards away, landing on the same monstrous tree branch as he faced the direction he heard Danzo's voice emanate from. Out of thin air, Danzo's body shimmered into existence, entirely unscathed from the powerful jutsu combination he'd been hit with earlier, "Danzo…"

"For decades I've tried and tried to match you on the battlefield, and I've failed. By now I'm at peace with this," Danzo said, as if he hadn't just cheated certain death without a scratch, "This even proves it. I have nothing in my arsenal with as much sheer force as just that jutsu. My talents were always of a subtler approach."

The ruby red Sharingan in the man's wide-open right eye contrasted sharply with the rest of him as he held a set of shuriken in the palm of his hand. Blowing on them he caused them to spin rapidly before they flew off of the flat surface as if they had been fired.

Hiruzen grit his teeth and dropped down off of the branch, avoiding Danzo's attack altogether. He could see the almost unseeable fan blades of chakra that Danzo had created off of the edges of the metal disks. Combined, the shuriken were able to cut through the thick, wide trunk of the tree they had been on, sending its upper levels down to the forest floor.

Resounding crash of wood and earth aside, Hiruzen noted that Danzo had gotten behind him, intending to reach out and touch him to debilitate him with his fuuinjutsu. His better at taijutsu however, Hiruzen whipped around and grabbed Danzo by his offending wrist to prevent him from so much as brushing him with a fingertip as that was all that would have been required to cripple him.

With the close proximity, Hiruzen was granted the ugly sight of Danzo's greyed right arm and the Sharingan eyes embedded in it. It was enough to make him sick.

Blindingly quick, Danzo drew a kunai and slashed at Hiruzen's belly, missing the attack, yet prompting the latter to release him. The two men leapt away from each other, stalemated once more in the trees. Both stony-faced seniors stared one another down, minds working a mile a minute to come to their own combat conclusions.

'Why did he slash instead of stab?' Hiruzen asked himself mentally, 'To cut at me in the situation that we were in would mean that instead of trying to go for the kill he merely wished to gain some distance. But why?'

His attention fell back to the Sharingan eyes in Danzo's arm. The Root commander's course of action had been taken only after he'd noticed that Hiruzen had been looking at the Sharingan eyes he could see that hadn't been concealed by his kimono sleeve. One of them had been different from the rest.

The one resting on the back of his hand had been without any of the telltale black tomoe that came with the fully developed eyes.

And that was it. He knew what a blind Sharingan looked like.

Hiruzen knew of every technique that had ever come through Konohagakure, including the forbidden ones… of all clans. Executing them was not required. Simply knowing of them all was what gave him his title of 'The Professor'.

'Abusing the Izanagi in order to protect yourself,' Hiruzen almost let out a wry laugh at the thought of it, 'As despicable as it is, I have to commend you for your ingenuity.' That was as far as the courtesy extended however.

Noticing the near-quirk of Hiruzen's wrinkled lips, Danzo frowned, 'He knows. No matter. I still have nine more uses of the Izanagi in total. That gives me nine more minutes of safety if it comes down to it. So let's continue.'

In a Shunshin, Danzo moved himself from his tree branch over to the trunk of a tree to Hiruzen's upper left, his hands finishing a hand-seal combination as he took a deep breath, "Fuuton: Shinkuugyoku (Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere)!"

Multiple wind chakra bullets shot out of his mouth at once, narrowing down the possible escape paths that Hiruzen could use to avoid being wounded by the jutsu. Gritting his teeth, the Sandaime Hokage was dealt a bloody wound when his left arm was grazed by an attack in the midst of his evasive movement.

Directly in front of him, Danzo appeared with his hand planted down on the tree branch while Hiruzen recovered from his dodge. He tried to take the moment to quickly count the number of Sharingan eyes that Danzo had in his right arm, due to his sleeve flying up momentarily due to the motion, but he was soon granted with yet another unwelcome surprise.

The wood of the tree branch warped outward in a sharpened, gnarled, swirling pattern around the neck to try and behead Hiruzen as it tightened. He dodged, but his reflexes hadn't served him quite as well as he'd hoped. His armored hood was cut from his battle suit and his scalp was gashed open, freely drawing the Hokage's blood.

'Mokuton,' Was the prevailing thought that ran through his head despite his injury.

What had Danzo done to himself for the sake of power?

His right arm had to be forcefully ripped from the tree branch he'd bonded it with in order to attack Hiruzen. His control over the Mokuton was shoddy at best and he'd been hoping that the sheer surprise factor would have been enough to finish Hiruzen off. It was a start if nothing else.

Apparently losing his footing, Hiruzen took a tumble off of the elevated tree branch, and Danzo feeling a need to go in for the kill launched himself down after him. He couldn't be caught off-guard as long as he could avert his path in the air with his wind release ability.

A smirk came to the bloodied Hokage's face as he hurled a single shuriken and flipped through five hand-seals with blinding speed, "Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

One shuriken became a thousand, and with his Sharingan in his right eye Danzo did his best to evade the attack. Blowing wind from his mouth and contorting his body impossibly in midair he managed to escape a few dozen, but there were still hundreds that remained, and the numbers caught up to him. After two or three hit, dozens followed until he was a metal-riddled bloody mess.

Hiruzen caught himself by planting his hand on a tree trunk and drawing himself to a sliding stop with chakra as he allowed Danzo's body to hit the ground meters below. His corpse then promptly vanished.

"Another Izanagi," Hiruzen asked rhetorically, watching Danzo's unharmed form reappear standing on the ground and looking up at him, "At this rate I'll kill you eight more times before you can even kill me once Danzo? How would that make you feel?"

The attempt to bait his long-standing rival was thoroughly ignored.

"I always admired that jutsu of yours," Danzo said, holding a single shuriken in the palm of his hand that spun rapidly due to his wind chakra, "…I'd like to thank you for showing it to this eye of mine."

'No!' Hiruzen thought with wide eyes as Danzo let the buzzsaw of a wind-enhanced shuriken fly his way. There was no lag in the hand-seals of the Konoha elder, performed just as smoothly as Hiruzen's had been.

"Shuriken Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shuriken Shadow Clone Jutsu)!"

Used with wind-boosted shuriken, upwards of a thousand of them.

It was unfair for such a jutsu to be in the possession of a man such as Danzo, but with the Sharingan he'd managed to obtain the hand-seals with a mere glance at them.

And because of it, a veritable wall of metal that could cut through nearly anything flew right at one of only four village leaders that Konoha had ever seen.

Another member of the old guard would meet their end today, but it would be alright.

It would be for the good of the village after all.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Konoha – Hidden Underground Waterway Facility)

As long as she kept up the same expressionless countenance that the rest of the Root unit did 24/7, Ino pretty much had free reign to go anywhere. As long as she was in Fuu body in particular, she could go anywhere since he was one of Danzo's two top bodyguards along with Torune.

Oh God, she had to keep an eye out for him. She hadn't come across him yet, but he was Fuu's partner. If Ino didn't tread warily around him, Torune would see that the black-ops Yamanaka was possessed by his distantly related clan member and take her out without hesitation.

She had to be quick though, because since he knew jutsu it wouldn't be too much longer before Fuu started fighting back against her control, and if he could get some control back the jig would be up.

Still, that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy figuratively being the smartest person in the room.

'I… can't stand it, I know you planned it, I'm gonna set it straight this Watergate,' Ino mentally sang to herself as she took Fuu's body somewhere relatively safe from the fallout of her to-be actions, 'I can't stand rocking when I'm in here, 'cuz your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear. So while you sit back and wonder why, I got this fucking thorn in my side. Oh my it's a mirage, I'm tellin' y'all it's sabota~ge."

Cue a quick ram seal that no one else saw, followed by a combination of tactically placed explosives set off a chain reaction.

'Okay,' Ino thought to herself through the three bodies her split spirit inhabited, 'You guys better get this started while I keep this place all jumbled. Maybe we can pull this off after all?'

If they were really emotionless, the members of Root wouldn't be affected by the panic, so it was time to test just how much emotional control they all really had when everything started coming apart at the seams around them.

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Hour 6-7)

By Shikamaru's count and from the chakra the two of them had been using in order to screw with each other, they'd knocked quite a bit of time off of their switch time and it would only be a matter of minutes

Really? After the entire day that they'd had, with the time left on the clock running down to absolute zero for Naruto to hit one out of the park on him, Shikamaru really hadn't expected to find Naruto where he wound up meeting up with him again at of all places.

The ramen shop: Naruto's favorite eating establishment. It was one of the first places Shikamaru had checked, and he figured from his initial sweep of the neighborhood that Naruto was smart enough to stay away from there.

"You couldn't wait until after you got your body back to eat?" Shikamaru inside of Naruto's body asked as he saw his own stolen body. A bowl of ramen wasn't normally the food of choice for Shikamaru's palate, but he wasn't in control of his palate; Naruto was.

He saw a large, bulging burlap sack on the floor next to Naruto's seat and kicked it back out into the street before Naruto could try to reach for it. Whatever was in there, Naruto had planned on using it to make a big splash from the weight that he'd felt the bag have.

Checkmate.

"Alright, time to knock you out," As he lifted his fist to make use of Naruto's brute strength and deliver a skull-thumping shot to his quarry, he was stopped by Naruto calmly raising a hand as if to silently ask him to wait. He wasn't done eating yet.

Why Shikamaru stopped, neither would ever know, but he did.

Eventually, Naruto let out a sigh and set his bowl aside, "I didn't want to stop before I did what I wanted to get done, but I got exhausted from hustling all day. Your body's so lame Shika, you get tired faster than me. I didn't even get to-."

"-That's called being normal," Shikamaru cut him off abruptly, "And I don't want to know what you were gonna do. I don't really care, because it isn't happening now," Shikamaru said, grabbing a pole stake that he'd found outside to bludgeon Naruto with, "Anyway, hold still," He was torn, because he wanted Naruto to feel the pain, but if he hit himself he'd be the one feeling it tomorrow, "I want to make this one count, now go to sleep so I don't have to do it again."

Hitting Naruto was for the greater good really. Anything could happen before the time elapsed for all he knew.

Fortunately, this wasn't necessary. Both began to feel a strange pull on their chakra and knew what that meant, having felt it beforehand at a faster rate when they had been originally switched. Their time was almost up. Mere seconds remained. It was all over with, and Konoha hadn't self-destructed.

"You know Shika," Naruto said as he stood up to face his best friend, "Despite everything that happened, today was really cool in some ways, don't you think?"

Shikamaru was not a fan of burying the hatchet in this instance, "Shut up and give me my body back already."

And with that, Naruto's body went limp for a few seconds before his body seemed to reboot and reactivate with the proper mind driving the seat. His blue eyes lit up to their usual bright sheen as he stood face-to-face with Shikamaru, who didn't seem relived to be back in his own body or anything.

Because it wasn't quite Shikamaru. It was a clone that Naruto had made while in Shikamaru's body, thus it was still Naruto in essence.

"...Man, that actually worked out," 'Shikamaru' eventually said with a very Naruto-esque grin on his face that was mirrored by the original possessor of the expression, "So how bad is it?"

"Oh he's gonna hate me tomorrow," Naruto assured him before tapping him hard on the forehead and dispelling him. Noting that he hadn't paid for the food his clone ate, he dropped the money on the counter and bid Teuchi and Ayame a farewell before heading back home, whistling a jaunty tune to himself.

The father and daughter just watched after their best customer, thoroughly confused. What had just happened?

XxX

Shikamaru would have been relieved to be back in his own body and back at his own comfortable home to boot, but the moment he returned to his body he found his caring mother Yoshino screaming in his face at the top of her lungs.

"HONESTLY I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE YOU LEARNED HOW TO ACT LIKE THAT! DID YOU PICK THAT UP IN THE GUARDIANS? WHAT IN THE WORLD WOULD POSSESS YOU TO TREAT YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY!" The moment Shikamaru's eyes unfocused for a few seconds as the switch between his mind and Naruto's was made, Yoshino took this as him tuning her out, "PAY ATTENTION!"

This was emphasized with swing of a hard iron pan that came crashing down over the top of his head.

Only then did Shikamaru realize that Naruto had faked him out. That splendid bastard pulled a 'Kawa no Kuni Shuffle' on him.

Naruto knew that Shikamaru would stick to his own body like white on rice while the rest of the time expired, figuring out that Naruto would try to pull one more massive jaunt while he still had the chance. Unfortunately, the plan completely revolved around Shikamaru finding himself so to speak and doing exactly that.

Even if he'd hit the clone, he'd wasted so much time barking up the wrong tree to find it that the damage would have already been done by the time he realized something was wrong.

Goddamn it, Naruto followed the tactician's handbook step-by-step, line-by-line. Who knew he had it in him? He'd been underestimated, and after being played fast and loose all day by his smarter partner he finally wound up burning Shikamaru in return.

Shikamaru had been looking to avoid the big flashy k.o. punch at all costs when he should have been checking his own positioning in the ring so to speak.

'Alright,' Shikamaru thought to himself with a scowl as he continued to endure his mother's harsh rebuke, 'Bravo you son of a bitch. Now I can't even go back out to do something else to you for the rest of the night, and by tomorrow I won't care enough to.'

Because Yoshino was going to bitch a hole in him until the owls came out. Man, she was getting nasty now.

Yoshino _was _a kunoichi, even if she had retired from active duty years ago. Which meant she was tough, and simply would not tolerate any shenanigans in her home, "-THAT WAS COMPLETELY DISGUSTING! I CAN DEAL WITH THE LAZINESS, BUT HAVE _SOME _KIND OF DECORUM SHIKAMARU! YOU COMPLETELY RUINED THOSE PANTS!"

What pants?

'I lost him for thirty minutes at most, twenty of them he'd have had to spend getting here in the first place! What the hell did he do?' Shikamaru thought to himself with a twitching eye, holding the brand new bump on his head as he pretended to listen to his mother rant at him, 'If I ask she'll just hit me again, because it doesn't look like she'll be done anytime soon. And where's dad?'

Shikaku was having a drink on the roof, laughing his ass off at his son's expense. Today had been a good day to take some time for leave.

"The best thing about having a kid for all the trouble it is…" Shikaku said to himself as he chuckled under his breath between drinks, "…Is that you really don't have to go looking too far for your entertainment."

* * *

**You know, for some reason I never really hated Danzo's abilities in canon, because while Izanagi is a completely hax jutsu, Danzo's offense was never so overwhelming that it made him unbeatable. He was strong defensively due to the Izanagi with a versatile offense that had enough power to make him dangerous to any character pre-war, and Izanagi was something that could be outlasted instead of just something that could be used as a timely out for him. He could barely even control it.**

**It wasn't his battle style that made him a villain. It didn't hurt that it was so infuriating a concept, but that wasn't what it was.**

**Anyway, that aside, the next chapter brings an end to the Civil Unrest Arc. Konoha will have to resettle from the results of its subtle power struggle, along with everything else going on outside of it.**

**I've got to go to work now all, so I'm done and I'll see you guys next time if you'd like.**

**Kenchi out.**


	63. Hidden Civil War

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I am one can short of a six pack!

**Chapter 63: Hidden Civil War**

* * *

To fight a battle from inside of the enemy's home base of operations was not an impossible task, especially when one had someone on the inside. This was far more possible thing than could first be thought, even against Root. After all, Team 10 had something of a body snatcher on the team.

That was more effective than Naruto's use of Henge no Jutsu that they'd used to take out the other strongholds in the past. A loss of concentration for even a moment wouldn't screw up Ino's jutsu.

Either way, attacking from the inside was usually their operational method of dealing with troublesome armed numbers in a well-guarded area, and an explosion was their 'go' sign.

*CLANG*

The door to their cell was ripped off by a bodily-enhanced Chouji, allowing Naruto and Shikamaru to head on through, "Alright, you've got Ino's body Naruto?" Shikamaru asked, mind racing as he peered down the dark hallway of the small cell block.

"Yeah."

"You and Chouji stay back for just a second," Shikamaru said, dropping to a single knee and forming a rat and bird seal, seemingly waiting on the door at the end of the hallway to open. Eventually it swung open as three Root ninjas rushed in, "Kage Nui no Jutsu (Shadow Sewing Jutsu)!"

Violent as it was, Shikamaru had killed his fair share of people over the years, and his aim with his shadow tendrils on his unsuspecting targets struck true, as he ran them all through and let them drop to the floor. They did not get back up.

The first course of action for anyone stationed near a containment center would always be to check on any prisoners. They rushed in so that they could confirm that they were still captured, not expecting a fight, but only doing so because it was their assignment.

Apparently even emotionless ninjas could be caught with their pants down.

"Alright," Shikamaru said, standing up and ignoring the blood pooling on the floor, "Let's go."

With no time to dwell on the dead foes, all three chunin scrambled out of the cell block and made their way upstairs to come out on a bridge separated from the rest of the underground compound. Smoke rose and billowed up from several different places in the facility, all the while dark blurs flittered all about trying to run damage control and see to the threat.

Unfortunately they didn't know what the threat was.

"You're on Naruto," Shikamaru told Naruto who walked forward and cleared his throat before yelling at the top of his lungs.

"That's right!" Naruto shouted, still holding Ino on his back to transport, "The jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi did this, so line up single-file for an orderly surrender or prepared to get your collective asses handed to you!"

…They knew what the supposed threat was now.

Every single Root ninja in the underground compound stopped where they were and stared at the four interlopers, Naruto especially, as if they were insane. They didn't move to attack, or even seem to put themselves on the defensive.

Naruto sighed and rolled his eyes before a cloak of red surrounded his entire body, **"Okay, how about now!?"** He yelled once more with gruffer voice, **"Is it serious enough for you now!?"**

Upon watching the teen then vanish in a Shunshin that took the shape of a fox's head taking a single snap of its jaws, yes. Yes it was. The Root ninjas immediately began to panic and pursue Naruto to defend their secret base.

Apparently panic could still set in whether one was conditioned to be 'emotionless' or not. Survival instinct wasn't really the sort of thing you could train away.

"Wow, that was really easy," Chouji pointed out in regards to how Naruto managed to goad attention as the biggest threat of the team, "Will he be alright alone, having to protect Ino's body too?"

"He'll be fine," Shikamaru said, "All he has to do is get as many of them as far as he can to the surface. He mapped out his route on our way down here. Even if this is technically their turf, Naruto kind of has the advantage."

XxX

(Training Ground #44: Forest of Death)

The man was an annoyance that he simply couldn't rid himself of. Even when presented with the ultimatum to put up or shut up in battle once and for all, for everything that he'd ever dreamed of, Shimura Danzo still found himself coming up just short of outdoing Sarutobi Hiruzen.

"You are without a doubt the most infuriating man I've ever had to deal with," Danzo said calmly as he stared at his chief rival, completely unscathed from his attack inside of a large cage comprised of bars made from his trademark Adamantine Staff.

"You just made it easier to summon Enma," Hiruzen said, smirking despite the blood caking his own face, "Thank you for drawing my blood for me. It really cut down on the jutsu execution time."

That clever bastard.

Danzo had to chuckle. He just had to. It was just like Hiruzen, to come out on top in such a situation despite every precaution and move Danzo had made to prepare for the end.

Given the circumstances, he couldn't have thought of any other ninja that would have turned such an inescapable predicament into what Hiruzen had. He had for all intents and purposes been checkmated, and he had simply rejected his own defeat.

Nothing within a full half-mile stood after Danzo's thousand-plus cloned wind-enhanced giant shuriken. Nothing except the adamantine cage.

"All of my precautions were a good idea after all," Danzo commented as the adamantine cage transformed back into a single staff that landed in Hiruzen's hands, "Even when you're caught unaware, you're quite the dangerous man."

Hiruzen simply allowed Enma to return to his single staff form, choosing not to rush in with a counterattack. With the Sharingan, there was plenty of space for Danzo to see him coming and anticipate a move. Quickly narrowing his eyes, he forced Enma to extend to a length long enough to allow him to smash through the entire tree that Danzo had ejected him from moments before.

He was clearly through playing around.

"The games are over Danzo," Hiruzen said with a weathered sigh, "…I should have seen to this a long time ago. Standing here today, I have no idea why I didn't."

Hiruzen honestly couldn't. How could he have missed all of _this_ happening with Danzo. Whether they were friends or not, shoving Sharingan eyes into your arm and head wasn't something you could overlook. Ever.

With the knife already stuck into Hiruzen's psyche, Danzo wasted no time in twisting it deeper. A psychological advantage was sometimes more important than any physical one.

"Now, now Hiruzen," Danzo expressed, feigning concern for his friend, "How could you have known to be suspicious of the covered eye when the very first thing I did upon implanting it was dictate to you that it was of no concern?"

…What?

Hiruzen glared up at his former comrade, wondering just what he was on about. If he was talking about the genjutsu influence of the Sharingan, there was no way that Danzo could have ever used that on him without his knowing, especially since he would have had to make eye contact with it to execute the jutsu.

As if he could read his mind, a rare expression of mirth pulled at Danzo's lips, "Old friend, I was of the mind that you knew of every jutsu that has ever graced the walls of 'your' village," He taunted cryptically. Having one over on Hiruzen was a sweet feeling. The man with all of the answers literally had too many of them to come up with the right one in this instance.

Slowly, as if he had been running through and eliminating all of the possible Sharingan techniques that would have fit the bill, realization of what had been used on him dawned over Hiruzen's face.

"…Kotoamatsukami (Distinguished Heavenly Gods)…"

"Really, if I hadn't used that jutsu to make you believe it was your own free will that kept you from checking my arm and eye, you would have figured me out before my self-betterment was complete," Danzo admitted in an attempt to rile his rival, "Then again, I can see why you never felt it so much as strange. You always did have a wait-and-see attitude. It's the reason the troubles that have befallen our village have occurred."

"You created the worst spy that this village has ever been affected by!" Hiruzen declared harshly, "Enma!"

Another swing of the suddenly oversized staff brought down the titanic Forest of Death tree that Danzo had been roosting in, although the man was astute enough to time the fall of the tree to his own escape from it, he had moved far too slowly trying to get his timing just right, and had failed to anticipate one very important thing.

That Hiruzen's staff wasn't really a staff, **"Danzo! I've been waiting for this day!"**

After smashing into the tree, the adamantine staff transformed back into its original form of the great Monkey King Enma who ran up the tree and leapt off just as Danzo had chosen to jump from it onto another. Caught in mid-air, Danzo tried to blow a stream of wind from his mouth to maneuver out of the way, but Enma had been going far too fast for such a thing to make him miss.

The leader of Root was smashed with a kick from the mighty primate, sending him flying through the forest until his body crashed through a rotted log. Recovering with a gust of air from his body, he stood painfully on the surface of a stream, the right side of his robe torn to shreds to reveal his entire arm full of Sharingan eyes.

Landing on a ledge overlooking the stream, Hiruzen smirked at the sight of the discolored, grey arm. It had a face in it, which was disturbing, but Hiruzen had seen worse. Danzo wound up using more than one Izanagi to survive his boiling mudslide/firebomb combo after all. The defining traits in the spent eyes were completely gone. The red orbs were featureless and dull.

"You're down three," Hiruzen said, Enma landing near him on a lower ledge, "Surrender. This doesn't have to end with your death, but I _will_ strike you down without hesitation if you persist."

"Feh," Danzo spat, dropping down to one knee, his right hand on the surface of the water.

A dull cracking noise sounded out before four massive tendril-like roots snaked out from the stream at Hiruzen and Enma. Both human and monkey dodged the attack, but Enma found that Danzo had anticipated where he would leap with his Sharingan and had moved into his landing zone first.

The emotional summon sneered and growled, cocking a fist back to strike at the much physically weaker Danzo as he landed, **"Danzo you snake-!"**

His punch missed easily due to Danzo's Sharingan perception, and a mere touch from the man as he rushed past him sent Enma down to the ground in a heap, paralyzed from moving due to black marks that had spread all over his body.

"No, the snake would be your spineless master's student," Danzo corrected, drawing a kunai and breathing on it to form his deadly wind blade, "Hiruzen says I hurt this village by creating the worst spy that this village has ever had? Who did that spy defect to? Who benefitted from every bit of information that Kabuto managed to pull from the hidden villages?"

Before he could strike Enma down for good, Danzo shifted his attention and cut down an approach from Hiruzen, revealing it to be a mud clone as he severed it in half. The distraction was enough to allow Hiruzen the chance to bail his summon partner out of trouble, though Danzo was fast enough to cut him on the back of the leg as he departed.

Wincing at the sharp pain, Hiruzen heard an audible 'pop' noise and felt himself and Enma being drawn backwards by a sucking force that he couldn't escape.

The culprit was a massive four-legged creature with tiger-striped clawed paws, massive tusks, and a large trunk, as well as bandages around its head. As the nightmarish creature pulled him in, Danzo utilized his right arm to create a swirl of roots from the ground that spun around each other to form a point meant to impale him and Enma.

Enma, paralyzed by Danzo's use of a cursed seal on him, used the last dregs of his body's own free will to throw his partner aside just enough to avoid the point of the wood release attack. Ending his summoning at exactly the same time, Enma escaped death along with his summoner who landed on the ground in a heap.

Face scrunching up in annoyance, Danzo allowed him no reprieve, ordering his summon to reverse its flow of wind to send Hiruzen flying. He had to look at this as a positive. Even if he'd yet again failed to kill Hiruzen, he had managed to relieve him of his most powerful weapon.

The elderly body of the Sandaime Hokage flew through the woods at a high speed until his body landed in a slide through the thick forest underbrush, small animals scattering away for self-preservation. Hiruzen got up after a short while, though not as quickly as he would have liked. Those old bones of his had seen better days.

Instead of charging back to where he'd come from, Hiruzen simply hunkered down and waited, straining all of his senses to try and find where Danzo would be attacking from next. The slightest sound or feeling that would let him know exactly where Danzo would strike from.

He needed an idea. Sure, he could kill Danzo a few more times, he still had tricks up his sleeve after all, but as the battle dragged on he'd be playing more into Danzo's hands. Every time he finished Danzo off he lost a finishing move that wouldn't work twice. Every approach he used to put Danzo six feet deep would be accounted for the next time around. He had seven of them left over.

'And eventually he will find himself in a position where his temporary invincibility will embolden him to attack me,' Hiruzen thought to himself with a weary sigh, 'A shinobi's work is never done.'

"Old age is finally catching up with you my friend," Danzo called out, standing atop the back of his Baku summon as it lurched through the forest. Hiruzen snorted at the hypocrisy of such a remark, "Perhaps you should take a rest. The village is in good hands."

"The only positive that would come with you ever becoming Hokage is that you would more than likely die before any of your policies could adversely affect this village permanently," Hiruzen replied, "Like I said, if you want the position so badly… come and take it."

XxX

(With Naruto – Tunnels Underneath Konoha)

With Ino's body in his arms, Naruto's normal traveling speed was slowed, but not by much. She was far too light to impede him to any significant degree, and he had to go slow enough to ensure that the pursuing Root members could keep up with him.

SHINK!

A kunai thrown his way bounced off of the tunnel wall near his head. Okay, so that was a little close.

To think that there was a second standing force of ninjas hidden within Konoha was a wild concept, but actually being faced down with it and finding that a secret base actually existed within his lifelong home full of these off-the-grid ninjas took the cake.

As he fled, he couldn't help but think.

When he and Killer B dropped those Root agents off in front of the Hokage Mansion, Hiruzen hadn't seemed surprised at their existence at all, 'No way the old man would ever let something like this go on if he knew about it though, right?'

He couldn't imagine him doing so, but then again Naruto couldn't imagine Hiruzen not knowing about Root when they were based inside of his own village.

Naruto turned his head for a moment when he felt the brush of air, indicating that one of his enemies had moved to his right side. With a quick draw of their tip-less tanto, they tried to cut Naruto and Ino down in one even stroke, but Naruto ducked and avoided the attack, lifting his entire body up as he rose to kick his foe away.

His assailant downed, Naruto took to his right to continue down another tunnel path.

'They're trying to corral me somewhere.' It wouldn't have surprised Naruto if these waterway tunnels hooked up to another branch. They were probably trying to send him running face-first into a trap being set by other Root members who had been moving to set the ambush since the start of the chase, 'Man, that's annoying,' He whined internally, 'After I get these guys I've got to go and find those guys to be on the safe side.'

That was his concern; that the fight would be more of a pain in the ass since _everyone_ after him wasn't facing him down at once. Not that it was only him and his unconscious new apparent girlfriend against 16 Root shinobi. That wasn't an issue at all inside of his mind.

Shifting Ino in his arms and switching the motionless kunoichi's positioning onto his back, Naruto turned on the afterburners for a moment, getting himself enough distance to turn around and face his foes in the tunnel.

The Root ninjas slowed and came to a stop instead of trying to barrel into Naruto as one great mass of humanity intent on bringing him down despite the losses that would result. It was noted that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki was something of a treacherous opponent to have, and while they had been the ones who had him on the run, nothing was for certain. A flat-out charge wasn't their best option and they knew it. It was good to err on the side of caution against such a challenger.

Naruto wasn't really surprised that they hadn't charged him, because they tended to be pretty good at tactical fighting (something he'd noticed from Sai and from fighting the hordes that he and Killer B had taken on the previous evening), but he was disappointed. Things would have gone much faster if they had just come right at him.

A frown marring his whisker-marked face, Naruto sighed at the sight of the Root ANBU creeping subtly away from their uniformed formation, their attempt to space out and cut off his paths of movement transparent. It wasn't like they needed to hide anything about what they were doing. He would either fight or run.

He didn't seem to be doing either though, instead holding onto Ino without even backing away from them.

Red flag. If Naruto was surrounded and wasn't vocally complaining about his misfortune or what have you, something was wrong. Very wrong. For you.

Underneath the shallow water on the ground, things got soft, the same steadiness as Nerf. As this occurred, the walls turned to the same fleshy color and consistency.

"Toad technique!" One of the Root members shouted in warning, "Stand still and you're done for!"

The more astute Root members began moving just as soon as they realized what was happening. For an unfortunate number of less read-up recruits, they found their legs stuck fast around the ankles, as Naruto clones appeared from seemingly nowhere and knocked the trapped enemies unconscious as if it were child's play.

Most of the clones were torn apart from a distant projectile barrage by the Root survivors, but they then had to deal with the original Naruto who had set Ino safely down for a moment once his trap had been sprung.

"I trapped your trap with my trap!" Naruto said, blocking a tanto attack with his machete before looping the chain on its handle around his enemy's neck and slamming his face into the watery floor.

"Kanashibari no Jutsu (Temporary Paralysis no Jutsu)!"

Naruto's body froze in place from the timely use of a temporary stun technique from an opportunistic Root member, prompting another to leap at him with irons and a seal tag. Those didn't body well for him at all.

It took a greater effort than Naruto would have liked to bring his hands together, but faster than his enemies could reach him, he formed the horse seal while inhaling deeply, "Moegara Nagare no Jutsu (Cinder Stream Jutsu)!"

Burning hot ashes flew from Naruto's mouth and with a turn of his head he was able to freely spray it at all of his enemies who felt that they'd had him where they wanted him. Those that hadn't been killed in the attack more than likely wished they had been. With their severe burns and only the dirty water on the ground as a source of cool relief they probably would have been better off that way.

A quick scan of the area brought a sigh of relief from Naruto who walked back over to Ino. All of that had taken just over a minute or so. With a hand-seal meant to dispel a summon creature, the waterway walls, ceiling, and floor returned to their normal appearances.

"I'd have said you had a chance, but I'm not really good at lying."

Explosives, misdirection, traps, and general all-around skullduggery. That was how Team 10 fought when they had time to plan something out. And obsessively training from the time Iruka had died to the scare of a lifetime from Orochimaru had clearly paid off. That toad technique had run like clockwork.

Not far away down the tunnels, Naruto could hear the sound of more fighting taking place, which was odd. The plan really hadn't accounted for anyone else out of his 4-person crew fighting in the tunnels except for him.

Because he was almost literally a one-man army, it was his job to go ahead and clear most of the predetermined route out for Shikamaru and Chouji once Ino finished her job in the base with the body that she'd hijacked.

Whatever. It wasn't happening near him, and Shikamaru's contingency plan had nothing to do with the lazy S.O.B. and Chouji making some kind of heroic break through the enemy ranks. If there was a classification for Shikamaru it would have been 'Battle Pragmatist', and nothing about that kind of action defined such a turn of phrase.

So in Naruto's world, things were fine.

"And let that be a lesson to you!" Naruto shouted at the defeated Root ninjas, whether they were cognizant enough to hear him or not, "Next time check your list, of the future five best ninjas of all time!" He said, ticking off names on his fingers, "Naruto… Naruto… Naruto, Naruto, and Naruto, because I spit hot ash!"

"Oh Kami, really?"

"Who else is trying to get some of this hot ash!?" Naruto asked, hopping in front of Ino to defend her body just in case. He turned around swiftly, only to find someone else he knew down there, "Wha-? Tsunade-baachan?"

Indeed it was the large-chested sannin in the flesh, walking up to him and seemingly taking in how thorough he had been in the group beatdown he'd delivered. Jeez. That kid didn't mess around. And she'd been worried about him when they'd been pursued on her escort mission? Never again.

He'd beaten the hell out of four full squads of ANBU two days straight and came out of both fights without a scratch on him. Maybe if she'd followed him on any of his missions instead of doing the admittedly necessary job of mothering Naruto and patching up his injuries while he'd been a Guardian, she'd have been better prepared for realizing such a thing. Seeing him come back from high-level missions in one piece wasn't the same as going with him on them and watching him actually do it.

"Brat…" Tsunade said, looking over at Naruto who was grinning at how swimmingly his toad had worked out, "Does it bother you that you're… oh I don't know… roughly as strong as-," Herself at his age? Jiraiya at his age? And that in of itself wasn't natural, jinchuuriki or not. If she remembered correctly, Kushina hadn't been that strong at that age, "-A… really strong ninja… back when they were your age?"

If Naruto had noticed her hesitation in how she'd almost had a faux pas of the tongue in regarding him and comparing him to perhaps Jiraiya at the same age, he hadn't shown it.

"My only two options are 'be awesome and live' or 'suck and die'-," Naruto said with a hapless wave of the hand, picking Ino up and shifting her weight on his back, "-Which works for me. Is it working for you?" The sounds of fighting still continued though, "Damn it, what is that sound?"

"ANBU is down here trying to get things under control," Tsunade smoothly answered, as if it weren't a big deal.

It was for Naruto, "ANBU is down here?" He'd never even seen ANBU in a real mission setting before. It was a bit trippy to realize he was smack-dab in the middle of one.

Tsunade didn't know why he seemed to be surprised. He _had_ just been attacked the day before, and he was a priority to the village. Was it really so much out of the realm of possibility that he had a friendly tail on him somehow? What, did he think Hiruzen would just send him home with nothing?

"Well yeah," Tsunade drawled smartly, "This sort of thing is kind of part of their job description. You know, neutralize and/or exterminate all threats to, within, or around Konoha with extreme prejudice as seen fit by the Hokage. Also, thanks for marking the outside of the way you got in with those other guys you tied up. It made it really easy to find this entrance."

"Yeah," Naruto said with a big grin, mentally high-fiving his sense of timing, "Now check it out! More guys as proof for Sarutobi-jiji that there's something shifty going on! He's totally green-lit to do what he wants!"

Oh.

Oh… he thought that was a thing. That was so adorable. If she wasn't supposed to be such a hard-ass she could have just reached out and pinched his cheeks whether he wanted it or not. It probably would have pissed him off more than her actual response did.

"Pssht, he's the Hokage," Tsunade said dryly, "Honestly, he doesn't have to justify anything that he wants to do. None of the other hidden village leaders would have in this circumstance," At that, her gaze softened on the blond teen, "I'm sure sensei would appreciate the effort though."

Naruto beamed at the thought of getting to help his favorite old man in some way.

"…Right after he kicked your ass all over for getting yourself into this much danger."

Thoroughly deflated, Naruto then thought of something, "Wait, this is supposed to be an ANBU op, so why are you down here?"

Tsunade's expression turned strained for a moment before her features hardened, "Let's just say, I have a hard time just sitting around and waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

That was something she did not answer.

XxX

(With Ino – Within the Root Base)

Danzo had annoyingly set up his underground stronghold similarly to a feudal castle; lots of floors where he and his subordinate's rooms were situated, doors that let off no indication of what lay behind them, long hallways with no discernable traits to them that at times led to nowhere.

Within her fellow clan member Fuu's body, Ino kept an even expression on her face despite her need to be quick. Hopefully the distraction explosion that she'd set off had raised enough of a stink that there wouldn't be anyone inside of the private quarters. It would be hard to explain Fuu's presence there when there was panic going on all over the place.

'All of these goddamn rooms in this goddamn base look the exact same,' Ino groused mentally, coming across another room that was merely furnished with a futon, a dresser, and low table with scrolls on it, 'I actually feel sorry for these guys. They don't have anything that's actually theirs.'

Ino would be the first to admit that she was more or less spoiled. Her family had lots of money and she had been a complete and total 'daddy's girl' growing up. What she wanted, she got, and she wanted a lot. If she couldn't get it at first through easy channels (Inoichi) she'd just find another way to obtain it on her own somehow. Just imagining living a life where she couldn't get something that she desired, it didn't compute.

Her own kin had been living like this since she'd been a little girl, and the thing she disliked the most was that she couldn't even remember having met Fuu before coming across him in Root. Defending the village was all well and good, but how could you take away someone's choice? Someone's human desires?

Root was based heart and soul on the archaic Shinobi Rules to the letter, to an extreme degree. It didn't just apply in the field, it applied in the lives of the operatives in what should have been a safe place.

She heard the sound of a blade be drawn and froze before turning around slowly. There she was faced with a Root member who wore the standard attire, but with clothes on underneath covering the entirety of his arms. He had short black hair and a strange black mask that covered all of his face except his nose and mouth.

"You're not Fuu," The man said, "If anyone had made any sort of sound like that behind him, he would have reacted with the intent to defend himself."

Having been caught at other times in the bodies of others, Ino knew that the game wasn't over until the bad guy attacked, "Torune, you're acting like I don't know my own partner is approaching,"

Nice bluff, but no dice.

"I should have been told Fuu was back with the Kyuubi jinchuuriki sooner," Torune said, his eyes looking blank due to the way his mask was situated, "Danzo gave Fuu specific commands to undertake if he was ever in the situation where he captured Uzumaki Naruto. The second I was told you ordered him simply thrown into a cell I knew something was wrong, even before they escaped."

Other than that, how else would explosives have been set in areas that would have crippled the base? It had to be something of an inside job for any chance at working.

Hearing Torune's words, Ino hadn't checked for any standing orders on how to handle Naruto as a prisoner when she'd been reading minds, but she wished that she had. She knew what the higher level techniques of her clan could do, and nothing that would have been ordered to handle someone like Naruto would have been gentle or good for him in the least.

It pissed her off that techniques that more than likely would have belonged to her clan were to be used on Naruto to harm him. If Fuu had finished spying on her, or had God forbid captured her to trade Naruto directly for her (which she knew he would have done), Root would have had something up their sleeve to make sure he was a good boy and played nice.

"There's no good way out of this if you fight me," Ino said from within Fuu's body, her face stony and serious. The part of her that regretted this, as Root members were still ninjas of Konoha, it was put on the backburner when she remembered that these people had tried to get to Naruto multiple times, either to harm him or use him, "If you attack me, you'll only be hurting your partner."

"You're in my partner's body, making him a threat to Root," Torune said, sheathing his sword and pulling off his gloves, "Fuu would do the same to me if the tables were turned."

Ino didn't want to find out just why he'd done that instead of keeping hold of his weapon, and she didn't plan on it either.

The thing was… Ino had set more than one batch of explosive tags before first detonating them. She'd put down another set in case she wound up being cornered inside of the quarters. Apparently Danzo didn't keep anything incriminating inside of the base itself, so there wasn't any need to

"Yeah…" Ino said, holding her hands up in a half-ram seal, "You're not the only ones who don't fight fair."

Her release time from possessing bodies was much faster than it used to be. Faster than say… the detonation of a whole mess of explosive tags.

XxX

(Training Ground #44: Forest of Death)

Danzo had taken Hiruzen's weapon of choice and his closest ally away.

Danzo had endured Hiruzen's taijutsu assault and one of his most powerful finishing combinations. He had even turned one of them right back around on him.

Nothing less could have been expected of Hiruzen's oldest rival.

The fact that Hiruzen had already killed him three times over notwithstanding.

Damn Izanagi. And he had seven other chances to use it remaining.

From his position in the forest, trying to hide and gain an edge for a surprise attack, Hiruzen scoffed and sprinted forward in time to avoid a crushing suction force that pulled up all sorts of local foliage and fauna

That Baku creature of Danzo's. It was rather dangerous, and it worked perfectly for what he needed it for. All he needed was something to assist the strength of his own wind attacks and something to make his targets easier to attack.

'If I want to end this, I need to rid myself of that summon,' Hiruzen thought to himself, and he had a plan to do it. Forming a cross seal with his fingers, he put the first portion of his plan into action, "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Shadow Clone Jutsu)."

Whispering as he split his remaining chakra into two halves, Hiruzen's clone tried to make its move as best as it figured the original would have, only with its timing flawed, so either Danzo or the Baku would take the bait.

When Hiruzen saw his clone bombarded with the inescapable wind suction of his enemy, he knew that the first phase had been completed. Silently moving while he had the chance, he stabbed an object into the ground and moved along as stealthily as he could. He had to be quick, because this wouldn't work for long, if it worked at all.

"Katon: Karyuudan (Fire Release: Fire Dragon Bomb)!"

The Baku sucked in not only wind, trees, debris, and all that the forest had to offer, it sucked in a straight stream of fire that scorched it badly. Its powerful breathing ability was compromised from the vicious injury that Hiruzen's clone had dealt it.

Dropping down from the shadows of the trees, Danzo had his fingers fixed in the dog seal, "Fuuton: Shinkuu Taigyoku (Wind Release: Vacuum Great Sphere)!"

The air that Danzo had ingested in preparation had been condensed into one great crushing orb, aimed from above right at Hiruzen. Even if it hadn't hit him directly, the second it touched the ground it expanded with full force and shattered the earth into a finely ground pulp for dozens of yards.

Landing on the ground after the destruction he'd wrought, Danzo scoffed. His eagerness to kill Hiruzen blinded him. He himself wouldn't have done such a thing to give away his position so dangerously, even if it was a bid to take out the Baku.

Throwing back the right half of his robe top, Danzo turned his palm to the right and slammed his hand down onto the ground, gritting his teeth as he channeled his chakra and forced up large roots from the ground to turn the area into a death trap.

Even if it didn't hurt Hiruzen, and he didn't expect it to, he would have to move from wherever he was hiding to keep safe, and that was all Danzo needed.

With all of the noise his roots were making, waving around, tearing through the ground, smacking into trees with titanic thuds, and everything in between, he could still make out the more subtle noises of movement and heard a figure disrupt a space to his back right a few dozen yards away.

There was no hesitation. His eyes turned that way with no time to waste. Any move that Hiruzen made would be easily tracked for Danzo with the Sharingan eye, and from there Hiruzen would be lost. The old man would get close and use his taijutsu, because he wouldn't want Danzo to copy another of his techniques, and that would be it.

The next time Hiruzen got that close to him, all would be lost. He didn't want to have to waste that much chakra to get the job done, but he'd already been tapping into Izanagi, so trying to use Kotoamatsukami wasn't that much of a stretch, even if it was the only time he'd be able to do it for quite a while.

He wouldn't have to wait for ten years, but it wasn't the kind of jutsu he was able to bring out every day.

The genjutsu with no counter and no release.

A sharp pain smoothly ran through the lower back of his side, almost lifting him off of the ground. Danzo gasped for a split second, out of surprise and at the sudden pain.

Hiruzen had run him through with nothing more than a black kunai. What a throwback.

Danzo grinned, even as he felt the blade of his friend tear through his flesh from behind. Blood involuntarily spilled from behind his lips and teeth as he spoke, "I admit Hiruzen, I hadn't expected such a textbook distraction to come from you of all people. But then again, you are supposedly 'The Professor'. You've clearly not forgotten the basics with all of the power available to you."

A spring-loaded wire mechanism set up to create the noise of false movement, and a log set to fake the use of a substitution jutsu. An Academy Student could have come up with the same thing.

"Sometimes the basics kill," Hiruzen said, twisting the kunai deeper. He was not taking chances with this kill, "I'm disappointed that you've overlooked such a thing because of your 'invulnerability'."

Speaking of which, "I'll be sure to remember that… the next time around," Danzo said, although something was wrong. He didn't feel right. If everything had been going right, he would have gone intangible by now. If everything was going right, he would have lost the ability to feel pain by now.

…If everything was going right, he would have stopped bleeding by now.

"What did you do to me?" Danzo said with great effort in his voice. The stab was deep. The wound was jagged and gaping. Hiruzen hadn't been kind in his attack. The man still knew how to kill, and he had no qualms with doing so whatsoever, even if Danzo figured him to be weak at heart.

"It's an idea I thought of," Hiruzen revealed as Danzo's lifeblood ran down past his hands onto the ground, "…Remembering a somewhat particular circumstance that a splendid young ninja I know found himself in when he fought an opponent that outclassed him due to chakra, but for a different reason,"

After all, fighting someone that could die a bunch of times and respawn injury-free wasn't exactly something you expected to face in the chunin exams, even if a jinchuuriki was. Oh, the day that Hiruzen would have ever figured he'd have taken a page out of Naruto's book. But he knew the jutsu, and had known it long before Naruto had ever used it all those years ago.

"Izanagi is quite the jutsu. Almost all-powerful judging by how it has been able to protect your life thus far. So I wondered if it could work if you couldn't even access your chakra to trigger it. Apparently not."

"You lie!" Danzo snapped, "I would have noticed if you'd disabled my chakra off! The Sharingan in my eye is still active!"

"Because that's still the chakra moving through your body, and your Sharingan will always be active, even if you ran out of chakra altogether," Hiruzen explained, "The Chakura Mukou Fuuin (Chakra Disabling Seal) can't stop chakra flow through your body, you just have no access to it, consciously or instinctually. Either way, you're now simply a man that has to rely on the body you've trained."

The body he just let Hiruzen injure, just because Danzo thought he'd get him close enough to finish off after he activated Izanagi and became temporarily invincible.

That jutsu was the great equalizer. As Danzo lost his ability to access his chakra, Hiruzen did as well. Even those as powerful as the kage themselves weren't immune when they were caught inside of the affected field of the seal.

The most important thing though, was that Izanagi was a non-factor.

And with nothing to give him another chance, the fatal wound was just that; fatal.

'He did it again,' Danzo thought to himself, his body beginning to go numb and his eyesight beginning to blacken, '…That monkey did it to me again. Blast it.'

He'd even kept him from pulling off his last ditch moves. No death-triggered seal, and no last-ditch attempt to Kotoamatsukami some sort of subliminal command into Hiruzen's head. His defeat was absolute and final.

So this was what dying was really like. It was… dark. How appropriate. Darkness seemed to be the only constant Danzo had ever been able to rely on as something that would always be there.

"Everything I have ever done-," Danzo muttered quietly, "I've done for the village."

"I know," Hiruzen replied in understanding. However he neglected to say the second portion of his thought out loud, 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' "Goodbye Shimura Danzo. For everything you've done for our home, you will not be forgotten."

A smile played on Danzo's lips. He wouldn't be patronized or lied to. He didn't need any empty comfort in his defeat, "Yes I will."

Either out of spite, or wishing to take the last vestige of real control out of Hiruzen's hands, Danzo used the last of his strength to drop his body forward, sliding himself off of the kunai that had been buried in his liver.

Falling face down on the ground, blood pooling around his dead, cooling body, Danzo's corpse didn't vanish as a preamble to an Izanagi respawn. He didn't rise to do battle anew. He lay motionless on the floor of the Forest of Death, as Hiruzen dropped to his knees right by him, eyes closed and hands in a short prayer.

"There was enough hatred directed Konoha's way from the world Danzo," Hiruzen said, "Our people didn't need your brand of leadership to bring us more."

Even so, at one point in time Danzo had been his very best friend, and deep down he would miss him. The Sandaime Hokage disposed of the body with a small fireball and began to make his way out of the forest.

He had an office to get back to and work that needed to be done. He could call for a medic to heal him while he was there. Koharu and Homura would need to know the results of his decision to duel, and from there he had his ordered sweep of Root's main village stronghold to hear about from his ANBU captains.

A Hokage didn't have the time to recover after all, or to mourn.

XxX

(A Few Hours Later – With Naruto)

It was hard to comprehend, even after it all seemed to be over.

Sitting at the hidden entrance to the underground waterways that Root had been using to conceal their hidden base's location, Naruto rested with his friends as they watched ANBU walk out the captured members of Root that they'd been able to bring in alive.

They had fought furiously, but there was no passion to their struggle. There was no feeling behind their orders to fight. As by the book ninjas they were on-par with any fighting force, but their lack of emotion hurt them when it came to crunch time. They didn't have that little extra inside to push them forward in desperate times.

Sure, they were willing to fight to the death, and more than a fair share did. Their hearts weren't in the battle however. The Will of Fire was actually a thing, even if those outside of Konoha didn't believe it to be, and most members of Root really didn't have it.

"What a day," Chouji commented with a sigh of relief. That hadn't cut it as close as he'd thought it originally would have when he allowed himself to be thrown into a Root holding cell. Then again, it had been a Shikamaru idea, so he shouldn't have felt any apprehension in taking it on, "I could eat a house right now."

The things he'd been privy to as a result of his inclusion… it felt a little big for him. He was just a chunin, and sure, so were Naruto and Shikamaru, but they had been in the Guardian Ninja organization and had gotten somewhat accustomed to their share of big state secrets and conspiracies.

Idly he wondered how much of this he could actually talk about.

"Ino," Chouji said after thinking of this point, "…Err, your dad or someone isn't going to come and try to wipe our minds because we saw and know about all of this are they?"

Ino shook her head in the negative and Shikamaru took the reins in speaking about it, "No. It's not like we stumbled onto this out of the blue. This has been barking around us for a little while already. If anything, they'll just tell us to shut the hell up about who we tell this to and leave it at that."

"I don't even really like _that_ though," Naruto said in deep thought as he watched the prisoners be removed, "I mean, this was _under the village_ this whole time. Right around us, and we might not have ever known about it. Tons of people still won't know about it."

"Well yeah, it's kind of for the best isn't it?"

As the attention of the four chunin fell off of the procession leaving the tunnels and Naruto heard the familiar voice, he felt a strong hand rest on his head and looked up to see his white-haired godfather and teacher, "Ero-sensei."

"Well you stumbled upon one of Konoha's dirty little secrets kid," Jiraiya said, "How are you holding up?"

One of Konoha's dirty little secrets? That implied that there were more. Naruto let that bit slide for the time being though. He doubted Jiraiya would get into too much more of it anyway, "Fine I guess. I'm still having a little trouble believing that all of this could have existed in Konoha without me knowing, but hey."

"There are things about Konoha that you still don't know and probably won't ever know," Jiraiya said with a roll of his eyes, "Just because you want to be Hokage, it doesn't mean you know more than some others do, or that you'll ever know everything that you think you should. There are people out there that have secrets that can't EVER see the light of day, and there are people that are better at keeping their secrets to themselves than you'll ever believe."

He had things he'd never told Hiruzen. Tsunade had things he'd never told Hiruzen. Whether he still somehow knew about them was anyone's guess,

"I don't want to say that sometimes you have to filter what you wind up telling the people…" Jiraiya said, trying to find a way to sugarcoat things but drawing a blank for the most part. He wasn't a fan of the practice, but some of what had happened today could cause a serious situation if it became widely known, "…But I can't think of a different way to put it, so it is what it is."

Danzo had many, many supporters in the village for his hard-nosed way of thinking, even if Hiruzen was as widely beloved as any Hokage ever was. The gentle grandfather, the elder statesman as he was. Times were scary, and his image had taken a few hits recently with the spy situation, and Otogakure garnering influence with seemingly no discernable way to cut them off at the pass in sight.

"So I'm guessing that just locking down everything isn't an option," Ino remarked dryly, cheek in hand as she leaned over on Naruto, "The Hokage can do whatever they want can't they? They're the strongest."

"Well if you think that way you turn into Danzo," Tsunade said with a distasteful wrinkle to her nose, "Besides blondie, that comes with its own set of problems for everyone. I could list them if you'd like so that you can take notes."

Shikamaru groaned his displeasure and stood up, hands in his pockets, "Please don't bother. She's not really the brightest," Ino openly scowled at him and kicked him in the calf, but was far too comfortable where she was to do much more than that.

"There's a reason why I used to feel a certain way about the Hokage's seat," About how it was a sucker's bet due to almost certain death and no possible way of coming out ahead due to taking it, "Sometimes it seems like you just can't win."

She was damned glad that Hiruzen _had_ managed to win on this given day however. What she knew now only affirmed for her that her and Jiraiya's opinion was right. He had a genjutsu like Kotoamatsukami up his sleeve for all that time?

Presumably the only reason he'd never used it on Naruto to cover all of his bases was because during Naruto's younger years Danzo could never get anywhere near Naruto without it being too suspicious to ignore under any circumstances. Then after Naruto had become a genin he'd only been around Konoha for roughly a year, and the times when he didn't have either his friends, Asuma, or Jiraiya around him somewhere.

Ick. That Sharingan eye that had possessed the ability had been too dangerous to leave in one piece. As far as Tsunade was concerned, Hiruzen had done the right thing by disposing of Danzo's entire body on the spot. There might have been those out there that would have mourned Danzo's 'passing' but she would not be one of them.

"This whole thing was stupid," Tsunade muttered to Jiraiya, referencing Hiruzen's duel with Danzo, "Anything could have happened. What if he'd lost?"

"Then he'd have had his ANBU take out Root beforehand before Danzo could take the seat and recall them," Jiraiya said, gesturing to the cleanup scene taking place before them as they spoke, "Even if Danzo had won, it would have taken him years to set his underground troops back up the way he would have wanted them. He would have had to do things Hiruzen's way with the conventional forces, and he probably would have died or been forced to retire before he got things the way he would have preferred them."

"…It was still stupid though."

"Of course it was stupid," Jiraiya snorted in agreement, "It takes an idiot to do cool things. That's why it's cool."

That earned him a good-natured smack to the arm. Of course, it being Tsunade who delivered it, the blow accidentally almost dislocated his shoulder.

…Really, she meant it all in good nature.

XxX

(That Afternoon – Hokage's Mansion)

"Of all the dumb fucking ideas dad," Asuma said, having chain-smoked out of worry for half of the day. Of course he'd made sure to do it far away from Kurenai when he'd gone home to wait, but when he'd gotten word that Hiruzen had returned, he'd wasted no time going down there, and the to-be mother of his child had made it a point to accompany and support him, "Doing that alone? Are you trying to get yourself killed, or do you think you're fifty again or something?"

As well as keep him from flying too much off of the handle.

"There are some things we can't afford to allow to be passed down Asuma," Hiruzen said in bed from where he was under strict orders from his medic of a student to rest for at least the remainder of the day. A smile planted itself on his face as he gestured to the calmly seated Kurenai, "You should know that by now."

Asuma simply grumbled and continued pacing a hole into the floor.

Kurenai sighed and tried to play peacekeeper as best as she could. It was fairly difficult to do, but when Asuma was all wound up it took a lot to bring him back down, "Asuma means well Hokage-sama, even if he needs work on expressing it better,"

"I have no plans on checking out so to speak before I can see my newest grandchild be born, or finally see my son married to a woman able to keep him on the straight and narrow," The wrinkled old man said with a gentle smile, "Have your students noticed the ring on your finger yet dear?"

"I… uh, haven't shown them yet. It's fairly new," Why was she embarrassed? Maybe it was just the thought of actually being allowed to a degree to call the Hokage 'dad'? Who would have ever thought that as a future for themselves?

"Don't change the subject dad," Asuma cut in glibly, "You aren't the only person who feels responsible for this place and what happens to it. Nobody would have ever said that you had to handle Danzo and his bullshit by yourself."

"We all have a responsibility to this village, true enough," Hiruzen acknowledged with a shrug, "But my responsibility is greater than yours. You're going to be a father, and I wouldn't be able to look Kurenai in the eyes again if you were killed dealing with an issue that has been ongoing since you were young. I and others that were able to do so should have resolved the problem then instead of letting Root become a part of Konoha's infrastructure."

There was barely anyone left alive from that period of time, even less who were still capable of fighting anywhere near the sort of level that it would have required to take on Danzo. Homura and Koharu wouldn't have done so with their hearts in it, even if they were still of that much strength of body.

It was up to a particular generation to handle their own mistakes, lest they leave deep-seated problems for the future to endure. He wasn't going to apologize for feeling that way.

"There can only one real 'king'. The piece you protect above all else," Asuma muttered, sorely missing that he had a smoke as he turned away from Hiruzen and to Kurenai, "But then again the Hokage was never the 'king' of the game. I learned that much from you dad."

Unfortunately, Danzo never really did.

"Then you'll make a better father than I was," Hiruzen said with a level, understanding tone.

"Oh shut up dad," Asuma said, turning his head over his shoulder just enough to grin at him, "After all, you did good enough to make me. I'd think Kurenai and my team of brats would say that you didn't do _that_ bad of a job."

"I could live without the smoking though," Kurenai said, crossing her legs and her arms over her chest in a pout, "That's one thing I really wish you would have kept from being passed down."

XxX

(A Few Days Later – Elsewhere in Konoha – Uzumaki Clan Mask Storage Temple)

To restore some sort of normalcy to one's life, there wasn't much of anything better to do so than manual labor. Luckily there was one prime piece of land that belonged to Naruto, and he was dead-set on restoring it and shaping it up for living.

Team 10 and Team 7 were present, because it was a fine place to hang out, their preferred training fields aside, and the training fields had a tendency to be occupied by other ninjas of the village quite often.

"So over here's where I'm gonna put a sweet house!" Naruto said with an excited grin, gesturing to a flat, slight clearing that was clearly visible from the main temple, "…I've gotta learn how to build a house first… but how hard could it be? People do it all the time."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes with his arms crossed as he, Sasuke, and Chouji followed Naruto around on a short tour of where he planned to put things and what he planned to do with his clan lands, "Yeah, those people are called contractors."

"Don't listen to your grumpy buddy Mister Nine," Killer B said, leaning against a tree, jotting things down in his notepad, "Killer B thinks this place is fine!"

Still a bit unwary of how to act around Killer B, Naruto stared at him cautiously before leaning over to Sasuke, "Yeah, I still can't tell if he wants to fight me or not. He followed you here didn't he?"

"He won't leave me alone. I've tried everything," Sasuke droned in a broken tone of voice, "I yelled at him, I threatened him, I tried to get him arrested, I tried to get him lost in the woods outside of the village. He kept showing up at my house."

Naruto and Shikamaru both shared a look before fixing Sasuke with a questioning glance, as if to ask why he stopped trying to send him away.

"…Apparently it's a B-rank mission," Sasuke grumbled, "I'm his host until he leaves."

"…At least you made a new friend?"

"Fuck off."

"How do these kinds of things keep happening?" Sakura asked, sitting on the front stairs of the temple, moving to the side enough for a few of Naruto's clones to haul lumber up past her, "Honestly, things weren't this loud after Naruto and Shikamaru left the village."

"Mmm. How did you live without us around for so long?" Naruto jibed in return, one of his special cigarettes lit and hanging from his lips as he oversaw his clones working, "I can't imagine how boring it was."

Sakura simply rebutted with a dry stare, "Boring? Maybe. But the amount of fiery explosions per week since you guys have come back has gone up five-fold. Property values have dropped."

"That's a complete load."

"I'm not even kidding."

From the look in the pink-haired girl's emerald eyes she wasn't saying any of those things just to say them. Unfortunately, she was speaking to the last student of Jiraiya. _The_ Jiraiya. If she was hoping for some sort of reaction based on indignity she was going to have to keep on waiting.

"You hear that Shika?" Naruto asked, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

Shikamaru grunted in affirmation, "Yeah, if we keep it up I guess you won't have to build a troublesome house out here. You could just buy a decent place in the main part of the village for cheap."

"Nah, that's too lazy."

"No, what's lazy is making all of your clones clear your land and fix your temple for you. I couldn't have done it better myself."

'Oh Kami, they don't even care,' Sakura thought, palming her forehead in exasperation, "I don't know what I was expecting…" She said with a sigh, "Maybe some sort of show of embarrassment, that might have been nice. Ino, help me here."

Ino hadn't been listening at all, instead walking over to a place in the clearing where Naruto had stated he would build a house, "It should be a one-story classic-type home, spread out. And I want a room of my own right here that opens up in the direction of the sunset, with a big walk-in closet."

"Hell no. Nobody's telling me how to build my house Ino-buta-chan." Naruto said in return, "It's gonna be two stories, modern with doors that actually shut instead of slide, and what the hell would you need your own room in _my_ house for?"

"For when I stay here overnight? Hello? Duh dumbass!"

Killer B simply giggled to himself and wrote in his rhyme book while the actual friends of the blond pair stared with varying degrees of surprise on their faces. It wasn't a secret that Ino could be very blunt, and that if she wanted something she wouldn't be shy about it in the least, but wow.

Naruto went silent for a second, cheeks going red for just as long before he found his voice, "If your dad ever caught you at my house they wouldn't be able to find my body! I still don't know how you explained away staying over the night before the Root thing."

"Oh," Ino said, blinking her soulful blue eyes blankly before shrugging, "I told daddy I'd stayed over Sakura's."

"What!?" Sakura shrieked, "Leave me out of this!"

It was weird enough that Ino was apparently earnestly dating Naruto now. Sakura didn't need to find herself dragged into anything having to do with their brand new 'really-should-have-seen-it-coming-a-mile-away' relationship.

"Oh relax Forehead. He's probably forgotten all about it by now since he's never brought it to you," Ino said, waving the whole thing off, "If it hasn't come up by now it probably never will."

"Ino-," Naruto tried to say, but stopped when Ino grabbed him by the hand and led him up the top of the stairs to the front of the temple. By 'privacy', it just meant that they weren't surrounded by their friends as they talked about this.

"Naruto," Ino said, cutting him off quietly. The PDAs were still too much for him, as was talking about relationship matters in front of others. She understood, "I'm going apologize in advance for the things I might do, because I'm selfish. I can be a real bitch about the things I want, and I wanted you. Even after getting just a little bit of you, I want you so bad it hurts me inside to think about not having you. I hope you feel the same way, but if not…"

How was she saying all of these things? Didn't she feel embarrassed or nervous talking about those kinds of things? If she did, her poker face was on par with Neji's or maybe even Gaara's. Hell, if that were the case he might as well not be able to see her face the way he couldn't see the Guardian Kenta's, because Naruto couldn't tell.

Even when she told him about her faults she spoke with such candor, and so much poise.

"I… don't know," Naruto admitted, his voice dropping next to a whisper at Ino's candid admission, "I'm not used to getting stuff that I want Ino. I wish I could tell you-," That he loved her? Maybe, but he had no idea what that was even like, "…Ugh."

He had no idea how much his interest in Ino went past being his trusted, gorgeous female teammate and into being a significant other. Jiraiya was utterly useless in preparing him for any of that past knowing how to identify a good looking woman. Asuma was really the only person he could go to about anything deeper than that who he trusted enough to do so, but he'd be damned if he would.

"Well that's just more reason for me to hang around isn't it?" Ino asked rhetorically, slapping him on the arm, "I know how much you care, and I'm not trying to get you to say that you love me or anything right now. I mean, how are we supposed to know what that feels like? To love someone, to _be_ loved by someone."

So she didn't know either? What the hell!? What exactly did he have to go on then if even the girl he was courting didn't know quite what they were doing?

"…But I want to know what it feels like," She finished with a small smile, "So maybe we can find out together?"

"Aww…"

"Shut up!" Ino snapped back huffily at their amassed friends with an indignant stomp, "I was being dead serious! I almost got him to stop being so scared about being serious, and you all have to go and-."

She was swiftly swept off of her feet and bent over backwards, the only thing holding her up being the arms of her boyfriend, who didn't turn out to be as shy as she'd figured when it came to giving her a peck on the lips. Color her surprised, "Y-You're not scared?"

"Pssht, I'm not scared of anything," A blatant lie and Ino knew it, because Naruto was awful at lying. Ever since she'd spent the night at his apartment he'd been jumpy about even holding her hand out around too many people, "But if I screw this up and I hurt you… I'd probably kick my own ass."

"There's always the chance it might not work out," Ino said with a frown. If anything, she was more likely to hurt him than he was to hurt her. "Besides… if it's really bad I can just learn an ANBU seal ritual that'll wipe your mind and make you forget it."

"…That's a thing?" Naruto asked, blinking owlishly as he still held her up. He knew his fair share of fuuinjutsu and he hadn't been aware of that.

"That's totally a thing," Ino said with a cattish grin, "I think daddy knows it. Either him or Ibiki. It doesn't matter. I can get one of them to show me."

"Would you teach me?"

"Sure. We can test it on daddy by telling him we're together, then we can see if you can use it before he strangles you."

Naruto couldn't tell if she was joking or not, and for some reason that brought his mood up back to its usual high. As Naruto pulled Ino up into another kiss more passionate than the first, their attention as well as everyone else's was attracted to the sound of a cawing hawk circling above in the sky.

Chouji shaded his eyes with his hand to look up and try to make out what he could of the animal, "Sasuke, did you leave one of your summons around your clan grounds without sending it home again?"

Sasuke didn't even need to dignify that with a biting retort about how his hawks could send themselves home, because his teammate was way off-base, "That's not even mine. It's a messenger hawk."

"You use your hawks as messenger hawks all the time."

"I'm telling you it's not my hawk."

Because of his sunglasses, Killer B was better equipped to look up in the general direction of the sun than anyone else present, thus he was able to discern exactly what he was looking at, 'That's big bro A's messenger bird,' He thought to himself before lifting an arm up as a perch and whistling with his other hand for the bird to descend, "Eh-eh-eh, got some mail today!"

"Wait, that's your bird?" Shikamaru asked as Killer B removed a small message from its talon to read.

The dark-skinned shinobi's mouth fell open at the message that the characters on the page conveyed to him. He couldn't rap, he couldn't grin. There was nothing fun to take away from what he'd read.

"Yugito…"

XxX

(Meanwhile - Eastern Kaze no Kuni)

Cornering Nii Yugito wasn't such a tough task. As a jinchuuriki she was a powerful enough jounin to handle any class of mission on her own. It was part of why she was so heavily valued. Her presence alone was enough for the toughest missions, allowing the Raikage to free up more of his forces for other tasks.

Her presence alone wasn't enough to handle two enemies the likes of Hoshigaki Kisame and Uchiha Itachi however, and she found herself defeated and spirited away from the country that was her home. The Raikage would stop at nothing to get her back, so getting as far away from his realm of influence was the safest bet possible.

"I didn't think you would get so… upset-," Itachi ventured to say, "-At the sight of so much fire."

Kisame only grumbled, not saying a truly legible word as he shifted the unconscious blonde woman's weight underneath his right arm, "…Stupid bitch. Of course the very next biju Leader-sama sent us after would be the giant fucking flaming cat."

It was supposed to be Kakuzu's mark anyway. His and Hidan's. Kakuzu was off replacing hearts after getting his ass kicked by that Tsunade woman, and the entire bounty affair had gotten him paranoid on locking down the rest of his riches.

All of that came before capturing an assigned biju since there were other free teams anyway. Akatsuki's treasurer indeed.

"It does seem as if Pein-sama has quite the underplayed sense of humor," Itachi said as the two of them proceeded over the cracked, dry land of the budding desert climate, "Then again, I couldn't imagine how else he entertains himself with all the organization affairs there are to keep him busy."

Uchiha Itachi talking about entertaining oneself? There was a sort of novelty to such an impossible thought.

"Where are we going to extract the biju?" Kisame snapped at his partner, still testy at having to fight a giant flaming cat after recently recovering from heavy-duty burns on eighty percent of his body.

"Somewhere secure where no one will interrupt the process."

Kisame stopped walking across the cracked wastes right then and there, prompting Itachi to do the same and turn to face the deadpan stare on the blue-skinned man's face underneath his hat. Dry wind blew around them both, an empty whistle rolling through the air for emphasis.

"Itachi-san, would it kill you to answer a question straight for once?" Kisame asked with twitchy grin. Seriously, Itachi never lied to him, but he could be so roundabout with his answers that it sometimes made Kisame want to cut his legs off.

Itachi didn't even blink, "I thought I was."

"…"

"…"

"Where are we going Itachi-san?" Kisame asked again, entirely willing to forget that the last thirty seconds had occurred.

Seamlessly, Itachi began walking again with hardly a flutter of his cloak, "A safe place like I said, called Sora-ku."

Kisame grunted and continued following along, "Never heard of it."

"Well I would hope so. That would sort of be the point."

* * *

Omake: Out of Body Experience (Aftermath)

It had been a week since the strangest day on record in Konoha for quite some time. Things had calmed down, even though the strange temporary possession of an entire block of citizens had never been solved, and a corpse of the horrible tentacle monster that had taken over the now burned down Kikyo Castle had never turned up.

Either way, things for the most part were peaceful, and life had returned to normal… for the most part. Nara Shikamaru apparently had a new morning routine with two new training partners who were more than willing to try and stanch out his slothful ways with the power of youth.

Naruto just let him sleep face down in the grass and trained for a few more hours before waking him up to leave. Apparently Shikamaru resented such a thing.

"Are you still mad?" Naruto asked, having caught up with Shikamaru after he'd been dropped off at Team 10's normal meeting area of their genin training ground by Gai and Lee. The training had to be working though. At least he was able to walk under his own power today.

Shikamaru didn't answer. Talking would have wasted valuable energy. He just kept his eyes on the dusty road ahead, every step they took causing his muscles to scream in protest. He'd have dropped in the street then and there if he hadn't been so sure that no one would have picked him up to carry him after he fell.

"Hey, just remember that you started it," Naruto defended needlessly. Shikamaru was too tired to get into a troublesome argument, "All I wanted to do was take a joyride in your body for an hour. I wasn't going to do anything. You're the one who turned it into some whole big thing."

"Well I guess I don't have to regret visiting the post office as the first thing I did when this whole mess started anymore," Shikamaru muttered, intentionally doing it loud enough for Naruto to hear him. It of course worked, and his more spirited friend took the bait full-bore.

"Mail fraud in my body? That's the best time bomb you've got set?" Naruto snickered. In hindsight he'd probably done things more illegal than that in Shikamaru's body if he actually took the time to sit down and read a book of Konoha's laws, "You picked a fight with a warlock, just admit it! The worst you pulled I could fix in a few days tops. I've got you screwed over for weeks. Scorched earth, bitch!"

For the first time in a few days, a confident smile pulled at Shikamaru, prompting him to pick up the pace of his limping. Every step Naruto lagged behind ate at Shikamaru with a pain that felt so good, because it meant Naruto was actually stopping to think about just what Shikamaru could have accomplished with access to Naruto's mailing info; contacts, mailing lists, etc.

Stark realization dawned on Naruto's face, and that was it. That had been what Shikamaru had been waiting on.

That moment where Naruto realized that his lazy genius of a best friend stood to be quite a nasty person when the mood took him and it didn't require an exerted effort of him to be as such.

"What did you do?"

"I sent a letter to an interested friend of yours."

The way Shikamaru said 'friend' implied that Naruto would not enjoy seeing this person, or that it would somehow inconvenience or vex him in a notable manner. So the question remained-, "…To who?"

Shikamaru didn't say a word and simply limped away, a smirk playing on his lips, "I'm going home and taking a nap. Tell me how that Pyrrhic victory of yours tastes later. I'm thinking it'll be pretty bitter with all of the salt I sewed into your soil."

"Oi! Shika!" Naruto snapped at him, wondering just what Shikamaru had done that left him so evenly tempered even after dealing with the fallout from Naruto's actions from the week before, "What letter? And what did that last thing even mean?"

Shikamaru didn't say anything else. All Naruto heard from him was the pineapple-haired former Guardian humming the wedding march of all things as he walked away.

XxX

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

A bleary-eyed Ino sat up out of the bed in Naruto's apartment, still dressed in her grey work clothes from Konoha T&I. She'd gone in at 5 that morning, and while it had only been a seven-hour day she had been busy. Going to Naruto's place for a little rest was closer than heading straight back to her own, when there weren't people knocking on the door that is.

"I swear to Kami…" Ino muttered to herself, righting stray strands of her blonde locks back into her ponytail as she walked out to answer the door, "…If this is daddy raising crap over me sleeping at Goldie's after work I'm gonna-."

Leaving the rhetorical threat unsaid, Ino opened the door only to stop and try to deduce why the person standing outside of Naruto's door had business there.

She was a taller young woman, with determined green eyes and long dark hair in a ponytail. She wore a form-fitting outfit with short sleeves and a shoulder-guard on her right arm. Thought it was hidden by the fringe of her hair, she wore a headband with a star-centered five-segmented flower as its insignia

She certainly didn't seem to be the type who would drop by Naruto's apartment, but then again in all fairness neither did Hinata… or Ino herself for that matter, "Can I help you?"

"Excuse me," Oh hell, she was talking, and she didn't sound very thrilled about finding Ino behind this door at all. "I was led to believe that this apartment was the residence of Uzumaki Naruto."

This was clearly going to be one of those days, which was odd because it was already half over. Normally these sorts of things started before noon, not in the early afternoon. It was quite the time for the b.s. to start.

'Mmm, you're not from around here are you?' Smacking her lips once in thought as she stalled for something eloquent to say, the Yamanaka Clan interrogator quickly gave up and went for the direct approach, "Alright, this is probably going to end badly, but I'm going to go ahead and wonder out loud who's asking."

"Shizuka," The girl stated firmly, a frown on her face as she crossed her arms in front of her very prominent bust, "I've come quite a long way after being told that my fiancé has returned to his home village. I refuse to return to Nadeshiko Village without him this time."

Ino raised a delicate blonde eyebrow in query. This was so absurd it wasn't even worth flying off the handle at, "Right…" She said skeptically, "You're talking about Naruto? Goldie? I'm pretty sure if you held a kunai to his throat and told him to propose or you'd kill him he'd wind up slitting his own throat from shaking so much before he actually said it, even if he wanted to."

In so many words, there was _no way_ Naruto had the guts at this juncture of his life to ask anyone to marry him. Especially not some girl who never came up in any of his letters to her from the Capital. She didn't even have a ring. Naruto was a noted horse's ass when it came to adhering to most stuffy traditions, but he would have definitely gotten the girl he'd proposed to a ring.

'He'd better buy me-, err, her a damn ring,'

Shizuka's normally expressionless face slipped into a small smile, "There's no need for a proposal. Showing me his true strength was all that he required. He'll be very well respected for it in my village after proving that he was stronger than me, and I know that he will be happy there after he adjusts. He's a good man. I learned that much back at the Capital."

Damn it. Ino was hoping at first that this was some sort of thing about how strong Naruto was. That was an easy enough fix if she could convince Naruto to somehow lose, but apparently he'd already defeated her at some point.

And then there was the fact that she seemed to fond of him. As in she legitimately liked him for who he was, not what he represented in regards to strength and what it would have meant to bring back someone powerful to her village. That just seemed to be a bonus.

Somewhere in Ino's head, the voice of a loud, boisterous announcer sounded off at the top of his lungs dramatically, _"A new challenger emerges!"_

Setting aside the fact that there was no way in the nine levels of hell that anyone was going to ever take Naruto away from Konoha against his will without slaying a murderer's row of the very best ninjas the village had to offer. There was serious doubt that any of this info would deter the girl in the slightest however. She was convinced she could finagle Naruto out of there somehow.

Ino stared at the girl with a silently miffed expression before her eyes fell down to Shizuka's chest and then moved over to her own, 'Stupid uniform.' Her eyes panned back and forth before bemoaning how bland the T&I outfits were, '…Should've answered the door in my underwear or something.'

Apparently Shizuka could see past the plain uniform and imagine what Ino looked like without it after looking at the girl's pretty features. It was then that her hackles began to raise when she recalled that this was supposed to be Naruto's apartment, she knew Naruto, Naruto wasn't there, and she was close enough to be allowed to stay there when Naruto wasn't around, "What is your name?"

Not willing to drop her surname, Ino decided that Shizuka would have to make do with her given name, "Ino."

This only caused the Nadeshiko kunoichi to narrow her eyes on Ino, "So that would make you the one."

"Which one?"

"The one who is my obstacle."

With that, the mysterious young woman turned and quickly left Ino standing there to take in everything that she'd just learned.

Wow, the tables had turned rather quickly. She'd gone from being suspicious of this strange woman on Naruto's doorstep to being set in Shizuka's way. Ino set her head against the doorframe and banged it one time, "…Goddamn it Goldie."

Somehow that explained everything.

* * *

**Alright. For the most part Danzo's Root had been hoisted by the man's own petard in training Kabuto as a deep cover agent in the first place, thus a pesky undercurrent in Konoha has been for the most part dealt with. **

**Now back to the wide outside world! More Akatsuki stuff. It's gonna get rolling. Plus I hope what I've got Orochimaru doing next when I put him on screen is brazen enough to make you nod your head.**

**Now I have to go to work at 1 in the morning every day. Apparently getting a real job you can be proud of doesn't mean that you don't still get shite hours. Now I'm nocturnal. Hoot-hoot.**

** made me have to repost this twice... at work. I guess that means I know what day it is.**

**Hey-hey, Mike-Mike-Mike-Mike. Guess what day it is?**

**...**

**Woo-hoo-hoo, hump day-eeee! Yeah!**

**I hope you enjoyed. Kenchi out.**


	64. The Noblest of Pursuits

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I'll drive 50 miles in a snowstorm up and back just to spar with my peeps from college for a few hours. While Japan might be a long-ass commute just for a beatdown, do you really think I won't head to your neck of the woods if the rights to this franchise were on the line Kishimoto?

I will buy a plane ticket to Tokyo in a heartbeat Kishimoto!

Don't make me come over there Kishimoto!

**Chapter 64: The Noblest of Pursuits**

* * *

Kabuto was glad.

For everything that was great about him, Orochimaru wasn't normally one to practice moderation. After taking in the Sanbi, Kabuto had sort of expected Orochimaru to fancy 'collecting' the biju for himself. While Orochimaru reveled in the ease with which he could execute some techniques he hadn't felt healthy enough to perform in years and be able to continue fighting, he wasn't becoming drunk with his own power.

After all, those who had always been strong tended to develop a tolerance for that particular disorder. How much power was enough to drive you mad when you had always been more powerful than most everyone else?

"Orochimaru-sama, you just can't sit still and let things fall around you, can you?" Kabuto asked with a smirk as he followed his master through the pleasant summer weather underneath the forest trees. It was too nice out for his tastes.

"I've sat around watching things happen for long enough Kabuto," Orochimaru said, "There are things I want to do. While you and others like Guren have done exceptionally well in my stead, I must admit, I would feel a tad stir-crazy sitting around in poor Yukimaru's body when there are so many wonderful things I wish to put into action. It's been so long since I've felt like making my presence known."

"Kind of close to Konoha though, isn't it?"

"Not particularly. It's just the same country. If no one dispatches a request to them, no one from Konoha will come," Orochimaru reasoned gleefully, "And even if they did, you and I wouldn't even need to involve ourselves in a fight."

Not fighting? Kabuto remembered how he handled Sasori when he didn't have to. He took great joy in killing his old Akatsuki partner. The glee evident in every action Orochimaru took after the quick confrontation had been palpable.

He seemed to enjoy the battle, simply for the fact that it allowed the serpent the chance to flex his fangs for the first time in a long while.

"There are only a handful of people in the world that can stand up against me now Kabuto," Orochimaru declared, sighing as though it were some great tragedy, "As sad as it is to say, other than _maybe_ my old teammates or the leaders of the hidden villages, I don't see anyone that can stop me any longer."

Well, you know what they say about whistling through the graveyard.

Kabuto grit his teeth together at the sight of a swirling vortex appearing right in front of them. He figured it would have only been a matter of time before Orochimaru's little debutante ball that consisted of putting Sasori six feet deep came back on them somehow.

From the black robe decorated with red clouds on the masked man that stepped out of the portal, it was quite clear that this man was Akatsuki. Spiky black hair and an orange swirl mask with one eyehole. He was quite the odd-looking one.

Orochimaru didn't seem to blink in the slightest. If anything his smile now seemed eternally pasted on his face, as if nothing could get the man down.

"Ah, the man who believes that he knows everything," The snake-eyed Sannin said in his own condescending form of an affable greeting, "Hello my old acquaintance."

Someone clearly wasn't in the mood for small talk from his reaction.

"What do you think you're going to accomplish Orochimaru?" The masked man asked, a dangerous lift to the end of his sentence despite the congeniality of the talk. Even Kabuto, despite the obvious danger he was in merely standing anywhere near the two, didn't seem very fazed, smirking in his usual smug manner as he leaned against a vertical surface and played spectator, "You're playing a dangerous game. Our rings, our targets."

"Tar_get_," Orochimaru specified with a chastising wag of the finger, emphasizing that he was indeed brazenly wearing the Akatsuki ring that he had only previously kept amongst his hideout belongings as a memento of losing his hand, "I only wanted one biju my 'mysterious' friend. And now I have it. Consider this a part of my unfulfilled Akatsuki severance package. I was promised the chance to learn every jutsu in existence, but I was so severely admonished for trying to cash in on that guarantee."

"I still needed Itachi."

"Well, unfortunately I _don't_ any longer. You can keep what's left of him now," Orochimaru reasoned with a shrug, "I wouldn't ever have in the first place if you hadn't seen fit to help him kill his entire clan, but after you did, well let's just say I only had one living target to aim for if I wanted a fully matured Sharingan," Sasuke was still out there if he wanted him. _If_ he wanted him, "…A little bird tells me that I don't even need that one target any longer. I just enjoy having contingency plans."

Kabuto pushed his glasses up on his face with a smirk, "After all, someone did _something_ with all of those eyes after the massacre. You wouldn't happen to know where all of those got to, would you Tobi-san? That is what you prefer to be called isn't it? Or wait, is it Madara? I'm sorry, it's just that I've heard so many names for you, I can't keep them straight."

The masked man took a single step forward after being presented with that information, "You'd best carefully consider the things you wish to refer about in passing."

Just… no.

Unsubtly threatening Orochimaru wasn't a wise course of action before he supercharged himself, it didn't matter how strong the person was. Doing so now might have become the most effective form of suicide known to mankind.

"I seem to remember when this fool in a mask appearing out of the blue to recruit me for his merry guild, because he needed the best. I was promised the chance to learn everything, but was constantly kept in the dark and treated as a mere underling. A pawn," Orochimaru's smile stayed on his face, but it grew noticeably more sadistic with more ill intent behind it, "…I was given orders by a man who claimed to be a leader but let himself be directed by a man who doesn't even use his own name."

The man in the mask felt a confidence in Orochimaru that went beyond anything he'd felt from the man before. This was the man who fancied himself a God-like being because of his ability to jump between bodies, and if possible he seemed more self-assured than ever now.

With admittedly good reason. He was disgustingly powerful

"I have no interest in your little gentleman's club," Orochimaru said coldly, "You have nothing that I want, and for all intents and purposes we should never cross paths again, unless of course you still desire the Sanbi in which case… feel free to try and take it from me."

If you're man enough. If you're powerful enough. If you're willing to jump into a fight you're not sure you can win because I baited you into it. If… if… if. The choice was his as to what Orochimaru meant by his outright challenge and if he would take him up on it.

The masked man simply disappeared back into the vortex from whence he'd come, "You will beg for me to bring you your end," He assured Orochimaru.

"I can't say I've heard that one in a while. 59."

"I'll stare at your corpse down by my feet, and you'll know when you're dead that you brought it upon yourself."

"23."

The masked man stopped and regarded the smiling Orochimaru strangely, "What are you doing?"

"Oh," Orochimaru said, waving the entire thing off, "Don't mind me. It's just that I hear these vengeance-filled soliloquies so often that I've made a little game out of counting how many times I've heard certain lines. But by all means, continue."

Who made a game out of all of the people who had spoken of killing them? That was just depraved, "You… sick bastard."

"190," Orochimaru chirped in return.

Tobi just stared at him for several seconds before seemingly departing into his own eye, leaving the area.

He might have had his own problems, and his own morals might have been what conventional folks would have called 'shot', but Tobi hadn't ever dealt with anyone as deranged as Orochimaru. And the man refused to be a piece on someone else's board.

He actually had the power and apparently the information he needed to keep such a thing from happening as well.

This was not good.

…Where were Itachi and Kisame with their mission to take the Nibi? Something had to go correctly for them. At this point Akatsuki only had the Yonbi, Gobi, and the Rokubi out of the nine biju. That was less than half and they had been the softest targets to take.

Of the ones left to capture, the Sanbi was now inside of Orochimaru of all people, the Ichibi's jinchuuriki seemed to be rising up the ranks to top-class in Suna after his murderous urges seemed to taper off four years ago, the Nanabi jinchuuriki was something of a hero to Takigakure now, the Hachibi…

…Well they weren't going after that one until they had a fantastic plan or incredible set of circumstances to make success possible beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Kyuubi host was a softer target by Akatsuki standards, and not by much. As far as all of the remaining jinchuuriki went, he struck the most even balance between the extremes of the three.

He wasn't an outright cold-blooded killer like Gaara but he was dangerous and had no problems splitting suckers down the middle. Itachi's recount of the fight with Kimimaro had been starkly eye-opening as to how deadly serious that boy could be.

He was famous and roughly seen in the same light as Fuu by his village as far as popularity went, but considerably lesser than Killer B was by his.

He was at least as powerful as Fuu and Gaara because he'd beaten them before and had only gotten stronger over time, but less powerful and experienced than Killer B and obviously Orochimaru.

Yugito Nii had been on a mission outside of her village when Itachi and Kisame had been dispatched to take her. Two of the remaining five, as in Fuu and Killer B, were mostly kept domestic. Fuu was normally kept within the country that Takigakure resided in and Killer B never really left the confines of Kumogakure at all.

…Except recently for some reason.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Uzumaki Clan Mask Temple)

The day had to carry on as usual, even after Killer B's sudden departure after the morning get together between the two squads that had graduated in the same year.

Seeing Killer B head off earlier, notably stoic as he presumably went to the office of the Hokage for his own reasons, left a somber mood over the Team10/7 meeting on Naruto's clan lands. The get-together had dispersed soon after the dark-skinned shinobi received his long-distance message, with Sasuke following him under the excuse that he was Killer B's escort for the duration of his stay in the village.

Shikamaru went home to unwind some more after the trouble with Root had seemingly come to an end, and Ino did have errands to run around town in the stead of her father who was working overtime with Konoha T&I on the captured members of Root to see what could be done about them.

After Naruto's telling recant of Orochimaru's horrifying level of control over the Sanbi, Jiraiya figured it was time

Jiraiya was probably going to have to get himself involved with handling Orochimaru should he keep himself and Otogakure going on their current upswing. That trend could only mean trouble in the future with so many high-level rogue elements. Since that was the case, he figured that there was a need to go into overdrive on what he was teaching Naruto.

It wasn't that time wasn't necessarily a luxury, but times of turmoil were an awful time to try and improve to any considerable degree. You had to take the chances to work when you got them, because when they were gone they were gone.

So he had to get Naruto back on focusing. Pressing the kid to get the job done after it became imperative and all-vital to was not Jiraiya's idea of fun.

"There's nothing you can do about it anyway," Jiraiya said sternly, arms crossed as he oversaw Naruto's progress, "I know you like to think you can solve most of the problems around you after you hear about, but sometimes you've got to let sleeping dogs lie, because sometimes that'll get you bitten."

Naruto cracked open an eye Jiraiya's way and quirked an eyebrow at the uncharacteristically cynical talk coming from his godfather, "You alright Ero-sensei?" He asked, "You sound like someone pissed in your cornflakes this morning or something."

The middle-aged toad sage had been testy ever since the Hokage had gone off to fight Danzo. That could have gone the wrong way if the two hadn't been a little closer matched in strength. Danzo definitely had the tricks up his sleeve, unfortunately he relied too heavily on his invincibility with Izanagi to counter Hiruzen's heavy attacks and wound up paying for it.

Jiraiya's face crinkled up in thought at just what was eating him. It was quite the list.

Between Orochimaru finding a new lease on his miserable life as a jinchuuriki and Hiruzen expending who knew how many years off of his life to finish things off with his longest standing rival, he was considering hitting the bottle to a Tsunade kind of degree.

Along with that, heading up to the Capital to see what was up with that red light district didn't sound too shabby either. It had always been a favorite haunt of his.

And things had been so simple back just a few years ago. All he had to do was make sure Naruto was a world-beater by the time he finished with the Guardian Ninja, teach the boy how to be a man, and finally find a way to convince Tsunade to bang him.

He'd completed… roughly one and a half of those three things, but he'd had a hell of a time doing them! He hadn't noticed how much he'd missed having a kid around to corrupt until he'd started training Naruto.

Speaking of which…

"You're not holding still enough," Jiraiya told Naruto, getting him to scowl, 'Damn it, what I wouldn't give for the training oil. Stupid atmosphere,' If he could spring Naruto for some off-time he probably would, but there was too much going on at the moment to take Naruto to Mt. Myoboku for the length of time he figured it would take him to learn Sage Mode, "Do it better."

"I've been trying to do this forever," Naruto replied through his teeth, "You started me on this before I even left the Capital, and I've got all of jack to show for it," That wasn't true. He wasn't so thick-headed that he couldn't see progress, but sometimes it felt like it.

"You can do it," Jiraiya assured him, "If I could, you sure as hell can. You know how to meditate, and it's just a few leaps forward from there. The moment you feel it out, you'll wonder how the hell you could have ever missed it."

Granted, once again it would be much easier on Mt. Myoboku with the toads, the oil, and the ambiance. Naruto's mask temple was the next best place they were going to find in Konoha that was for sure, and the meals back at home were a hell of a lot better than they would have been on the mountain.

Jiraiya knew Naruto could get the job done. He was so close, even without the oil, which was incredible. He wasn't even letting Naruto use clones to get it faster because of the danger factor. It had only been six months since they'd started dedicating time to teaching Naruto to gather senjutsu chakra.

The best place other than the mountain to gather the needed nature energy was in a place that felt like home. The reason Naruto's apartment was out was because a house by itself simply was not a home. It was a place where you felt most comfortable, and for Naruto that was a place of his own that belonged to him.

He was so close. If he could just get an excuse to get Naruto out to Myoboku…

With a sigh, Naruto's seated posture broke down and he looked up at Jiraiya shaking his head, "I dunno. I mean, I think I feel something, but I don't ever know. I know what your Sage Mode feels like, but when I think I'm drawing in senjutsu chakra I don't, you know, feel it."

"My Sage Mode is imperfect anyway," Jiraiya said, crossing his arms over his broad chest, "If you think you're feeling it, but it's not the way it feels when you sense it from me, that means you're balancing it right, which kind of pisses me off to think about really."

Naruto grinned at Jiraiya as he jumped up to his feet and threw his hands back behind his neck, "Don't be like that Ero-sensei. If I'm awesome, doesn't that just make you awesome too for teaching me?"

"In a way," Jiraiya said, finding the grin infectious, "All I seem to do is train top-shelf badass. First the kids from Ame, then your old man, and now you're shaping up nicely. That's right Naruto, just keep on building up my legacy for me! Wa-ha! Wahahahahaha!"

Naruto laughed along with him boisterously until he picked up on something that didn't quite belong in that set, "Wait, what kids from Ame? You trained kids from Ame?"

Jiraiya stopped laughing and sobered up in mood considerably. It hadn't been something he had been hiding, but all the same he wasn't very excited to talk about it, "Yeah. It was before I trained Minato even. I taught three kids for three years until I thought they were good enough to survive on their own."

"…What happened to them?"

The white-haired veteran sighed and leaned against the wall by the display of masks, "They did well for a while. I'd hear rumblings of some group in Ame working for peace… but that was a long time ago. I haven't heard anything since… gosh, right after the time you were born I'd say."

Wow. Talk about a throwback of a memory.

"I think you would have liked to meet them," Jiraiya said with a smile of remembrance, "Two of them were good kids. You would have gotten into a fistfight with Yahiko though," Thinking of those things were sad though, "Enough about that though, what's up with these masks? Do they do anything?" He grabbed one and went to put it on his face before Naruto stopped him, "What? I was kidding."

"No, they really do stuff," Naruto told him, pointing to one in particular on the wall, "That one possessed my clone."

"With what?"

"I don't know. I don't care. It wasn't human. I got the hell out of here."

Jiraiya looked at the wall of masks with an all new interest, "Okay, you know we're spending the rest of the day figuring out what these damn things do don't you?"

"What if there's one that makes you explode, or makes you pee blood or something?"

"Well that's what clones are for."

XxX

Akatsuki. Akatsuki. It always came back to Akatsuki.

Sasuke couldn't focus on his training. Not after the message Killer B had received had been shared with the Hokage. He had been told explicitly that he was not to roam alone. He was to wait in Konoha until a squad was available to escort him. He was surprised Killer B hadn't simply barreled his way out of town, but apparently the only person the world's greatest jinchuuriki would back down to was his Raikage of an older brother.

…Older brother…

Accounts from eyewitnesses of the departing attackers of the Nibi jinchuuriki claimed that one of the attackers bore extreme resemblance to Konoha nuke-nin Uchiha Itachi.

'Itachi…' Sasuke thought to himself. This was the second time in a handful of months that he'd heard anything of his own older brother. His chief rival even had visual confirmation of Itachi's current existence, and had even suffered a Sharingan-style genjutsu entrancement.

Walking back into the main house of his clan grounds, Sasuke found Killer B sitting by the door, leaning against the wall. His face was grim and serious behind those sunglasses of his.

He'd been so passionate when he'd taken the message to the Hokage's office, but the orders of his Raikage superseded his desire to leave and do his own thing. Nii Yugito had been taken. There was no way Kumo wanted to risk losing two of their absolute heaviest hitters in one fell swoop.

Even so, if anyone understood wanting to say 'screw it' to the rules that were holding you back from doing what you wanted, it was Sasuke. In that vein he wanted to help. Not just because of that, but because sticking his nose in this would get him a step closer to taking Itachi's head.

"The Raikage said you weren't allowed to travel the countryside alone right?" Sasuke asked, trying to help the rapping shinobi skirt the law that had been laid down by his brother, "Well hire us, or to be more specific, hire me. I'll put a team together and we'll 'escort' you across the country."

Killer B hesitated for a moment. A was already pissed off enough about him running off from Kumo at the drop of a hat. While he technically wouldn't be going against his brother's word, A would still kick his ass even harder for finding the excuse of a loophole to disobey him.

But it was Yugito who was in trouble. Any sort of wrath he'd have to face from his brother's Iron Claw was a mere trifle if he could get his village's resident kitty cat back alive and in one piece. He wouldn't leave a friend like her behind. And it wasn't like he hadn't earned enough money over the years to pay for a mission of this sort. With all of the S-ranks he'd won before A barred him into staying in the village, he could easily drop the cool million ryo minimum it would take to run an S-rank mission.

A needed to specify his bullshit parameters meant to order Killer B around better, because he also never said that the squad Killer B had to wait for needed to be a Kumo squad.

"**I guess the Uchiha boy isn't all darkness inside,"** the Hachibi commented from inside of Killer B, **"Then again, I don't expect much positive out of that clan to begin with, so it wasn't like he had much to live up to."**

He didn't know why Sasuke cared, because it couldn't have just been out of the goodness of his heart, if that was even a bit of the factor at all. On the other hand, assistance was assistance. The Uchiha Clan was notably intense and somewhat obsessive, so why not put that to use against another Uchiha when this one clearly wanted a piece of Itachi?

'No doubt. Can't be that bad if he's helping us out,' Killer B slowly started to grin as he looked up at Sasuke's serious expression. Didn't the kid know that frowning that much would give him wrinkles by the time he was 25? "So this escort team you're talking about, you got anyone in mind or are we just ass-out?"

"You let me worry about that," Sasuke said before groaning inwardly, 'Oh good lord, I understood him. I've been hanging around this clown too much.'

Killer B had something Sasuke wanted; an excuse to get himself a piece of Itachi. Sasuke had something Killer B wanted; a way to avert A's ruling against heading out to retrieve Yugito. Neither of them cared that the other one had their own reasons for going after Akatsuki. All that mattered was that the partnership would make it easier to get what they each wanted out of the deal.

"Ye~~~~ah!"

Ugh. This was a horrible idea.

Between Killer B and one of the members he had in mind for the team, Sasuke was certain that he'd wind up stabbing someone on his own side before they even caught up to Akatsuki. But he figured he could save up all of that rage and have more to take out on Itachi when he saw him.

And there would be plenty of rage to be had.

What was a family reunion without a knockdown, drag-out fight?

XxX

(Northern Kaze no Kuni – Sora-ku)

Kisame let out a whistle at the sight of the formerly grand city. It seemed entirely comprised of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers. There was no building within view, at least from the range they were viewing it from, "What can I say about this town that hasn't already been said about Kakuzu's face? It looks bombed out and depleted."

"Indeed," Itachi said as they continued walking toward it, "It was an ambitions idea to settle here. A thriving border town in the northern portion of the desert nation of Kaze no Kuni. But not soon after it began to come into its own, Sunagakure and Iwagakure waged war against one another. The northern border of Kaze no Kuni became something of no man's land, and the city became a battlefield. People fled, and the dream died."

The wind whistled over the dry, cracked plains that surrounded the dead city.

"Ah. Morbid," Kisame said as he shuffled an unresponsive Yugito under his arm, "You're really good at that kind of thing Itachi-san."

"Hm," Itachi said, accepting it cryptically, "Either way, this place became nothing by the end of the last war. No one comes here. There's no point. Not even bandits. There's nothing to loot that hadn't already been taken by shinobi fighting for this place back in wartime, and it's a terrible place to use as a stronghold. Water is hard to come by through regular means."

"Why do you know about it then?"

"The Uchiha Clan stored munitions here just in case after it became a ghost town."

"Just in case of what? They had a whole village on their side. What the hell were they stockpiling weapons outside of it for?"

Itachi spared half of a glance his way before continuing onward, his high collar covering most of his face, "That… isn't important anymore."

When Uchiha Itachi declared in so many words that a conversation was over, you picked up on it. When he did that, there was nothing you were going to do to restart it.

…At least they had a decent place to hole up and contact the others to extract the Nibi.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato – Mission Assignment Desk)

"Report," The Hokage ordered of the four Konoha shinobi standing before him. He could have turned this mission request down, but it was in everyone's best interest that Akatsuki did not wind up extracting another biju. Between the one Orochimaru had and the three that the rogue organization already had in their possession, losing another one, even one from another country could spell disaster.

"Jounin, Hyuuga Neji."

"Chunin, Uchiha Sasuke."

"Chunin, Nara Shikamaru," Whether his enthusiasm for the mission was questionable or not, Shikamaru knew enough about protocol to get his shit together and sound off at identification like the professional that he was.

"Chunin, Uzumaki Naruto," He said before putting on a cheeky grin, "…The greatest team ever made, reporting," He just couldn't help himself, "Come on, this is the best team ever. You can't say it's not. We're so good it's broken, and that's not even counting-."

The doors flew open and the most god-awful noise any of them had ever heard came out of the mouth of the man that entered, "YEAAAA~~AH!" Was that supposed to have been singing?

Hiruzen felt a migraine coming on. He was too old for this crap. Killer B had certainly perked back up after putting that mission request in, hadn't he? "…For those of you who weren't aware, this is your client for the mission."

Neji suddenly felt an intense amount of resentment for Sasuke who had recruited him directly for the squad. He didn't know that his client would be so… flamboyant, "I see."

It was okay. When he wasn't busy with his separate duties as a jounin he dealt with Gai and Lee almost every day. Together. When those two were on point with their eccentricities they could come close to making any sane person lose it. How bad could one new person be?

"Officially your mission is to help B-san adhere to his brother's declaration; that he is not to leave our village without a professional escort," Hiruzen stated, his tone completely in business-mode, "Unofficially, off the record, you all deserve to know that you will be more than likely heading into battle with Akatsuki. B-san wishes to intercept them before they can extract the biju of Kumo's second jinchuuriki. For the sake of preventing Akatsuki from obtaining yet another vital resource for causing havoc across the Elemental Nations we will be lending our assistance."

Everyone stood in place, taking the information in until Naruto raised his hand.

Hiruzen sighed and shook his head, "Yes Naruto-kun?"

"Why the fuck are we the only ones that ever do anything about this?" A fair query, if not worded completely vulgarly, "Suna is _right there_. They were spotted going through Kaze no Kuni, with the Yugito lady. And we're hauling ass cross-county alone because…?" He asked before remembering that Hiruzen was the Hokage and not just his nice grandfather figure, "…Err, sir."

It was going to take them two days to get onto the trail from Konoha, and that was if they went at Naruto's pace. If Suna actually gave enough of a damn about Kumo losing one of its two jinchuuriki, they could have at least tried.

The same went for Iwa, but of course they weren't going to do anything. No, why would they? They'd already lost their jinchuuriki, both of them, all without saying a damn word when the separate situations occurred, so it would be obvious that they'd be fine with the other villages losing theirs. The balance of power and all that.

"I'm certain that other villages have suffered Akatsuki killing some of their shinobi as they abduct jinchuuriki. Grudges run deep. Even over something like this involving security for us all, I'm sure other villages love the idea of seeing foreign villages fall flat on their faces," Hiruzen said, "You can call it the hubris of others. You can call it a refusal to see a bigger picture. Whatever you'd like to call it, just know that we're the only ones doing anything about Akatsuki because we're the only ones that see the merits in doing something whenever another village is the target, because in the end it will come back to bite us all."

The grim, stark reality of those words set everyone serious. Neji and Sasuke could understand, not wanting to help anyone else for some 'greater good' when they had been gravely wronged by them in the past.

"It would be like you helping Kabuto rescue Guren if she were a jinchuuriki or something," Shikamaru pointed out for Naruto's benefit. Judging by the way his face twisted up at the thought of assisting Kabuto with anything other than a painful death, the message had been received.

Every village had done awful things to all of the others at some point in time. Every village routinely had conflicting missions with the others. Every village had within it children who had lost parents or some sort of family to ninjas of another village.

The Sandaime Hokage put a small smile on his face at the thought of one thing despite all that he had said, "At least if Naruto-kun is somehow taken, I know of two places with people who wouldn't mind lending our village assistance in retrieving him," Naruto seemed put off at the thought of needing to be saved by someone, "Take it as a plus. Now, be on your way."

Killer B took the initiative and grinned at his hired help, "One hour. See ya at the gate, so don't be late!"

Neji wanted to strangle him already. This could be more difficult to endure than Lee and Gai together at their worst. He needed to sit somewhere quiet for a moment to gather the strength of will he would need to survive this mission. It hadn't even been five minutes yet.

As the team walked the halls away from the mission assignment desk, one question had to be asked that seemed to have been glossed over when the team was put together in the first place.

"Why aren't you taking anyone from Team 7?"

Sasuke stopped dead in his tracks when he heard that out of Shikamaru. It was a legitimate question, and it was one that he wasn't surprised someone as perceptive as Shikamaru asked him. It should have bothered him that none of Sasuke's main teammates were on the current squad.

The answer though was chillingly simple, "…Because I don't want any of them to see how I'll be when I see Itachi."

Both Naruto and Shikamaru looked at each other at that vague and odd answer, even as Sasuke continued to walk out of the building, "What way?"

This time he didn't turn his head or stop, "You'll see."

XxX

(Yamanaka Clan Compound – Ino's House)

Every time Naruto ventured over into the neck of the village inhabited by Ino's clan he always found himself feeling extremely self-conscious. It was odd. He could walk through the Hyuuga Clan's grounds with no shortage of swagger in his step, and they were five times as tightly wound about everything than the Yamanaka Clan.

It probably had something to do with his latent paranoia that he subconsciously thought everyone in that clan could read his mind, which was silly, because he knew how Ino's jutsu worked as much as someone could without knowing the jutsu personally. Mind-reading was a high-level technique and if someone wasn't touching his head they couldn't even do it.

Either way, Naruto almost jumped when the door opened. Half expecting Inoichi to be the one to open the door, he was surprised when Ino's mother did instead.

She was a lady just over forty with light brown eyes similarly patterned to Ino's blue, the color of her irises outlined in black. She wore an elegant dark teal dress with a gemstone just underneath her collar and wore her brown hair in a bun with strands framing her face past her ears. She was still very lovely. Even with the marks of aging on her face, it only seemed to make her seem nobler.

Ino's mother always set Naruto aback because of her stately demeanor. She always seemed so elegant. He wanted her to like him but always felt as if he spoke like too much of a hoodlum in front of her. If she cared though, she never said anything in front of him. She seemed to think well enough of him.

"Oh, Naruto-kun. It's been too long," She had such a calm and collected demeanor. Ino wasn't like her or Inoichi at all. They must have spoiled her too much when she was young, but he wasn't dumb enough to say that to Ino's face, "Have you come to call on Ino?"

Wow. Did she actually know that they were together, or was she just fucking with him? She tended to do that when he ran across her in the flower shop or the few times that he'd seen her when coming to their house in the past.

Naruto didn't know where Ino stood on letting her parents in on things regarding the two of them, "Ah, sort of? I just wanted to tell her something."

Ino's mother clicked her tongue shamefully and looked up at where Ino's room was, "That girl. When days come around when she doesn't have to work or go on any missions she can be such a lazy young woman."

"I'm not asleep mom," Ino's voice drifted blearily from up the nearby stairs, "Go ahead and send Goldie up."

Ino's mother put on an expression of false onus at being caught in conversation, "Ara, how did you know Naruto-kun was here dear?"

"My room's at the front of the house mom," Ino's voice called down the stairs, "I can't help but hear everything."

"Well you heard her Naruto-kun. Go on ahead," The older woman said, beckoning Naruto inside before quickly shooing him upstairs. It took considerable effort from Naruto not to grumble something as he went along. Seriously, that woman probably knew years in advance that he'd been feeling something for Ino, "You really should come by more often. I know Ino would enjoy it if you came for dinner one evening."

"Heh-heh, anytime I get an invite I'll totally do that," Naruto said, backing his way up the stairs as quickly as he could to escape the conversation without tripping and falling. Why did Ino's family freak him out!? He knew why Inoichi did, but Ino's mom shouldn't have rattled him at all.

His progression was stopped after he made it to the top and Ino held him in place by his shoulders, "Whoa boy," He spun around immediately after being stopped, "Easy now."

"I'm pretty sure your mom knows something's up," Naruto said immediately upon seeing his brand new girlfriend, hair down and clad in purple pajamas. Well someone had certainly been comfortable in bed before he'd shown up.

"Huh, I didn't know we were hiding anything," Ino replied, stretching her arms up over her head as she led Naruto down the hall to her room. Damn her, the freaking tease. He didn't care if she was barely awake or not. That top was too short to be stretching like that and those pants rode too low. She had to have known this already before getting up to walk around her house like that.

"Uh-huh…" Naruto drawled, eye twitching as he followed Ino into her room and leaned against the door, closing it, "By the way, it's like eleven in the morning,"

Remaining asleep past that hour would have been a total Shikamaru sort of thing to do. Not that Naruto was above doing so himself from time to time, but he also wasn't above pointing it out either.

Ino glanced back at him, her bangs covering one of her eyes from his view, "It's my day off Goldie," She said with a yawn as she crawled onto her bed, "This is the first day in a while that I didn't have to be up before sunrise."

"I know it's your day off. It ain't mine though," Naruto said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the travel pack strapped tightly to himself. Anything to keep from being caught staring at Ino's butt while she got back into bed, "Me and Shika have got a mission. We're probably gonna fight Akatsuki again."

Ino got herself resettled and stared at Naruto long and hard, looking over the fact that he was getting ready to head off on the job, "I'd tell you to be careful, but that's a total death flag, so just kiss me goodbye and I'll be good."

"You, being good?" Naruto asked with a scoff as he got closer, eliciting a scowl out of her, "I really wish you could go though."

"Mmm," Ino wrapped a hand behind Naruto's neck and pulled him in for a long kiss, "Do you?" She asked, breaking away to start peppering multiple kisses that cut him off from answering.

"Yeah," Naruto said in between multiple pecks from the girl before finally pulling away, "We wouldn't have any fun on this one, but I still wish you could go."

"I do and I don't at the same time," Ino admitted shamelessly. On one hand, she hadn't been assigned to go, but on the other she wanted to be there because from her experience it was better to be in danger with Naruto than worry about him from afar, "I guess I can help Asuma-sensei and Kurenai-sensei with baby stuff in the meantime."

Aww. His baby was going to do stuff to help get ready for Asuma-sensei's baby. Ino pointed at him meaningfully to stop anything he was about to say on the matter before it could come out of his mouth.

Ino saw Naruto make a zip motion across his mouth and lowered her hand with a sigh of relief, "Good. Now isn't your team waiting on you to go? I'm not getting in trouble for making you late just because you want pre-mission nookie."

"W-What?" They hadn't been together long enough for him to consider doing _that_. Not that he wouldn't want to, of course not that, but getting too frisky too fast with a kunoichi was an effective way of getting oneself neutered. Aside from the physical ramifications, Naruto would rather hammer a nail through his hand than screw up what he had with Ino.

Two buttons on Ino's pajama blouse then decided to pop open for Naruto's benefit.

Fully awake at this point, Ino's playful side was on full display. It was almost effortless at that point to establish a connection telepathically between the two of them, _"Come on, you're gonna say you weren't thinking about it?"_ She communicated through thought.

If he hadn't before he was now. Getting a very good view of her chest was probably pushing his mind straight down that gutter.

It was still fun to tease him even when they were together. And the best part was that if she nudged him far enough he'd nudge back, and that would be… interesting for lack of a better term.

She hadn't expected him to push back right at that very moment though.

The fair-skinned blonde bit back a gasp when Naruto leaned over her, stroking her cheek and looking into her eyes. The moment she opened her mouth to speak, she found herself the recipient of a searing kiss. She fought his tongue with her own for dominance but quickly lost due to foul play from roaming hands. Her body pressed to Naruto's she bit back a moan when he kissed and nuzzled against her neck, moving his spiky head toward the opening of her top.

"Stahhhp…" Ino whined, biting down on the index finger of one hand while guiding Naruto lower with the other. She didn't mean it at all.

Kissing her collarbone, he continued downward, undoing the rest of her buttons and stopping at her belly-button, watching her fight to keep from wriggling too intensely beneath him, 'Holy shit, this Ero-sensei stuff actually works?'

And here he'd been pretending to ignore Jiraiya whenever he'd gone off on one of his explanatory tangents on how to play with girls. Thank goodness Naruto had only _pretended_ to not listen. He idly wondered what else he'd been right about, and how much of it he'd get to try with Ino.

She would never voice it aloud and let him think that he'd won, but it took all of the Yamanaka telepath's focus to keep from screaming out in her mind for him to touch her, to do anything he wanted. If she'd have thought it as loudly as she knew she would have, he'd have heard it. They were that close in mind. And she'd have never lived it down,

He kept doing that damn thing where he'd put his hand on the lower part of her belly and use his full-body sensor jutsu in direct contact with her, 'Stupid chakra-pulse foreplay!'

Naruto's grin was downright evil. His fingertips hooked onto the waistband of her bottoms and tugged at them until they reached her shins. Settling his hands on her knees, Naruto teased pushing her closed thighs apart. Just the thought of it made Ino whimper in complaint every time she felt him start and stop.

'Hey, remember that time you tried to get me all flustered and five minutes later you were screaming at me to do this-and-that to you?' Yeah, she could imagine hearing that back later and wasn't letting that happen.

Ino shut her eyes tightly, breathing in pants as she anticipated what was to come, only to feel nothing but a breeze. Opening her eyes, she turned her head and saw that her window was open and there was no Naruto in sight.

…He was gone.

…

That asshole! She could literally hear him cackling inside of her head. Really. Instead of forming actual words through their telepathic connection he was making the effort to mentally laugh.

"_Ooh… you're so going to get it for leaving me like this when you get back Goldie!"_ Ino thought to Naruto fitfully through their connection. Granted, she should have known better. There was no chance in hell Naruto would have done anything serious inside of her house with both of her parents present.

Still, Ino was a bit spoiled. When she wanted something, she usually got it. She hadn't quite gotten what she'd wanted this time, either because Naruto had seduced her in return for her messing with him, or because at the very last second he'd thought with his correct head and realized how bad things would have gone for him if they'd had sex in her bedroom.

At least now she knew Naruto had no problems being the aggressor. Fun-fun-fun.

Lying on her back, Ino pulled her bottoms back up and re-buttoned her blouse, grinning up at the ceiling silly and red-faced. Ahh, the joys of specializing in psychology were so much fun when your boyfriend was one of the top 5 most eccentric people in the village.

A knock came to her door and Ino hopped back underneath the covers. It was best to avoid as many awkward conversations with her parents as she could for now. She was anticipating that little episodes like this would only be the beginning.

"People just saw Naruto hopping rooftops like a bat out of hell," Inoichi said as he opened up Ino's door, "What's his problem?"

Ino just giggled to herself and pushed herself up on her elbows, "No problem daddy, he's just late for his mission. He came to let me know he and Shika will be gone."

"In your room? With you in your night clothes?"

Ino shrugged in return, not rising to her father's protective streak, "It's Naruto."

That meant two different things to the two of them. For Inoichi it put him on alert, that he was more than just a teammate, which was what Ino had wanted, thank you psychology. Really, on Ino's side of things, Naruto had done much more in the past than just see her in pajamas. He'd done more not even two minutes ago, the bastard.

Eyeing Ino's room with an analytical eye, the jounin tried to dredge up something suspicious that would have given credence to Naruto getting frisky with his daughter. After five seconds of blank silence he couldn't find anything, and the look on Ino's face was one of annoyance at having her room scrutinized.

His eyes did stop on a pair of goggles that sat in a prime position on her desk. They were perfectly clean, but the lenses were broken, there were markings of obvious wear on the straps and the frame. They looked extremely familiar as well, just like Naruto's. Oh yes, she'd had those for quite some time.

"You still keep these ratty old things," Inoichi pointed out, leaning on the doorframe, "These are Naruto's right?" They had always been broken, but she kept them clean and they were always in sight. Not like a trophy, but like a memento.

"They're Goldie's old pair, yeah," Ino informed him, "Someone we fought a long time ago broke them and he got a new pair, so I asked him if I could keep the old ones."

Weird, because Ino didn't like old clothing, even items that she'd never worn before. Not only were those goggles old, they were used and broken. Also, Ino would never have been caught dead wearing anything like that, "…Why?"

"Because they make me think of him," And thinking of him made her happy. She didn't care if Inoichi felt protective of his little girl or not. She wasn't so little, she wasn't so innocent, and as previously mentioned when she knew she wanted something enough she'd get it.

Hoping he heard something else, Inoichi gave Ino the 'dad stare' only for her to return his look without flinching. He opened his mouth to say something lecture-worthy only to find that he had nothing he could think of. Ino just silently raised an eyebrow as she waited for whatever he had to say, but nothing ever came.

In the end, he just pointed his index and middle fingers at his own eyes and then at hers, getting the girl to roll her eyes, before he departed, closing her door back and walking away. He had to get back to headquarters to continue his shift as lunch was almost over.

Speaking of thinking of Naruto, Ino had a little something of hers to take care of before going back to sleep, and it was Naruto's fault. With a downright evil toothy grin, she made sure she still had her connection with him before reaching a delicate hand underneath the covers and her pajama bottoms.

"_Oh Goldie, I'm so glad you've got some fight-back in you. Let's see how far I can make you go before you lose your head,"_ With the person she knew his sensei to be, it probably wouldn't take much of a real shove, _"You made me make the first move, but I'm making sure you make the last."_

XxX

(Thirty Minutes Later – With Naruto)

Well that had certainly backfired. Badly.

Taking a cue from Naruto laughing inside of her head through telepathy, Ino made sure she was projecting her thoughts to Naruto while she was masturbating. And she made sure they remained connected until she finished.

Now he had to start a mission all frustrated, and he would have no privacy to 'relieve' himself when they finally stopped hours later for a few minutes to take a rest.

He landed at the front gate with a scowl on his face a mile wide. Put off at the sight of him, Shikamaru had to bring it up, "What's the matter with you?"

"You don't want to know," Naruto said, eliciting a mumble of troublesome out of Shikamaru. The two long-time teammates walked the rest of the way to the outside of the gates together to meet up with Killer B, Neji, and Sasuke, "What's up guys? Are we ready to go?"

"Wheee!" Killer B exclaimed, throwing his hand into the air, index and pinky finger extended to mimic horns, "Hachibi-sama's ready to bust! Them black-coated clowns 'bout to bite the dust!" Izumo and Kotetsu both visibly cringed inside of the gate station.

"**Ugh."** Naruto heard the Kyuubi complain inside of his head,** "Please. I don't care if we'd lose or not. Just fight him. Either we'll kill him or he'll kill us, but at least I won't ever have to hear his voice anymore. We both can't live on the same planet for too much longer."** It was almost willing to make the sacrifice as long as it didn't have to hear Killer B try to rap ever again.

"Sunagakure isn't being entirely unhelpful about the situation," Neji informed them, holding up several marked maps that he'd managed to procure from those working in the long-distance messenger department, "They were able to keep a heading of what they could find on their movements that would lead us in the right direction."

Probably borderlands. There wasn't a chance that they'd try anything where people had free reign to scour an entire countryside for them. Another way that Akatsuki constantly used the political environment against the hidden villages. It was probably a trick they'd picked up from Orochimaru judging by how good he was at it… or vice-versa.

It hadn't been what they'd expected once Naruto, Sasuke, and Shikamaru got themselves a look of their own.

Sasuke got a good look at the map and stared long and hard as his mouth slowly fell open, 'There's no way.'

But it was the only place that made sense. It fit too neatly with where the map had them going and where Sasuke knew _that place_ was. It fit so perfectly that Sasuke kept trying to convince himself that it wouldn't be the right place.

But even if it wasn't, it fell just outside of Suna's projected field of hideout locations. They would wind up passing by it even if Sasuke ignored the big beacon of familiarity that existed right by him. He would be remiss to keep that sort of information to himself. There was no such thing as coincidence after all.

"-llo! Oi! Sasuke! Wake up!"

Sasuke returned to the world of dynamic thought with Naruto trying to get his attention, "What's your problem dobe?"

"What's _your_ problem?" Naruto asked in return, "I know you like acting too cool to pay attention to anybody, but we've been trying to get your attention for the last minute. You're leading the formation."

"Look alive Uchiha," Neji said to him, "If something occurs ahead of us you're supposed to be the one to react first and inform us."

He didn't even bother scowling or raising a fuss in return, "I'll hold up my end, just make sure you and Shikamaru keep up," He said as he ran off, setting the pace for the rest of the team to follow. He knew he didn't have to worry about Naruto, who was a stamina monster, and Killer B was probably the exact same. It was a good thing because he knew where they were going, and he was going to be footing it double-time to get there quickly.

Not so much to stop Akatsuki, but to get to Itachi.

In the formation it was Sasuke, then Killer B, then Naruto, then Shikamaru, then Neji at the rear. With that setup, Shikamaru was able to speak to Naruto subtly, "This isn't going to go well at all."

Naruto spared a glance over his shoulder at his closest friend. He was used to his pessimism, but hearing it right out of the gate was off-putting. Shikamaru's pragmatic outlook on the things going on around him usually wasn't that cynical.

As everyone settled into an uncomfortably tense travel silence, only broken in the slightest by Killer B's calm humming of beats as this was just business as usual, Naruto couldn't help but admit that Shikamaru had a point.

There was something funky about the whole thing. Mainly because it would probably be the first time that two members of the Uchiha Clan would be in the same place at the same time in nearly a decade. At least it would be the first time on record that they knew of.

'I had to fight to keep it together when I saw Kabuto,' Naruto thought to himself, frowning in consideration of what Sasuke was more than likely going to be like if and when they saw Itachi, 'I can't even imagine how Sasuke's would go off on the guy that killed his whole clan.'

He hadn't realized just how bad things had the potential to get until he'd seen Sasuke's face change when they'd all seen that map. Whatever Sasuke saw assured him that he was going to have it out with Itachi come hell or high water. Naruto saw it. Shikamaru saw it. And they couldn't turn back now. Time was of the essence, and they were on a head-on collision with whatever the fates had in store for them.

Sasuke had almost nine years to stew over it, every single day. He lived in the Uchiha Clan district all by himself. It was a veritable ghost town and a bitter reminder of what he'd lost every time he left his house in the morning. Naruto didn't have his clan either, but he saw the grounds around the mask temple as a chance to rebuild and make something wonderful happen there again. It wasn't a similar outlook on the solitude.

The same principle probably didn't apply when you saw your dead relatives littering the streets at one time.

For Naruto, fighting Itachi just once for as long as he had before the eldest Uchiha brother had left him to duke it out with Kimimaro alone had been quite the tall order. Fighting Kimimaro had been simpler in comparison when it boiled down to it. Itachi was one of the most talented ninja Naruto had ever had to deal with, and it hadn't just been the genjutsu.

Since regaling his friends with tales of the explosion of violence, Sasuke had gotten him to train with him from time to time, and in exchange for Sharingan management training he constantly picked Naruto's brain for tidbits on what he could remember from how Itachi fought; any habits that he might have picked up on. Every little bit helped, and nothing he could tell Sasuke about the fight was useless to him.

They did walkthroughs where at times it seemed Sasuke tried to recreate what he was being told, and whenever he did it was never with a look of barely bridled anger that one would expect Sasuke to present to anything having to do with Itachi.

At times it was hard to tell if Sasuke wanted to emulate some portions Itachi out of respect for how good he was, or if he wanted to know how Itachi would move on as intimate a level as he could, to know how to strike him down well in advance when it finally came time to take his head off.

They needed a plan of action on how they would engage the pair. As Naruto and Shikamaru had fought them before, the two of them would have the best knowledge of how to go about handling them, but between Killer B who neither of them held out much hope for when it came to listening to them, and Sasuke who they figured would get tunnel vision the moment it became clear that Itachi was in his grasp there wasn't much hope of any plan Shikamaru could make surviving first contact with the enemy.

"Nothing good'll come of this," Shikamaru said to Naruto quiet enough to keep it from being heard too widely, "Just my luck. What a drag."

He'd have to plan for whatever plan he came up with first to fail, and fail to such a degree that two of his players wouldn't be a dependable factor any longer. That was always unpleasant.

When in doubt, when chaos would guarantee to reign supreme over the worst possible situation, Shikamaru had always been able to rely on one thing, and seeing the grin surface on Naruto's face despite what he'd just said solidified only solidified what he'd already gotten to know for three years.

"Shika, just calm down. We've got everything we need. We've got every_one_ we need," Naruto said in an oddly calm, strangely composed and thought out tone of voice, "You're the best there is, aren't you?"

"Naruto-."

"-You're the smartest there is, aren't you?"

Shikamaru sighed deeply before feeling his nerves settle, "I don't want to be, seeing as how it's a pain in my ass, but if you're making me say it; yeah."

Ego was contagious. And when you constantly hung around someone that wouldn't accept for a moment that you weren't the most intelligent person in existence, it sort of rubbed off on you.

"Well Neji's got the best eyes in the world, Sasuke's the angriest guy in the world, B's the strongest jinchuuriki in the world, and me? Heh, if I said too much about me your heads would explode," Naruto said, his grin never fading despite the obvious ludicrous degree of his statements, "This team is pure… concentrated… badass, and I'm not about to be scared of some blue fish guy and Sasuke's big brother. Not after I actually saw something to be afraid of."

By now, everyone could hear him, and everyone was listening.

"I can't be afraid of anything else ever again," Naruto said, his tone dead serious, ensuring that the entire team heard him, "I told B already. There's only one mortal man walking the face of the planet that I'm scared of," He'd admit it. He was man enough to admit that he was shaken up at the thought of fighting someone, "It isn't B, and it damn sure isn't anybody in Akatsuki."

Everyone had been leaping through the trees, being all silent and reflective, as if they were facing off against the living boogeymen of their society. No. They weren't. Not after Naruto had caught sight of the real thing, or as close to the real thing as anyone was going to reach in this day and age.

He wouldn't be afraid. Not of Hoshigaki Kisame, not of Uchiha Itachi, and whenever Orochimaru slithered his way back in front of his machete again he'd show that snake just how scared he was of him.

Naruto wouldn't be afraid, and he wouldn't let his team be afraid of something that he knew in his heart they could defeat.

"So enough with the silence already. Whatever happens is gonna happen. All we can do is be ready for a fight," Naruto said with a snort, "Seriously, you guys are acting like we're heading for an execution platform instead of out on a mission," They'd all taken the mission knowing the mess that they were going to get into.

It would have been silly to get cold feet right after embarking. They were all talented enough to get the job done. They had to believe that they were. The moment they didn't they might as well have written themselves off as K.I.A.

'Not bad Mister Nine,' Killer B thought, pausing his internal soundtrack long enough to hear Naruto out and see that it actually had an effect on his team. The grim atmosphere had faded, leaving a stark determination behind.

He gave them something of a heart-to-heart, and then he called them out directly. It worked.

All Neji did was smirk and nod his head, but Naruto's direct contrast on the team was a tad more vocal.

"Tch, I didn't need to hear any of your dumb speech." Sasuke said callously with a smirk, "I guess getting together with Yamanaka made you two double-down on the dumb blond stereotype or something," Naruto just silently flipped him off from behind, having gotten the response that he'd wanted out of him, "For the record, I've got the best eyes in the world."

Neji took that as a challenge, "Oho. Really now? We'll just have to see about that Uchiha-san."

"Hm. I guess we will."

And all of a sudden the uncomfortable weight was gone. The cloud that had been looming overhead since the outset of the mission had vanished. Shikamaru furrowed his brow in thought. Just how the hell did Naruto manage to do that so easily? He knew how all three of his present friends ticked to that sort of a degree.

Naruto knew how serious things were, how serious they would be in a matter of days. He only got this way when he knew in advance, without a shadow of a doubt that they were walking into a proverbial meat grinder, and Shikamaru hadn't seen him like that since they'd left the Guardians. Shikamaru was the only one present that had seen him like that.

Naruto wasn't the smartest. He never would be and with what he already had he didn't have to be in order to go as far as he needed to in life. He also had yet to become the strongest in the village, but what had just occurred was leader quality, plain and simple. When anarchy loomed, if you dropped Naruto into the face of it, Shikamaru had no doubt that Naruto would give him the time to make sense of the calamity. That was a leader.

A leader didn't need to have all of the answers or need to be able to solve everything themselves. That was a gross misconception. A leader needed to be the person that had the correct people around him with the answers or resources, and could inspire them to bring out what was needed. As a follower you had to believe in their belief in you, that they were right to put their faith in you.

They weren't kids any longer. One of them had to start standing up as someone that their generation could follow. Shikamaru was smart enough to lead, but he wasn't the one to inspire the kind of widespread confidence that could sway the hearts of people. It was why he'd have been fine with a middle-management position in life.

And now he had to make sure that Naruto wound up being everything that he was shaping up to be.

Thinking of this, Shikamaru rolled his eyes, 'I'm really going to follow that idiot all the way to the top aren't I?' He thought to himself, 'Either that or we're both going to wind up getting shallow, unmarked graves dug for us in the ass-end of nowhere. One or the other.'

Then again, he'd known that well in advance already.

* * *

Omake: 'Til _What_ Do Us Part? (1)

Ugh. Shopping. Why?

Naruto knew that Ino worked hard, and he also knew that due to the fact she still lived at home and did not have to pay for living expenses she had quite a fair amount of disposable income for a young lady. Income that she liked to use on sundry goods and items of a leisurely nature.

Having quickly learned the value of money from his time living off of a stipend, Naruto didn't particularly like to splurge on anything unnecessary outside of regular trips to the greatest restaurant of all time and to ensure that his cupboards were constantly stocked with top-shelf instant ramen. Even so, Naruto had an appreciation for Ino's appreciation of the finer things.

Even when those things were clothes, because she had a tendency to parade around in front of him while wearing them, and she was anything but modest about it.

Still though, eventually when you had an attention-span that could be diverted by the sight of a squirrel running past you, watching your hot girlfriend model clothes for you eventually became rather monotonous since it was in public. That meant that the fashion shows came with a strict tag of 'look but don't touch', no matter how sexy he thought she looked at any given time.

Purple was her color, but she made that cream-colored evening dress look remarkable.

"Goldie, how does this look?"

Quite good actually, but he'd said that so many times already that day that it tasted like ash in his mouth to repeat, and he knew what ash tasted like. He was bored, and he couldn't even veg out properly because he had to stay aware enough to answer her.

"Ino-chan, I don't know why you're asking me," Naruto eventually said, "Even if you get it, even if you don't, the only clothes I usually ever see you in are your work clothes or your ninja stuff," That was the wrong way to respond judging by the glare he received for his candor.

Ino pointed at Naruto accusingly, waving her finger close to his face, "Are you kidding? The reason you dress up is to look good. And since I'm not looking for a boyfriend the only person I care about dressing up for is you!"

'If it was for me we'd be at my place, and you wouldn't be wearing anything at all.'

"I heard that."

Damn telepathic connection.

It was wonderful that more often than not that he could communicate with Ino without even having to talk, but sometimes he'd forget the rules of mental projection. They were so close that the louder he thought things the easier it was for her to pick up on them. He could get by it if it was on as long as he thought in an 'indoor voice', but as loud as he'd thought that last one he might as well have tapped her on the shoulder and stage whispered it right to her.

Even so…

"I still stand by it," Naruto said, no qualms about it.

"Part of me is flattered, but the other part wants to wash your brain out with soap," Ino said, poking Naruto on the nose before turning to go back to the changing room, "I'll change and pay for what I'm getting. Be out in a minute."

Cool. Finally, Naruto could go stretch his legs outside, and maybe he could convince Ino to head back Ichiraku Ramen way for some lunch? The sun hurt his eyes so much upon exiting that he pulled his goggles down to avoid being blinded.

Summertime in Konoha might have sounded redundant when they lived in a country that had 'fire' in its name, but it was particularly hot and sticky out today. Kids had ice cream and were playing games of ninja with water balloons and wet sponges instead of wooden shuriken, girls were walking around in clothes that were skimpy by civvie standards. It was that kind of day.

Naruto found his attention garnered by the heat lines in the distance until he heard someone call out.

"Boss!"

Well that could have been anyone really. But judging from the tone of the voice that was so familiar, and the instinctual reaction to sidestep something about to barrel into him, Naruto could take a swinging guess at who it was, "Konohamaru," Naruto said, grabbing him by the scarf as he ran past, "Why are you yelling for me!?"

"Is it true?" The new genin asked, not specifying anything about what he'd meant as he poked Naruto in the chest, "It can't be right? You're not that kind of guy!"

"What kind of guy?" He was getting ready to see if Slingshot Guillotine worked with kids in long scarves as opposed to machetes on chains of chakra. Not that he didn't love the kid, but all of that swelling up on him crap was for the birds.

Konohamaru just stared at Naruto before shaking his head, "Nevermind. We'll get to the bottom of it this way," Turning around he cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, "Hey guys! He's over here! I found him!"

Naruto tapped his foot on the dirt road and watched as Moegi and Udon landed on the ground seconds later. Once again, he had no idea what was going on. An instant later he choked on his own saliva at the sight of who they'd brought with them.

A gorgeous girl, dressed all in black with pitch-black hair and sharp green eyes. Shizuka.

He thought he'd left that mess behind in the Capital.

"Naruto," She seemed far too pleased with finding him for his tastes.

It was like locking eyes with a predator. If you moved too suddenly you were calling down the wrath onto yourself. Naruto's mouth suddenly felt very dry. It would have been so much easier if she had just been someone who wanted to kick his butt. He could handle that. But she didn't. She hadn't for a long time, "Shizuka…what the hell are you doing in Konoha?"

Shizuka really was a gorgeous girl, even from as small a smile as she presented him with just at answering his question.

"I received correspondence that you'd retired from the Guardians and returned to your village," She answered earnestly, "Without your contract to the Fire Daimyo binding you, I felt it was time to try again in persuading you to return to Nadeshiko Village."

Confusion was rampant on Naruto's face, "Who'd have sent you mail telling you that I was-…?" Shikamaru. He was the only person that knew where to send anything and actually would have done it, "…Shika, that's crossing the line."

Shikamaru had hit below the belt before as far as pranks had gone. If he was going to put forth effort on anything he was going to do it to the extent that he wouldn't ever have to follow up on it again; the whole 'swing once hard enough to keep the other guy down' adage.

Naruto let the 'Letters from the Capital' book slide because despite how personal it was it had been a damn good prank. Having this happen as retribution for the prank war was just way too vengeful. No wonder he hadn't been seeing too much out of Shikamaru the last few days. The bastard knew what was going to happen before it started because he'd been the one to orchestrate it, and he was smart enough to ensure he was nowhere near it.

Ignoring the proverbial raincloud dampening Naruto's mood, Shizuka walked up to him and attempted to grab his hand only for him to pull it out of the way without even paying attention. Much to her annoyance he repeated the process several times without fail.

It was at that point that Ino walked outside with her bags in hand and frowned thoroughly at the sight of Shizuka within ten feet of her boyfriend, "Oh. It's you again," At least now she could hear things from the horse's mouth, "Goldie, this girl says you're her fiancé. True or false?" Getting questioned by his girlfriend on potential infidelity certainly got Naruto's attention.

"False! False as hell!" Naruto exclaimed, throwing his arms up in front of himself in an 'x', "She jumped me in the Capital off of some challenge her master and Ero-sensei threw out before we were born, and I scared her into stopping. Next thing you know she's saying stuff about how we're engaged!"

There was a longer story to it, but that was the gist. He was fairly certain that no one wanted to hear a third-party story about how Jiraiya had screwed him over twenty years in advance back in his days of wanderlust.

Ino raised an eyebrow and spared Shizuka a glance, not minding that she was being subjected to an imperial glare from the woman. She could be catty if sister wanted to make this an issue, "Okay… so since she thinks you're stronger than her-."

Naruto butted in with an amendment, "-Hey, she KNOWS I'm stronger than her."

Oh good lord, and this was her boyfriend, "Whatever. So since she _knows_ you're stronger than her-," Ino said, shooting a mock glare Naruto's way and garnering a cheeky grin out of him, "-She's now obsessed with clubbing you over the head and dragging you back to her village Amazon-style so she can stud you out."

Konohamaru, Udon, and Moegi's eyes went wide upon hearing Ino's rather blunt description of what Naruto would be in the Nadeshiko Village. Slowly, Konohamaru raised his hand slowly, getting the attention of his senior Konoha shinobi, "…I kind of want to go be a Ninja Guardian for a few years now."

Udon couldn't help but concur, "Yeah, me too."

"What? No!" Naruto said, completely beside himself. He wanted to be a good influence! There was nothing good to come of them wanting his old job!

No, that was an awful, awful job. No shinobi child should ever aspire to be a Guardian. Yes, the pay was sweet, you got in good with the daimyo for life with just a three year bid, you got a sweet-sweet sash, and so many people had it out for the Hi no Kuni nobility that there was no end of skulls to crack for practice, but it never stopped.

There were only twelve of them at most and they had to handle an ungodly workload of missions that started off at B-rank and topped out at S. It was no place for anyone that hadn't already lived a full life, because there was a good it would end while you were under contract,

The Good Samaritan part of Naruto who had thought the same thing as Konohamaru and Udon before experiencing it firsthand felt it wouldn't be right if he did anything other than persuade them away from that existence. "Why would you want to do that job?"

"Because Asuma-oji went and he's so cool!" Konohamaru exclaimed, "You went too Boss, and now look at you! You're stronger than ever! Plus you've got Ino, that other girl, _and_ this new girl that you met there fighting over you!"

Naruto stared at the genin team, his head tilted in confusion, "What other girl?" He never received an answer to that question.

"I'm not fighting over Goldie," Ino insisted, fists set on her hips, "…I've already got him. As far as I'm concerned any fight that could've happened is over already. Now come to mama, Goldie."

Udon and Konohamaru struck nosebleeds at the way Ino made that sound.

"Okay, first of all, no. I'm not into that," Naruto deadpanned Ino's way, prompting her to pout out at him before he turned back to Shizuka, "Second of all, I'll tell you what I told you at the Capital. I'm not going back to anybody's village to get hitched. Not to somebody I don't love and who doesn't love me."

There it was. Ino shifted her own glance to Shizuka to see how she reacted. Naruto wasn't going anywhere and it was as simple as that. As far as Ino was concerned, Shizuka could take her curvy, well-built little ass and walk it straight out of the gates back from whence she came.

"It's already been decided Naruto. We are going to be married. It can only be you. You're the only man that's ever defeated me, and that's what's most important. It's a good match."

Or not.

"Argh!" Ino exclaimed before taking aim at Shizuka with her fingers in her number one clan hand-seal. The Nadeshiko kunoichi didn't seem nonplussed in the slightest, "Alright, that's it. How's a nice trip out to sea sound? I've heard the fishing boats in Nami no Kuni spend at least a month straight out there. Shintenshin no Ju-!"

Naruto stopped her from doing something rash with as much conviction as he could muster from someone that also wanted Shizuka gone, "Ino-chan! No!" She couldn't just use a jutsu of that nature on someone out of the blue, even if it wouldn't have caused her the slightest physical harm. Body-snatching was not seen as a small matter. It would have been even if not for what had happened a short time ago.

"But-!"

"No!"

"She's gonna-!"

"Noooo!"

Those two could not be allowed fight. Not in the middle of the village they couldn't. While Ino's techniques weren't very destructive, Shizuka's were. And Ino would have been initiating conflict unprovoked. He didn't want to have to visit her in Konoha's Strict Correctional Facility for the next three-to-six months and she didn't want to be there.

Knowing this, Ino sighed and lamely lowered her hands out of the seal, slumping over in defeat. It probably wouldn't have been her best idea to have taken Shizuka's body down to the middle of the ocean and left it there, but she wanted to so badly. It would have handled the matter, or at least delayed it.

She looked over at Naruto and quickly straightened back up with a serious look, pointing at her blue eyes and then his before turning her back, slapping her own rear. Naruto gulped gravely, but nodded, prompting Ino to depart for home with her purchases, message sent.

And it was clear; if you aren't going to let me solve this you'd better handle it yourself, or you aren't getting any this. Not until the issue was resolved. And they didn't even need a telepathic connection for it. They really were on the same wavelength.

The sight of Ino intentionally making a show of her hips moving as she walked away until she vanished in the midday crowd didn't hurt when it came to driving the point home.

Naruto quietly groaned to himself. Shizuka wasn't breaking any rules or laws by being in Konoha. She wasn't going to outright try and capture him. She was just going to bug him and sabotage his budding relationship with Ino or anyone else she had to until he broke and she got to take him home with her.

Taking him home with her was going to be improbably, if not next to impossible, for several reasons (one of them sitting in his body, batting its tails in slumber) that he doubted she would care about, but that didn't matter. Stubborn people were stubborn after all. She wasn't going to give up, and neither was he.

It was going to be a battle of wills and wiles, and it was going to be downright miserable for the young jinchuuriki.

* * *

**And that's the chapter. Aside from what you can already imagine is going to go down next, I'm just going to say, all of those Guardian omakes from earlier in the story were done for a reason. They'll be coming into play somewhat next chapter.**

**Alright, so I've heard through the grapevine, i.e. some of my lovely reviewers, that Orochimaru in this story is overpowered.**

**To which I respond en masse with honest curiosity... compared to what exactly? **

**Seriously, I really want to know. There's actual merit to that argument because in essence he is, or at least there would have been over 100 chapters ago (and I'm being generous by staying that low in number), but now, not a chance.**

**I won't do anything like what I'm about to say because I have standards as a storyteller and a desire to actually improve on what I've done in the past, but theoretically I believe that I could give any remaining villain **_**anything**_** I wanted at this point, within reason of the present universe, and they **_**still**_** wouldn't be OP compared to what actually exists in canon. Jeez.**

**Comparatively, Orochimaru with the Sanbi and a body that's too legit to quit isn't overpowered compared to say, the real Madara from the days before ninja morals.**

…**Who comes from a land down under.  
Where women glow and men plunder.**

**...Who has Rinnegan… and Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan… and Mokuton… and the Juubi… which is apparently like the God of trees or something; the crown deity of timber and coppice.**

**Hold on a second.**

***gasp* I'm the Log Pope. I should have seen this coming! The divine log! It all makes sense now! The source of the greatest jutsu in the history of the series; Kawarimi no Jutsu, **_**had**_** to be divine itself!**

**Oh goodness, how could I have ever missed it? My scriptures should have given me enough clues all along as to the true identity of the Juubi.**

**I hope you enjoyed. I… need to go reflect and repent for my lack of foresight.**

**Kenchi out.**


	65. Operation Desert Storm

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. But one day I will, no matter how illegal it turns out to be, and I'm not going to take no for an answer because I just refuse to do that! Because I'm a winner and winners... we don't listen to words like 'no' or 'don't' or 'stop'! Those words are just not in our vocabulary!

**Chapter 65: Operation Desert Storm**

* * *

"Orochimaru is a problem," Tobi growled, standing before the true form of the man who referred to himself as 'Pain' itself, "This needs to be resolved Nagato. Nothing productive will come of that man doing as he pleases."

The two of them looked out over the eternally rainy village of Amegakure. It was congested as far as living space went, but no one wanted to live too far away from the center of the village. It was a holdout reaction to the days when war would rage all throughout the country, even as close as the outlying settlements near the hidden village itself.

The man with whom Tobi spoke seemed wholly unconcerned with the weather. His spiky orange hair matted down on his head as rain dripped down past his death-pale skin riddled with piercings. His odd, purple ring-patterned eyes stared out, surveying his recently won domain.

"The more time he has with the Sanbi, the more he'll adjust to its power. I agree," Nagato/Pain said to his masked benefactor, "It isn't as if we have an abundance of choices as to who will take him on either. You and I both know that it will be me."

Well that certainly solved the issue of talking Nagato into taking some sort of proactive action against Orochimaru.

"How are you feeling?" Tobi asked. He hadn't been present for it, but he did know that Nagato had recently deposed the leader of Amegakure. Hanzo was dead, and there was always a chance that Nagato was still reeling from a potentially harsh fight.

As expected, even if there had been something wrong with him, Nagato would never let it show, least of all through one of his Six Paths.

"I'm fine," Nagato said through his Deva Path, "Shall we begin extracting the Nibi then? With Sasori's death it may take longer than before. We can worry about dealing with problems such as Orochimaru after we've finished more pressing business. You can find him, can't you?"

"He was never as difficult to locate as he thought he was," Tobi said, "And I have a feeling he's becoming bolder than he is careful these days."

XxX

(Sunagakure no Sato)

Having provided the bit of intel to Konoha that Akatsuki was moving through their countryside, Suna was also well aware of who had entered the borders of Kaze no Kuni in order to deal with them. It wasn't a matter that the Kazekage planned to directly get his forces involved with. There was no benefit to Suna fighting to protect Kumo's jinchuuriki, but if Konoha wanted to waste resources for another nation's weapon that was their prerogative.

If they couldn't hold onto what was theirs against a group of nine-, no, eight shinobi, they clearly didn't need to have that sort of power, did they?

Standing on the roof of his building, the Kazekage shut his eyes and felt the shifting of the wind. Another windstorm was either on the way, or was happening somewhere else in the country already. If he had to guess he would have said farther north.

One of his ninja appeared behind him in a Shunshin, set in a kneeling bow. He wore the common outfit of a Sunagakure ninja, turban and all, only it covered half of his face. Only the right side was visible, with two red markings traveling horizontally across it.

The Kazekage turned his head just enough to note which one of his ninja had come to him, "Baki," He greeted.

"Kazekage-sama," The turban-clad shinobi said, "The Konoha group has been spotted in the desert. Four of them, but their attire makes them hard to identify. They also have at least two sensors in their party, so we can't risk sending anyone close enough to them to confirm who they are."

"They're not going to send anyone else if they don't send either Hatake Kakashi or Uchiha Sasuke," The Kazekage said without a shred of doubt in his voice.

"Why do you say that?" Baki asked his leader. It seemed sound, but it was quite the risk to pit either of those kinds of resources against criminals recorded as able to conquer entire nations single-handedly.

The Kazekage turned to Baki. This particular jounin was one of Suna's most intelligent higher-ups, and the man he trusted the development of his children to. He had not been let down in that regard once over the years, "Since the power of the Senju Clan has gone the way of the dinosaur, the safest bet to fight against a fully matured Sharingan is another fully matured Sharingan."

And Konoha only had two others to choose from; Kakashi or Sasuke.

Turning around, the Kazekage had another point to cover, "You said they needed to confirm who they were. Does that mean they've already speculated who they are?"

"One could be Uzumaki Naruto. The Kyuubi jinchuuriki."

There was no 'could be' about it. You didn't make that sort of assumption if there wasn't a great possibility of it being truth. That was a dangerous sort of conjecture to have and be unfounded.

Immediately a decision was made.

"Gaara is not to be informed of this," The Kazekage said with the utmost seriousness in his voice, "I mean it. If he catches wind of either Uchiha or Uzumaki being anywhere near this area, he will go after them in order to engage."

Gaara was much better than he used to be, but he still had hints of loose cannon left in him. The fact that he was shaping up to be the strongest ninja that the village had ever seen was one thing. But he still had his lapses in judgment and what he wanted could at times override what was better for more than just him at times in his mind.

"So what do you want us to do?"

The Kazekage let out a sigh. If this didn't go absolutely right, it was going to do irreparable damage to their alliance with Konoha. An alliance they no longer needed in order to function and had always resented to begin with. Many of the ninjas and even the council of advisors had at different times expressed their displeasure with what their village had to do to keep afloat.

But now that the Wind Daimyo had been replaced with a new leader in recent years, the times of hardship were over. Suna was flourishing thanks to a feudal lord that was willing to take his business to domestic mercenaries, as well as because of past assistance from Konoha, but it was time to cast off the stigma presented by the latter.

"We still have our teams watching the northern border," The leader of Suna said to Baki, "Have them move a platoon into position."

Akatsuki, Konoha's jinchuuriki, and Kumo's two jinchuuriki, all in one place intertwined in what was sure to be a severe battle. Three birds, one stone.

How could any enterprising military-based government turn down such an invitation?

XxX

(Deserts of Northern Kaze no Kuni)

Kaze no Kuni and its series of seasonal wind storms were growing increasingly aggravating to deal with. Granted, they had been fortunate enough to avoid having to travel at night when the wind was at its worst, but it constantly felt like the tents they'd set up for rest would blow away despite being secured to the ground as best as they could.

Sitting inside and checking over his equipment as Shikamaru simply lazed around on his sleeping roll, Neji couldn't keep the scowl off of his face any longer, "The five of us against a man able to wipe out an entire clan in one night and the 'Monster of the Mist'."

"Don't tell me you like those odds," Shikamaru said.

Neji gave him a look as if to ask him if he were kidding or not, but Shikamaru kept his eyes closed, preventing him from seeing it, "I wouldn't know. The only thing I know firsthand from facing them comes from both you and Naruto," And he hadn't been content with what he'd heard, "Why are we doing this?"

He wasn't the type to go against his orders, but he was entirely willing to question the validity of them.

The fact of the matter was, there was no love lost for Neji as far as Kumogakure went, and not only was he traveling with the brother of the Raikage, who had sent out the order that wound up with his father dying as a method of appeasement, he was doing for something that would benefit the very village that they came from.

Shikamaru shrugged his shoulders, "Think of it as fostering peace and camaraderie across international borders," He said sarcastically.

"And why exactly do you think I would care about fostering any sort of camaraderie with them?" Neji replied. Forgiving his family who were legitimately sorrowful over what had happened was one thing, but forgiving the people that had been the cause of his life's greatest tragedy and had never issued the slightest apology or even acknowledged their responsibility despite the fact that every shinobi village on the continent knew it?

That wasn't so simple.

"Okay, consider it a way to smooth things over after what Naruto did,"

Neji narrowed his eyes at such a thing being brought up, "Kumogakure didn't feel the need to smooth anything over after what they tried with the Hyuuga Clan, so why does Hokage-sama feel the need to appease them with this?"

"Because it's not appeasing them," Shikamaru said bluntly, "Akatsuki getting the Nibi out of Yugito-san wouldn't be good for anyone," He drawled, "It's just that if we save her and make sure she returns safe and sound, no one will be able to bitch about what Naruto did to the Raikage's right-hand man."

"-Which he was entirely within his rights to do in the first place in order to defend himself and the members of his squad."

Yes, the way it sounded didn't pass the smell test. It looked like Konoha was apologizing for the actions of one of its soldiers for doing what soldiers were supposed to do in an obvious situation. The only reason it was controversial was because of who Darui was as the Raikage's number one underling, and because Naruto was a jinchuurki.

Shikamaru knew this, but he also had seen far more egregious displays of such a thing in the Fire Court, "Politics don't have to make sense or be fair Neji. It's circumstantial. Kumo's been chomping at the bit for a fight since they started bolstering their military, and Suna obviously isn't feeling the need to live up to the whole 'ally' portion of our agreement."

That much had been blatant over the years. Suna had a chip on its shoulder because of their daimyo cutting their funding and sending his more lucrative business to Konoha. In a show of good faith, Konoha tended to outsource the work back to them to keep things civil.

It had apparently been their cue to become petulant. As Suna recovered more and more economically they didn't particularly return any sort of neighborly favor and the treaty simply devolved into the two villages tolerating one another. They were allies in name only, as Suna hadn't once provided Konoha assistance upon request.

And here again, they weren't helping, even though they had to know of Akatsuki by then. What they were after. What that could mean if they got enough of what they were looking for.

Back in front of the Hokage, Naruto had been right. Why the hell did they have to be the ones that always fought the stupidly strong S-rank criminals?

"Either way," Neji figured, listening to the wind howl outside of the tent, "Tomorrow we should be entering the enemy's territory, at least according to Uchiha-san. Do you think we can defeat them?"

"Yes," Shikamaru said without a moment of hesitation. And he left it at that. A matter of moments later the two were asleep. There wasn't any time to waste worrying about tomorrow.

XxX

(The Next Day – Konohagakure no Sato)

"Halt. What's your business in Konoha?"

A young man barely in his twenties, with brown hair containing a white streak led the pack of three that were being questioned. He wore a pair of sunglasses, full black monk's robes, and a white sash around his waist with the kanji for fire emblazoned on it.

Most of all, he was very surprised, because these were the same voices he heard the last time he had ventured to Konoha's gate.

"Wow… you guys are still here," Sadao said in an earnestly stunned manner, much to the confusion of Kotetsu and Izumo, "You don't remember? You were the ones that were standing right there, asking that same question the last time we came here. That was four years ago."

The two chunin who seemed to land guard duty with more frequency than any other twosome in the village only felt their stock in the village hierarchy drop further with that frank statement, "Ugh," Both of them groaned simultaneously as if they both absorbed body blows. Kotetsu was the first to recover, "Right. Well I can't go off of past meetings for this sort of thing, so could you just tell me for the ledger."

Sadao nodded and gestured to the woman with him sporting curly dark hair in a high ponytail, a dazzling autumn-colored kimono that seemed more at home on a noble's body than a ninja's. He then gestured to an angry-looking young man with neck-length dark hair, monk-in-training robes, and his right arm covered in a brace lined with seals that traveled from his elbow under his sleeve to the base of his fingers.

"Sadao, Suzukuro Kotoko, and Sora of the Guardian Ninja," The leader of the trio, and the overall group, said to identify themselves. Sora scowled and Kotoko just waved cheerfully, eyes entirely closed.

"And your business?" Izumo asked, actually remembering two of the three the last time they had come.

"To visit our lovely juniors who are no longer with us!" Kotoko exclaimed chirpily, "Shika and Naruto had to go home when their contracts expired, but we've come ever so far to see them and catch up," At that her eyes opened in a vicious grin, "And make sure Naruto hasn't lost his mind and ripped an entire town's worth of people apart the way he almost did back-."

Sadao abruptly cleared his throat and Sora looked as if he were about to cut a string on the shamisen she kept on her back to make her shut up.

"Oh! A completely isolated incident from almost two years ago," Kotoko amended with a wave and a delicate laugh that belied the violent anticipation she'd shown just a moment ago, "It was mostly Jiraiya-sama's fault. I don't think Naruto's particular seal is the type anyone else but him is supposed to try and open, and I don't think you can really 'loosen' it either, but oh, I'm rambling!"

Kotetsu and Izumo both looked at each other and then back to the visitors, "Riiiiight," They weren't particularly afraid. If finding out Iruka was dead and then confronting the person who did it and spied on the village under the guise of a friend for years didn't set him off into another freak-out, they figured things were well enough in hand, "We haven't heard of anything like that happening. He's been back for almost six months."

"What about the news flying around that he obliterated a fishing village and killed two of the Raikage's best ninja," Sora asked bluntly, tapping his fingers on the braces covering his right arm. It was Naruto that kept the more awful parts of himself from being a danger to others, and even because of him that he'd found a place willing to bring him in. As callous as he was, he did want to make sure everything was okay, "It's confirmed."

Kotetsu and Izumo saw it as the watchmen from the capital looking in on one of Konoha's big hitters. Well to the two of them Naruto was a Konoha ninja. He was a good kid. One of them. And with that in mind they synchronized thought processes for a wonderful fifteen seconds.

"Well that was on a mission-."

"-And he had complete control the entire time-."

"-And that fishing village was long abandoned-."

"-And those two guys really had it coming."

"It was more like _one guy_ really."

"Yeah, he just straight-up killed the other one. No Kyuubi involved."

It was proof positive that those two had been doing this particular job together for far too long to be healthy for normal social development.

Kotetsu punched Izumo in the arm after the last remark only to get a glare in return. What was the big deal? They were ninjas. They killed people all of the time. Well, the ones that actually went out on real missions instead of guarding the gates and other areas in the village did at least.

"Anyway," Sadao said, getting things back on track, "You should have some kind of communication about it. He should know that we were sent this way. The daimyo sent him word just as we set out," Izumo nodded and headed back to the guard post to check the notices left for their shift.

Kotetsu entertained himself in the meantime by wondering if Kotoko's crazy was more deciding of a force than how pretty she was. If it wasn't he might have contemplated hitting on her.

"These are the people guarding the gates?" Sora grumbled, seeing them as a rather soft lot. He wondered just how Konoha had its reputation as the strongest village in the past. It was no wonder to him that Kumo was taking over that particular spot ever since the build-up of their military forces.

Sadao rolled his eyes behind his glasses, "Yes, these are the people guarding the gates. Because 80% of the people coming through the gates are civvies and you don't want to scare the people that pay you," He said before expanding on his statement, "These guys are like, 'Welcome to Konoha,' and then you go inside and if they think you're trouble that's when you see the people you're not supposed to mess with."

"I guess that's my cue."

With that, Kakashi appeared in a puff of smoke, crouched on the roof of the guard post with a lazy wave for the visitors. Sora scowled, and Sadao just grinned over at the newest Guardian team member. Yes, that certainly counted as the 'don't do anything stupid in our village' warning. Guardians or not, you didn't just decide out of the blue to tangle with Hatake Kakashi.

"Hello~!" Kakashi said with his visible eye crinkled in mirth, "I'll be your escort to the Hokage today."

"Why you?"

"Eh, because I'm bored, and I don't see how Gai could try and turn this into a challenge if he finds me," That admission by itself stunned Sora. He was escorting/keeping watch over them, three of the Fire Daimyo's personal bodyguards/hitmen, because he was bored?

Getting a thumbs up from Izumo in the post, Kotetsu turned back to the three Guardians with a wry smile, "Welcome to Konoha," He said, laughing inwardly at the scowl on Sora's face, "By the way, you are far from the scariest person I've had to let through the gate just this month."

XxX

(Northern Kaze no Kuni – Sora-ku)

The desolate city once meant to be a shining beacon of prosperity in a harsh landscape was so still and so quiet. It was like a tomb. The only thing stirring the silence of that tomb to progress was the howl of the tearing wind through the empty streets and alleys.

Streets that had existed back during the height of the city were covered oppressively with sand that blocked entire doorways into buildings. Walls were cracked and crumbled away, blasted by the constant harsh nature of the climate.

The team from Konoha stood atop a rooftop a short way into the town that let them look back around to the vast desert and the godforsaken city. They were so far out of their own neck of the woods that it wasn't even a joke. They hadn't seen a tree or grass in a day and a half.

"Alright, let's do this," Naruto held his hand out, expecting the others to put theirs in as well, "Hands in for good luck," Killer B threw his hand in without hesitation. No one else did. It was rather disheartening, "Guys, come on. This is important."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and threw his in as well. As long as it shut Naruto up and got them moving sooner he'd take the hit to his pride.

Sasuke immediately turned his back on the display altogether and headed off in his own direction to start handling business. The plan was to split off into pairs anyway. Worst case scenario they would end up matched against Itachi and Kisame two-on-two. Best case scenario it would be two-on-one against one of the criminals.

Shikamaru muttered a curse and followed after him before all hell broke loose without anyone watching his back.

"Remember the plans in case you find any of them!" Shikamaru said before leaving the rest of them.

Killer B seemed too antsy to remain still and shouted into the air over the howl of the growing sandstorm, "Akatsuki better watch their back, I'm comin' to get my kitty cat!" And he began his life-or-death game of hide-and-seek, splitting off to try and cover more ground to find Yugito.

If Killer B was the one who found them first, the noise and chaos he would raise would quickly alert the others to the location, and he would more than be able to survive in time for help to arrive.

With that bit done, Naruto let the frivolity fade and turned to Neji who had his Byakugan active. His attention wasn't focused on the dead city of Sora-ku however, it was directed to the outside of the area, "What's the matter?"

Neji narrowed his eyes suspiciously, "It would be better for all of us if I just left it unsaid," With his field of vision he could see that Naruto wasn't going to let it go however, and he knew it, causing him to relent with a sigh, "Sunagakure has dispatched a unit. To this point, I've counted up to seventeen dispatched thus far concealed in the desert storm."

That should have been good news. More bodies to search meant an easier time and an easier battle once it inevitably began. Only, Neji said they were concealed, hiding.

They weren't coming any further, and Naruto knew it, "They're not gonna help, are they?" He asked in a hard voice.

"You and I both know the answer to that," Neji said, unable to hide the disgust in his voice despite his best efforts. Politics made him sick. Perhaps that was why he would probably never progress much further in his career than he'd already reached, "They would let these madmen slit this world's throat if they figured the rest of us would go down with them as well."

"Well," Naruto said, flipping a new pair of goggles down over his eyes before producing another set for Neji, "I guess I wouldn't want to have to break this much of a sweat just for a first round knockout anyway, right? As long as they're not coming after _us_, I don't give that much of a fuck."

Neji gratefully put them on in order to protect his very important doujutsu. They weren't prepared the way Naruto's were, but they were vital equipment in this weather. Clearly Naruto had been prepared to provide for the team he'd been saddled with. Had Sasuke not been in such a hurry, Neji wouldn't have doubted that he would have received a pair as well.

"I don't like this."

"Neither do I, but we're in now," Naruto said with a shrug, despite the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had to ignore it. He had to. It wasn't like they could turn and run away. Even if they did, he wasn't sure they would get very far depending on what the Suna ninjas were really there for, "Might as well finish the job."

Neji nodded and began leading the way through the dusty streets of Sora-ku, "I feel that getting out will be what we'll have to be concerned with later."

There was a good chance that the ninjas outside had standing orders to keep anyone from leaving at all.

"We'll be fine," Naruto assured him, "You'll be back in Konoha, grumping around and dealing with Gai and Lee in no time."

"If that's the kind of fate I can expect upon surviving, I might as well ask them to kill me."

XxX

It didn't take long for Shikamaru to catch up to Sasuke, finding that he'd lowered his position to the sand-covered street, his eyes closed as if he were trying to think of or remember something, "Hey," Shikamaru said to him after landing in a cloud of dust behind him, "Don't do that. I don't care how hot to get to your brother you are, if you get anyone killed-."

"I've got it," Sasuke said, eventually opening his eyes and wincing at the wind kicking up sand around them. Even covered by the gigantic walls of the buildings around them, it was still quite gusty. He reached out and caught a pair of goggles thrown to him by Shikamaru who also had on a pair, "Who brought these?"

"Who else actually wears any?" Shikamaru asked, "They're not prepared to help fend off optical genjutsu like Naruto's are though."

Sasuke frowned deeper than normal despite his relief at not having to squint just to walk around and see, "If they're not, you shouldn't fight when we find Itachi."

Shikamaru instinctually wanted to say that Sasuke didn't have to tell him twice, but a need to know what he was walking into made him say something else instead, "Why not? I know you probably want to handle that bit of family business alone, but that doesn't seem very smart to me."

It wasn't about being smart. It was about keeping people that shouldn't have been involved alive when the entire thing blew sky-high.

What Sasuke said next, he said from experience, "Whatever genjutsu Itachi wound up putting on Naruto wasn't even close to being his strongest one," He knew that for a fact. If it had been, Naruto wouldn't have come back anywhere near as healthy as he had been, "Whatever you do, don't look into his eyes. If you do you'll never be alright again."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. Did that not apply to Sasuke as well? As far as Shikamaru knew, the most infamous portion of the Uchiha Clan's gameplan was to get an opponent to look them in the eye, and if Itachi's genjutsu was better that kind of cut out an entire facet of his would-be gameplan that he'd probably been prepared from early childhood to utilize, "And what about you?"

"I've been waiting for this for half of my life," Sasuke said, leading on, "It's not going to end the way it did the first time."

"Do you know where he is already or something?"

"No, but I know where he won't go, and I know someone who can help find him. Come with me."

He seemed entirely certain of what he was saying, and that gave Shikamaru pause. There was someone there other than them and Akatsuki? Someone that could help him find Itachi? And he knew about it in advance? What the hell did that even mean anyway? Sora-ku was deserted.

Smelling a rat, Shikamaru immediately bound Sasuke in place with his shadow, keeping him from moving another step. Sasuke couldn't even turn around to confront him over it. He was frozen in place. Of course, Shikamaru didn't need to even look him in the eyes to know that he was pissed.

That didn't concern him. If he were honest, Shikamaru was just shy of being quite miffed himself.

The sound of Sasuke's voice was sharp enough to cut steel, "What are you doing?"

Shikamaru didn't flinch and held his fingers in hand-seal of his signature move, "You're not telling us something. I'm wagering you're not telling us a lot actually."

He reacted too oddly when he'd been informed of the area in which Akatsuki had been guessed to be traveling to.

There was something about this city. There had to be. It was too convenient that Sasuke even knew about Sora-ku at all. It wasn't exactly a landmark passed down in the annals of Konoha's history. It was more of a cenotaph to Suna-Iwa's history if it was anything.

And now he was saying that there was someone there who could help them find the bad guys? It would have been irresponsible _not_ to call him out at that point.

"I don't care about any of that though," Shikamaru continued, "You're spoiling for a one-on-one with Itachi, but there's a time and a place for settling your scores. The middle of a mission where the primary objective isn't to kill him isn't it."

"What would you know about-!?"

"I _don't_ know about whatever you're probably going to say," Shikamaru cut him off without even willing to hear whatever tirade he was about to go into, "But you know what I do know about? Making sure everyone gets home in one fucking piece. So I'll just say it right now. If anything you're going to do, or anything you're not telling us gets somebody killed, you'd better hope that it's me."

Sasuke hadn't planned on any of his teammates dying. He wasn't going to let them if he could help it. Not for what was supposed to be his fight to begin with. But he was being put on the spot and being threatened, of which he was no fan, "And if it is you?"

He felt control return to his body and turned around to face Shikamaru who walked past him and farther along into the city, not even bothering to turn toward him as he did, "Then you're going to wish it was Naruto instead."

Sasuke stared at his back for a spell before tossing his hair out from in front of his lenses and moving along, "Hm."

XxX

(With Naruto)

Normally on a team with two sensors that were searching for something, the sensors would split up to more effectively cover ground. This wasn't a normal case though.

In the kind of setting where the Konoha team found themselves, Naruto's sensor jutsu was next to useless. There were too many walls. His chakra pulse could work through one, but in an empty city it wasn't particularly effective.

"Nothing Neji?" Naruto asked as they kept combing Sora-ku. The entire place gave him the creeps. It was the closest thing to a ghost town he'd ever seen. The spirits of wars past and the people whose lives had failed there felt like they covered every empty window or open doorway with a torn curtain swinging in the wind.

"No people yet," Neji said, his covered eyes able to see right through every aspect of the goggles and through the buildings because of the Byakugan, "But I see cats. Many cats."

Finding stray animals in large numbers wasn't an odd thing for an abandoned city.

For instance, it was a well-known fact that packs of wild stray dogs that controlled most of the major cities in Tsuki no Kuni.

…Finding stray animals was odd for an abandoned city in the desert though.

Especially stray animals that all seemed to be doing something one thing in unison; watching them.

Neji opened his mouth to say something, but Naruto shook his head, not needing to hear it. His sensor ability might have been stanched by the walls around them, but he could still feel just behind them and without looking he could tell that the cats were looking at them from the shadows. All dead silent.

From the windows, in the alleys, through holes in gates and walls. Cats. Hundreds of average cats. At least, he would have counted them as normal if they weren't doing their level best impression of _The Birds_ just before attacking.

Why did he know what that was? Damn Ino, making him take her to that weird movie. It had been before they were actually together as well, so he didn't even get to make out with her during it. No, he just got to watch hordes of birds kill people and he thusly gained a new thing to have nightmares over. Thank goodness he could turn wind into a deadly weapon, because-.

"Naruto! Focus up!"

Naruto snapped out of his musing when he head Neji snap at him to get his attention, "What? What's the matter?"

His answer came with another release of his own chakra pulse. At the end of the street they had been walking on, it opened up into a town square sort of area. Perched on seemingly every ledge and line hanging in the air was a crow.

There were hundreds of them, all around, looking right at them.

This was _just_ like that stupid movie.

"Uh…" Naruto started to say, slowly moving his hands to make a hand-seal just in case, as if a sudden movement would bring them all down on them, "This ain't a genjutsu."

"I'm aware of that," Neji noted their movement first, as hundreds of wings began to beat and bring the masses of avian down upon them. The two of them moved away from each other to a safe distance. Not from the birds, but so that their separate defensive measures didn't interfere with each other, "But it does not change the fact that they are on every major interchange from here on out. Hakkeshou Kaiten (Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven)!"

"Fuumon no Jutsu (Wind Ripple Jutsu)!"

As Neji spun rapidly, chakra flew from his body in a dome. Naruto in turn released a single booming pulse of wind chakra that flew out from his own in every direction. The techniques from both boys sent the birds flying long enough for them to clear a path through the courtyard.

They wasted no time sprinting for that path and making for the nearest narrow alleyway.

"This shit is for the birds Neji!" Naruto shouted, covering up his face as he and Neji ran through a storm of feathers and plumage, "Heh, get it? For the birds? You know, because we're getting attacked by-."

"I understand, Naruto-san," Neji said in a terse voice as he focused on pegging the birds out of the air with palm and finger strikes when the ventured too close for his tastes. They really needed to shake those stupid things and get on with the mission.

"Hey, you remember that weird game you used to play? The counting birds thing?"

"That was training, not a game. And no, I'm not going to try and count them."

Naruto couldn't help but feel let down. Situation aside, he really wanted a concrete number of how many of the grimy crow bastards were trying to peck their eyes out. Unfortunately for the vermin-covered avian, they were wearing protective eyewear. Naruto had ensured that they'd come prepared. If ninjas had Boy Scouts, Naruto would have gotten a damn merit badge for his foresight.

…Actually, shinobi and kunoichi training in the Academy basically were Boy and Girl Scouts, only they actually wound up using the things they were taught to do later in life… to fool and kill people… for money and other miscellaneous odds and ends.

With a quick sleight of hand, Naruto grabbed Neji and forced both of them to kick up a massive cloud of sand around the two of them at an intersection, allowing the two of them to split off in an attempt to fool the birds. It did nothing though, as they were smart enough to halve their numbers and continue to pursue the pair.

Hiding just inside of the doorway of one of the copious buildings they'd passed, both Naruto and Neji waited in dead silence as the crows passed them all by, to the last one.

After the last sound of cawing and wings beating left the range of their hearing, the two of them breathed a sigh of relief. Neji gave Naruto a nod of acknowledgment at replacing the two of them with clones so quickly and Henging one of them to look like Neji to fool the stupid crows.

"Stupid rats with wings," Naruto said, head raised in triumph.

Neji just shook his head and continued scanning the area for any more trouble, "That designation is for pigeons," He said, before stiffening and turning to face straight ahead of them in the dark of the building.

"Indeed it is," A familiar dry tone said that caused the hair on Naruto's neck to stand up, "Hello again, Naruto-kun."

In the shadows, red eyes stared at the two of them, but neither of them were affected by whatever genjutsu his eye contact would have wrought on its own for their own reasons.

Without even needing to speak in order to coordinate, Neji moved to Itachi's flank and set upon him with the open-handed strikes that were the bread-and-butter of his fighting style. He might as well have been wading through gelatin however with the way that Itachi perceived and avoided his movements.

His taijutsu was so dangerous that Itachi _had_ to pay attention to him. One touch could mean getting his chakra knocked out of whack, or death entirely depending on where the blow landed. But Neji had never been counting on actually hitting him.

All he needed to do was cause him to make a move that left him vulnerable. It took all of fifteen seconds of attack for that opening to present itself, in a blinding flurry of hands and Itachi's deft dodging abilities that carried them all over the room.

Itachi was faster than Naruto and Neji both, but he was in extremely tight quarters and they had been coming at him as hard as they could from the very beginning. It was just that Naruto let Neji get to him first.

The punch from Naruto sent Itachi clear through the ceiling to the next floor. Immediately grabbing his collar, there was no opening for Itachi to dodge the follow-up Rasengan that put him straight through the back wall, and every wall that led back out to another street.

Naruto and Neji stood at the last hole that Naruto had caused with his fist and his signature attack hitting a human being, "You_ started_ with a Rasengan?" All of the things Naruto could do that Neji knew he was capable of, and he went to the tried and true standard two. In the end, he figured it was better than him risking cutting Neji up with wind or burning him with ash, "…Well, when all you have is a hammer I suppose..." Neji wondered aloud.

It was probably the most controlled destructive attack he could use.

Opponent above you? Rasengan the skies! Opponent dodging? Rasen_rengan_, because two is better than one! Need to bust down a door? Rasengan! Need to clear rubble? Why Rasengan, of course!

Naruto rolled his eyes, "You don't really need a thousand techniques like Kakashi-sensei or Hokage-jiji. You just need enough. If you fight somebody, you're probably only gonna fight 'em once… because one of you are probably gonna die. So if I have one move I can do perfectly… why wouldn't it be my go-to?"

Itachi's body dispersed into crows before it even hit the ground outside from its second story fall. The birds flew away into the sandstorm-swept streets, cawing frantically, leaving no trace of Naruto and Neji's previously deadly opponent.

"Oh, that is absolute bullshit!" Naruto snapped, "He can make his clones without even being there for it!" It had definitely been a clone technique. Naruto had killed and seen enough of his own clones die in combat to know when he was facing down a solid clone jutsu, therefore making that what it was.

…Unless Uchiha Itachi's body was entirely composed of crows, which did not seem physically possible.

"My apologies," Neji said to Naruto afterwards, "I could see it wasn't the real Itachi, but it _was_ a solid clone of Uchiha Itachi."

Everything had happened so fast though, it wasn't like there had been time to say anything, and it wasn't like it mattered in the end anyway.

And so he attacked it like it had really been Itachi, because you just didn't play around with anything having to do with that particular man. Both of them were well aware of that little nugget of information. Sure, they might have wasted a strategy of attack on a clone, but Itachi didn't get the information from his Crow Clones after they dispelled the way that Naruto did.

Naruto gave him a pat on the shoulder. Neji had done the right thing as far as he could see. If they hadn't fought to win then and there, that clone would have sidetracked them for far too long. They wouldn't have been able to capture and interrogate it, "Don't worry about it. Must mean we're getting closer."

Between the crow sentries and the Crow Clone, it definitely meant _something_.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Sora-ku)

"We have company," Itachi said to the hologram of the other Akatsuki members, "They will find our location before we finish the extraction."

"_Oh for fuck's sake!"_ Hidan snapped over the connection he shared with the others, _"If you have to stop and break the jutsu to go fight, that just means we'll have to start all over again from the goddamn beginning!"_

The silver-haired killer was bored. They'd been sitting there for days as it stood already, and now the process of removing a biju from a jinchuuriki took even longer than the previous three days since Orochimaru had killed Sasori and taken his ring away.

Pain stifled Hidan with nothing more than a glance, despite being nothing more than a chakra hologram, _"Be silent Hidan,"_ He said sternly before addressing both Itachi and Kisame, _"Do you know who plans to move on your location?"_

"I do not," Itachi said, holding his concentration for the extraction jutsu, "I simply know that they are present. They disturbed my crow summons and I believe they defeated my clone."

The extraction would take another full day at least. This was not good news.

Silence reigned from the members of the organization. The only sound happened to be that of Yugito being drained of her biju and her very life's essence by a blue mass of chakra surrounding and writhing around her body, taking the Nibi straight from her eyes and mouth. She hadn't stopped screaming for three days.

They had been at it and were in the last quarter of the procedure, but the enemy would locate them before they finished. Sora-ku wasn't large enough to stop them for long. There were no human beings in Itachi and Kisame's vicinity for Pain to use for his Shapeshifting Techinque to make a decoy to sidetrack the enemy.

A decision had to be made.

Shutting his eyes, as if in quiet resignation, Pain opened them once again to address Kisame and Itachi, _"Can you escape with the jinchuuriki's body?"_

"I'm not entirely certain it will be a clean exit," Itachi admitted, "We were able to get here because the residents of the city are unaware that the biju we plan to extract is the Nibi," He spared a glance to the well-fortified entrance of their hiding place. Were it not for Yugito's cries of pain he was certain he would be hearing countless yowls of ninja felines at the barrier outside, "I'm quite certain they know we have its jinchuuriki now."

Kisame just laughed, "I'm pretty sure I can cut our way through a bunch of stupid cats if I have to," He said.

"I'm not saying that you can't," Itachi said, "But the commotion it would raise would bring those looking to take Yugito-san out of our hands."

"They're cats," In other words, not nearly as inherently dangerous as his sharks, even as far as being ninja animals went.

"…" Itachi didn't say anything at first, simply staring at him harshly for several seconds before opening his mouth, "Dogs, weasels, clams, toads, slugs, owls, turtles. Do I really need to go on?"

"…No, I think I've got it."

Being scolded by Uchiha Itachi. It was quite the experience to say the least.

XxX

(Konohagakure no Sato)

It was to be a mutual debriefing of Naruto's past Kyuubi episodes, approved by both the Hokage and the Daimyo (and insisted upon by advisors of the latter after Naruto almost took an entire town off of the map while serving as a Guardian). The track record of Naruto's progress in his jinchuuriki development was also to be shared.

Just in case another Kyuubi jinchuuriki was to be made, _the next time_ they would have something resembling a gameplan or a curriculum as it went in trying to prepare them. This approach would cut down on all of the headaches that had come, and continued to come, with training the one they already had.

And so Naruto's two old squad leaders were stuck walking with one another to the meeting of those who had interacted most with the current Kyuubi jinchuuriki over the course of his development.

Well… this was awkward.

"So…"

"Hmm…"

For once, Asuma didn't know where to start with a conversation, "So what's with that girl you work with? She looked like she was counting how many of us she could kill before someone finally got her."

Sora and Kotoko were elsewhere, taking in what there was to see of Konoha. Normally that would have been cause for alarm, leaving Kotoko alone in a place filled with potentially hapless victims, but Sora was with her, and his grumpy nose-to-the-grind mentality would cut down on any homicidal tendencies.

"She's kind of unbalanced. The only thing you can really count on out of her is that she'll perform any mission she's given," Sadao said, "Other than that… well…" All he could do was shrug. How else could he explain the periodic attempts Kotoko made on everyone else's life, and how it was allowed by their handler and by the Daimyo himself.

Asuma didn't need any explanation on why, "She's something of the contingency plan isn't she?" He asked rhetorically, "To keep something like another upheaval from happening," It's the only explanation for keeping a 'mad dog' element around a tightly woven fighting force.

Sadao actually stopped in the hall and spared Asuma a glance before recognizing who he was talking to. The man was no fool. And he'd been there in person for the incident that led to the Twelve Guardian Ninja organization losing the confidence of the Fire Daimyo for an entire decade. They were just beginning to build back to something resembling their former glory.

Naruto and Shikamaru had a lot to do with that while they had been there. They'd actually gotten their numbers back up to eight out of twelve for a while.

"It's been a long time since you were a Guardian," Sadao said to Asuma, remembering that the man had been one of his heroes when he'd been a kid looking to get the same spot Asuma used to have, "After that little coup that half of them tried back when you were one of us, a lot of us don't really get face-time with the Fire Daimyo anymore. Naruto did though, and he did really early into his run."

And there were a handful of factors that played into that, aside from the fact that Naruto's antics amused the airheaded noble enough that he wanted to keep the boy around.

Asuma shrugged with a smirk on his face, "Naruto was an approved Guardian, son of the Yondaime Hokage, trained by Jiraiya-sama and one of the few surviving Guardians, and known almost everywhere on-sight as the Kyuubi jinchuuriki," In other words, his pedigree was ridiculous, and even as a thirteen year old kid he backed it up on the battlefield for his age.

For everything about the Daimyo as far as common sense went by most people's standards, the man knows his politics and how to play the game so to speak. Asuma was quite certain that he recognized Naruto was probably the front-runner for the strongest of the next generation that Hi no Kuni could produce. He'd done top-notch work as a Guardian, as Asuma had never caught any rumors of major screw-ups from that group while Naruto and Shikamaru had been away,

Nobles didn't die, cities didn't fall, and even with all of Naruto's baggage (that wasn't really all his fault that he had) the capital and the Daimyo's court remained standing by the time he'd left, so he'd also curried more favor with the man from the results of his work alone.

He'd probably tried for years to ensure that he'd have Naruto's services beyond the three year contract that the boy had originally signed. But homesickness was a bitch, and there wasn't any way he was going to keep Naruto in the Guardian's employ any longer than the original agreement short of blackmail.

"We really wish Naruto and Shikamaru were still there actually," Sadao admitted, "Those two helped stop a sure-fire civil war you know? Kazuma, Sora's father? He wasn't dead. He was going to use Sora and bring the rest of your old partners back from the dead as the main piece in a plan to take out your little village."

Asuma knew this as well. Rumors spread quickly. Around sixteen months ago it had happened, and it had been cut off at the knees before it had gotten close to threatening Konoha, "What can I say? My kids are the best."

A snort came from the blind ninja monk, "Modest ain't we?"

There was absolutely no shame in Asuma's game, "Nothing's ever going to make me think they're not," That being said, the two of them entered the Hokage's office, the door closing behind them, courtesy of the ANBU guards keeping watch. Asuma spared a nod to one of the masked special forces, knowing that if an ANBU was going to sit in on this, even as a guard, it would be Yamato.

Hiruzen nodded in greeting to the pair, and leaning against the wall in the corner Jiraiya acknowledged their entry as well.

The Hokage was still feeling the physical exertion from his fight with Danzo, but that didn't mean that the work stopped. Which also meant it couldn't show. Jiraiya and Tsunade were normally in closer proximity to him these days to cover for him, but he was still the face of the village and had to exude a strong presence.

"Well I see no reason not to start the meeting," Hiruzen said diplomatically, "I'm sure the Daimyo has his concerns with Naruto's progress,"

"Not him really. More like his advisors," Despite his connection to the capital, Sadao didn't have any problems being forthcoming with the truth. He wasn't exactly a fan of how the Fire Daimyo could be swayed by those he trusted, "_We_ know Naruto's got a handle on it for the most part, but other nobles in the court don't. They just know he's lost control once before, and it scared the hell out of a lot of them when he did."

Asuma stood by the window and lit himself a cigarette, letting out a noncommittal grunt, "Naruto's not here to give his side of things."

Jiraiya managed to block a laugh, because in hindsight it was hilarious to think about, 'Naruto's side is literally, 'I was playing willpower tug of war and I slipped. In my mind. Could've happened to anybody,'' "This isn't an indictment or something Asuma. I'm pretty sure you realize, teaching that punk how to draw upon the Kyuubi's chakra has pretty much been a practice of throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks."

Reaching almost half of the full possible potential he could get to wasn't quite anything to sneeze at. Still, trial and error wasn't exactly the best approach to take when you were dealing with a living force of nature stuck inside of a teenager.

"Chakra control and sheer force of will," Jiraiya continued, punching into his palm, "We found one thing that works for the time being, but any idiot who thinks that's a perfect solution probably should have been swallowed at birth. So let's map this out and work out a godforsaken blueprint here."

Maybe he could write another how-to self-help book based on this crap?

XxX

(With Shikamaru – Sora-ku)

Shikamaru had been on pins and needles since his little discussion with Sasuke, but when your other best option was to go it alone against two S-rank shinobi you had to go with the known-unknown that was on your side instead of the known-unknown of the people you were going to have to fight without him.

He hadn't expected to be taken to a supply store first and foremost out of everything.

The young genius had only seen two human beings in Sora-ku since entering, and he'd seen both of them in this odd, dingy shop located off of the street.

"These are really well-made," A girl their age said as she returned Shikamaru's weapons of choice to him. She had long brown hair and wore a sleeveless red blouse with light colored trousers and kept her upper left arm wrapped in bandages, "Well, the mechanism ins undamaged, and the chamber is oiled so the blades should come out a little faster now."

Shikamaru nodded in unsaid thanks to the girl and looked over his weapons to make sure they hadn't been sabotaged in some way. He'd only handed over the apparatus itself though, not any of the blades that went with it. Everything seemed to be in order as he slipped his hidden wristblades back onto his forearms underneath the sleeves of his jacket and replaced the blades inside of them.

Sora-ku was a big place, but any bit of intelligence on the place said that it was entirely abandoned by humans. He should have known better. There was always a chance that people lived in any sort of place that had been inhabitable in the past. Why one would keep a shop out in an abandoned town though? It was beyond him.

And why did Sasuke know about it?

"It's not an Uchiha Clan base," Sasuke said, as if he could see what Shikamaru was thinking as he sat on the other side of the room, "Not saying we didn't have them, but no. This was a supply shop we used when we were far away from Konoha on missions."

"A supply shop?"

"My clan weren't the only ones who knew about it, just the only ones who knew in Konoha," Sasuke insisted, not knowing quite how to explain things, "There were more, in other villages. I'm not sure how many are actually left though."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow at the bit of exposition, "So what? Knowing about this place is like some kind of fraternity or something?"

"That's closer than you might figure boy," The old lady said with a laugh, "Our approach to business is something of a holdover from the olden days. The days before your village system was commonplace. Clans had to be outfitted somehow, as most of them focused so much attention on combat that practices like trading and metalworking weren't concerns. Shops like mine were seen as something of neutral zones for certain ones that didn't have standing blood feuds with one another."

The old woman had puffy grey hair and wore a pair of cat ears on her head. She wore a pink scarf and an orange dress and had a black-tipped nose, as if she were a cat herself.

"That little practice stands you know," She continued, "The only enemies the cats will attack are those who look to turn the traditional neutral grounds of our shop into a place of sole gain."

A bemused look came to Shikamaru's face at that, "Hooray for capitalism, the great equalizer."

"Nekobaa, you and Tamaki should clear out with the others," Sasuke said to the old woman. If one were to listen to the inflection of his voice closely, one could almost take it that he sounded concerned, "The reason we're here isn't the only reason you might be in danger. Suna's gathered people outside of the city. They're waiting on something."

"Probably a signal to come in here and exterminate us and Akatsuki in one fell swoop," Shikamaru added, "He's right you know. With what we're doing here, it's probably best if you go. You have an emergency exit don't you?"

Nekobaa nodded and sighed, "Well, business here hasn't been well in a long, long time. That, and Tamaki hasn't been fond of the desert atmosphere for years. Our family has other shops we can go to. I _am_ getting a little too old for this."

Sasuke seemed somewhat relieved that they were apparently going to leave. But before that, he was hoping he could get something useful out of the warning, "Itachi is in Sora-ku."

"I know already dear," Nekobaa said, "He was expecting you to come. Why else would he have come here of all places?" Sasuke's eyes went wide and she set a hand on his shoulder, "Denka and Hina can find him. I'll prepare them to show you where he is."

Shikamaru simply stared at the two of them and then at Sasuke's stunned expression. It was as if he were about to face something he'd been preparing his entire life for, and he wasn't sure if he was ready. That did not create a good mindset to have now of all times.

If he shot off a flare in the middle of a sandstorm as thick as the one outside to signal the others that they would soon have Akatsuki's location, would anyone even see it?

Come to think of it, he remembered looking up into the air before they'd gone inside to see if he could divulge when the storm may let up. From what he could see of the sky, the sand seemed to be… moving in a bit of a circle instead of simply blowing straight through. He hadn't thought of it at the time because he wasn't familiar with the desert's weather patterns. But now that he had a quiet moment to sit and think of everything he'd taken in since entering the city that stuck out.

"I don't think this'll be as straightforward as it should have been."

XxX

Sora-ku.

Standing a mile clear of the city surrounded by ground forces, Baki could take solace in the fact that whatever hell that place was about to become, no one was intended to actually go in there.

Still, it wasn't going to be standing for much longer.

"ANBU will take point and plant explosives in the prime areas of the city. Members of the Puppet Brigade will scout the outskirts. If at all possible, capture one of the objectives you were briefed on," Baki said, "The rest of you, observe, and if necessary prevent any non-friendly from leaving Sora-ku until zero hour. Fan Corps will focus on controlling the flow of the sandstorm."

With the manipulation of the sandstorm it would keep things clear for their forces, while convincing anyone inside of the city that leaving would result in certain death for them. It was ironic that remaining inside of Sora-ku away from the danger of the storm was the thing that would wind up killing them in the end.

The foreign shinobi and the international terrorists may have gone in, but they wouldn't be coming out. There were simply too many high-profile figures in one place who would be killing each other to let it just happen without:  
a) Ensuring that it did in fact happen.  
b) Keeping the situation contained when it actually did.

It was just as well. Who would give any of these figures free reign within the limits of Kaze no Kuni? To simply let them and then sit back as whatever damage occurred as a result would cause them to lose face with the new Wind Daimyo who had only recently began to favor the shinobi of his own country again.

Baki understood all of this, all of the reasoning behind why this was happening. He was old, grizzled, had seen it all. Backstabbing and plots were as much a part of their society as any of the other ninja arts. Between nations, trust was just a five-letter word that would get you stabbed in the time it would take you to say it.

One of the younger ninjas amongst the ground forces didn't exactly see it so cut and dry.

"And what about Konoha and Kumo?" The young man asked. His vest was completely unmarked; no cuts or wear evident on the informal body armor. Oh, he was _brand_ new. Well that was just adorable, "This is the kind of thing wars get started over, isn't it?"

"It's a battleground involving Akatsuki and three jinchuuriki," Baki said, explaining Sunagakure's plausible deniability in this case, "If none of them come back and nothing is left standing by the end of it, there's nothing that can be said or done. If anyone has any problems, what are we to say? That we were just to let three foreign jinchuuriki have their run of demolishing the land in our country?"

Besides, it was more than likely that in such a situation, Kumo and Konoha would turn on each other before taking aim at anyone else. Those two had been looking as if they would be taking one another on for the better part of a decade with Kumo moving into position for the number one spot of strongest hidden village. Now they were seemingly more poised to fight one another than ever with what had been going on recently. All they needed was a decent excuse.

Losing a jinchuuriki or two in this black hole of a mission was as good an excuse to cause a dust-up between the two villages as any that had ever come up in any previous war. And if Kumo and Konoha wound up fighting, neither of the two would be the strongest anymore.

International politics in a military society was a dirty game. You had to play dirty to win it.

* * *

Omake: 'Til _What_ Do Us Part? (2)

In hindsight, Ino felt that perhaps she should have known better than to go to Sakura first with her newfound issue. Visiting a nice, outdoor ice cream place was supposed to be calming. It was a calming food. But when your best friend found your circumstances laughable, it tended to sour the experience.

Ino dropped her spoon down into her empty bowl and slammed her hands on the table between herself and a thoroughly amused Sakura, "It's not funny Forehead!"

"You're right, you're right," Sakura said, waving Ino off and schooling her own features into a blank look. It lasted for all of half a second before her composure broke and she began to laugh again, "Oh, no you're not! It _is _funny!"

She didn't even feel like rising to the jab at her forehead. It was more fun to poke at Ino than to get into an argument regarding the nicknames of choice that both girls had for the other.

"I'm starting to think Goldie has a point when he says that our friends suck," The blonde telepath muttered, glaring at her closest friend out of the corner of her eye.

"Come on. This is what friends are for," Sakura reasoned, "Having problems that you can laugh at so you can take your mind off of your own. Oh, you finally get the boyfriend you want, and he's engaged! That's got to be something out of a romance novel."

"I mean, it's Naruto!" Ino emphasized, as if that would explain everything. And it did. It just wasn't what Sakura had been expecting, as she didn't say a word in dispute she just grinned and raised an eyebrow questioningly, "…You know what I'm talking about! He was an acquired taste and you know it!"

This did nothing to dull Sakura's sense of humor at the situation, "Mm-hmm. Apparently that Shizuka girl acquired it too."

"She wants to marry him so he can give her village some powerhouse babies," Ino deadpanned, eliciting an actual blush out of Sakura, "That's literally the only reason she's here. Also, I'm going to kick Shikamaru's ass when I see him again, because I'm almost entirely sure that it's his fault she showed up."

Neither Naruto nor Ino had seen the lazy Nara since all of this had begun to occur, and Naruto frequently cursed his name and punched at the air randomly whenever he was particularly irked by the current affairs surrounding them.

It had been three days since Shizuka had made her presence known, and those three days had been filled with her trying to convince Naruto with logical reasoning as to why she was the best choice as a significant other. Part of this logical reasoning was an outright attempt to point out her physical appeal over Ino, and the fact that she was to be the leader of her village with all of the strengths of personality that would come with such a thing.

More than once when she'd been in the dark-haired woman's presence, Ino had contemplated stabbing her with a poisoned senbon, just once. Nowhere she'd actually feel it, but somewhere that would definitely shut her up.

But she was technically a diplomat, and there was a chance that could get messy.

With the mood effectively sobered, Sakura shifted to proactive mode. As funny as it was, friends also tried to help other friends, "So… what are you going to do?"

"Nothing," Ino replied, as if the word left a bitter taste in her mouth, "Naruto said he'd handle it, and sometimes a girl's got to trust her man."

If skepticism was a color, at that moment it would have been pink, similar to Sakura's hair, "Naruto?"

"Yes."

"I figured his first choice to fix the problem would've been the thing you actually want to do to her," In other words, beat her up and kick her out, because more often than not Naruto's conflict resolution involved physical conflict, "I'm sorry, but I can't really imagine a solution from him where that doesn't happen."

XxX

"Nadeshiko Village women are kind of… persistent, one could say," Shiho said, adjusting the thick glasses on her face as she sat down at her table with her guest, "They're extremely stringent about the law where they have to marry the man who defeats them. There might not be any reasonable way out of this."

Naruto had been hoping that one of the most logical, level-headed women he knew could help him out when it came to one such as Shizuka. Shiho was his best bet to pull this off with any semblance of decency and he knew it.

With a sigh, Naruto reached out and grabbed both of Shiho's hands in his for a heartfelt plea, "I came to you because Shikamaru is an asswipe, and other than him you're the smartest person I know," His voice was solemn and pleading. It was… strange to hear him asking so earnestly for assistance, "Please, I need you. I trust you. Help me get out of this."

The thing was, he didn't even have to. Shiho would have helped him if he'd come knocking and asking normally. He didn't ask for it much. But for Naruto to be so serious and composed about it, it wouldn't have been possible for her to turn him down.

"Well, you can't have a fiancé if you have a wife, so you could marry Ino-."

"We're seventeen years old!" Naruto immediately said, recoiling at the thought. That would be a disaster if there ever was one. Nothing good would come of that at this juncture, "Nobody's ready for that! I'm doing this to _keep from_ having a wedding I'm not ready for!"

"-_but_ that might start a war. Let me finish," Shiho continued, giving Naruto a stern look, "Beating her in a fight didn't help, and you were too hardheaded to throw the fight against her back when you had the chance," It was there that Shiho noticed something off about Naruto's posture, "What is it?"

Naruto fidgeted in his seat upon being pressed, "I didn't technically win a fight with her. We both just stopped after I turned on the red."

That particular turn of phrase represented the gigantic being of inhuman chakra residing inside of his body. It was not lost on Shiho, who was more than astute enough to break it down for herself.

"…You tapped into the Kyuubi's chakra and that made her stop?" It took a moment, but Naruto did nod in confirmation. Shiho lifted her glasses just high enough so that she could rub the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on, "Oh, you are so much smarter than you were when we met, but you miss so many things sometimes."

Instead of taking offense, Naruto just stared at her for a long moment, "That's the nicest way anybody's ever called me dumb that I've ever heard."

Ugh, that was what advisors and trusted confidants were for it seemed. Therefore Shizuka took it upon herself to explain, "You never beat her because even if she conceded after the fact, you never accepted victory. If anything, it's a draw at best, and if it comes down to it you can argue that. I don't think that by itself would stop her though."

"She'll still hound me to go with her and marry her."

"Yes. If you want this to absolutely go away, you have to have another man win against her in a battle. You need a ringer Naruto-kun."

"And who the hell am I gonna get that's strong enough to pull it off, and stupid enough to fight her to win in the first place?" Naruto wondered aloud. Not that he was blaming Shiho for the idea, but it wasn't as simple as it seemed from first glance, "Shizuka's actually fucking tough. Anyone I could think of would ask me why I want them to fight her, and when they find out why they're not gonna say yes."

Shiho shrugged her shoulders in defeat, offering a pitying smile, "That's your responsibility. I'm afraid I'm not very close with the side of our ninja forces that actually fight. You're actually the strongest friend I have. Which isn't exactly a small thing to say."

She couldn't have all the answers to his questions. If the solution were really so casual, he probably wouldn't have needed the help to begin with. As it stood, Naruto was grateful that Shiho spared the time that she did to hear about his damned problem.

The shifts at the Konoha Archive Library were absurd, and Shiho had been pulling more hours than ever since the Kabuto breach in security that had slipped through the cracks had come to light cleaning up the system.

Naruto bid her farewell and went on his way to try and figure something else out before the thing with Shizuka turned into a huge mess.

Making sure he was well and gone, Shiho exhaled a breath of relief and knocked on a wall near her kitchen. Moments later, Shikamaru spilled out of a nearby broom closet, "…Troublesome."

"Was it worth it to start all of this Shikamaru?" Shiho asked after the fact. She was willing to offer him asylum so to speak. What other time would Shikamaru actually ask her to come over to her house? Still, she was by now well aware that he was the primary reason one of her very best friends happened to be in a pickle.

From on the ground, Shikamaru opened his eyes and stared up listlessly at the ceiling, blinking slowly, "I'll tell you what. Give me a week, then I might have an answer to that."

* * *

**Alright, this took a while, and I'm sorry for that. **

**So apparently being a responsible, contributing member of society in the profession of television news with absolutely unforgiving work hours is surprisingly draining. I think I'm damn near nocturnal at this point. **

**Behold. The Nightman Cometh.**

**Add that with preparing for an intended bout in October, along with all of the other pipe-dream stuff I'm into to try and get rich, and I can safely say that I will be a burnout by 30.**

**Being an assistant producer still rules though.**

**Anyway, next time! Violence! A treacherous op! A tearful reunion… if those tears were made of blood! And other stuff!**

**Hope you enjoyed. Kenchi out.**


End file.
